I was recently talking to a friend who was navigating a situation where he was frustrated that his girlfriend of a few months kept implying that something that had just happened might be grounds for breaking up… something that seemed to my friend pretty minor, or even just a misunderstanding.
“She keeps threatening the connection!” he would say, and at first I thought he meant something about emotional warmth, but it was more about this sense of security. And implied was that somebody more mature or more collaborative, if they were in the same situation, would be able to convey the sense of “this is a problem” without the sense of threat. And I agree the move is problematic (not just unpleasant) but I see it as (usually) a symptom of a deeper problem: you got too close. The coalition that draws you together is facing coup attempts by the subsystems it’s oppressing, which were not consulted on the distance.
It’s not that there’s supposed to not be tensions, is that those tensions need to be included at the negotiation table—welcomed into the coalition, rather than forced outside it.
Anyway! With this basis, I want to explore the origin of this kind of blameful relationship-threatening. I used to see it as a behavior to be addressed, but now I see it, as I said, as more like a symptom of a situation to be addressed. “This isn’t supposed to be happening” can be viewed as a failure of spiritual acceptance or equanimity… or it can be viewed as a sign that, well, maybe you’d be better off if you made something else happen.
As the central case study for this piece of writing, I’m going to share some replies I made to someone in the extended network of the culture incubator I was part of in my 20s—the one whose magic I boggled at in Wtf is the Synergic Mode? He had put out that he was looking for people to come live with him, and listed out elements of his vision, including a dozen bullets about various “practical house things” about windows, AC, aesthetics, bikes, kitchen., as well as “shared purpose” items that referenced some of the cultural resonances of that scene:
- desiring the information of what others’ experiences are like
- an inviting space for grief to be felt, and for feelings in general to be felt and not suppressed – also, freedom to experience grievance as a pathway into grief when grief cannot easily be accessed – also, a context-sensitivity in expressing grievance, and an awareness of the impacts that grievance can have in a space
- impacts can be shared freely, and can be received as impacts rather than hearing impacts as being judgement or blame
- blame to be expressed only within a context of desiring to shift out of blame – I don’t want this to sound like I’m creating a “rule”, rather I’m sharing that I just find it uncomfortable to be around people who are feeling entitled to their blame-mindset. This goes both ways – I also wouldn’t want others to egg me on if I’m finding myself on the edge of going into blaming someone for anything.
And I wrote a response!
blame to be expressed only within a context of desiring to shift out of blame
I’ll make a general comment from my own experience that while I’m hugely in favour of shifting out of blame and not feeling entitled to end up in a conclusion that is based on blame, I’ve sometimes found that trying to shift the blame away too early makes it hard to even think the thought that I’m trying to think—to access the wisdom in/under the blame. Sometimes there’s something sacred that I care about, whose first way of expressing itself involves blame, but if I can welcome it fully without trying to change how it articulates itself, then it finds a clearer perspective, beyond blame etc. And that this is the kind of failure mode that can show up in a mindset learning community, that is focused on “avoiding blame” instead of something more like “welcoming everything that arises”.
On a different note, I’ve also recently realized that sometimes the wisdom underneath blame is actually “I don’t want to be in this situation”, and that the “relationship at stake” quality implied by blame is not a power-over-move / bluff, but rather an accurate impression of something that wants to end. and there’s an important difference between the form of a relationship (eg roommates, romantic partners) being at stake vs the whole relationship and ability to feel warmly towards each other or stay in touch is at stake. In my experience it’s usually only the former (the form) that’s at stake unless someone feels that they can’t enforce the boundary they need without also making the whole connection at stake. And then (in this model) if people insist on sticking close together even though there’s a strong incompatibility and parts of them would rather leave, they will find themselves feeling bitter/resentful/blameful towards each other, no matter how hard they try to transcend blame. the powerlessness can come from being unwilling/unable to consider separating as a viable option.
And the implication of this is that you may, counterintuitively, have less blame in your house if you focus on finding people who are a better fit for some of the object-level particulars of the house (which sound quite detailed, precise, and important) than people who are committed to “shifting out of blame”. Not that general talkaboutability doesn’t also matter, but… if you’re not actually a good fit, then you’re not a good fit. And sometimes/somewhat this can be renegotiated and a new solution found, but that’s costly and it’s ultimately possible the best solution is to not live together! You can’t mindset your way out of that.
(And that’s a tough tradeoff when you feel like there aren’t a lot of people who you could happily live with in terms of even just one of shared understandings re mindset/culture and shared unusual preferences re particular household flows! Which it sounds like is part of what’s going on here ❤️)
Note that if you are a good fit on the pragmatic and vibe levels, the desire to keep things working will create great incentive to sort through whatever tensions do arrive, without letting blame tear things down.
There’s a phrase I really like, which is “the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.” The phrase is Prentis Hemphill‘s definition of boundaries. I’m really not sure that boundary is the right word for that, but the phrase itself is quite helpful.
(At the very least, that phrase is missing the Schelling point aspect of boundaries, where they have a mutually-known stable-point property. Divia pointed this out to me with this essay: A Positive Account of Property Rights which builds up to the obvious need for property rights from basic game theory.)
At any rate, what’s going on with this right distance thing?
It seems to me that: in addition to having different senses of the world, we also have different preferences, values, tastes, aesthetics, desires, needs. Unlike perceptions of the physical or social world, if we want different things, that doesn’t mean we’re missing something about what the other person is seeing—although there is something I don’t see if I don’t get why someone wants something (that person could be myself). We can be confused or conflicted about what we want, and our wants also evolve as we learn more about what’s possible and get more in touch with ourselves. Nobody else can tell us what we want, but neither can we simply tell ourselves what we want: we have to find out.
Two friendly ways to stably resolve conflicts in what we want: distance and win-wins.
Distance: If you want to live with a dog, and I don’t, one simple way we could solve it is not living together!
Win-wins…
If, however, we want to live together to a degree that simply moving out doesn’t feel like an option, we need to enter into some sort of negotiation.
I use the term “compromise” to refer to a negotiation result where we’re both somewhat unsatisfied, and these outcomes tend to be unstable as we’re both still trying to somehow get that underlying need met, perhaps at the expense of the other’s need. Moreover, we may therefore (often accurately!) not trust the other person not to subvert the agreement. This instability is why we refer to such situations as compromised.
I use the term “win-win” to refer to a negotiation result where we can both tell that we both prefer that new outcome we’ve found (suppose I love dogs I’m just allergic and didn’t know there were hypoallergenic dogs, or we’d both actually be happy with some other pet, or we realized we can have the dog live outside and that works great for both of us).
The difference is somewhat about the degree to which there’s still a problem, but this itself is partially a function of both (a) what our alternatives are and (b) the degree to which we feel a sense that We are caring for what we both want, in a way that feels good for the whole, vs feeling like a power struggle between us. The question, again, is whether on balance it feels right, having factored in all the relevant details.
Choosing distance feels best when it’s done jointly as a win-win—where we each see how it enables both of us to meet our needs better, but choosing distance can also be done unilaterally if common ground can’t be found—and essentially must be done unilaterally, in this case: you might hope that your partner will see why things aren’t a fit so you can part amicably, but if they keep not seeing it, eventually the only way to communicate it is to break up.
But also, we might also discern that the necessary distance is small: we still want to live on the same block, even though we don’t want to be roommates. Or someone leaves as a full-time employee but continues working for the company as a contractor.
Sometimes, but far from always, what we want in a conflict is less about some material state of affairs but simply about being heard and understood in our experience of the past or future. Or about ensuring that the shape of the coalitional landscape between us accounts for something important that could readily be left out.
There is a third way to stably resolve a conflict, which is not so friendly: the complete destruction or subjugation of one party by another, so they have no chance of retaliation (which would rend it unstable). This holds in the short run—and decisive victories are certainly far better than long drawn out awful wars—but in practice this approach is limited stability-wise without use of the other two, because when you use it it creates tangles and hostility in others and within your coalition, which then need to be sorted out via distance and/or win-wins.
On the scale of an individual psyche, your parts are stuck with each other and basically can’t destroy each other nor get space. Interpersonally and inter-group-ally, the distance options and the destruction options somewhat become more available. But then up at the global scale, we are once again stuck with each other, and we’re too intertwingled with allegiances and friendships and business partnerships and cultural influences and so on, so attempts at destruction create enough karmic tangles that again, stability is only achievable by dialogue.
Or so it seems to me.
Constantly consciously expanding the boundaries of thoughtspace and actionspace. Creator of Intend, a system for improvisationally & creatively staying in touch with what's most important to you, and taking action towards it.
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