Tag Archives: relationship sustainment

MAINTAINING THE STATUS QUO

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route-66

 

 

 

“Route 66”

“If you ever plan to motor west,

Travel my way, take the highway that is best.

Get your kicks on Route Sixty-Six.”

The Open Highway

For relationships to be healthy, meaningful and satisfying we should measure them with more than just ‘longevity’ as the sole matrix.  Relationship should last because they’re beneficial and good for the parties involved, and because both parties desire the relationship to do so.  The key then once a relationship has become set in a stable and relatively predictable state is how to manage that status quo over the course of time.  An appropriate analogy would be that of the Great American Road Trip where the destination in which you’re going to, in many cases, is less important than the overall experience of the trip, the unplanned and planned excursions you take along your journey and the quality of time spent with your partner on the open road together, but like most things can be ruined by common minor elements, that build up over time or a single major fouling.  Keep in mind that a negative has been proven to offset a positive at a ratio of 8:1, and therefore the majority of what we will cover are those elements where we typically get in our own way of relationship health, stability and satisfaction.

 Letting go of the wheel

Our gender schemas are deeply embedded within our own cognitive and social frameworks regarding what defines masculine and feminine and the roles for each.  Social agents work to formalize, instruct and to guide us in these roles, which are often at odds with biology and unspoken expectations and negotiated agreements established through behavior within the relationship.  One of the clearest examples of this is ‘who leads and manages the relationship?’ (who’s driving the relationship), which was negotiated through unspoken expectations and behavioral actions in the beginning of the relationship and the problems that become of it when that early agreement is renegotiated at a later stage.  At its core, relationships begin to fail when a man let’s go of the leadership obligations he’s entrusted with and is expected to carry out.  I’ll let Greg Swann, a good friend, philosopher and thorn in many people’s side, pick up the argument in a blog post he did a while back;

“Do you dispute this? He was in charge of the relationship from the beginning. He initiated it. He nurtured it. He pursued it. He escalated it. And he put the ring on it. Is any of that untrue?

He is the leader of that marriage, and he is the only leader of that marriage, because the relationship exists only because he quite literally made it happen.”

Ladies, in the beginning, you were happy to forfeit agency, accountability and social equality in lieu of privileges your gender is offered in traditional social structure, but now once comfortable and secure within the relation, seek additional benefits and privileges by renegotiating those terms under a la carte feminist ideals, prerogatives and sense of entitlement…  which technically is fine, but just don’t be surprised and blame your partner, when your relationship fails or you file for divorce because you were “unhappy” (leading cause stated for divorce, of which women initiate +70% of the time).  If your ‘happiness’ did depend upon your partner to provide it (as claimed) and you’ve taken the responsibility, accountability and agency from them to do so… sorry cupcake, that’s your fault.  I can totally empathize with women and understand the desire to grab a wheel of a moving vehicle when the driver isn’t in command of the vehicle (relationship) or is absent-minded and distracted from his duties.  Your job is NOT to grab the wheel and wrestle for control, but to wake him to his deficit.  Should that fail, you’d both be better off if you where honest and upfront about it and took a different journey with an appropriate man behind the wheel…  Guys, should you have any passenger grab the wheel of your relationship and attempt to steer it, I would immediately pull over and let them off at the side of the road.  This would be true for ANY passenger; her, her friends, parents, sibling, children and to include your family, friends, etc… otherwise, if you’ve decided you’re just going to ride, don’t get behind the wheel in the first place.  On the other hand, if you are truly interested in maintaining the status quo that you had when you first started dating; learn to drive; whether that’s a Ferrari, mini-van or school bus.

Falling asleep behind the wheel

A significant issue to long-term relationships is the compliancy that comes with the security of a stable and predictable relationship.  We simple invest less energy into the relationship, because it doesn’t demand it and we fail to ask for it.  We fall prey to a comfortable trance, that turns into monotony,  that dulls our sense of spirit and adventure.  We can address this by not falling asleep to relationship maintenance elements of sustainment, stability, quality and relational dialectical tensions.  As partners we should carefully drive the course of the relationship between these lane markers associated with balancing these relationship maintenance elements and towards our objective goal.  And much like lane dividers and rumble strips, we should communicate to our partner and they us, when the relationship is veering from these guide lines and for us to then take action and properly steer back onto our course.

Driving within your ability

Far more sinister and damaging is the increased compliancy associated with not having our emotional, physical and sexual needs met within the relationship, nor holding frank, open and honest discussion regarding these with our partner.  This is in large part due to a number of factors that we fear holding these discussions, whether from the built up relationship equity, the fear of conflict and where this known conflict may lead, a lack of our abilities to hold, manage and appropriate conflict accordingly and any personal and social stigmas we may feel are attached to these sentiments, desires and needs, can and often hold us back from essential sharing and critical emotional communication with our partner.  We fear the risk to our comfort, more than we do our own authenticity and the health of the relationship.  By not establishing a case history and success within the relationship of being open and vulnerable to express our feelings, desires or needs, we subjugate these feelings and any solution that may be available, to an unhealthy status quo.  We simply will not risk testing the strength of our relationship in a significant way, where it hasn’t been proven capable of in a lesser way.  This of course poses a paradox between comfort and growth, defined by the saying “there’s no growth in the comfort zone” and the fact that relationship should be grown over time.   The status quo of personal and relationship development is advancement, which fundamentally means change.   As such, it would be wise to take the relationship only as fast and on a course, in which we can safely manage, but to steadily increase our ability to do so.  Are you advancing your knowledge, skill and experience base consistently to advance yourself and the relationship in an effort to stay together?  Do you have a repertoire of skills from which you can draw upon for difficult situations and are you adding to them on a regular basis?  This is your skill set and ability to drive a relationship safely and effectively.   If we cannot hold a conversation about minor relationship concepts of respect of property or space, such as shutting cabinet doors after use, how do we expect to hold an honest and open conversation about our partners in ability to hold our sexual attraction and meet our needs of intimacy?  To span this sort of gulf between us and our partner we need to already have established a setting of trust, respect and safety for already having navigated simpler, less stressful and dangerous situations.  Our abilities and skills need to be proven or the speed of the relationship needs to be slowed to the degree in which we can safely navigate these challenges.  We must also be keenly aware that the environmental conditions in which we find the relationship play significantly into our abilities to manage these tasks… the more adverse the conditions, the more care we should take in response.  This ultimately means we should not be advancing  any relationship beyond the limits of proven ability- a girlfriend with whom we cannot be committed to being fully honest, open with and that has sound conflict management skills (girlfriend track) should never be taken onto the marriage track under any circumstances where the risks, dangers and consequences are far greater.

The Sing-Along

The ‘sing-along’ is a time-tested ritual utilized to pass the time, break the monotony and to bond participants together as a group.  These songs are often central to our sense of identifying with those experiences and the timeframe in which they existed in our lives.  As children they may have been children’s songs or common folk songs.  As we get older they are replaced by anthems of youthful vitality, independence and freedom.  The question becomes then ‘what is the soundtrack of your relationship?’ and ‘what are you doing do foster it?’.  Playful relationship rituals thus become key to entertaining each other through the passing of time, to break the monotony of the rigors and stresses of life, to bond you and your partner together and to keep our interest in each other vibrant and alive.

Running out of gas

It isn’t a road trip if you can complete the journey on a single tank of gas… knowing the general range and context of your relationship travels will help you to manage the essential elements of individual and relationship ego depletion (emotional energy), of which there is only a limited amount, prior to exhaustion.  Just like a car, we can run on empty, as long as we’re constantly re-filling our emotional reserves and we are within range of those services, but should we knowingly face a journey in which that range and services will exceed our current reserve, we’d be wise to prepare for that in advance of that journey or as soon as possible, once we realize it.  To maintain a relationship in a healthy status quo we need to make sure that the degree of individual and relationship self-care exceeds the stresses and demands placed before us and the relationship.  This is where an emotional and empathic partner is invaluable.  Too often we will run ourselves low and to a breaking point, and they can identify it and help us to remediate the effects of stress through active de-stressing techniques, increasing simple acts of intimacy and uplifting our spirits in a wide variety of ways. 

(*** bonus tip for the ladies;  if you list being ‘sarcastic’ as an attribute on your dating profile…good men see this as a warning flag and will naturally avoid you out of self-interest and preservation.  Being ‘sarcastic’ means you’re only destructive- sarcasm never builds, it only destroys.  Who honestly thinks they can build a relationship, let alone a life, with anyone who’s valued attribute and nature is to destroy?)    

 

The Pit Stop

On any great journey there is going to be a need to take care of a wide variety of personal and relationship type needs.  Much like a pit stop on a road trip, these are the times in which basic service and maintenance checks and services should be completed.  We should be asking our partners about their relationship satisfaction, even if you’re aware of their general feelings of happiness and satisfaction, there’s always room for removing stray bugs that smear and litter our relationship windshields.  These are the points in which we should be checking the levels of relationship communication and making sure that the mechanisms of sharing and expression are well lubricated.  How’s the alignment of the relationship tires?  Are they properly inflated and is tread wear within service life conditions?  Verifying, tending and reinforcing relationship boundaries needs and expectations are all critical to safe (drama free) and efficient running relationship.  Soliciting feedback will be more accurate than solely utilizing observation techniques to gauging this.  We should also plan on these occasions relationship planning; checking the course, direction, distance and destinations in which you both intend to take the relationship to make sure that the relationship and life journey is mutually satisfying for both of you.

Settling for Winona

Some trips are one-way affairs, with no intent upon returning back from whence you came.  The intent is to take the relationship to a particular destination and for it to permanently reside there.  I began this post with the analogy of the Great American Road Trip and I specifically kept the ideal Route 66 in mind.  Now I’d like to add to it just a little bit…  That highway was originally the route settlers took starting from Chicago to go to California and was utilized to avoid crossing the Rocky Mountain and the Sierra Nevada mountain ranges, which was consider very risky and dangerous for the time.  The song by the same name, Route 66, delineates stopping points, towns and cities of that journey within its lyrics;

 It winds from Chicago to LA,
More than two thousand miles all the way.
Get your kicks on Route sixty-six.

Now you go through Saint Looey
Joplin, Missouri,
And Oklahoma City is mighty pretty.
You see Amarillo,
Gallup, New Mexico,
Flagstaff, Arizona.
Don’t forget Winona,
Kingman, Barstow, San Bernandino.

On a two thousand mile journey, a lot can and more often than not, does happen, especially if you’re a settler in ox pulled carts, let alone in an air-conditioned convertible (Yes, people actually do drive with the top down and AC on full- its awesome).  There is a notion in the West that where some people’s wagon wheels broke, they settled, for failure of financial capital, resources, knowledge or sheer gumption prevented them from settling where they initially intended or set out for.  In the frontiers of relationship development, if your choice destination is that of California, make sure that you plan and prepare for these types of predictable occurrences, so that you do indeed settle in California instead of Winona and that relationship management, maintenance and repair are a part of your relationship status quo.

RELATIONSHIP MAINTENANCE- SUSTAINMENT

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woman-playing-chess-with-husband

“A penny saved is a penny earned”

 Proactive Practices

Relationship maintenance sustainment practices and protocols are skills, management ability and efforts directed at keeping a relationship on-going, making sure it stays on-course, continues to be vibrant, flourishing and exciting. They are pro-active by nature, meaning they should be done with a degree of frequency prior to any loss of effectiveness and satisfaction within the relationship (normal wear and tear). Historically relationship maintenance has been the sole domain of the feminine; supporting, caring and nurturing the relationship and its dynamics, but as society and culture have shifted towards a more feminine-centric society, many of these dynamics and their accountable responsibilities are more aptly placed within the masculine prerogative and leadership role. It is important to keep in mind that these tasks and behavioral patterns of proactive relationship sustainment are not typically associated with elements of relationship fault or repair (when there is a malfunction or damaged within the relationship- these will be covered in later blog posts), but are more associated with sustaining emotional energy and health levels within a relationship, such as relationship morale, maintaining relationship value and managing ego depletion, to make sure that the relationship stays on track, is well nourished and alive.

The Big Four

Relationship sustainment efforts should fall under four distinct categories of behavior efforts,(which will all be covered under individual future blog post) but are limitless, as to the specific nature and action elements one can take within each of categories, which include;

 Relationship Stability efforts– which focus on longevity

Relationship Quality efforts– dealing directly with satisfaction, love and intimacy

Maintaining the relationship Status Quo– maintaining specific stages or states within the relationship such as attraction, trust and respect– (opposing Hypergamy).

Maintenance of relational Dialectic Tensions – natural opposing forces or ideals found within relationships, such as connectedness vs autonomy, predictability vs novelty etc…

A Tailored Program

A successful sustainment maintenance protocol or program isn’t just a ‘to do list’ and a process of checking off of the relevant and completed boxes of completed tasks, but an established and tailored program centered specifically on the context of your relationship (because relationships change over time and within one’s life trajectory arch), the objectives you have for the relationship, and the needs, desires and values that each of you want from the relationship. Understanding specifically what you and your partner need and want will help immensely on what to focus on and the frequency it should occur at. Understanding that meeting or exceeding expectations is fundamental to relationship satisfaction, which ultimately determines the relationship heading. Furthermore, the simple reality is that it is human nature to become incredibly enmeshed in routine patterns of behavior, occupied with the rigors of life and to come to expect maintenance behaviors by your partner to occur routinely, which introduces negative behavioral traits into the relationship, namely, taking each other for granted. Keep in mind, there is no such thing as ‘cheating’ at life; either you get it right or you don’t. In this regard, it just makes sense to be organized, diligent and assertive in taking specific timely action to counter our basic instincts and to create a tailored proactive relationship program for ourselves that should include routine elements, tactical application efforts and strategic campaigned efforts to maintain overall relationship satisfaction in the following manner;

Daily Temperature Readings– what’s your partner’s emotional state and morale? How is this affecting them and the relationship? Are you actively listening to you partners body language, tone, attitude and demeanor when they speak? What is she really communicating and are you letting them know you care in return?

Weekly Gas Ups- We only have a limited degree of emotional energy (ego) and managing ego depletion is critical. Weekly emotional/ego refueling is essential for satisfaction in life. Often the best fuel isn’t having fun, but simply de-stressing and increasing intimacy. Know what works best for both you and your partner and be generous in the refueling. Never run a relationship on an empty emotional tank.

Monthly Tune-Ups- noting what’s impeding relationship satisfaction and taking steps to remove or remediate it, as removing a negative is 4x-8x more effective than adding a positive (actually negatives are just simply that much more destructive than positives, so we should first focus on those first). One of the most important is a self check; what’s your branding status? Are you being the guy you lead her to believe you to be?

Annual Check-Ups- noting the relationship direction in relation to the relationship’s objectives. If the relationship were a ship, does it need to be righted? Are you on the right course despite the relationship tack (alignment in relationship to the wind)? What isn’t happening and what needs to be done? Like ships, relationships rarely sail in straight lines to their objectives and doing so may actually be less than optimal. Understanding the forces that surround your relationship and sailing appropriately is always a better course of action.

Great, healthy relationships just don’t happen. They take a considerable amount of work, empathy and foresight to get right the first time. We naturally get better at those tasks and functions we repeat often and with thought. Our actions define who we are and the quality of the relationships we are in. Often it’s as simple as knowing what needs to improve and taking the necessary steps to act on what we know to be necessary. Understanding the framework that governs that surely helps considerably.

 

Relationship skills as life skills

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Isn’t it disturbing that people need coaching, teaching and lessons in socialization?

Just like your Father…

Parental influence on children are fundamental and serve as the foundation to a child’s social development and competence, as the parents are the immediate models for the child and they will pattern their behavior to them, often mimicking the styles and attitudes of the parent, even the lack thereof. Children coming from a broken home are at a severe disadvantage, due not only to the lack of a second parental figure to model to learn and develop from, but are taught initially to have a lack of confidence in a stable and secure relationships from the onset by their parents example. Their parents have defined the child’s expectations through their own failed relationship and any continued follow on catastrophe as it plays out over the years and typically they do.

Masculine behavior measured by a feminine ruler…

Our educational system picks up and furthers that development through a vastly increased everyday experiences with peer socialization and formal education. Unfortunately in the last 30 years there has been a markedly shift away from progressive social skills education emphasis being taught in schools and a return to ‘traditional’ education of the three-R’s, while at the same time being increasingly feminine centric in its gender bias. Our school systems just are not teaching social skills, but obedience and conformity, and specifically supplication to the feminine imperative.

The Princess club…

All this of course is under the shadow of a culture based education which reflects, validates and promotes the values and world views of popular culture at large, which presents males with a misandric world, that marginalized and devalues males and in particular fathers, while implying that males are incompetent and incapable of learning social skills to function in an ever growing feminine centric society. These notions are reinforced when little girls learn social skills through everyday experiences and they are recognized, rewarded and promoted by society and culture for doing so. Males are not, nor are they expected to, which highly affects their development and social competencies.

The Players Utopia…

Inexplicably men are then yet tasked and expected to take the lead socially in initiating, developing, fostering and sustaining relationships with women in the dating market place. Women then fall victim to the misandric errors of a society and culture that promotes vulnerable, insecure, under-developed men who lack the capacity to provide women with the relationships that they desire and demand. Is it any wonder our divorce rate isn’t greater than 54%? Not only are males hobbled by society and culture for developing appropriate social skills for what is ultimately expected of them, but the incentives for relationships, marriage and child rearing, are also stripped away from men; it is vastly easier to learn a smattering of game, ‘pump & dump’ and ‘next’ the chick… wash, rinse and repeat ad infinitum.

The Soft Skills

While once considered “soft” skills (cluster of personality traits and attributes that enhance an individual’s interactions with others) that some simply possessed naturally, relationship skills are something that can indeed, need to be learned and are immensely applicable both in one’s personal and professional life. Businesses have long ago realized that training staff on these skills enhances productivity, collaboration and organizational success. It is now being suggested that in a number of professions (virtually all), soft skills may be more important over the long-term than occupational skills, to which the individual may be directly employed and if current business trends continue, the demand for these skills will be on the rise.

What are they?

Relationship skills are any skills facilitating interaction, communication and relationship development and sustainment with others. They are a combination of the ability to understand and manage one’s own emotional state and the ability to understand and respond to other people. While the skills include understanding and using social conventions, it also includes the ability to understand the “Hidden Curriculum”, the ways in which peers communicate and interact, informal rules of behavior, conduct and social hierarchy and the ability to build appropriate relationships between those. They are central to most forms and styles of leadership and are dependent upon for collaboration, which is at the heart of any healthy romantic relationship. Simply put, men who are not socialized, socially calibrated and can exhibit a measurement of leadership ability, are not desirable as mates to women. Women will simply screen them out and choose other men who do. If you truly want and desire a relationship, becoming socialized, socially calibrated and learning to develop your own leadership style and skills is absolutely essential.

Back to basics…

The first step to building more effective relationships starts with being practical and assessing your own abilities. Start paying attention to how you interact with others, your friends, family, co-workers and strangers. Look into your own failed relationships and gleam what you can from them by performing an relationship autopsy. Gauge your own abilities, strength and weaknesses and be consciously aware of your aptitudes when dealing with people. Look to make specific improvements in specific areas that you identify. Self educate yourself. Develop a personal curriculum. Scour multiple resources, compile your notes in a central location and journal about your efforts to improve. Work at it daily, as small continued efforts typically outweigh the result of a single sustained push. Begin to understand yourself and how you moderate your responses to people, events and circumstances. Take yourselfyou’re your education seriously. Learn to communicate more effectively and empathically accurately (accurately understanding people, which is done by listening and reflective questioning, realize that many of these skills will be and are communicated non-verbally; it will be through behavior, attitude and tone. Realize the enormity of the undertaking in which you are partaking, but take it one step at a time. Have fun with it. Make it a hobby. As with most goals people vastly over-estimate what they can accomplish in a year’s time, but grossly under-estimate what they can achieve in five… Over the course of a normal life, that is very little investment for a life time of effected change.

The alternative

Learning social skills can reduce the stress and consequences from having a lack of social skills (getting it right) or a failure of correct skills; grief, agony, despair associated with a failed relationship and limitations within a career or professional life. Want to get over that girl who broke your heart. Work at being a better man than you were when she hurt you, when your combined skills were not enough to maintain or salvage a relationship. Doing so will build real confidence, increase your opportunities and limit your potential failures…

Food for thought

As women have successfully advanced in terms of education (where for every two men who earn a B.A. three women do) and the work place, as women currently claim over half of the work force, they have at the same time vastly reduced the pool of eligible males that would satisfy their hypergamy (female imperative to marry up) as there are fewer men that will meet their increasing criteria and demands (spinsterhood syndrome). When women have become significantly financially empowered, they begin to choose men based on criteria other than their ability to provide, and while there is a markedly increase in desire for better looking males (and game), those avoiding playing the phallus field seek out older, but attractive accomplished men. Although there is still preponderance for hypergamy, as a reversal of hardwired sex roles are hugely unpopular and widely undesirable, women still seek older men of status. The seniority of the male brings a measure of calm confidence of experience, knowledge and relationship skills that provides a powerful vagina tingle to the female hindbrain… Remember a man isn’t made in a day, he’s created over a life time…

…it’s never too early to start beefing up your obituary.