by Chris G Moon
These cravings had been inside me for so long that, like so many people who have chronic physical pain, I had adjusted my life to cope, conditioning myself to be unaware of them long before I had ever met my partner. Then I got married. It was like giving all my old needs a signal to come on out and attack my wife. Of course the part of me that was disgusted with my neediness would not let them reveal themselves openly. Like the highly skilled expert that I was (and still am, actually) in the field of unspoken demands, I let my needs be known with subtle body language, tones of voice and convert hints. Unfortunately, my wife is not a mind reader. Nor could she possibly meet my enormous emotional requirements. I was disappointed in her for not giving me what it wasn’t her job to give. And neither of us knew it! Not until I checked inside7 and realized that, if I was feeling disappointed and resentful, I must have been harbouring an expectation that she would have to meet before I could ever be happy again. The saddest part about this kind of relationship dynamic is that we withhold our love from our partner until the “little me” is satisfied. By holding on to our demands, and not allowing ourselves to love, we push ourselves onto the road to relationship hell.
If we want a truly fulfilling relationship, there is one thing we all must understand: no one can give us what we truly need; no one can make us happy.8 Referring to the example above, I might have thought that if my wife reached out to me and hugged me, complimented me, or otherwise reassured me, that I would have then felt loved and comforted, thus helping me overcome my sense of unworthiness. However, my experience is that the expectation itself blocked any comfort from coming my way. As I stated earlier, expectations were designed with the intention of getting our needs met; but when they were created , two things inevitably occurred. First, we experienced a scarcity of love within us (“if we need it, we must not have it”). Second, when the need was not met by someone out there in the world—by our parents, for instance—we began to view the world as a place without enough love. By trying to get love from my wife, I was merely reinforcing my old assumptions: I was unloved, and living in an unloving world, inhabited by unloving people.
Therefore I was also dooming myself to re-experience the frustration and disappointment that I first felt those many years ago. If we need love from someone else, then we are denying that there is enough love inside of us. Feeling unloved ultimately leads to the formation of unloving beliefs, such as the belief that we don’t deserve to be loved, or that we are unlovable. So even if our partners reassure us that we are lovable, there is a stronger voice inside assuring us that we are definitely not lovable. No matter how much we try to improve our partners with our subtle or obvious expectations on them to change, the need that fuels the demand will never allow us to feel the love that lives inside of us. As long as we persist in our expectations and demands, we will fail in our quest for love just as the knights failed in their quest for the Holy Grail. They failed because it was in the one place they were convinced that it wasn’t—within their own hearts.
Once you become aware of the effects of expectations and demands on your life, it doesn’t take long to realize that they bring very definite, albeit undesirable, results to both sides of the relationship; results like…
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STRESS, DISAPPOINTMENT, AND RESENTMENT
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“Expectation = Premature Resentment”
Stress comes from the pressure you put on your mate to make you happy, as well as the pressure you’re under to be your partner’s everything. I sometimes try to imagine what would happen to my wife if she attempted to satisfy my every need. 9 She would constantly have to anticipate my moods and figure out a way to give me what I want at the perfect time, in the exact measure, and for the precise duration I require. After a week she’d be due for a nervous breakdown.
As both sides burden each other with excessive emotional demands, a great strain is placed on the seemingly delicate dynamic of the relationship. Disappointment is the inevitable result of the huge emotional investment we make in someone else’s ability to make us happy. When we superimpose our fantasy on someone, we become excited with the anticipation that all our dreams are about to come true. As reality sets in, our soaring anticipations plummet, and we become crestfallen. Sometimes this disappointment leads us to the conclusion that we had been purposely deceived by the other person, who conned us into believing that they could give us everything we always wanted. One of my clients put it this way: “I thought I was marrying a mermaid, but I woke up one morning to the Creature from the Black Lagoon!” At other times we feel that the person did not deceive us at all: they actually do have what we need—they are just selfishly refusing to give it to us. This conviction causes us no end of frustration. We are so close to the fulfillment of our life-long dreams and that so-and-so is blatantly denying them to us!
Whether we feel deceived or denied, the disappointment of unfulfilled expectations invariably leads us to resentment. Resentment is a combination of bitterness, dissatisfaction and a sense of lost trust. It is interesting to note that children react in the exact same way as adults when their needs are not being met. They become bitter, feel that they are being treated unfairly and decide they cannot trust the person to whom they were looking for love and nurturing. Years ago I was shown an equation which has been repeatedly proven to be valid both in my work and my personal life: EXPECTATIONS = PREMATURE RESENTMENT. Put another way, expectations are resentments looking for an opportunity to happen.
After a while there are no more violins when she walks into the room; no more fireworks go off when he smiles, and pretty soon all that’s left of your super hero/heroine is the blue and red jock strap or panties that are inconsiderately dropped on the floor and which you have to pick up and put in the goddamn laundry!! It is at this point that the Glamour of sentimentalism begins to give way to the second stage of relationships, which I call “Disillusionment.”
The good news is that there is a better way. When there is discomfort in your relationship, ask yourself: “What do I need from my partner at this moment?” The answer will be there. It is usually an emotional need, even if it is disguised as a physical one such as the need for your partner to touch you, remember your birthday, or make love to you. Whenever I was upset because my girlfriend arrived at eight thirty for our seven o’clock date,10 I was actually upset because my need to feel special was not being fed. By focusing on the more mundane issue of the importance of keeping a time commitment, I had an excuse to be angry with her, but still didn’t get my need met. When I asked myself, “what do I really need from her?” I realized that I wanted her to make me feel important; someone for whom it was worth being on time—even early! (Coincidentally, the day I no longer made it her job to prove my importance by being punctual was the day she stopped being late for our dates.)
Identifying our expectations and underlying needs is an acquired skill, since most of them are buried deep in our subconscious minds. Usually we are consciously aware only of the behaviours that we want our partners to adopt or change. We want them to act a certain way, or say certain things, but we are rarely aware of the emotional need that we believe will be satisfied by the new behaviour. We don’t want our birthday to be remembered—we want our worth to be proven. We don’t just want to be touched or hugged—want our lovableness to be validated. Since we have spent our lives hiding these needs from everyone, including ourselves, they are not going to make their presence known easily.
Thus the need for three of the most powerful tools a human being has: imagination, intention, and intuition. Imagination is the doorway past our limitations to what is truly possible. Intention is the expression of our willingness to move in a certain direction. Intuition needs a little more care in describing because of its false association with psychic abilities. There is a power within us, which I will call Soul, that chooses only complete peace for us. Whatever wounds we carry, it chooses to see them h
ealed. Whenever we are blinded or confused by the illusion of this world, it chooses to see us free of the illusion. The way Soul thinks, I call intuition. If you cannot be aware of the need you are expecting your partner to feed, just ask yourself anyway, “What do I need from my partner in this moment?” If you have a sincere intention to know, your intuition—because it chooses to see you free of this need—will provide your imagination with an answer. Let’s say that the answer that your intuition provides is something like, “I need attention.” Even if the answer does not make sense to you, you can trust it as long as it is a valid human need. If the answer is something along the lines of needing your partner to do or stop doing something, you’d better check your intention and ask again. Needing your partner to change or behave in a certain way is an expectation, not a personal need you’ve been carrying.
When you identify your emotional requirement, you can ask yourself, “Am I willing to let go of this expectation?” In other words, am I willing to stop making the fulfillment of this need part of my partner’s job description? Am I willing to look inside myself for the power that can give me everything I need? Am I willing to let that power be the source of my happiness, and to stop trying to make my partner play the role of absolute provider? If your answer is “yes,” then your intuition will guide the rest of the process, which will take you beyond your expectations. You’ve done your part; the rest is up to your Soul.
How can you tell if you’ve really let go? Look at your partner. If you feel the love flowing more freely between your hearts, then you’ve let go. If you’re not feeling more peaceful and loving, you are probably still hanging on to the expectation; or else you’ve really let go and found below the first expectation another, stronger expectation waiting to surge forward. In either case, you can simply do the exercise again.
It all comes down to a choice of direction. If you are willing to let go, you have a great chance of finding everything you thought you needed right inside of you. If you’re not willing to let go, be prepared for the situation to get worse; sooner or later the failed expectation will turn into bitter resentment, distancing yourself further from love. Before you know it, you’re on the Road to Hell.
Intention, imagination, and intuition are just about the most powerful tools we humans have. If your sincere intention is to release your partner from the burden of your expectations, your intuition will support your imagination with a purpose and a direction. If you can imagine it—it’s possible!
So how can you get your need met if you let go of it? Well, I know the idea sounds strange, but the truth is we don’t really need what we think we need. Need is a mistaken desire that occurs every time we forget that we already have everything inside of us. The master Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is within. The master Buddha said that all that has been created and more is within us. All the great teachers and visionaries repeated that message in many different ways. But it will forever remain a nice idea until we put it to the test. Simply by letting go of our needs, we create a space in our mind where the need used to be. The universe abhors a vacuum, and it will fill that space with all the love it has to give.
Every new relationship holds great possibilities. The initial excitement has the potential for true passion; the fun is the promise of real joy; the laughter is the reminder of life’s sense of humour. And behind it all is the innocence of Soul Partnership. As beautiful and exciting as the Glamour stage is, Relationship guided by Soul is vastly more beautiful and exciting. It is really what our hearts are calling us to.
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2 An exception to this is some high school boys who act very much like mountain sheep. In the winter we used to play a game called carton hockey. In the school yard at recess, we’d squash a milk carton and kick it around in a kind of cross between hockey and soccer in the stamped down snow. It was a very bruising game whose real purpose was to spectacularly body check each other in the hope that a girl would notice; we realized this the day we had no milk carton to kick and my friend Rene said “Who cares? Let’s start the game!”
3 The element of lust was in there too, of course.
4 i.e. on the rare occasion.+
+ i.e. frequently. #
# i.e. most of the time!
5 With more explicit sex scenes.*
* Some including trapezes.
6 Keep in mind, however, that the amount of time needed may be measured in centuries.
7 A week later.
8 Which means no one can make us unhappy either.
9 With the number of needs I have, I figure I would have to clone her so that there would be three Su Mei’s, working shifts.
10 Some people have an amazing talent for tardiness. I had a friend who was always a half hour late. One day I decided to teach him a lesson. I agreed to meet him at six-thirty, knowing he would arrive at seven. I therefore decided to not show up until seven thirty, to show him what it felt like. The night that I arrived at seven-thirty, he showed up at eight.
CHAPTER 3
DISILLUSIONMENT
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“I married the girl of my dreams; but I woke up to the stuff of nightmares.”
—from a client interview with the author
With the advent of resentment, you will enter the second stage of your relationship journey—disillusionment.11 I remember as a boy I used to love Western movies and TV shows. I fantasized about being a cowboy, wearing a white hat, and entering a town to help the poor townsfolk rid themselves of the menacing bad guy in the black hat. What I liked most about those shows was the look of the town with its hotel, saloon, general store, and the stable where I—I mean, where the good guy would keep his horse. I loved the clean lines and immaculate paint jobs on the buildings, and the fine clothing of all the inhabitants—except of course for the town drunk, who always appeared dirty and unkempt. I loved the barroom brawls where the hero could be punched in the face thirty times and never even lose his hat, much less get bruised.
Then I saw the pictures of real western towns and their inhabitants, and my dreams were shattered. There is no way a white hat would stay white in those places. Most of the early western towns were filthy, comprised mainly of hastily erected shacks and canvas tents. And forget about painting them. They were lucky to have a bucket of whitewash thrown on them. And the people? Well you could describe them as many things but “well-dressed” would not be among the top ten adjectives. Most of them looked like the town drunk in my favourite shows. I can still remember the feeling of “reality” setting in, when the picture of my dreams was blown apart.
Disillusionment tends to have a rather negative connotation, often associated with feelings of anger, despair, and even betrayal. In fact the meaning of the word indicates a freedom from illusion. This is a good thing.12 Human beings carry a deep reverence and thirst for the Truth. Without the power to dispel the illusions which block our awareness of this Truth, we would be in an eternal prison, never completely satisfied or at peace. Relationships have an amazing power to dispel our illusions about the nature of Love. It begins as soon as our disappointment causes us to realize that perhaps we were mistaken. Perhaps this person is not the source of my happiness. A first, we may draw the conclusion that we simply chose the wrong mate, and then begin the search once again. But the disappointment will continue as long as the expectations are there, eventually leading even the most die-hard fantasizer13 to realize that the source of our needs just ain’t out there. I’ve often felt that disillusionment is a gift from my own Soul, intended to help me break out of the trap of believing that my source of happiness is “out there.”
However, the process of disillusionment can be a very gradual one, like the taking down of a cathedral brick by brick. It begins when our needs do not get met, and we fail in our attempts to educate our partners as to exactly how they should be ful
filling us. At this point we resort to…
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MISGUIDED BEHAVIOUR
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“The Devil made me do it!”
-Anonymous
In her book, “Positive Discipline”14 Jane Nelsen explains that when a child’s needs for belonging and significance are not met, the child experiences discouragement. The intensity of the discouragement varies from child to child, but typically leads to a certain degree of misguided behaviour and misplaced goals. Ms. Nelsen outlined four expressions of misguided behaviour, stating that a misbehaving child is not a bad child, but simply a discouraged one. The four behavioural expressions of discouragement are:
• Attention Getting (Look at me! Look at me!)
• Power Struggle (I’m not gonna do it and you can’t make me!)
• Revenge (I’m gonna hurt you as much as you hurt me.)
• Assumed Inadequacy (Why bother trying—I don’t matter anyway.)
The words in the brackets are mine. The first two behaviours are attempts to get the two primary needs met, while the bottom two point to a more severe sense of discouragement, where there is a belief that the need will never be met and thus the pain of discouragement drives the child to more destructive (often self-destructive) behaviour.