Triggers

by David Richo

  3. The Unconscious Agenda behind It All

  The dimension of the third level—the unconscious agenda behind it all—is the most cunning and elusive, since it is outside our awareness. Usually, we need help in finding out what we are really up to. We are unconsciously motivated into an intimacy-defeating pattern. Yet, all the while, we are focusing only on the first two levels, both triggering, so both confounding. The two conscious levels of dispute and drama have to be traced to their hidden agenda, the deeper truth that activated them. Only then can we break out of the pattern.

  Agendas are based on motives. The following list offers examples of agenda-motivations that can sabotage a relationship. One or more of these might be up and running in the midst of our conflicts:

  This relationship was a mistake to begin with and I am doing something that will spring me out of it.

  I can’t leave this relationship on my own; I want to force her to make me go.

  It is dangerous to be in any relationship with both feet in, so I can’t ever be fully committed.

  I am actively and passively getting back at him—or a parent or former partner—for an old hurt.

  I am maintaining my sense of entitlement. I believe I have a right to full agency, control, and decision-making. Thus, I can reject collaboration.

  I am in this relationship to gratify my own ego, not to let go of my ego to fulfill the relationship.

  I am addicted to adrenaline, so keeping things at fever-pitch and unresolved gives me the fix I came here for. I get antsy when there is too much smooth sailing. Something in me has to cause shipwreck or at least a perfect storm.

  I only feel good when I do what leads my partner to feel upset or crazy.

  I want to prove my worst fear, perhaps based on an abandonment experience in the past: He won’t be there for me when I am really in need or I don’t matter enough for him to be loyal to me for the long haul. This makes me not trust him. I then have to put energy into a contingency plan, which can take the form of complaint, blame, or keeping an eye out for a new partner.

  I have to train her to be like my mother or father so I can re-experience a positive or negative pattern from childhood.

  I fear and avoid intimacy at all costs.

  In each of these, we set things up so that we will find evidence that our agenda is legitimate. What a way to stay stuck: “I get you to do what proves me right and what assures us no progress.” Any progress toward more closeness is highly dangerous when one’s safety seems possible only by distancing—the common theme in all the examples above.

  If a man’s agenda is avoiding being engulfed by his partner, he now feels justified in his agenda. The other partner may take the distancing as an abandonment, replicating what her father did. Her agenda may be to prove that all men will leave her. The confirmation of an agenda will be considerably more satisfying than conflict-resolution and an effective relationship.

  What can help us toward healing is to uncover our agenda, admit our motivations, and design a new positive agenda: I am in this to show the five As and ask for them, to behave lovingly, to act collaboratively, to address, process, and resolve conflicts as they arise, to ask for what I need directly.

  This final suggestion about directness gives us our best chance at casting light on our secret agenda. We ask what our agenda is meant to make happen. Or, even more telling, we can ask what keeps happening in the relationship when we have conflicts. Where we wind up over and over is the most useful clue to the true agenda of each partner. For instance, if what we end up in again and again is distance, that may be our agenda. But wait! Distance as space helps us grow; it does not have to mean abandonment. Nor does closeness have to mean engulfment. We can ask for healthy distance directly rather than by defaulting to what happens when our agenda is secret: which is that we try to achieve distance in roundabout ways. In healthy relating, when we do ask for distance, we add a word about returning to our connection: “I need some time to myself now and I will be back by seven for dinner.” We are asking for what we need and giving assurance that our request does not indicate abandonment. Now we don’t have to go through so many gyrations to fulfill the secret agenda that stresses us and confuses or hurts our partner—and us too.

  Finally, every hidden agenda is fueled by fear. To ask ourselves what we are most afraid of is a useful open sesame into our hidden agendas. Look again at the bulleted list above. Every entry, without exception, holds a fear—for some of us, even a terror. The fears are not new. They are familiar, lodged in us for decades. We look back and realize how these are the exact fears that designed so many of our choices—and later our regrets. In the book of Genesis, when God questions Adam’s secrecy, Adam explains, “I was afraid, so I hid myself.” Indeed, there is a direct connection between what we fear and what we keep hidden. Both sabotage our chances at the serene intimacy that can bring us happiness. That option thrives on fearless openness, the openness that leads a partner to trust us. So we gain all the way around.

  STATES OF THE UNION

  Here are examples of some of the many sectors of a marriage or of a seriously committed relationship: love, friendliness, loyalty, candid communication, sharing of feelings, fulfillment of financial obligations, cohabitation, co-parenting, sexual connection, sharing of similar interests, bilateral decision-making, collaboration in practical matters. All these elements flourish as a unity only when both partners are still on board in activating them. However, sometimes one partner or both are no longer committed to tending to all the domains of a marital union. For instance, one partner may be acting irresponsibly regarding the budget. The other partner then takes over that sector. The partners are now not partnered financially. In effect, they are no longer “married” in that subdivision of their bond. This will naturally trigger resentment in the partner who feels obliged to take over. The same imbalance can happen in the realm of child-rearing as another example.

  When just about all areas of the bond have collapsed, except cohabitation and financial contribution, the partners have, in effect, become roommates. Their full commitment is no longer operational. When one or both spouses are no longer in the relationship with both feet, they are no longer fully married. The “partners” still have a marriage certificate, but it has been rendered inactive. Usually, their annulment is known to both of them but not talked about. This is an instance in which a trigger is needed to signal a need for a change, but no trigger is firing it up.

  It would be of great advantage to make the implicit bargain explicit: “Let’s admit that a diminished commitment is all that is left of our relationship. Do we want to keep it this way or re-enfranchise a full marriage? Some states have seceded from our union. Do we want to bring them back in without triggering a civil war?”

  Let’s consider another dilemma that may arise. If there is no sex, or intention of having it happen, is a partner justified in finding that component elsewhere? Can he or she say: “We are now divorced at the sexual level, so I believe that either of us is free to devise a new sexual plan. The alternative of no sex with another person for the rest of my life is not acceptable.” This is a topic that calls for openness and for therapy if partners are to explore what is happening and then decide what comes next. They may find that a breakdown in one or some areas of a commitment is the equivalent of a breakup. They may also choose to restore the missing links.

  At the same time, a relationship or marriage can be designed entirely by the adult participants. Thus, a marriage in which there is no sex or in which there is an unequal financial arrangement can be indeed legitimate if both partners are truly satisfied with it. A sexless relationship may have longevity, but the partners might still wonder if they are finding the full measure of growth, challenge, and happiness a partnership can provide. Wise people open a long conversation when they decide to omit something so import
ant to the fulfillment of universal human longings.

  DANGER IN THE ELECTRONICS SECTOR?

  Screens are often between us today. We wonder how the focus on electronic gadgetry, especially in young people, is impacting the possibility of true connection. Does it obstruct or foster relating?

  In the pre-electronic age, we grew up interfacing with others only by direct contact. We could understand how others felt by reading their feelings, faces, words, gestures. In a world of online meetings, however, our emotional range becomes stunted. So many of us are now caught up in the speed style of texting, compulsive checking for messages, calling one another to check on whereabouts, obsessive Facebook reporting of minor daily issues. All this seems to increase communication, but it actually inhibits social contact and the gaining of skills for human connection. The electronic world can in fact ultimately make isolation rewarding. Human love is changing, not because our capacity for love is lessening but because the authentic ways of getting to it can now take a backseat to virtual connections. We notice, for instance, our preference for texting rather than talking by phone, let alone meeting up.

  The immediacy of the search-engine click-to-an-answer becomes a style that can make taking time to find solutions intolerable. In this regard, we are shortening our attention span. We receive reinforcement from making quick moves toward whatever is next, not from sustained attention. No wonder we see such an increase in attention deficit disorder in our population. Sustained attention is the first of the five As, the components of intimacy. Our addiction to the virtual world has to have an effect on how we show intimate love. How is it possible for those who cannot abide taking time to work something out be candidates for time-taking relationships and conflict resolution? How can those who have not learned to pay attention for very long listen carefully to another person? How can someone whose every spare moment has to be filled with stimulation be able to handle the many flatline hours and longueurs that inevitably punctuate a life together?

  Some young people don’t like reading a novel because exciting things don’t happen on every page and it takes too long to get to the denouement. But our brain thrives on a sequence of stimulation and then enough downtime for processing and synthesizing what we have read or learned. The loss of this simmering phase, and the time it requires, debits from our skill at processing experiences and problems, especially in relationships. Since simmering is crucial to freeing ourselves from triggers, this presents an obstacle to accessing inner resources.

  Shakespeare writes in Twelfth Night:

  O time, thou must untangle this, not I.

  It is too hard a knot for me to untie.

  But we no longer have hard knots or the need for time to untie them because the internet has ready answers to all our conundrums, no matter how complex. To doubt complexity because now everything is so simple and at our fingertips is to doubt the full potential of human relationships with all their dead-ends and disappointing chimeras. We do not gain the skills of waiting and pausing, of facing our own demons one-by-one at their pace, of slowly reconstituting ourselves after crises. Those struggles are the building blocks of inner resources and meaningful relationships.

  In my childhood in the fifties we saw a movie on a Saturday afternoon and then played the parts of the actors with our friends. We wanted to emulate the heroes. That night, we pictured what happened in the film in our imagination as we went to sleep. Those are all ways the psyche evolves. It does not fare well when we see one film after another with no time to contemplate their meaning, live with their themes, relate them to our own story, find the metaphor for our own life in them.

  All the skills required to be human and to be intimate seem to be at stake, and only time will tell if we have something to worry about here or if it will all work itself out satisfactorily.

  We have developed technologies that make change possible. We can see this advance as a metaphor for our personal work: We can perhaps now develop technologies of love so that the world will change because of our new collective ways of connecting. It takes cooperation and collaboration, forms of caring. Globalization is connection but not yet caring connection, the essence of love. Do we have the power of gods because we need to conquer and command or because we were meant to be what we say God is: love?

  The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire.

  —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Toward the Future

  PRACTICES THAT INCREASE OUR RELATIONSHIP RESOURCES

  Certain practices can increase the resources that strengthen our relationships and reduce the impact of our triggers and reactions, as in the following examples.

  Who Picks a Partner?

  With healthy inner resources we are attracted to healthy people. When the picker is the part of us that wants to complete the past, we might not be so discerning in our choice. A person who was brought up by a mother who continually hurt or betrayed him might now feel the need to continue to be a victim of a woman’s dishonesty. It is counterintuitive but often the case. Remember that we look for a repeat of the past—not an alternative to it—when we have not worked our history out. In other words, we prefer repetition to innovation—a self-defeating choice indeed.

  Our need from childhood to make Mommy come through this time diminishes our powers of intelligent assessment. Unmet needs make us continuously scan our world to look for the one who can fulfill them, but mistakenly. We hook up with a partner who betrays us over and over. The possibility of finding out he is not trustworthy is more familiar and therefore in some ways more satisfying to the wounded child within. She seeks repeat of the past, not freedom from it. This is how the psyche puts first things first: it does the personal work of clearing up the past, and only then finds a healthy alternative to it. With inner resources, however, we can make choices based on what works rather than what echoes.

  On a humorous note, if, impossibly, we had ever actually completed all the work necessary to clear up our unfinished business from childhood, then who would attract us?

  Boundaries

  By the age of three months babies routinely employ a “stimulus barrier” to protect themselves from too much input. For instance, if an adult is trying to arouse their interest and they are tired, babies simply close their eyes and doze or turn away. We can use similar techniques but with words: “I need some alone time now, so let’s talk later.” This is an alternative to running away or angrily turning on the other. In addition, we learn we can survive when we are triggered by the fact that a partner is getting too close for comfort. We can ask for space without offending, triggering, our partner.

  Two-Way Mindfulness

  In mindfulness practice we are nonjudgmental witnesses of our here and now experience. In such personal practice we are mindful of. But wait! In an intimate relationship we can also be mindful toward. Partners can practice being present to one another in a non-judging, nondemanding, noncontrolling way. We will definitely feel the power of this interactive style of mindfulness. It will be especially meaningful when one of us is going through a hard time. We will be comforted in our distress when our partner sits with us in serene mindful attentiveness. Such real presence endows us with a secure sense of being loved and respected, of being cared about and understood. It is the equivalent of physical holding.

  This two-way experience of mindfulness is crucial in how we reduce what we might call “inter-triggering” in our relationships. We are less likely to trigger one another when we feel held in our experience rather than shamed, criticized, or blamed for it. Indeed, two-way mindfulness in any interaction, whether at home or work, is a royal road to connectedness and mutual respect.

  Loving Ourselves and Being Loved

  Feeling loved is a positive trigger; feeling unloved is a neg
ative one. Real love can’t be earned, only given freely. That is what we sound like when we love ourselves; we are not redesigning ourselves to please others, only opening to others just as we are: “I will just be who I am and see who responds with love.” Shakespeare presents a helpful practice in Measure for Measure, expressing the great affirmation against self-deception: “Now I will unmask.”

  We might also be aware that someone looking at us with love activates our love for ourselves: “I must be very lovable if she loves me so much.” This is how love from others increases our inner resources.

  Finally, we love ourselves when we act lovingly toward all people. The loving-kindness cycle moves from self to all beings. By loving all we feel ourselves included in the love that is everywhere.

  May I show all the love I have,

  In any way I can, wherever I may be,

  Today and everyday,

  To everyone—including me—

  Since love is what we are

  And why we’re here.

  Now nothing matters to me more

  Or gives me greater joy.

  May all our world become

  One Sacred Heart of love.

  Letting Go of Having to Win

  When our competitive ego is triggered, we will be driven by the need to be right—a form of stress and pain. But true safety in an intimate relationship can’t happen when someone has to be right. It comes from freeing ourselves from the ego-fear of not being in control. Then both partners find themselves safely and securely in an environment that is generous and no-fault. That environment is more likely to happen when we are flexible. This does not mean we give up our convictions in order to purchase safety. It does mean that we have found the knack of maintaining our beliefs and boundaries without forcing others to bow to our superiority, an action that will certainly push their buttons. Instead, we are open to others’ views. We look for ways to find common ground rather than to be on top.