Seeking and Finding

The world today can be a complex place, and survival a tricky art to learn.  With the weakening of traditional communities, and the rise of individualism – the ‘me’ society – we all, at times, feel alone and unsure of ourselves.  This leaves us vulnerable to the ploys of advertising and lifestyle gurus selling us their props for personal perfection.   In our frailer moments, it’s easy to go astray and end up wondering, who am I?  Where and how do I fit into all this?

In the last couple of decades a companion industry to the self and home improvement sector has grown up based precisely on this sense of fragility and the need for a deeper, more spiritual dimension to life.  There’s now an abundance of experts who want to show us how to uncover our hitherto untapped potential via techniques and concepts that will help us have great lives, fantastic relationships, fabulous careers, lots of money.

Genuine inspiration or another manifestation of the consumer culture desire for instant gratification?  You decide!

My own years of experience as a psychotherapist have shown me that that we are all very different; that there’s no magic formula; that most of us seem to have a need to connect lovingly with significant others and with the sacred in our lives; that we all search for happiness and make many mistakes – and hopefully learn from at least some of them – in our quest for it.

What brings about the greatest inner peace is the ability to see and accept ourselves for what we are: a mixture and a balance of various qualities, some good, some which give us pain – ‘the thorns in our flesh’.  We aspire to being the best we can, we often fall short.  What can we do except pick ourselves up and keep going?

And this seems to me the sheer wonder of human beings, that with all life’s many challenges – with illness, with disability, with emotional distress, with troubles of every kind – we still get up in the morning and do what’s required of us, and even manage to have a few laughs and some moments of great joy along the way.  I have worked with people in the direst circumstances who nevertheless will cross terrible pain thresholds in order to make sure their partners and children are okay.  The ordinary human being has a heroic quality that is absolutely incredible.

The truly happiest people I’ve known have lived outwardly quite low-key, mundane lives: getting on with their work, caring for their families and friends, taking themselves for who they are, and others in the same spirit.  This is a gift, no doubt.  But I have a great liking and respect for these hidden lives, cloaked in the ordinary, but which give ballast to the world, stop it all flying apart.

My fear with some of the new techniques on offer is that they do the opposite – so up in the air.  But actually, it’s all here, all around us.  We are what we’re looking for!  What we really need is to be more grounded in our own lives, more appreciative of what we actually have, instead of constantly seeking something else, something bigger and better.  I very much like that Frances Gurney poem which contains the line, you are closer to God in a garden than anywhere else on earth.  And I remember an elderly gentleman – actually, my late father-in-law – telling me ‘a garden can make your whole life’.

Research supports the value of the ordinary.  It shows that people who have pets they love tend to be more contented; that church-goers suffer less mental illness; that in the UK, people whose earnings correspond to the average income are the happiest.

And when, at the end of his life, that very great seeker after meaning, Aldous Huxley, was asked what he thought the world needed most, he simply replied: ‘a little more kindness’.

One last quote, by Dag Hammarskjöld:

Your own truth, you shall learn it

                                Your own path, you shall follow it

                                Your own death, you shall endure it

Of course we shall.  What alternative is there?  In the end,  life itself is the greatest teacher. If we just pay attention, the lessons are there for us in the living.  All we require is a daily dose of courage and humility.

 

Should I stay or should I go?

How do you advise a couple when one partner wants to end a relationship and the other wants to save it?

Clearly no-one should be persuaded – let alone forced – to stay in a relationship in which they are genuinely unhappy or being ill-treated in any way.

But for all relationship professionals, from therapists to divorce lawyers, the scenario where a couple actually seems to get along pretty reasonably but are on the verge of splitting up is all too familiar.

They’re polite and considerate to one another, they aren’t fighting, superficially at least they’re not angry with one another.  No-one’s getting the silent treatment either.  But somewhere along the line, they’ve become disconnected.  They’re sitting there side by side, but they’re not together.  Or at least, it doesn’t feel like they’re together.

Inevitably, in this situation, one partner is convinced the solution is to split up, the other isn’t so sure.  What has made the ‘leaning out’ partner want to go?  And what’s making the ‘leaning in’ partner want to hold on?  It won’t be the same in every case, but quite often it’s a matter of shifts within the relationship that have left one of the partners feeling left behind, excluded from changes that have happened with the other partner.

These can be outward changes – a new job, the arrival of children, the death of a parent, moving home, illness, an interesting hobby – or inner changes, psychological or spiritual growth through counselling or religious practice.  Whatever the cause, one of them has changed, and the other doesn’t know how to deal with those changes, and may feel deeply threatened by them.

The result is disconnection.  One is scared, the other feels misunderstood and unloved.  It’s usually the one who feels unloved who decides the relationship is over.

I recently attended a conference at which the main speaker was Dr Bill Doherty, the Canadian marriage therapist and trainer, and his subject was these ‘mixed agenda’ couples, and the method he has developed to help them work out whether they really could be a going concern once again.  The amazing fact is that he has found the vast majority of the couples – and remember, these were couples in the throes of separation and divorce – end up finding that their relationship is worth the effort involved in saving it after all, even though it means facing some deep and challenging soul searching on both sides, and changes in order to re-connect and make it possible for the relationship to thrive again.

‘How much are you willing to change in order to save your marriage?’ is a key question for each of the partners.  It inevitably comes as a shock – they didn’t realise they needed to change.  Surely you should love each other for who and what you are?  Isn’t it wrong to expect someone to change?

Well no, it isn’t!  We all have to adapt to situations, to the changes that life presents us with whether we ask for them or not.  And it’s the same in marriage.  Marriage isn’t static.  It’s dynamic, and the success of it depends on the relationship being strong and supple enough to contain the growth and the development of the couple, both together and as individuals.

In our throw away culture of built-in obsolescence, where divorce is now the outcome for almost one in every two marriages, with all the pain and loss, heart-ache and economic hardship that entails, it was so encouraging to learn about a programme that helps couples to re-find the lost spark in their relationship. That helps them to see that even if there’s only a very little love left, it can once again become a big, strong love given the willingness and desire to conserve rather than dispose of something so important and vital to their happiness that it will impact on themselves and those closest to them for years to come, maybe for the rest of their lives.