Month: December 2010

There seems to be a growing number of people who are leaving their relationships. Initially I figured people were talking to me about their pending break-ups because they heard that I was single, but that turns out to be incorrect. They are talking to be because they are in unsatisfying relationships and they look at what Rachel and I did as the next appropriate step in their relationship.

With most of these situations there are some common trends. Below is a list of some of the things I’ve been hearing about why people are thinking of leaving their long term relationships:

You are not very satisfied with your life and when you speak to your partner they are more concerned with keeping things the way they are than your lack of satisfaction. This has more to do with the economics of time and effort than a genuine lack of caring about what you going through. Their actions are selfish because they don’t want the cognitive overhead associated with having to change their relationship with the world. Leaving this person is often enough to cause the changes you are looking for because adjusting to a relationship ending is a lot tougher than changing things enough to allow you to find more satisfaction in life. But keep in mind that the changes MUST be lasting or else you’re back to this game in a few months or years.

You are not connecting with your partner on an emotional level. This is either due to withdrawal by your partner, an improvement in your emotional intelligence or an inability to foster the emotional awareness needed for a reciprocal relationship. Withdrawal is selfish and is under the control of your partner; this is really bad because they are choosing to withdraw. An improvement in your emotional understanding shows that you are evolving as a person which frees your partner of responsibility from this issue; but it’s still not very good because unless they evolve in the same way, the relationship is going to suffer. Having a partner who is incapable of expressing the emotions needed to allow for the connection to exist just shows you how powerful attraction can be because it allows us to overlook huge shortcomings in favor of falling in love.

You are in a relationship with a horrible person and as you mature, you begin to see their behavior for what it is. This is a big one because what attracts us to people serves a reproductive function and oftentimes these things are not what make for a positive relationship. His arrogance was sexy confidence before the kids came along, now it’s just a pain in the ass because he doesn’t believe cooking dinners to be the role of the primary bread earner. She used to be strong willed because she wouldn’t back down during an argument, now she is just stubborn or delusional because she won’t accept the truth. Good luck here. Change is possible, but they’re going to need to see the need for change and until they do, you’re going to suffer.

Your partner is a border-line or complete sociopath who cares more about controlling behavior and perceptions than addressing the wrongs. I’ve yet to see how this one works out well. Staying in a relationship with a sociopath is only an option if there are no children, you won’t be having children and you are not getting abused. If children are involved, consider the impact that modeling your relationship will have on them. They’ll learn that mommy or daddy has one function and that is to service the needs to their partner. Not a healthy legacy to leave for anyone. And children see and normalize this very quickly.

You are with someone who can’t meet your needs. This is sad because it is so emotionless and flat that it’s almost boring to talk about and admit. For example, you have a very broad emotional spectrum and your partner doesn’t. There’s nothing wrong with this, it’s just unsatisfying for you because so much of your identity doesn’t get expressed. You’re lucky if your partner is mature enough to accept this and allows you to get your needs met elsewhere but lets get real here, who is that mature? Personally I crumble when a girl friend goes else where to get her needs met regardless of what those needs may be – be it coaching for swimming, someone to hear her problems, laundry advice, etc… even the stuff that I know nothing about.

Your relationship has actually ended but you are with someone who can’t end it. This is so common it’s an embarrassment for our species. One partner has checked-out while the other is still working hard to try and make things work. The checked-out partner won’t end it for some reason – mainly because they can’t have the tough conversation – and the still-trying partner believes the relationship is worth saving. The end result is one person spending all of their remaining relationship building energy while the others sits and wonders how much better life would be if they weren’t in the relationship. I have difficultly with this one personally because I have a tough time accepting that I was wrong about falling in love and seeing my world without my present partner. But the sooner it ends, the sooner the two of you will find happiness again

If you see yourself in one of the above situations, consider taking some time to evaluate your relationship. It may not be over, but you may need to take some steps to get a handle on what is going on.

For the last 15 years I have known that human beings suffer from two types of things, physical and mental. Physical suffering amounts to about 15% of it and it includes things like illness or injury (actual pathologies) or biological stress resulting from the acute deviation from biological homeostasis. Mental suffering accounts for the remaining 85% and is comprised of the emotional consequences to our misinterpretation of reality.

What is very funny is that we spend an awful amount of time treating or trying to prevent the physical suffering by taking medication, eating better food, exercising more, etc… but we do not spend anywhere near the same amount of time addressing or preventing the mental suffering, which is surprising given that a similar amount of effort in this area would result in 5 times greater reduction in suffering. I’ve known this for ages and haven’t until recently done very much to capitalize on the life improving consequences of working to see reality more clearly.

Now that I’ve started to work to see my nature, my actions and my view of the world in terms of what is actually happening – the truth – vs. what is being interpreted about the world – my reality – a remarkable observation is starting to present itself concerning how human beings respond to the eliminate of a source of stress.

Initially, when I eliminate a big source of stress in my life, there is a strange out of sorts feeling, like something is missing. It’s kind of hard to shake at the beginning because peacefulness is a change from the normal state of negative arousal. It’s a lot like quitting smoking after a few days – once the physical withdrawal from the addictive chemical has passed – because you KNOW you are not doing something that you used to do (smoking or craving a cigarette is doing something) and you become acutely aware that something is missing. Your brain is used to processing something and it notices that this is not happening anymore.

This can be a wonderful time if you act quickly and put these liberated cognitive resources to work on something useful or purposeful and, overtime, you can actually make permanent changes to what you do with your brain on a daily basis. Doing this will require active attention and effort to teach the brain to automatically focus on something new, but it can be done – just as you taught your brain to focusing on the original stresser. The inverse is also true, the brain will, if you do not actively direct your attention onto new things, find another reason to feel stress and being to make that the new normal. The spontaneous action of the brain is to maintain the present state and, in the absence of a reason for the present state, it will seek out and find a reason, then use the free resources to focus on the new stresser.

It is important to remove as many of the stressful things in your life as you can but if you want to completely free yourself from them, you need to actively fill the hole that they leave when they are gone. If you don’t, the hole will be filled by something that creates the same amount and type of stress that you just eliminated and after a few weeks, you’ll be in effectively the same position that you originally were

A friend of mine has started smoking again. He was badly hooked for almost 20 years and made the decision to quit about a year ago. He has started having the occasional cigarette again and doesn’t seem to register that smoking isn’t healthy. He believes his claim that he can have one every now and then and that it isn’t a problem. I’ve been there, quitting and only having the occasional smoke. Problem is with most people who smoked so much or so frequently that they needed to stop doing it is that we are addicted now and likely forever – I know I am and there’s a good chance that he is too.

I LOVE smoking. I found it to be one of the most pleasurable things that I have ever done. I was good at it if that is possible. I could smoke a pack a day, during meals, before and for breakfast, anytime and any place. I joke that I made two big mistakes in life, the first being that I started smoking and the second being that I stopped. I think about it almost everyday and there are times when I crave them. I haven’t been a smoker in almost 10 years and I believe that if I live long enough I will become a smoker again – I would likely start smoking if I had a terminal illness.

I HATE smoking. I find if to be one of the most destructive things that I have ever done. I couldn’t stop smoking at will. I needed to smoke a pack a day to feel normal. I needed to smoke in the middle of meals to enjoy the meal, it needed to be the first thing I did in the morning, it was always on my mind and I didn’t have control over my actions when I was a smoker. I wish I had never started because I wouldn’t be thinking about smoking right now, and again now, and right there again. I hate that there is something on the planet that will make me lose control, something that I could easily fall back into doing that ruins my life.

If you have quit, put the smokes down and don’t ever pick them up again. If you had to quit, you have to keep quitting, over and over again until you are gone. It’s just too easy for the brain and body to fall back into the old behaviors because they are still there and they were so much fun! But you’ll think you have a handle on it until that moment when you realize, with stinking hands and nasty breath that you can’t stop and need to quit.