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All of us have spent time living with other people. I'm pretty sure no one raised exclusively by wolves is reading this document. Most of us have also spent time living (comparatively) alone. It is often only when we (particularly women) live alone that we finally buckle down and take care of our own basic needs.
My theory of basic needs (cribbed largely from the traditional Maslow-ian pyramid) strongly informed the first few chapters of this guide. Stated concisely, certain needs must be satisfied in order, before we can begin to be happy. Happiness is largely an artifact of having most of our needs met, most of the time, and having the resulting sense of confidence and security that they will be met in the future. Joy is something else, beyond the scope of this booklet. Until I was nearly 30, I was convinced I would never be happy, that I should instead focus on the more elusive pleasures of joy, ecstasy, religious fulfillment, intellectual satisfaction, etc. What a waste of time that all was. We are animals. Here's what we need:
You can probably imagine additions to this list. It is easy to respond to this list with ideology. All my needs are taken care of, yet I am still vastly unhappy. Surely my problem is not to be found here. Or, how can I worry about these things. I have so much more than starving people on some other continent. My problems must not lie here. Perhaps one or both of these positions is true. But if you have never lived your life for at least a few months, with your primary focus on this list, putting aside for the moment all else, how can you be so sure?
Many considerations prevent one from focusing on this list. The need to work vast hours may prevent one from ever getting enough sleep. If one has no fixed address, no certainty as to shelter can arise. Starving people on other continents, asthma sufferers everywhere and so on, are truly getting the business. Working to solve those and other problems is admirable.
Nevertheless, in the selfish search for personal happiness, a tight focus on the above list can really work wonders. Unfortunately, it isn't easy to meet most of our needs, most of the time, and as I mentioned above, I believe women in particular need to find space of their own to live in in order to learn what their needs are and how to effectively fulfill them.
Assume that one has, perhaps by applying the first few chapters of this booklet assiduously, learned to be happy on one's own. Then assume, perhaps through applying the next few chapters, one has found someone to share their life with. The problem of how to merge those two lives remains. I talked a bit about accounting systems and about planning a future together. But honestly, sometimes the real problem is just getting through the day without a screaming fight, or a building sense of resentment that you'd be better off living by yourself.
If you weren't lucky enough to be raised in household that modeled compatible couples behaving in functional ways, you will have to find another way to learn how to live together. Try to spend time with couples whose relationships you respect. Pay attention to how they make sure their needs get met and how disputes and incompatibilities are managed. If you find that a lot of your friends are almost as messed up as you are, you can continue to make new friends and learn from the new ones, or you can resort to reading.
I recommend John Gottman's Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work and The Relationship Cure. Mira Kirshenbaum's The 10 Prescriptions To Heal Your Relationship and Pepper Schwartz's Everything You Know About Love and Sex is Wrong might also prove helpful. Many, many other books might also help. Navigate the self-help aisle at a bookstore or library and pick up what appeals to you. Read it with the kind of critical eye we apply to breakup advice.
To tide you over until you find your own solution, apply the following simple, homemade cures, largely cribbed from Gottman.
Start conversations calmly How the conversation starts is an awesome predictor of how it will end. If the count-to-10 advice doesn't work for you, find some form of meditation that does, or vent to a friend, a wall, or your journal. It is so incredibly important that you avoid a harsh start to a conversation, especially a difficult one.
Stop when it gets ugly If either of you starts to "flood", aka experience a surge of adrenaline aka your heart rate jumps, stop the conversation. Arrange to reconnect with each other in about a half hour. Separate, each of you needs to spend the time apart calming yourself. Get back together, and do something that makes you feel good about yourselves and each other for at least a half hour before returning to the issue at hand.
Make regular time for each other Inviolable family mealtimes, institutionalized daily or weekly walks, a sacred half hour before bed time are all conventions we've run into when interacting with long-established couples. They all work, and there are a ton of variations that you can put together. Make an open-ended project of finding more time to spend together, doing things you enjoy, that make you feel good about yourselves and each other.
Continue to learn about each other You've heard all that person's cocktail party stories, but that doesn't mean you know everything about them. Encourage them to tell you all the stuff about 3rd grade they don't usually bring up in public.
Always respond to each other You don't need to agree, or do what the person asks, but never ignore them. That will end the relationship quicker than outright abuse.
Help each other to be happy Mostly be making sure you don't get in the way of their needs being met, and, where possible, helping them meet those needs. This can be so simple, and make such a difference. If he's tired, let him sleep. If she's hungry, help her find the food she wants. Encourage each other to maintain a network of friends and other family.
Many of us discover that however resolved we are, we put our own needs second to the needs (or even casual inclinations) of others when enmeshed in a relationship, particularly if it involves sharing living quarters. This is a habit, or inclination, that must constantly be fought. Find ways to make the relationship work to satisfy everyone's needs. By communicating more effectively, in ways that draw you together, instead of force you apart, you may discover your partner can be very helpful in getting your needs met. Don't let them ignore their own. Expect an ebb and flow, and that all equilibria will be dynamic, changing as the world around you changes, and your own needs and capacities change with the years.
A lot of people who have never lived with a significant other, never been married, etc., are appalled when they look at their enraptured friends as they plump up. The friend they used to cycle, rock climb, kayak or play ultimate with now spends all of his or her time doing something with their lover-and-new-best-friend, and, other than the more active moments in intercourse, most of what that involves is oh so sedentary. Combined with candle lit dinners, dinner parties with other couples, movie nights with take out, gifts of chocolate and candy and the occasional resort to Ben & Jerry's after a fight but before kissing and making up, the muscles disappear and the pounds pile on.
Exercise is a basic need. And when we're trying to figure out a way to merge the day to day details of two lives, our cultural milieu makes it oh-so-easy to deprioritize it. We have to breathe, eat and get some fluids. We even have to sleep once in a while. But we can put off the exercise for years before things get irrevocably dire. However, will power is not only not enough; it isn't a very good solution.
New relationships present a special set of hazards for our need to exercise. We're time crunched, because there just isn't enough time in the day to be together, and we still have to pay the bills, eat, sleep, etc. We want to spend time together, and we know what we want to spend part of that time doing, but the rest is a matter of finding models in our lives and the culture at large. Other than romantic walks on the beach in the evening (which requires a beach and a particular time of day, and at least somewhat cooperative weather), most of what the media depicts couples doing together is very sedentary. And the sad truth is, if you're still in the honeymoon phase and you engage in exercise activities together, with the usual soulful looks and occasional (or constant) touching, a good chunk of the people around you may respond in a discouraging fashion.
Recognize that if, at some other point in your life, you are jogging, stair stepping or rowing away your anger at a breakup or resentment towards your partner or otherwise working out to work off bad relationship energy, you, too, will feel distinctly uncharitable towards the obnoxious pair cooing at each other across the gym or ambling along the path completely blocking your progress and too oblivious to move out of the way. In the mean time, try to avoid arriving at that point in life by scheduling physical activity together that you both enjoy.
It might be hard. If you are lucky enough to be of a size, and approximately the same fitness level, walking or jogging together might work. For many, however, pace presents an insuperable difficulty. Rock climbing is inherently a pair sport, as is scuba (although scuba isn't the best way to become more fit). Hiking works for some. Racquet or team sports work for others. But even going to the gym together, splitting up to each do your own thing, and reconnecting at the end of a session may be good exercise, and good-enough time together. Plan to persist. A lifetime of fitness generally doesn't (and probably shouldn't) involve doing exactly the same thing, at the same frequency for the rest of your life. Health changes may force some exercise routine modifications, but interest levels wax and wane, as do the seasons.
Dancing can be a wonderful physical activity for a couple. Unfortunately, straight white men in particular are strongly discouraged from expressing themselves in this way, which makes it a less than optimum choice for heterosexual white couples (and there are a lot of them out there). Go ahead and float couples dancing as an idea, but if you encounter resistance, even slight, from a straight white guy, give up. He probably doesn't know why he doesn't want to do it, but basically he's sure that if his buddies find out, he'll be called pussy-whipped forever after. And he won't tell you that; he'll just resent you a little more every time you bring it up. Try something else.
If at some point in your relationship, you find that it is very hard to get any of your partner's time, and your partner attributes that to scheduling difficulties, be extremely suspicious. You'll be very tempted to cancel everything you do (especially exercise), in an effort to be available on those rare occasions your partner deigns to spend time with you. Go ahead and look up deigns in the dictionary. Basically, you have no power in this relationship. Unless one or both of you figure out a way to improve the situation, your partner will (probably very, very, slowly) exit the relationship literally, as they already have emotionally. (It's possible the power play is just a gimmick, and they are actually an abuser, but the advice holds even more in that case.) Resist the temptation to let your needs slide so you can always be available for your partner. Now is when you should be working out, losing the happy fat, getting a new hair cut and reconnecting with your friends. It's good for you. It's good for your relationship. And if the relationship ends, it improves your odds of finding someone appealing to you, if you are already at your best.
If you are both unhappy with your relationship, it's going to be an incredible struggle for either of you to stay on top of any kind of routine physical activity. Try, but don't beat yourself up when you miss sessions or have to cut back. Plan to restart when things are less difficult.
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Copyright Rebecca Allen, 2002.
Created February10, 2002 Updated November 19, 2003