Faith - No Sex Does Not Mean No Love

This is going to be short and quick.

Okay, settle down.

Simply put, sex is the big paradox in the western world. It’s everywhere and yet we are afraid to deal with it unless we can hide behind jokes or blushing cheeks.

I know folks who thought nothing of going through life engaging in regular bouts of leisure with any number of others, yet they couldn’t bring themselves to tell their kids a thing about the Facts Of Life.

Well, you ain’t gonna read about it here neither. So don’t get your hopes up.

Since this is a blog about my personal journey, I will use this post to deal with a major battle I faced, based on misunderstandings growing up: what does sex mean in a relationship?

Sex Does Not Mean Love

It’s not that I thought sex and love meant the same thing. I know that sex is merely one possible expression of love. However, without proper personal Boundaries and Acceptance, I believed that if sex existed in a relationship, then gradually changed and sort of stopped, it meant that I was no longer loved.

Many therapists have said that one of the earliest signs a relationship was in trouble was when sex stopped.

If sex is the ultimate intimate expression, then when sex falters it must obviously mean that the very foundation of the relationship is falling apart.

Well, I mean that’s how I basically reasoned.

Here’s the thing: if you do not have faith in love, in the person you love, then you are forever insecure in the relationship with that person. The insecurities are always there, just under the surface, but in an intimate relationship they are open and in plain view (yeah, even if we try really hard to hide them).

So I had no faith in the permanence of relationships, largely because my parents divorced.

I also had no faith in myself as being worthy of being loved. If a person was making love to me, then it was proof that I was loveable. (Okay, I know that was a myth. Bear with me here.)

I was raised to view sex as obligatory. It was the responsibility of both people in the relationship to have sex. That’s a rural thing I think, although it’s pretty much everywhere. If the woman didn’t want to, that was fine. A woman’s mood was not a prerequisite to sex; she just had to be there and submit to it.

It’s not a unique view, no matter how much we are unaware of it. Do you know how many legal statutes exist to allow a marriage to be annulled if the marriage isn’t “consummated?”  It’s pretty sad.

So let’s sum it up:

A woman’s expectation and responsibility and obligation in the marriage is, among other things, to do her Wifely Duty and have sex when the husband wants to; sex is an expression of love that dwindles and goes away when a relationship is in trouble; marriage can be considered invalid if one party cannot or will not have sex to consummate the relationship; insecurity of being unlovable is relieved temporarily when sex occurs, due to it being viewed as proof that someone loves me; sex is seen as a need.

So basically things are just too jacked up for me to be balanced.

Oh wait, I forgot to add to the problem! Let me fix that…

Growing up I was bombarded by the simple judgment against me simply because I was male: all guys think about it sex.

Man that ticks me off no end. Just because all the guys you associate with do, doesn’t mean they all do. It’s a generalization that weighed heavily on me. I was treated as a second class citizen by women because the men in their lives had stupid views about sex. They wanted it a lot but they were so selfish about it, so there were a whole lot of dissatisfied women and clueless men. But lump me in with them?

It would be the same as me saying all women are treacherous witches just because all of my experiences with them to a point ended up with me getting hurt.

If all the fish you catch have the same drawbacks, maybe ya ought to fish in a different pond some day. Just sayin’….

Okay. Breathe. Let go.

So here’s this mess that works against me. I can’t begin to have faith in the stability of a relationship because if sexual expression stops then I resent the woman for not upholding her end of the relationship, I feel threatened because I feel she has stopped loving me and the relationship is on its last legs, and I feel guilt because I then try to force the issue and put on the pouty face: “If you loved me then you would.”

I shudder when I examine myself. No wonder self-examination is so scary. But it’s also healing, because once I see what I do and why, I become more mindfully empowered. I free myself to choose to see things differently, to react differently.

I Am Loved With or Without Sex

I needed to develop faith in relationships, women, and even myself about a lot of things, including sexual matters.

Communication is key here. If sex is viewed as proof that you love someone, then a lack of sex represents a lack of that love. By communicating my concerns to my partner, I can let him or her know that I will need their help in fighting the doubts and shadows. They can, in turn, reassure me that I am indeed loved and we can focus together on all the other ways we express love to each other.

So Boundaries help me stop relying on this other person to provide my self-assurance and security and peace and happiness. I recognize that if he or she doesn’t want to have sex, then it’s not a reflection against me but a reflection of their own sovereignty to make decisions about themselves and their bodies and minds.

Acceptance is another tool to be used. Sex is only a need based on the importance we place on it. Place less importance on it, and it becomes less of a “need.” Accepting that there are other ways to express love, accepting that sometimes sex just isn’t possible, frees me up to enjoy my partner more fully because I’m not all hyper-focused on this one thing.

And if I accept, then I won’t try to manipulate my partner to get my way. No heaping on guilt, no pressure or coercion, no whining and begging and threatening and tantrums and ultimatums and angry demands. Certainly no undermining junk like accusing my partner that he or she doesn’t love me because he or she isn’t showing me they love me by having sex. That’s childish, unfair, cruel, and irresponsible.

Been there.

Faith vs. Expectations

So I have found my way out of another morass from my past. Sex is an aspect of a relationship that, when kept in balance and perspective, can bring much comfort and joy. What it takes is willingness to abandon preconceived expectations and accept that I am loved and lovable. I can be free to enjoy the expressions that someone else can give me.

I can stop hyper-focusing on what I don’t have and focus my attention on the things I do have. That’s actually a good balance that Mindfulness has allowed me to have in a lot of things.

I have found faith that I didn’t know I had, because I have let go of some of the old views and teachings that I grew up with. When you grow up with something, it’s natural to assume that the thing reflects truth and reality, when it really only reflects a small corner of those things.

So that didn’t take too long. And you didn’t fall asleep on me! Yay!

And with that, I think I’m done examining some of the main pillars of Mindfulness in my experience. I’m going to keep posting personal matters relating to Mindfulness on this blog, and I will expand the topics and examinations on my new blog at a-mindful-guy.com.

Well, as soon as I can figure out how to get the thing to work. Lol

Faith - All By Myself

When you are single in America, an awful lot of folks think it’s a problem, like there’s something wrong.

Not too long ago, they would have been correct.

“Jim still isn’t married. He’d better hurry up and settle down and start a family.”

“Mary is going to die an old maid at this rate.”

“Dan is a nice guy, but he isn’t even trying to see anyone. Is he… weird?” (Weird often equaled gay)

“Shirley isn’t getting any younger. Pretty soon she’ll be too old to find a nice man.”

(Sound of mother sobbing into a dish towel) “I’m never going to have grandchildren and it’s like he doesn’t even care.”

(Sound of mother grumbling in general directions) “So, when am I going to get a grandchild?”

Ugh. It all makes me sick to even type.

I understood things pretty much that way my whole life. That stupid Life Script that sets your life course in a flow-chart format was not even discussed – it was just handed to me.

Not that anyone could have discussed it with me. It was just understood that you went to school, got a job, found a nice girl, dated, got engaged, got married, had a child or ten, had a grand-child or thirty, retired, and wandered off into the sunset. Some variations existed in my region, but for me the path was instilled in me in various ways as the cultural norm.

Simply put, I really had no choice to stay single. It was not an option.

It is a choice nowadays, more and more. But there are still folks who uphold the basic dogma of the Wrongness of Intentionally Remaining Single. It’s not really their fault; they don’t believe there is a choice either.

So what can be said about singleness? Like everything else, it’s about choices. And as you will discover in life, there are more factors to consider in life choices than it appears.

I’m Afraid of Being Alone

There are some folks who are afraid of being alone. But that is a pretty uncommon phobia. Why do I say that? Because most folks who say they’re afraid of being alone… really aren’t.

Afraid of the dark? No, more likely you’re afraid of what else is in the dark with you, or you’re afraid of the vulnerable feelings you have in the dark. It’s not the dark’s fault.

Afraid of spiders? More likely you’re afraid of the spider biting you, or the emotional response as you feel it crawling on you. Their movements just look so alien to us that they seem, well, creepy.

Afraid of being alone? Probably not. I mean maybe you’re afraid of being vulnerable if someone tries to break in, or afraid of someone already being there when you come home alone one night. A lot of those insecurities lie in not having faith or confidence in yourself and your abilities to handle life events. What if the furnace breaks down, or my car won’t start? It would be so much better if I had someone else around. Maybe so.

But what if your fear or worries about being alone have nothing to do with that?

Maybe you might really hate feeling lonely?

If you think “being alone” is the same as being lonely, then high five! You just figured out where the problem is.

I disliked going through life without a girlfriend. That’s partly because I felt lonely, and partly because I was indoctrinated with the notion that you could not buy a house in Happy Life Estates without being in a relationship.

Plus any people at school and in my neighborhood regularly asserted I was gay, which wasn’t exactly improving the odds I was going to get a girlfriend from among the locals.

Men and women kissing in public, holding hands, doing all the Couples things – seeing all this around me only compounded my feelings of alienation.

Of course I was oblivious to all the people who were single and loving it. I figured they were in denial and as soon as the novelty of being single wore off they would be as miserable as I was.

I was also blind to all the couples who had a partner 24/7 and were way more miserable than I could imagine. I assumed they just made bad decisions and if they had maybe met someone at a park or at a book store, they might be happier today. Or in many cases, maybe they should have just trolled at a more upscale bar. Hey, the quality of the pond gives you a hint to the quality of the fish you’re gonna haul out of it.

Soon I got a girlfriend and had companionship. It satisfied some aspects of my life, but I noticed that others appeared. That’s a pattern in many relationships: smooth at first, then the rocks appear and you wonder what happened.

It all boiled down to expectations. I could not grasp being happy in life as a single person, and I could not grasp why being in a relationship did not instantly fix all my woes. I expected all the wrong things, and that’s what was really making me miserable.

I needed to cultivate faith….

Mom Needs Grandkids!

The Script says that one of the biggest bonuses in having children is one day getting grandchildren.

It’s funny that I remember very few pictures of me, her only child, on my mom’s desk at work over the course of her career. Once grandkids appeared, there was hardly room on the desk for anything BUT their pictures. That gives you an idea of you how important grandchildren figure into the life of a woman round these parts.

See, mom was very busy actually trying to make a living and raise me, so there wasn’t a lot of time to relax and enjoy me. We did have a lot of time and vacations and stuff, don’t get me wrong. But parenthood was very much a job. Grandparenthood is very much a hobby.

After mom retired, she had this huge hole in her life, and grandchildren were going to help fill that nicely. It made her very confused and disheartened to realize after awhile that grandchildren aren’t like the stories. (Wow, neither are husbands and wives! We seriously need to stop reading Happily Ever After stories like they’re roadmaps!)

She adored my sons, and they adored her. But they didn’t just sit quietly and behave like I had as a kid. My kids saw grandma as an awesome playmate that treated them great. But she had respiratory and mobility issues and their constant desire to run around and play wore her out. They were always poking around in things, spilling out boxes to find out what was in them, wanting her to go outside and push them on the swing or catch them at the bottom of a slide 30 times in a row.

Sadly, she wanted to do more and enjoy them more, but her expectations were too high, both for the role of Grandmother and for herself. She couldn’t meet her own expectations and it made her less happy.

She really needed to cultivate some faith….

So When Ya Gonna Tie the Knot?

This will be short and sweet. I know a girl who is beyond wonderful to me. It was assumed we would get married. Probably not now.

Did something bad happen? No actually something good happened: we escaped the bear trap called The Script. It was painful, and I think we had to chew a leg or two off, but it was a relief!

We are happier now that we threw off the expectations and role requirements that were heaped on us throughout time. We can relax and enjoy each others’ company because we aren’t tied to this Institution of Relationship that everyone says will be the road to happiness and personal fulfillment. I mean we tried to fulfill the Script as best we could, but it wasn’t for us. We are happy this way.

But other folks, oh my….

So many of them still live lives according to The Script. That by itself is perfectly fine with me, because as long as everyone is playing by the same rulebook there’s a pretty good chance it will work out for them to some degree.

But to see their faces when they saw us together doing things and being happy, and compare that to the looks on their faces when we dash their fairytale dreams with news that we probably aren’t going to get married: the weight can be suffocating.

Religious teachings, cultural expectations, personal views: so many things can help pile the guilt right on your back when you escape The Script. Suddenly there’s something wrong with you. You are going to anger God and rob everyone you know of the joy of seeing your gleaming golden wedding because you are being selfish and choosing to live lives outside the Right Way.

We’re trying to have our cake and eat it too, I’ve been told.

Let me just say, I’ve taken the plunge and purchased the cake once. If it works for you, go for it. It didn’t meet all the expectations it was supposed to. So I don’t need to. I’m free to get married, but ought of desire to, not out of obligation to.

How can we deal with all the peer pressure and expectations of others?

We just have to cultivate a little faith….

Alone But Not Abandoned

Loneliness is basically when you want someone there and no one’s there. It’s an emotional reaction to unfulfilled desire. Not really sexual desire (although that’s a big part of it at times) but a desire for companionship.

I was nervous when I found someone who I really clicked with on pretty much all cylinders, but discovered that we were at a point in our lives where we just couldn’t handle living on top of each other.

I had to have faith that it was okay.

I needed to have faith that I could live my life separate from someone else by building boundaries, and that was not going to scare away this one person.

I needed faith that I could be single and have a fulfilling life.

I needed to have faith that I was whole and complete as a person without needing another person to make me complete.

I needed to have faith that I could make it… alone.

Now I can go home and have cereal for dinner if I want. I can watch three DVDs of wrestling in a row and not worry that someone in the house is missing her favorite shows. I can leave work and spend the evening walking every aisle in a book store or window shopping at the mall. I can come and go when I please and do what I please. That’s freedom.

And when I get lonely, I can pick up the phone and call or text the most wonderful person in the Multi-verse, and ask if she wants to go to a movie or out to eat or just hang out and walk the aisles or the mall together. That’s also freedom.

I am alone, but I’ve not been abandoned. I don’t need to be attached to someone.

But wait: what if this best friend of mine chooses to go away? (Is it time to sound the Abandonment Alarms?)

It would hurt badly. I would mourn and become unbalanced for awhile. But I have faith that I am still a complete person, I am capable of having a happy and fulfilling life alone. I would still have many friends and no doubt would make many more. I would go on.

My mind used to rob me of peace and erode that faith by dwelling on such an eventuality. I would sit and worry obsessively and compulsively over a potential scenario that was very unlikely. I will not do that anymore. Sure the thoughts occasionally come back, but I will treat them like the guy that comes to the door to ask me if I’ve considered carpeting. I will smile, tell him thank you but no thank you.

“But it’s a great deal.”

“True. But I don’t want carpeting. No deal is so good that I’m going to purchase carpeting if I don’t want it. Free would not put carpeting on my floor.” If I want a relationship I can have one, and if I don’t then that’s cool too. But I don’t NEED one. Believe it or not, the more pressure you put on yourself to get into a relationship because you NEED to, the more likely you will become frustrated and open to making some erroneous choices.

I have a choice as to how I will deal with facing things that make me uncomfortable, including loneliness. I can sit and lament or I can get up and go somewhere.

 “But I don’t want to go somewhere alone. It makes me lonelier.”

Loneliness is an emotional reaction to a situation. Believe it or not, you can change that reaction. No really, you can! It might mean you just have to change your expectations a little….

As I said earlier, one of the main issues that contribute a bit towards loneliness (and certainly one of the biggest arenas of expectation in a relationship) is: sex.

Don’t get all excited (oops, sorry), but we’re going to look at this topic next. Relationships and sexual expectations, and how Mindfulness can help balance that out. No kissing and telling; I promise, I won't get inappropriate.

C’mon, have a little faith.

Faith - Well I Gotta Have Faith

George Michael sang about it. Well, he sang about having faith in something, anyway.

So often when we hear people talk about their faith, we are hearing about their religious beliefs. But there are other demonstrations of faith, since “faith” has shades of meaning.

“I watched a documentary about First Responders and it really restored my faith in people.”

“I was afraid to change careers at my age. But I just had to make a leap of faith.”

“No one knew if the news report was true at first. Everyone was just taking it on faith.”

Dictionaries and thesauruses (thesauri? Nah, it’s 2013) have definitions of faith that focus on belief in something, trust in something.  You can trust something and believe in it if you have faith in it. Whether that thing is a god, a philosophy, a business model, or a weather forecast, it is something that you trust to be correct, or helpful, or at least that it is what it appears to be.

Sometimes we apply faith in something without thinking about it. We subconsciously trust something when we just assume – take it on faith – that a thing is and will continue to be what it seems to be. A new bridge might be unsafe, but people might have faith in its safety simply based on knowing it’s new. Whereas a bridge might be very stable but appear to be rickety, and folks might not have any faith in it to support them on use.

Sometimes faith needs more conscious effort, whether because we encounter something new, or because something familiar has demonstrated questionable trustworthiness in the past.

Then there are situations where we have been pre-programmed to either have faith or have no faith in something. Religion is often involved in these cases, but it extends to pretty much any sphere of one’s life.

But for folks who dive into Mindfulness, there are a few places where they may not have really examined for the presence of – and need for – faith.

Faith in Self

It is a funny thing to watch someone who seems to lack confidence suddenly enters one of their Strong Places. You know, suddenly his back gets straighter, her head is held a little higher. Or the person who oozes self-confidence suddenly stumbles into a gray patch, a Weak Place for them. His posture drops, she suddenly looks at the floor or her shoes a lot.

It goes to show that self-confidence isn’t something you either have or you don’t; it’s something you have in some places and don’t have in others.

Although I am more balanced now than I used to be, it wasn’t that long ago that I had a very prominent Strong Place and an equally prominent Weak Place.

Work was a Strong Place. If weird things happened or technical issues popped up, I could just slide my brain into Analyze and Correct mode. I would exude self-confidence, not because I thought I could understand or fix absolutely everything, but because I had enough experience which I could plug into my troubleshooting brain routine. I had a track record of success; it wasn’t 100% but it was certainly well over 80%. At the drop of a hat, tell me of an issue or tell me to go train someone on something, and I needed very little preparation time on average. My instincts were sharp and I followed them.

Once I got home though, it was like entering an alternate universe. I thought too much and second-guessed everything (actually I often didn’t stop at second-guessing. I was very familiar with fourth- and fifth-guessing). I assumed the worst in many situations which caused them to actually become worse. I worried and fretted about making the wrong decision or saying the wrong thing or not doing something that I should have done. I had instincts, but I only followed the bad ones.

In short, I had faith in myself at work, but had no faith in myself at home. Work stuff was a piece of cake to me, but I stressed mightily in relationships.

I guess it ought to make sense, given my past. Dad was an old-school auto mechanic and Mom was a Customer Service wizard. They found what they enjoyed doing and were good at, then had careers in those realms. They excelled in their niches – their little corners of specialty – but they fell down at home in their relationship. I followed in their shoes.

I had to figure out how to develop faith in myself as a man capable of having a good, successful relationship. To do that, I needed to lay some groundwork: I needed to develop faith in myself as being someone worth being in a successful relationship. I simply didn’t think I was worth it.

“I Don’t Deserve You,” I Lied

The fairy tales and romantic songs try so hard to dictate how a relationship is supposed to work. Never mind that we put our relationship training in the hands of guys who abandon all sense in pursuit of beautiful girls (even if she’s an ogre now, I promise she becomes a gorgeous princess at some point!) or girls who will only fall in love with exactly the one prince or knight in shining armor (usually because all other choices are clearly shown with amplified imperfections). Or in the case of music, we are entrusting our understanding to people whose main purpose in life centers on the popularity of songs they sing (even if someone else wrote them).

Pop tunes and power ballads do not set a very good foundation for a long-term relationship. Look at the track records of most of the people writing and performing them.

It is assumed that the right sentiment expressed in a song can land you happiness everlasting. Or only one person holds the key to Happily Ever After.

Lies! The whole pack of it is lies!

But those tales survive, and the tunes sure are catchy.

One problem with all this is that it’s all unrealistic. It’s fantasy. That’s why people buy the romantic fiction or the love song-laden CD: they want to purchase a fantasy. That’s fine, up until they start treating the fantasy like a viable foundation for reality. Then it gets a bit dodgy.

Archetypes are presented, and you need to find some way to fit into them. That can be tough because you are dealing with princes/princesses, magical beings, rulers or other rich people, and the world of myth which is conveniently black-and-white. Mostly our ability to fit into the myths is physical: bigger aspects of anatomy; more wealth on display; prestigious position in society.

Aside from songs in which sex is the main motivator, love songs portray huge myths. These songs emphasize how desperate the guy is to land this particular girl that he will do anything to win her. We know he will do anything, because after stating this fact in exactly so many words, he is often off on a Romantic Scavenger Hunt, ticking off all the items on his list that he is prepared to do. Catch grenades, take a bullet, never let her cry nor feel even a moment’s pain or unhappiness, die in some fashion that will eventually be featured on an episode of 1000 Ways To Die, etc.

It’s simple: I don’t deserve you, so let me purchase you and your love through martyrdom, whether literal or figurative. Self-sacrifice is pretty noble, so I shall win her heart through self-sacrifice.

Of course, it’s one thing to win a heart; it’s another thing to keep it. This leads to the relationship becoming an endless business transaction that would put the karma cycle to shame. It’s like you are only leasing the girl’s heart. You make the down payment, and then you spend the rest of your life struggling to keep up the payments so that her heart doesn’t get repossessed and auctioned off to some other guy. Or girl.

So rather than accept who I am and remain open to love from someone who is equally flawed but generally compatible with me, I assumed I was not worth being loved by anyone and therefore I needed to settle for what I could get. People may not say it in so many words, but you would be shocked to find out how many folks believe that somewhere inside. One of the reasons many people stay in toxic relationships is an abiding belief that they don’t deserve better, or that they will never really find better, or ultimately that if they did find better, then “better” wouldn’t want them.

Ugh.

Have faith in yourself as a loving, caring, flawed human being. Believe that you don’t have to be perfect to get someone into your life. You don’t even have to meet all of their criteria (so stop trying to, as I had to learn).

Even the most “broken” person can turn the corner into a happy relationship. And even the most insecure individual can find happiness single and unattached. So before we look more at how to have faith in a relationship, consider having faith in yourself as a complete, whole being who can exist happily separate from a partner. Let’s look at Faith in Singleness.

Emotional Detachment - The Hard Lesson Of Letting Go Of Fear

Let it go, man. Just let it go.

I actually hate that advice (regardless of how true it may end up being), because it downplays the effect things have had on someone, and it doesn’t do anything to actually help anyone. If it was so easy for that person to let go of, then they ALREADY WOULD HAVE! Who on this planet ever heard someone say “Don’t worry about it” or “Just let it go” or “Don’t let it get to you” and went “Oh cool. All better. Thanks!”? Apart from saying it with sarcasm, I mean.

There have been so many things in my past, connected with relationships that would have been so much easier on me if I had actually had the presence of mind to distance myself from the overwhelming emotional reactions. But I couldn’t figure out how to “just let it go.”

It’s like every challenge needed to be met and overcome. Why did the anxiety of a situation overwhelm me? Why couldn’t I just have let something slide?

Some believe it’s because I’m a guy and guys just have to fix stuff. Trust me: a whole lot of women do too. So I don’t think it’s just that.

Some think it’s a Virgo thing. Like there aren’t any other control-freak signs in the zodiac?

Some think it’s because I have a disorder. I actually do, probably more than I have discovered. But I let so many things in my life just go on by. Somehow in close relationships it’s different.

I didn’t need to fix each situation. I needed to fix the person, and each issue that came along seemed to be yet another crack that needed patching. It wasn’t that I was trying to be mean about it. In fact, I thought I was being a good, helpful, dutiful partner.

“I was just trying to help.”

“Yeah? So at what point did I inform you that I needed your help?”

Ouch, that’s the hard truth right there.

It’s funny, because I was busy proving the truth of the Biblical admonition: don’t be trying to focus on removing a tiny splinter from someone’s eye when you’ve got a big old honking roof support beam in your eye. My cracks were the ones I should have been working on patching up. But of course, without the perspective of distance, I couldn’t see that.

Here are some examples of moments I wish I had had this Perspective Distance:

The Other Person Is Angry!

The comedian Louis CK made a perfect observation when he was talking about how men nowadays don’t really know how to be in a relationship. He mimicked a young man who was so stressed over the fact that his girlfriend was angry with him.

“Well, later she won’t be!”

So this is almost like a hiccup in the philosophy of being Present, living within the moment. In this case, the person can become myopic, short-sighted, only aware of what’s happening right in front of him without having the insight or understanding that moments pass. “The moment” should never be interpreted as being how things will be forever.

I don’t think I assumed that a girl would be forever angry at me once she started being angry at me. But I did see her mounting frustration or sharp edges during moments of anger as a threat to me and the relationship. I saw her anger as being the harbinger – the herald – of Relationship Armageddon. If she was angry, it meant the End was Nigh.

Totally ridiculous, of course, but that’s how I felt. And now I understand why.

My mom and dad.

Kids (and many adults) sometimes see things in a very Cause-and-Effect way. In fact, it’s how superstitions and misunderstandings start.

“A crow flew into Mabel’s house, and the next morning she was dead.”  Never mind that Mabel had a heart condition, her arteries were so congested that they were featured on local traffic reports, she had an undiagnosed and untreated medical issue, or that her family had a history of heart failure at a young age. All we know for sure is that one does not experience a crow flying into one’s house every day. Since that very unusual event was observed the day before Mabel passed away, it follows that the two “were connected.” So, stay away from crows!

All your cattle died, so start looking around the village for the girl with the unusual birthmark, wart, or hair color. Burn her as a witch, and then all will be restored to normalcy. Never mind that the cattle’s water or feed supply was tainted, or they got hoof-and-mouth. It was all a witch’s fault! And if the tainted water that killed the cows was partly due to the drought that caused your crops to wither, maybe there are two witches!

A kid walked into his school one day and killed many of his classmates, and he had been listening to that awful heavy metal/rap/rock and roll/whatever. Obviously we need to protect our impressionable youth from such demonic music. Never mind that the kid had an undiagnosed chemical imbalance (because “no kid of MINE has a problem like that!”), his parents never spent any quality time with him (“Yes we did! We drug him to church every Sunday like good families do!”), he felt estranged from his friends as he grew in a different direction from them, or he simply succumbed to a mental or emotional tipping point and fell into the abyss. Nope, it had to be the music he was listening to. Granted, the music may not have helped and may have contributed to the problems, but he was probably now listening to music that mirrored how he felt rather than listening to music that influenced him.

Cause and effect. Of course, in my case, I see it now: Mom and dad used to be happy around me, then they started being unhappy around me, then they were angry at each other, and then they split up. Let’s see, they were together when they were happy, and they split up when they started being angry and yelling all the time. Anger = family and relationship break-up.

It totally did not help me that my parents tried to hide it all from me. I know that it’s not great to fight around your kids, but there’s no reason for them to grow up with this ideal that married couples always smile and get along and are just happy all the time. When that kid grows up and he doesn’t experience that fairy tale that was so carefully placed around him during childhood, he might well wonder what’s wrong with him, or more likely what’s wrong with his partner.

So it would have totally helped me if I could have had some perspective about anger within relationships. Maybe I could have stepped back and seen that the issue was the other person’s. Maybe I could have seen that it was not only her problem but also her responsibility to deal with whatever the problem was and get over being angry.

Of course, my mom and dad were angry at their partners prior to their breakup. Because they were so wrapped up in their own heads and trapped in the straight-jacket of how they were raised to believe relationships worked, they just knew that they were both angry and it was the other person’s fault.

So instead of having the distance, it followed in my head that if she is angry, I must do whatever I can to reverse that, for her sake, my sake, and our sake. It didn’t help when she was angry at me particularly, because that’s what I learned as a kid:

Step 1) Mom is angry at dad

Step 2) Mom ends up kicking dad out.

True, I couldn’t have grasped my parents’ problems, so having them sit down and explain it all to me would have been a waste of time. This is especially true since I’m pretty sure they never understood why the train was so severely off the tracks for them to begin with. They knew down to the tiniest detail what the other person was saying and doing that was so frustrating and wrong, but they didn’t know where the problems really were. They saw symptoms, not the disease.

But that doesn’t mean it was fair to keep me, the child, completely in the dark. When my marriage was on the brink, my kids totally saw it. Hard as it was on them, they saw the stress all over me and felt it in the house.  So my wife and I sat down with the kids together and separately to explain things as best we could. By not springing the separation and eventual divorce on them as a total surprise meant (in our case) that the children were prepared and somewhat armed with the ability to deal with it.

So now I need to step back and examine a woman’s anger with understanding. I understand now:

·         A mood will pass.

·         Anger is an emotion, not a reality. No, not even when you’re “really angry.”

·         My parents split up because they worked to control each other instead of resolve their issues.

·         My parents were angry because they would not behave the way the other one wanted them to.

·         My parents had unrealistic expectations of each other, so disappointment was inevitable.

·         My parents could not accept each other as they were, could not force the other to change (even through violence), and could not escape the prison of what they believed “relationship” really was.

·         My partner can be angry, even with me, and she has the right to her emotions.

·         If my partner is angry, I do not have the right to try and “correct” her mood. The same holds true of she is sad, happy, or anything else.

·         My relationship does not have to suffer like my parents’ did, because while a child is shaped somewhat by his or her parents’ example, he or she is not condemned to repeat it. We have choice.

Knowing that a mood will pass, even a bad mood is valid, and just because someone is angry with me does not signal the end – this allows me to have the distance to see the mood as a thunderstorm; a lot of wind, a lot of noise, a lot of stress. But it will pass, birds will chirp again, and blue skies will return.

Alcohol.

All I can say is alcohol was a primary factor in shaping my early life and views. But since it loomed so large in the bad things that I remember early in life, it took on a mythic stature. It was the fabled monster lurking in the darkness, waiting to bring you to ruin. So it became my policy to avoid alcohol studiously. I convinced myself I was allergic to it, to the point that I had a terrible reaction to even tasting it.

The only problem for me was that I had no objective viewpoint. I did not understand that alcohol in moderation was not something to fear. Mostly I didn’t understand that because there was no such thing as moderation, from what I saw. People drank to get drunk. Drunken people did bad things.

When I found myself in a relationship with women who did not have the same problematic past with alcohol abuse in their families, they did not really understand my panic over the notion that they wanted to occasionally drink socially. And crud, did I ever panic over that! Remember what I said about anger being the herald of the end of a relationship? Well, alcohol was the catalyst of that end.

Wine coolers in the house caused me to scowl every time I looked in the refrigerator. How many nights did I spend lying awake waiting for someone I cared about to leave a bar or club, after all the anxiety I felt upon finding out that was their plans for the evening in the first place? Not to mention that some family friends used to pity me mightily because I did not partake. They actually hoped one day I could have the freedom to drink. Yuck!

It didn’t matter if these people in my life explained that they would be fine with their alcohol consumption. My mom said she was fine after she drank all morning then crossed the median into oncoming traffic as she drove me to a book store (I was too young yet to drive). Drinkers lied a lot, I learned early on. They could not be trusted. Therefore if I cared about a woman and she had plans to drink socially, I automatically got angry because my insecurities teamed up with my past experiences to tell me I could no longer trust this person.

Children of alcoholic parents have a lot of these issues. They can also find themselves in failed relationships, co-dependency, or even trapped in a bottle (alcohol or pill) themselves. Again, what I grew up with was the only reality I had access to as I grew up, so I internalized the idea that that was how things were for everyone everywhere all the time. It’s sad, as cosmopolitan as I was in many ways, I was so backwards and ignorant in many others.

I have two people whom I can credit with helping me come to grips with my fear of alcohol: my psychologist for explaining how alcoholic parents shaped my viewpoints, and a certain young woman who proved that even if she got very inebriated, she was still a mature and responsible person whom I could trust.

I still cringe around alcohol. But I have the emotional distance now to realize that it is a reaction to deeply-rooted trauma in my past and not a reflection of reality in every case. So if someone I care about wants to go to a club and have some drinks with friends, I no longer stay up fretting. She isn’t going to behave badly, she isn’t going to abandon her morals or common sense, and that margarita isn’t going to bring everything I care about to a painful end.

But I’m still going to stick to water or soda.

In large part, my fear of anger and alcohol has been moderated because someone helped me have faith that my past experiences aren’t the only experiences. So it seems only logical that we turn our attention to the pillar of Mindfulness that might make folks a bit wary: Faith.

Emotional Detachment - Angry Asian Apparitions!

This will tie together some issues relating to emotional detachment in relationships, but first we’re going to look at some Asian horror movies, because they have a Buddhist backbone where emotional bondage ties a person to “a bad place.” The bad place varies, but a lot of people who have had “bad relationships” know exactly where that bad place is: they lived there once.

I love Asian horror movies. A lot of Americans do. Unfortunately, a lot of American film makers do too.

Why “unfortunately?” Because they are so affected by these films that they want to remake the films with an American sensibility. Then they re-film the basic flick with the same kind of imagery but it’s skewed towards how American culture views the universe. In the process, much of the horror is lost.

The notion of ghosts is that sometimes spirits are prevented from moving on into the afterlife they are meant for, and instead remain tied to this realm for some reason. Usually the tales revolve around some malevolent motive, such as “the ghost is trying to get revenge” for some slight.

But just as cultures have different values and social mores, their ghosts are different as well.

Short detour – American Horror vs. Asian Horror.

What Scares America? A Lot, It Turns Out.

As time moves on and cultures change, the things which scare them changes too.

Americans have been afraid of a lot of things, but from early cinema down to the most recent suspense and horror movies, there are some things that help form the American fear experience:

Alienation – Remember how the Doors sang about people being strange when you are a stranger? Look at films that scare you the most and see if the foundations involve small towns or immersion in different cultures (such as getting into trouble abroad where you are not familiar with the language, customs, laws, etc.).

Isolation – Like alienation, minus the chance that some kind-hearted soul will show up to help you out. Do the films that scare you the most involve your fears of being trapped somewhere, being separated from family and friends, having no one believe you when you try to warn them, or being unable to trust those around you?

Powerlessness – One thing that really scares Americans is being in a jam and unable to do anything about it. A good American horror movie makes sure that during moments of high tension:

·         The lights go out.

·         Someone who is running gets hurt and can’t run anymore.

·         The phones don’t work (storms take out telephone lines, cell phone batteries die or there is suddenly no signal).

·         Cars won’t start (or Annie gets in the car and realizes Jeff had the keys).

·         Doors won’t open.

·         Annie gets in the car but she can’t leave because Jeff is still in the house somewhere.

The notion of powerlessness especially frustrates me, because I don’t know very many girls who would just totally wilt in the face of a guy with a knife who is slowly advancing on them. Based on most of the girls I know, a psychopath would find things flying at his head that no one even knew were in the room. And I don’t think any psycho really wants a piece of a girl who comes at him all tooth-and-claw. So to get the appropriate feeling of terror, the girl has to wilt. A guy who is in the same position will probably swing a pipe or something, so the writers have to make sure he misses, loses his weapon, or the weapon doesn’t really hurt the menace.

Either way, you have to make sure the protagonist on the screen at the moment of confrontation is powerless to prevent bad things from happening to him or her. Even a guy with a machine gun will empty his cartridge into the menace, only to find out that bullets aren’t effective. See, once the menace stops being a menace, you have two problems:

1.       No more horror.

2.       No chance for sequels.

Now if weakness in its various forms seems to be what drives the American fear-film market, what got the whole Japanese horror market (and soon everyone else’s) horror market screaming for relief?

It seems to be change.

As their traditional cultural values continue to be challenged by one generation after another, it begins to affect how stable they perceive the world to be. That fuels fear, and that drives filmmakers to tap into that mindset.

Enter: Ju-on and Ringu.

There are other films that are landmarks in contemporary Asian horror films, in my opinion, and they seem to share the same fears. But to focus on how it all applies to Mindfulness and emotional detachment, I’m going to look at these two briefly.

Girls With Long Black Hair Are Everywhere!

Ju-on’s self-definition on the film tells us that a curse is born when someone dies “in the grip of a powerful rage.” That curse then sets up shop where the death occurred, and anyone encountering it will suffer from it as well. Similarly, a curse is born from such anger in Ringu, although it gets to be a bit more mobile.

Curses born from extreme emotional states which were unresolved at death: a true Buddhist issue.

Abandonment of traditional roles and obligations is a huge theme in Asian horror. Parents abandoning children, husbands and wives abandoning marriages, adult children abandoning the care of their elderly parents, and even social care systems abandoning their duties to society are all things which keep cropping up.

So just as Godzilla is a cautionary tale of the dangers of man’s nuclear folly (among other things), Ju-on and Ringu are cautionary tales of the dangers of segments of society who do not uphold their end of the social contract (among many other things).

But instead of a big lizard blowing radioactive fire all over Tokyo as a symbol of cinematic payback, you get women with long black hair defying the physical universe’s laws for their own payback.

Make no mistake – there is a fair amount of revenge going on in Asian horror films.

But the revenge is often not against the people who caused the problem in the first place, but against innocent folks who are not connected to the event except by accident later on. That’s another standout issue in these films – you and your generation are blatantly flouting social conventions and maybe nothing will happen to you, but just as you are causing your forefathers pain, your actions will impact the generation after you.

Ringu and Dark Water fans, take note.

Okay, What Does This Have To Do With Emotional Detachment? Focus, David!

Focus, right!

PS: Spoiler alert.

In these films, the spirits’ revenge is driven by events after the parties are wronged. So the Vengeful Ghost motif is used very well.

But it’s not the wrong that led to the formation of the ghost directly. Sadako in Ringu did not become a ghost because her dad swatted her over the head with a shovel. Kayako didn’t become The Crawler in Ju-on simply because her husband Takeo tried to give her a makeover with an Xacto knife.

They died with unresolved emotions. That led to the various curses and ghostly manifestations.

Note – Kayako and Sadako were still alive after their abusive treatment at the hands of men who traditionally were obligated to care for them. The little girl in Dark Water, the sick patient in Infection, and on and on: people who lived long enough to have those negative emotions set into concrete. That tied them to this realm, preventing them from moving on. Then they died, still tied. Viola: curse!

So the ghosts are not tied to this realm by murder, negligence, incompetence, or any other abandonment of traditional caretakers. It was those unresolved emotional states which forced their spirits to linger in an effort to attain resolution.

Sadly, it just wasn’t to be.

Emotions can have the same effect on us today, tying us to a moment in time or a person in our past that prevents us from moving on. The curse isn’t going to be perpetuated by your vengeful spirit (I hope) but by your own mind. You and those around you will be affected (infected) by the curse of the emotional cage. You will be trapped, and others are liable to be pulled in like objects encountering a black hole.

Although I’ve never known anyone who has come back to wreck havoc due to dying while in the grip of a powerful rage, I do know a whole lot of folks who live with a powerful rage. Sadness, anger, frustration, and a host of other emotions end up causing the person to haunt himself or herself. Like a vengeful spirit, these emotions begin to take on form and substance, affecting people physically as well as mentally and certainly emotionally. And then he or she gets into a new relationship, where those emotions come out to wreck that havoc on the new partner (just like Rika entering the house in Ju-on – she had nothing to do with the original events, but she was the new blood. So to speak…)

If we are to move into a peaceful existence, whether we call it Nirvana or Paradise or just a happy and contented life, we need to figure out how to free ourselves from bondage to our emotions. It may take professional help – in my case it definitely did. But as soon as we determine what we are going to let go of, what we are going to refuse to let control how we feel, we have more energy and resources to deal with life.

If someone hurt us, for example, that’s something that will affect us for a long time; maybe forever. We may not be able to control the fact that it hurts, but we can control how much the hurt affects us. A failed marriage, or an abusive relationship, or any other relationship configuration that caused us damage, will leave scars. These things do not have to prevent us from being happy with someone else (so long as we make good choices), or even happy alone.

Everyone has different capacities for things in their lives. Controlling their emotions is one capacity that will differ from one person to another. But no matter what our personal capacity, we can all improve.

Next post:  some concrete suggestions and experiences in detaching oneself from emotions and gaining the mastery over them (well, most of the time).

Emotional Detachment - Taking A Step Back

I remember a big complaint with men back in the day (and really, it hasn’t gone away) is that men weren’t really in touch with their feelings.

That was ridiculous. Maybe individual men weren’t, but most men are familiar with their feelings to a degree. It’s really no different with women – some are more familiar with their feelings than others.

What stinks though, and stunk then, is that men were less likely to openly express a lot of them. It was drilled into our skulls that it wasn’t right or acceptable to do that. Feelings were always there, but they had to be kept inside. That was the manly way.

Oh, unless it was like anger. That was perfectly fine to express if you were a guy. A woman in public, however, needed to keep her anger in check. In private she could let it rip, but in public? Nuh uh.

I remember being told quite a few times not to cry because big boys didn’t cry. What a stupid thing to teach kids. It’s good not to cry over absolutely everything, but it ought to be criminal to teach a boy that he should not ever cry.

Criminal, I tell ya.

Jesus cried when he visited the tomb of his dear friend Lazarus. Even though Jesus knew full good and well that within the hour Lazarus would be up and eating, emotion happened.

It is not necessary to do away with emotion. It is a catastrophe to do away with emotion. However, if life is t be at all manageable, emotions need to be controlled. Control them, or be controlled by them.

To focus on this point, let’s look at another religious and philosophical character from history.

Buddha and Nirvana

Why is the Buddha smiling? Half a hundred reasons could be (and probably have been) given, but the serene smile may have something to do with his enlightenment, as he figured out how he would see Nirvana.

Well, not the band, or course. Kurt Cobain wasn’t born yet; although Kurt might have really benefitted from the enlightenment of the Buddha.

So real quick I will do a terrible disservice to Buddhism and chat a moment about Nirvana and the Buddhist enlightenment.

Nirvana was not a place, really. It was a state of being.

·         Mankind’s life was seen as just a big cycle of suffering.

·         To break free from the cycle of suffering, one needed to understand the cycle and one’s place in it.

·         Why does man suffer? Because man is eternal, and instead of finding the ultimate bliss, he mucks around on earth, life after life, tied to this realm.

·         Why is the tied to this realm? Because he is a victim of his perception of needs.

·         Man will be reborn, one life after another, reincarnated until he learns how to sever the things that tie him to this realm. In other words, he needs to learn his Karmic lessons.

·         He is tied to this realm by constantly trying to become happy and stop being unhappy. To do this, he strives all his life to acquire money, property, a spouse, children, something.

·         If he doesn’t get all the things he wants, he’s unhappy.

·         If he does get all the things he wants, give him a few years, and he will be unhappy.

·         Happy, sad, angry, afraid, on and on – these are emotions that people are enslaved to at various times.

·         If you want to stop being enslaved by the emotions, you must master them and stop trying to travel away from a place called Unhappy and trying to make it to a place called Happy.

·         Be happy where you are, and content with what you have. Struggle over.

·         Nirvana!

Of course, it’s really not just all that, but you get the idea. Until you master your emotions, you will become a volleyball. You will be forever bouncing from emotion to emotion, on the positive side of the net, then the negative. And eventually you’re going to hit the floor hard.

We struggle; we fight, trying to resist crossing the net. That makes us alter our behavior and try to alter the universe if possible to stay on this one side of the net.

When we accept that sometimes we will be happy and sometimes we will be unhappy, things get a lot easier. Negative emotions aren’t pleasant, but they are temporary. Emotions are temporary. They are just thoughts that affect us.

We’ve talked about intrusive thoughts and we’ve talked about acceptance. Emotions fit in here too. It all boils down to accepting things we cannot change, and changing things which we can when they need to change, and realizing that thoughts are not reality – they are just thoughts.

It’s funny: we can’t really control very many external events or other people, yet we spend so much time trying to figure out how to do exactly that. Emotions are one huge aspect of our existence that we totally can control, and yet it’s like the last thing we try to rein in.

But we will never be able to control our emotions if we just get swept away by them. We need to step back.

Going Backward To Move Forward

So you’re in a relationship. That means that you have another person’s emotions to consider besides your own. Add kids to the mix, and your life can become emotionally busy.

So many arguments start because of emotional triggers. He said this, she did that, and now I’m sad/mad/scared. A person external to you says or does something that triggers an emotional reaction – those reflexes – and before we know it we’ve returned fire or run for the fallout shelter. But in either case, we did not stop to really look at the situation.

There’s no way we can expect ourselves to rationally consider everything that someone says or does, but we can practice this rapid analysis to get better and faster at it. In time, little things will not bother us as much because we’ve already retrained our brains to recognize that a trigger has been pulled and will reflexively start to respond in a more even and controlled fashion.

This can be important, because it’s not usually huge issues that we blow up on our partner about: it’s the little things that start the chain reaction of emotional meltdown. One tiny straw that finally breaks the poor camel’s back.

Here’s an example from my life. Some of my wife’s friends came over to the house one day for a little get-together. I was working around the house, still trying to get the place straightened up for guests. I came up from the basement and there were women all around.

I said something, and I was launched upon. See, one of the guests had just been in her most recent bad relationship (yes, many men and women are unable to say they’ve only had one) and the last thing she wanted was for a man – any man – to say anything to her. Anything. What gets me is I didn’t say a word to her the entire day.

What did I day to the group?

“Have a good party and let me know if there is anything you need.”

Woman: “Why don’t you leave?”

Sensing a confrontation (since I said something to the group and was launched on by this one woman), I started to say I’d better go in the other room and give them some room to play. I got out “I’d better…”

The woman cut me off (I still hadn’t said a word to her): “No, you’d better shut up is what you’d better do.”

Okay…..

I was angry, upset, and so on. A bunch of emotional triggers were being pulled in sequence. But I held my tongue and went into the other room. Why?

Simple: I was not going to ruin my wife’s party, and I wasn’t going to try and reason with a woman who only wanted to scrap. That would be a total waste of time and energy.

It bugged me for a long time. It still does, down inside. That was totally rude to tell the husband of a party host to shut up in his own house, particularly when the only thing he did to provoke this reaction was to exist in his own house. She was hating on men at the moment, and I fit the description of “the enemy.”

So with Mindfulness, I’ve got a tool for dealing with the sudden spike in anxiety when I recall the incident. It means being mindful of how I feel, what led to those feelings, and how I want to feel.

Here are the steps I take to get enough distance not to let the memory ruin my mood:

1.       I remember the moment. Ugh. I don’t like remembering it, mostly because it begins to bother me again the moment it leaps to the front of my mind.

2.       I recognize that it’s bothering me. That slight chilly flush that hits my skin. I no longer have to wait for the pulse and breathing to be affected before I realize a negative emotion has been triggered. That’s one of the nice things about practice – my reaction becomes one of choice, and it gets faster!

3.       Quickly my mind reviews the particulars of the incident, picking out the trigger moments that I still haven’t fully put away. It’s like watching the whole thing on fast forward, with my practiced eyes falling on specific points while the images race by.

4.       I make a semi-conscious acknowledgement that this happened and it is starting to bug me again.

5.       I run down the factors that can free me from that anxiety.

a)      She was coming out of her latest bad relationship, so she was hating on all men (it wasn’t personal against me).

b)      I was hot because I didn’t deserve to be treated that way. At least I’m realistically in-touch with why I got angry.

c)       I was also hot because it was embarrassing being called out in front of others like that. People usually don’t like being thrown into the Smackdown Spotlight, especially with no warning.

d)      I did not respond in kind, so I saved my dignity at the time.

e)      I do not need to retaliate against others for being wronged. I can choose to, but I don’t need to. It’s not like I have anything I need to prove to anyone.

f)       This lady, and everyone there that day, has no doubt entirely forgotten the moment. I’m the only fool still holding on to the stupid thing. If I can let go, it really is gone.

g)      If I still feel that twinge, it’s my natural reflexive desire to return fire. I can control that and it will save me needless confrontations. If a war really isn’t necessary, there’s no point in fighting it; especially if you know going in that you cannot win it.

h)      That twinge is just my inner critic hollering at me for not retaliating. Shut up, inner critic. I will not feel guilty for choosing the course of peace.

6.       I am now free from the unpleasant emotional bondage to a moment that is years long past.  And in under two minutes. Yay!

I don’t want to feel angry over all that. So I choose not to be. All it takes is effort, choice, a little analysis and reasoning, and sometimes a little prayer.

Oh, and apparently ten years. (Slapping my forehead.)

Next post, let’s look a little deeper into the Buddhist enlightenment about the dangers of not controlling one’s emotions. That’s right: we’re going to discuss Asian Horror Movies!