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Introducing
Sanity to Love
by Seana McGee and Maurice Taylor |
"Celebrating Women of Courage
and Vision" is the theme of Women’s History Month
this March.
Love's journey is not static; it's a process
that consists of three distinct and absolutely
predictable phases. Couples either progress
through these or, like so many of our ill-prepared
traditional foremothers and -fathers, get stuck
somewhere in the middle. The New Couple calls
these stages of love "intoxication,"
"power struggle" and
"co-creativity."
The intoxication stage, which lasts
roughly two weeks to two years, is a high and memorable
time for most partners. These are our days of wine
and roses, when the mere prospect of seeing, or hearing
the voice of our beloved, is capable of producing a
thrill. For many of us, it is the only time we let
ourselves lapse into a fantasy of being in and feeling
unconditional and perfect love. The ultimate
anesthetic, this first stage of romantic love has the
power, at least temporarily, to blot out the pain of our
insecurities and imperfections -- hence its bittersweet
name.
Nevertheless, the intoxication stage of
relationship ends; and it's supposed to end, as
night replaces day, though few of us accept this
fact. Instead, we confuse what is really an
ephemeral state with true love -- and blame ourselves or
our partner for its dissolution. That's why it's
impossible to over-emphasize the need for couples to
expect the passing of this period, to prepare for the
onset of the second stage, and to be assured that much
greater things are in store.
Traditionally, the second stage of
relationship -- power struggle -- has gotten a bad rap,
characterized as either a war zone or an occupied
territory. It has been so confounding for so long
that this period of partnership has come to be seen as
synonymous with romantic commitment itself. And
yet, of course, it isn't. The power struggle is
just a phase – something we all go through, like
adolescence or "the terrible two's." The
problem in previous generation was that most couples
didn't have the luxury of the education or tools to
"resolve" this touchy phase of
relationship. That meant it went on -- as it
still does for many of us -- till death or divorce.
On its surface, the power struggle is
just that -- the point in a relationship when, no matter
how much each of us would like to deny it, those dreaded
conflicts start to emerge. Unfortunately but
predictably, the euphoria of oneness and complete
acceptance erodes, we "get used to" each
other, and dissatisfaction seeps into a crucible that
might once have seemed impenetrable. Often, to the
embarrassment of both of us, we regress into two pouty,
competitive children, each one evidencing unfair or
simply unbearable behaviors, and putting forth, openly
or surreptitiously, our unconscious, irrational agendas
of "Me first," "I want, I want,"
"Leave me alone" or "Please don't leave
me at all." If our tiffs are noisy, we're
most likely headed for firefights; if the disagreements
are quiet enough that they can be ignored, freezeouts
lie ahead.
Either way, Beloved has become Beloved
Enemy. No longer our precious salve, our partner
now seems the salt in our wounds. Though to the
unenlightened among us, this second stage may seem like
a dirty trick, this isn't the case. For whether we
know it or not, the power struggle has surprisingly
little to do with our mate. Rather, it's
predominantly a flashback, a further act within the
incomplete drama of our younger years, which has found
in our adult relationship a second stage upon which to
enact itself. Once we recognize and learn from
this fact, the power struggle can become the most
healing and empowering period in our adult lives,
enriching our significant relationships.
Certainly, the passage of time alone
never transports any of us out of the middle stage of
relationship. Still, this stage can be brought to
a conclusive and beneficial end. In fact, the bulk
of The New Couple is dedicated to teaching
partners how to do this -- how to move on, as soon as
possible, to wondrous co-creativity. The way out
is always through, which in this case means
committing to The Ten New Laws of Love -- that is, to
the "work of relationship." New Couples
are specifically asked to learn a basic relationship
skill set and undertake two ongoing processes. The
skills are these: emotional literacy, which
includes emotional awareness and fluency; deep
listening; anger management; conflict resolution; and
negotiation. The processes are individuation,
which involves becoming emotional peers with the members
of our family-of-origin and resolving transference, a
kind of ghost-busting, which entails interrupting our
unconscious tendency to try to work out with our
partners unresolved early relationships with our primary
caregivers.
Together, The New Couple skills and
processes are the nuts and bolts of The New Couple
system. A sure formula for keeping our precious
chemistry alive, they also help us avoid creating
relationships that either replicate traditional
marriages or are knee-jerk reactions to them. And
while becoming a New Couple is not an overnight affair,
the skills and processes required can be easily and
successfully learned over time. Furthermore, they
don't require a perfect performance, just a genuine
commitment. Apollo 11, the first successful
lunar landing, was on course only three percent of the
time -- and it made it safely both ways!
The work of relationship is never
entirely over -- for all couples are works in
progress. Still, it gets much easier -- and soon
the "wow of relationship," which we experience
when our initial chemistries actually endure, is on its
way. And, as those of us who commit to The Ten New
Laws of Love notice, the power struggle does yield to
co-creativity -- which, most emphatically, is not a
mythic state. Almost imperceptibly, as day
replaces night, and sometimes even before we expect it,
interdependence becomes reflexive and a greater peace
prevails between us -- yet never at the price of
passion. Emotional intimacy is our way of life
together, our ability to love and honor ourselves
expands, and our individual missions are firmly on the
march.
If we've chosen parenthood, one of the
major benefits of our intention to cross into this last
stretch of the relationship journey is the trickle-down
effect that co-creativity has on our children.
Although it's still not adequately recognized, functional
couples make functional parents. The most
powerful parenting technique we can use -- and the most
positive gift we can offer our children -- is the
role-model of genuine partnership -- a union in which
each partner not only loves and respects but openly
champions the other.
As we move out of the power struggle and
tap the potential of our couple, our mutual focus shifts
away from problems and avoidances in our relationship
and turns toward further exciting adventures and greater
purpose. (If ever the world needed every partner's
solid and heartfelt contribution, it's now!) No
matter the glitches and backslides, when we commit to
pole-vaulting out of the power struggle with the help of
The Ten New Laws of Love, a soft landing in
co-creativity is just ahead. As we create a life
we love with the love of our life, we're able finally to
celebrate both our priceless individuality and a stellar
connection.
The New Laws of Love
In our day, a truly successful relationship seems
well-nigh miraculous, especially to those of us who fear
that we're condemned to remain forever rudderless when
it comes to long-term love. Yet human beings don't yearn
for anything that isn't possible. As a very wise person
once said, miracles don't really exist; they're simply
phenomena ruled by laws of nature that our scientists
have yet to discover. Well over a decade ago, when we
started as psychotherapists teaching, training and
counseling couples as a team -- which was also just
about the moment we met -- we were already convinced
that such natural laws must also exist for love, that
there must be a way for everybody to have emotionally
and sexually deep connections that last. And we embarked
on a singular quest to find those laws, hoping to
introduce sanity to love.
To tell the truth, our resolve wasn't only
work-related; it wasn't only for our clients that we
began our search for the most cutting-edge information
and the most effective, enduring-results-producing
techniques (though serving couples was, and still is,
our joint mission in life). We were also, quite frankly,
mad about each other, which made us bound and determined
to do everything in our power not let the gift of our
own precious love fade away. Our commitment to the
healer-heal-thyself ethic -- which says that if one
talks the talk, one had better walk the walk -- also
became immediately relevant: no sooner did we two
therapists (ourselves veterans of several failed
relationships) fall in love with each other than we had
huge problems with each other! Thus, inspired both by
professional research and ethics, and by the passion
between us, we became adamant about figuring out this
thing called committed monogamous relationship and
discovering the laws that govern it.
Our research was underpinned by our eclectic
theoretical orientation -- a hybrid of humanistic,
depth, self and transpersonal psychologies, systems
theory and the recovery model -- and based on our
separate and mutual clinical experiences working with
couples, parents and single persons in community
counseling centers, schools and hospitals in the United
States and in private practice in Asia, as well as on
our own relationship. In fact, over the first two years
together, we dated, broke up twice, got engaged, then
married. Along the way, we sampled a variety of couple
counselors, relationship experts and workshops. In
short, as though it were a carburetor from yesteryear,
we repeatedly took our own relationship apart into a
million pieces and meticulously put it back together
again. While the value of the techniques and processes
we sampled -- their power to crack open our hearts, blow
our minds and set our spirits free as individuals -- was
unquestionable, and though many of these approaches
deepened our intimacy as a couple as well, none offered
the cogent relationship tenants we were seeking.
A New Model of Love
It was clear to us that these laws would have to be
part of an overall vision -- a sparkling new model of
love that not only honored our more sophisticated
requirements for relationships, but also boldly replaced
the traditional. After all, though it's been
oft-repeated that relationship is a journey, not a
destination, it's neither fair nor viable to ask lovers
today to head out for parts unknown using a map -- or a
model -- that's fifty-plus years old! Above all, this
replacement would have to be strong enough to keep us
all from defaulting back into the trance of the
traditional model of relationship.
As the larger picture came into focus, the exact
dimensions of this model -- what would later become the
laws -- vividly revealed themselves in the negative: in
other words, we noticed certain facets of relationship
the neglect of which consistently got couples (our own
included) into trouble. Conversely, we also noticed that
a respect for these facets seemed to keep couples
healthy. Though ignoring one facet alone was often
enough to do a couple in (and respecting one alone was
never enough to save them), partners were usually
tripped up by a cluster of them.
Though they wore many faces, these standard couple
conundrums always boiled down to some variation of the
following:
- Lack of a passionate initial connection
- Unwillingness or inability to prioritize the health
of the relationship due to self-destructive behaviors
- Inability to deal with emotions due to emotional
illiteracy
- Inability to listen from the heart
- Entrenched unfairness
- Inability to make peace and restore broken trust
- Lack of a method for resolving conflict
- Undiscovered or unmanifested life purpose for one or
both partners
- Emotional or financial dependencies
- Unwillingness to embrace healing and education for
the relationship.
To our delight, we realized that each of these
problems was linked to a binding principle. In those
principles lay the essence of what we sought -- the
natural laws of love. And since none had been
specifically articulated in previous generations, we
call them the Ten
"New" Laws of Love. Here they are:
Chemistry: The First New Law of Love
Chemistry is the magic, the special energies that
signal partners possess the raw material for success.
Chemistry is not optional because it provides the
synergy couples need to get through the rapids of
relationship -- and keep them high on course to their
grandest goals.
Priority: The Second New Law of Love
Priority is a couple's commitment to keep the health of
their relationship front and central. It asks partners
to begin to psychologically "leave the nest"
of their first families -- and to address any
compulsions and addictions, including codependence -- in
order to be fully available to their second family.
Emotional Integrity: The Third New Law of Love
Emotional Integrity asks partners to create an
"emotional safe zone" with each other. They do
this by taking responsibility for their feelings --
especially by learning the difference between
"acting them out" and expressing them
healthily. This law also guides partners in identifying
and healing blind spots and "buttons" that
cause disharmony in all relationships.
Deep Listening: The Fourth New Law of Love
Deep Listening is the greatest act of love -- and a
skill. It is partners' ability to hear each other's
words, and the feelings underneath, with compassion and
empathy.
Equality: The Fifth New Law of Love
Equality is about fairness and respect. It involves
acknowledging power imbalances in the relationship and
helps partners see through the tyranny of unnegotiated
-- and often antiquated -- roles, responsibilities and
unconscious expectations.
Peacemaking: The Sixth New Law of Love
Peacemaking is a couple's commitment to maintain their
emotional safe zone through the use of anger management
and conflict resolution tools and New Couple agreements.
Self-Love: The Seventh New Law of Love
Relationship landmines are precise gauges of pockets of
low self-love and unfinished emotional business from
childhood. This law teaches partners how to do the
crucial deep diving and fall back in love with everyone.
Mission in Life: The Eighth New Law of Love
This law teaches that true love cannot be sustained
until both parties are on some level engaged in his or
her own true work. Mission in Life is partners'
commitment to the fulfillment of their own and the
other's life purpose. Intimates are either a mission's
most powerful support or its most formidable saboteur.
Walking: The Ninth New Law of Love
Walking involves addressing the primary insecurities
that plague all partners, because emotional and
financial dependencies can mean slow death -- of
respect, trust and passion. When intimates are willing
and able to leave the relationship if need be, it's
their best insurance that they won't!
Transformational Education: The Tenth New Law of Love
Transformational Education is the fail-safe mechanism of
the Ten New Laws of Love. It represents partners'
commitment to do whatever learning and healing is
necessary if they get stuck on any of the first nine
laws because New Couples agree: If it’s a problem for
one of us, it’s a problem for both of us!
As for our own couple, the laws plainly function as a
sacred scaffolding -- stabilizing and enriching our
relationship just as they do that of the couples we
serve. Having befriended our fair share of dragons --
which, of course, we expected -- we can't imagine where
we'd be without these laws to fall back on. To their
credit, we're still very much each other's absolute best
friend in the entire world, and our life continues to be
an exciting reflection of both our individual and joint
dreams made manifest. Because these laws have repeatedly
proved their effectiveness over the years -- serving as
a hologram of couple health for ourselves, our clients,
workshop participants, and all types of audiences -- we
were inspired to write The New Couple.
We wish you joy and success in the creation of your
New Couple!
From The New
Couple: Why the Old Rules Don’t Work and What Does by
Maurice Taylor and Seana McGee C Copyright 2000.
Reprinted with permission of HarperSanFrancisco.
Internationally known
relationship experts Seana McGee, M.A.,
and Maurice Taylor, M.A., a
married couple, are authors of the ground-breaking
relationship book The New Couple: Why the Old Rules
Don't Work and What Does. Founding directors of
NewCouple, Int'l., a transformational education
organization for couples and singles, the couple has
been counseling and teaching together as a team
virtually since the moment they met more than twelve
years ago.
Maurice and Seana
weave into their teachings wisdom gleaned from their
professional experience with couples and singles from
more than fifty world cultures on two continents and
their own ever-passionate marriage. Recently they’ve
joined the prestigious faculty of Deepak Chopra's
multi-media group, MyPotential, Inc.
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