Plants and Pets

A couple of points for consideration: Why might we consider looking for a new relationship? If we were with our partner for many years and are just a few months into the process of adjusting to the end of our relationship, we are still pretty raw.

What if we find a terrific new partner who's former partner passed away and they don't have the baggage we do. We might be too damaged to successfully navigate this new relationship and in the process hurt both ourselves and our new partner. That would be a sad outcome.

We would be better served to take some time for self care, healing some of our wounds prior to trying to find a new partner. It's fairer to both ourself and our potential new partner. neither of us need to get hurt.

It may seem like finding someone new will make us feel better, but it's really likely to be a rebound relationship for us, and possibly not one for our new partner. We don't want to be unfair to another person or ourself.

Let's give ourselves time to heal. The average time it takes to get past the five stages of grief varies, but is generally around two years. During that time we can start with a plant. If the plant lives, after a couple of months get a pet. If the plant and the pet are both still alive after about two years, we are ready to care for a human being.

In the interim we can learn to care for ourselves. We practice our tools in our daily lives, making certain that we treat ourselves with all the empathy and compassion that we deserve. In this way we give ourselves the gift of healing.

Karma and Acceptance

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Acceptance and difficult decisions... that's the toughest part of relationships. We often begin our relationship with love in our hearts and rose colored glasses on our face. We bathe in the glow of eros, or sexual, love as our relationship begins. We feel alive and joyful. Our partner appears perfect through the haze of erotic love.

Over time as we grow in our relationship we notice that our love has changed. It has gone from being only eros to include agape love. Agape, or selfless, love is a matured love. It is a love that allows us to put our partner first, to compassionately fill their lives with warmth and empathy. As we give ourselves fully to the relationship, we free our partner to do the same.

The Buddhists call Karma the law of moral causation. We get what we give in life. If we give our partner empathy, warmth, respect, acceptance, security and loyalty we will likely get the same in return. If we give our partner condemnation, criticism and complaints we will probably get that in return as well.

As we focus on the positive in our lives and try to be the person we want our partner to be, we allow the ebb and flow of the universe to pass through us. We give up the press of forcing our will and permit events to unfold naturally. We use our tools to de-stress recognizing that enjoying the journey is the ultimate goal.

Emotions and Kindergarten

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Most of us in life are rarely in healthy balanced relationships. We are, more likely, in a variety of dependent or codependent relationships which we enter with a great deal of baggage we bring with us from our past.

The key to effective discussions between partners in relationships is empathy and compassion. Allowing ourselves to experience our emotions during disagreements keeps us compassionate, not only to ourselves, but to our partner as well. Once we turn our feelings off, we become automatons who respond with no more caring than the computer on which we blog. We can learn to disagree without being disagreeable by following the simple rules we learned in kindergarten:

Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
Remember the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.[Source: "ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN" by Robert Fulghum. See his web site at http://www.robertfulghum.com/ ]

How Do I Save My Crumbling Relationship?

We are in the process of watching our current relationship fail...

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for the nth time. It's the same old scene again... feelings are changing, the good stuff seems to be disappearing, it's all tense and uncomfortable, we are walking on egg shells all the time, waiting for the other shoe to drop... it always does... we feel like running. It's the same as the last time, and the time before that, and the time before that... and so on. The same problems keep on cropping up in relationship after relationship. We are starting to wonder if it's worth it anymore. Maybe we should just be alone for a while and forget about having a partner. It seems like there just isn't anyone out there who we feel comfortable around for any length of time. It feels like the world has gone mad.

Does this seem all too familiar? What happened? Why do we keep on having the same problems year after year, relationship after relationship? Do we just keep picking the wrong partner?

At some point we consider that the one common denominator in each of our relationships is us. When we finally come to that realization, we have begun to see clearly. The one thing we do have control over in our lives is us. We cannot control how others behave, what they think or how they live their lives. When we finally grasp the truth, that the only person we can control is ourselves, we begin to see the light.

As long as we are trying to control something or someone other than ourselves, we give our power away to that which we try (in vain) to control. Once we realize that we can only control ourselves and allow others to do the same, life gets much less complicated. We focus on what we can control... us... and let our partner focus on what they can control... them.

It is probable that we have participated in the destruction of each of our relationships in pretty much the same manner from relationship to relationship. We begin with an obsessive and captivating eros form of love for our partner. Over time as that love began to change from obsession and eros into the more mature form, agape, we begin to notice little irritations about our partner.

As each of us tries to exert more and more control over the behavior of the other, we become harsh and unpleasant. The wonderful acceptance that blossomed initially in the relationship has vanished only to be replaced by criticism and complaints. In an atmosphere such as this, change does not happen. In order for change to take place, we need to feel accepted. Once we feel accepted as we are, we can begin to make the changes we wish to make to please our beloved.

As our irritation, criticism and complaints grow our relationship diminishes until there is nothing left but the opportunity to leave. If we experience the same kind of failure in one relationship after another we need to look within. How are we contributing to the demise of our love? Is there an answer?

The answer is empathy and acceptance. Compassion for our partner must precede a healthy relationship. Once we can feel empathy for their situation and accept our partner as they are, we are on the road to a balanced healthy relationship that will strengthen instead of falter over time.

Health Care Reform Questions

Health care reform. That's the topic all the blogs are buzzing about as Congress begins to review the legislation that may or may not reform health care. There are many issues to be considered and many organizations involved in lobbying Congress to have their desires met. It is important that we, as those who will be helped or hurt by the bill that ultimately leaves Congress, contact our Congressional Representative and Senators with our views. Over 70% of Americans want some type of health care reform, but what that entails varies widely. http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/health_care/ Here are some of the issues to consider:

Tort reform: This entails making changes to the process by which doctors may be held to account for their mistakes in a court of law. Currently there are no limits on any medical malpractice awards. This drives up the cost of malpractice insurance and increases the cost of medical care. Since America is a litigious society, tort reform may be a necessary part of changing the way we view medical errors. Additionally, the American Medical Association currently has no nationwide format for ensuring that incompetent doctors remain unlicensed. This too may need to be changed. What's your view?

Prescription Drug Reform: The cost of prescription drugs has skyrocketed over the years. Many drugs are available for substantially lower costs outside America. In the UK, for example, almost all Rx's cost under 11 pounds (about $18). This is in stark contract to some Rx's here which can cost upwards of $600 without insurance when no generic is available. The high cost of Rx's in the first years during it's patent is meant to reimburse the company for research and development costs. Should we import lower cost Rx's into America from other countries (such as Canada) to decrease the cost of health care?

Health insurance for profit: The ability of insurance companies to make a profit has always been assumed to be a given in the health industry. This may need to change as the cost of health care rises dramatically over the coming years. http://assets.aarp.org/rgcenter/health/m7_nothing.pdf How do you feel about insurance companies becoming not-for-profit to decrease the cost of health care?

Public Option vs Private Insurance only: This area of health care reform has been getting the most media attention and has the widest views. On the one hand, some in Congress believe that there should be a public health care option to compete with private insurance companies. This system would be set up on a medicare style basis, would emulate the current plan available to Congress and with existing plans already in place, would provide coverage to almost 97% of Americans. Others in Congress believe that a public option would degrade the overall quality of care available to all Americans over time and would cause employers to eventually stop offering health care as a benefit to employees. What's your view?

How to Pay for Health Care: Any plan requires payment. Even doing nothing will cost trillions of dollars over the coming years. It is agreed by all that some kind of reform is needed. America pays over 50% more for health care than the next closest nation. Considering the findings of the World Health Organization http://www.who.int/whr/2000/media_centre/press_release/en/index.html regarding the standing of America, it appears we have a great deal of decisions to make regarding the cost of health care vs the quality we receive. How should we pay for health care?

Regardless of the opinion we each hold, it is our responsibility as citizens to become educated about health care reform: what it means for each of us, how it will effect us, how much it will cost us now and in the future and what will happen if we do not address the issue. After becoming educated it is our further responsibility to contact our Congressional Representatives and Senators http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml to share our opinions so that our elected leaders have the information necessary to represent our views when they vote on this most important legislation.

Misunderstandings Happen!

Misunderstandings happen in relationships. Although our goal is effective communication, we don't always make it. It is common for us to make inaccurate assumptions about the intentions of our partner when we don't take the time to get all the facts. Very often we will fill in the holes in the story with our own information. When we do that we may be headed for trouble.

How do we avoid this pitfall? Oddly enough, anatomy gives us the answer. We have two ears and one mouth. This indicates that we should listen twice as much as we speak. Truthfully, most of us speak twice as much (or more) as we listen. Practicing active listening is much more than just hearing what is being said to us. Active listening includes focusing our energy on understanding the meaning behind what our partner is saying in addition to the words being said. We refrain from thinking ahead to our next statement, and instead work on paraphrasing what we have understood from our partner both in words and underlying emotional message. This is not our normal pattern of relaxed chatter and may require a great deal of focus until we are more practiced in our approach.

When we have a misunderstanding with our partner our goal is to repair the rift. We do this by taking responsibility for our part. We own our stuff. We do this because we realize that when we own our part, we free our partner to feel compassion and empathy as a result of our vulnerability and humanness. Our partner can then feel free to own their part in the misunderstanding as well, fully sealing the rift. This breaks down the walls of resentment and bitterness and allows us to reconnect emotionally.

Misunderstandings happen. They can create painful episodes between partners leaving behind walls of anger and frustration. It is important to resolve misunderstandings promptly to avoid those feelings of anger and frustration becoming bitterness and resentment.

As we practice our tools in our daily lives we create an atmosphere of warmth and understanding between ourselves and our partner. Feelings of self esteem grow best in relationships where individuality is encouraged, communication is effective and mistakes are tolerated.

I Think I Will Scream!!

She's driving me crazy! He doesn't understand how his behavior makes me feel! If she keeps nagging me I think I'll explode! If he doesn't listen to what I have to say I'll scream!

Sound familiar? We have all been in that place where we are infuriated with our partner and feel like we are going mad. We may want to shout to the heavens in frustration or curl up in a ball and disappear. Regardless of who began the current disagreement, we both end up in the same old argument again and again. What is happening? How do we get off the merry go round?

The high emotional toll that conflict brings to a relationship can be devastating. As partners we were once gentle and loving with one another. Now we bicker and argue almost daily. It seems as though not a day goes by without tension or a disagreement. We both feel like we are walking on egg shells. Every comment is taken the wrong way, every gesture and look misinterpreted. We feel stuck and can't seem to break the destructive pattern.

There is a way out. Empathy is the answer. When we can put ourselves in the place of our partner and imagine how they are feeling in that moment, we are becoming empathetic. When we are angry our ability to empathize with another vanishes. We are upset and consumed with our own feelings. In such a state we simply cannot empathize. In that moment, it is imperative that we give ourselves a time out and take a break from the situation and our partner to regain our center.

We may respond to a perceived threat by feeling anger. This may be our first line of defense. The adrenaline we produce in response to the emotional reaction from a threat, prepares our body for fight, flight or freeze. If we opt to fight with our partner, we add to the drama and discord. If we freeze, we become unable to communicate, again adding to the discord. However if we opt for self care, we can take that burst of adrenaline we received from our emotional reaction and use it to care for ourselves. We can take a brisk walk. While we walk we can mull over the events that have come to pass and use the adrenaline in our system as well. This not only protects our relationship from further harm, but also allows us to burn the adrenaline out of our system rather than letting it negatively impact our health. After a brisk walk we can return to the discussion feeling centered and empathetic, capable of coming to a mutual solution.

Although it may feel odd to walk away from conflict initially - we may have been programmed from early childhood to stay and fight it out with siblings or playmates - once we have tried this approach and found it successful, we will want to incorporate it into our tool bag for frequent use. Taking a time out, decompressing, coming back to our center, returning to empathy and being able to come to a mutual solution, are all beneficial ways of solving recurrent arguments in our relationships.

We use our tools in our daily lives. Our consistent practice of self care gives us increased self esteem. As our relationship improves our ability to be a part of an inter-dependent relationship increases and we become happier more fulfilled human beings. And isn't that what it's all about?