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ОглавлениеWhere Am I — and Where Do I Want to Be?
Tremendous growth happens when couples learn to “swim in anxious soup together.” This means learning to tolerate anxiety for growth, rather than moving to control and manage one another or collapsing and complying in order not to threaten each other.
— ELLYN BADER, at a 2018 Couples Conference in Oakland, California
Before you can start learning any new love skills, you first need to understand why you’re doing this at all. When it comes to improving your relationships, what is the ultimate goal?
In the Love Cycles model, which outlines the five stages all romantic relationships go through, the final stage is Wholehearted Love. But there’s no real end point in this journey: everlasting love is an everlasting journey. Most couples will need to make repeated treks through all five stages, continuing to learn and grow together with each cycle. If and when we arrive at the fifth stage, however, our relationship is at its healthiest and most rewarding. Although we don’t stay in Stage Five permanently, we can find our way back to it with greater ease each time we drop into an earlier stage, and we stay in that fifth stage for longer periods of time.
Wholehearted love is more than just loving someone with all you’ve got. It means loving from a place of personal wholeness and with a full recognition of your partner’s wholeness. There are three elements of wholehearted love: mindful self-awareness, relationship skillfulness, and care and nourishment of the relationship.
WHOLEHEARTED LOVE
Mindful Self-Awareness
Relationship Skillfulness
Care and Nourishment of the Relationship
The first step is to assess where you are on the journey toward wholehearted loving — right here, right now. The quiz below will help you understand each of the three elements of wholehearted love and how well you practice each one.
I will ask you to retake this quiz at the end of the book, and I think you’ll be surprised at all you’ve learned. If you’re willing to thoughtfully consider the ideas in Love Skills and try out most of the exercises, I’m confident you’ll find yourself in a very different place by the time you finish the book.
Wholehearted Loving Quiz
This exercise should be completed individually. If you’re working with a partner, share your results after you’ve both finished.
Rank yourself on a scale of 1 to 5 for each item based on the definitions below. After each section, add up the scores to get your total for that section. The usefulness of this quiz relies on your self-awareness and honesty with yourself, so be as truthful as possible.
1 = This is never true for me
2 = This is rarely true for me
3 = This is sometimes true for me
4 = This is usually true for me
5 = This is almost always true for me
Mindful Self-Awareness
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
— C. G. JUNG, founder of analytical psychology
Mindfulness is a meditative practice of paying attention to the moment in a nonjudgmental way, and self-awareness is your capacity to observe and reflect on your inner world of thoughts and feelings. Mindful self-awareness allows you to tolerate the discomfort of self-reflection, to turn reactivity into responding, and to develop self-care practices to support your wholeheartedness. Being mindfully self-aware means understanding yourself and committing to being the best version of yourself.
| Score | |
| 1.I don’t usually get worked up about little things. | ______ |
| 2.I know which parts of my personality are “challenges,” and I’ve learned to embrace them without engaging in destructive behaviors. | ______ |
| 3.When I’m upset, I’m able to be compassionate with myself. I don’t beat myself up when I’m already down. | ______ |
| 4.I have ongoing practices that support my ability to stay mindful. | ______ |
| 5.I value my relationships with people besides my partner; I have a community that I’m able to give to and receive from. | ______ |
| 6.I like my sense of humor and often laugh at myself. | ______ |
| 7.I’m not embarrassed or ashamed of being vulnerable, although I am discriminating about where I show it. I share it with appropriate and supportive others. | ______ |
| 8.I’m an introspective person, and I reflect on why I think, act, and feel the way I do. | ______ |
| 9.I value the quality of generosity and work to develop it in myself. | ______ |
| 10.I understand the impact my history has on my current life. | ______ |
| 11.I’m comfortable being alone as well as being around others. | ______ |
| 12.I feel that I’m living close to the values I hold dear. | ______ |
| 13.I care deeply about my partner but know that the most important part of my well-being depends on the relationship I have with myself. | ______ |
| 14.I understand the general makeup of my personality: whether I’m an introvert or extrovert, what my go-to defense mechanisms are, which environments I mesh well with and which ones to avoid, and what motivates me and what deters me. | ______ |
| 15.I make my own mental, emotional, and physical health a major priority in my life. | ______ |
| TOTAL SCORE | ______ |
Relationship Skillfulness
Relationship skillfulness refers to your ability to use specific skills to resolve conflict and express appreciation, affection, and compassion. Most prominently, this includes the ability to communicate both your positive and your negative emotions in ways that enhance your relationship. There is an art to sharing both your vulnerable and your loving feelings, while also being able to express your negative feelings in a way that preserves your connection. Relationship skillfulness also includes being able to openly receive your partner’s feelings — both the loving ones and the difficult ones.
| Score | |
| 1.I easily use “I statements.” | ______ |
| 2.I take responsibility for my part of the trouble. | ______ |
| 3.I’m empathetic when listening to others. | ______ |
| 4.I don’t seek out arguments or problems with the things people say or do (I don’t badger, provoke, or nag). | ______ |
| 5.I attempt to understand someone’s perspective before making judgments about their words or actions. | ______ |
| 6.I make an effort to repair my relationships when there is strife. | ______ |
| 7.I don’t think I’m always right, and I’m willing to admit that. | ______ |
| 8.I’m comfortable being vulnerable with people who are close to me. | ______ |
| 9.I set clear and healthy boundaries, not too rigid but not too loose. | ______ |
| 10.I know how to complain without criticizing. | ______ |
| 11.I’m able to forgive and apologize. | ______ |
| 12.I recognize nonverbal cues in others. | ______ |
| 13.I practice being an attuned listener, and I rarely interrupt others because I truly want to know what they have to say. | ______ |
| 14.I’m aware of how my body language and facial expressions may come across to others. | ______ |
| 15.I recognize when I’m getting defensive about something and consciously calm myself down, so I can have thoughtful and healthy conversations. | ______ |
| TOTAL SCORE | ______ |
Care and Nourishment of Your Relationship
When you take the time to nourish and care for your relationship, you make it a priority to create time to talk, experience new adventures and pleasures, give gratitude and gestures of intimacy, and seek guidance from professionals when you encounter the inevitable bumps in the road.
| Score | |
| 1.My partner and I have similar values and respect the ones that are different in the other. | ______ |
| 2.Although we may have had nasty arguments in the past, we’ve learned from them and continue to discover more about how to argue in healthy, productive ways. | ______ |
| 3.I don’t let our disagreements get in the way of loving my partner. | ______ |
| 4.I want to treat and respond to my partner with the most loving and mature part of me. | ______ |
| 5.There are times that my partner discloses more (or less) than I do or can. I feel a little uncomfortable with it, but I also know we are different people and that it’s okay. | ______ |
| 6.I appreciate when my partner is honest with me, even if it’s not always what I want to hear. I know that my partner would only say negative things about our relationship if there were important problems we needed to repair. | ______ |
| 7.I recognize that communication about our issues needs to happen early on and be done in a productive way. I don’t build up resentment, “sweep it under the rug,” or resort to pettiness. | ______ |
| 8.We are affectionate: holding hands, kissing, and cuddling are a regular part of our relationship. | ______ |
| 9.I can count on my partner to usually listen and help me with my issues — my partner never turns me away without a justifiable reason and a promise to get back to me soon. | ______ |
| 10.I take time to honor our relationship daily, whether that’s giving my partner an amorous hug and/or kiss, saying a sincere “I love you,” performing an act of gratitude, intentionally reserving time in my schedule to devote solely to my partner, or some other way of letting my partner know that she or he is special to me. | ______ |
| 11.Although our sex life may not be what it was when we first started dating, we both make it a point to keep passion and novelty alive in the bedroom and give each other feedback on what we each like and need sexually. | ______ |
| 12.We make a point of talking things out face-to-face rather than over email or text. | ______ |
| 13.Having fun is a major component of our relationship — we love taking on adventures together. | ______ |
| 14.My partner and I both seek to learn about and accommodate each other’s preferred “love languages” (receiving gifts, quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service, or physical touch). | ______ |
| 15.We laugh together often, but jokes at each other’s expense or about a known sensitive area are off-limits. If we cross that line, we apologize. | ______ |
| TOTAL SCORE | ______ |
Reflections
The sections with the highest total scores are the areas in which you already have a high degree of skill. Below, list your skill sets (Mindful Self-Awareness, Relationship Skillfulness, and Care and Nourishment of Your Relationship) in order, beginning with your strongest one, then your second strongest, and finally where you are most challenged. The great news is, all of these practices can be learned over time — and even an area in which you got your highest score can be improved.
#1:
#2:
#3:
Keep these results in mind as you move throughout the rest of this book. Every exercise will help you get closer to one of these three qualities of wholehearted love — sometimes several at once.
Let’s move now to understanding the Love Cycles model.
