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Listening
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My wife wants to talk constantly about the affair I had and she forgave me for…… Why?
20 Sep 2006 by Rod Smith / 9 Comments
If one spouse forgives the other for cheating, why does it (always) get brought up in conversations long after the cheating has ended and after the forgiveness has been granted? (Question asked “online”)
Here are four, of many, reasons:
1. Sexual infidelity severely wounds people (all people involved) and relationships on many levels. Its power to shake life ought never be underestimated. Betrayal cuts a deep wound and often dislodges the capacity for future trust. (This is for the victims and the perpetrators!)
2. Because of the intense intimacy that can accompany the sex act, the betrayed spouse might go on a quest to know if the “stolen sex” led his or her partner into deeper levels of intimacy than were achieved within the marriage.
3. The forgiver will probably interpret silence (or anger, or even “over” focus) as an indication the affair did not really cease, or that it has been re-ignited.
4. Talking can connect people, and it can (but does not always) offer hurt people a sense of legitimate control and order. People who have been betrayed often want to talk about their experience (hurt, pain) as an attempt to stop their lives from (the feeling of) running totally out of control.Men and women who have participated in infidelity, and who yet have a forgiving spouse who is willing to work on the marriage, are encouraged to talk openly about anything the forgiving spouse may want talk about. There are some necessary limits to this which I will go into in another posting.
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Daughter (17) hardly goes anywhere…
06 Sep 2006 by Rod Smith / No Comments
READER’S QUESTION: Our daughter is 17 and will hardly go anywhere with her very few friends and wants to be at home all the time. She is a good student and works very hard at everything she does. Should we be worried that she has hardly any friends and seems to be hiding by staying at home?
ROD’S RESPONSE: While your daughter may, or may not, be able to tell you the answer, ask her if there are ways in which she thinks she’d like to change anything about her social life. Ask her how she thinks you might be able to be a help to her in this regard.
My hunch, since you have not mentioned excessive sleeping, unpredictable mood swings, or any manner of disturbing patterns of eating (or not eating), I’d suggest she daughter is doing what is most comfortable for her at this time.
Enjoy her presence around your home. Many a parent would give a limb to have their son or daughter at home more often.
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Love is Listening
27 Jul 2006 by Rod Smith / No Comments
Love cannot be pretended. Nor can the art and skill of listening. Feeling loved is feeling heard. To listen is to profoundly love. If I say I love you then I am saying I am willing to hear you. I am willing to hear even the things I would rather you would not say. If I am truly loved I will be able to say, appropriately, the things that you would rather not hear.
Anyone willing can be a better listener, and therefore, a better lover.
When someone you love wants to talk, if you have no intention of listening, rather say so as kindly as possible. This, in itself, is an act of love. You will have overcome a hurdle of good listening: honesty. There will be times when you will not be available. In the same way, you too will not expect that others will always be available to hear you.
Listening, like love, has no tricks. It is genuine interest, expressed. It is entering the world of another, modifying nothing. It’s embracing the experience of another simply because of their intrinsic value apart from anything they might (or might not) be able to do for us.
When you listen, the angle at which you sit does not matter very much. If you are not listening, the other person will know. The depth of your stare into another’s eyes or the sincerity of your facial expression will not do it. People thousands of miles apart, connected by telephone or by mail can really hear each other. Others, seated on the same sofa, who are staring into each other’s eyes, can miss everything the other is trying to say.
Listen to your life. What is it saying? The words you use and the things you do, tell about the spiritual condition of your life, reflecting your heart. If you want to know about someone’s spirituality, listen to what the person says and the things he or she finds amusing. All behavior has meaning: the flat spin you are in and the endless hours you might spend at work, keeping you from family, mean something.
Listen to your life’s rhythms. Notice that some days you feel very healthy and things seem in balance: you can be sincerely nice to people. Other days are different! Listening to your life will alert you to when extra care in dealing with others would be helpful. If you cannot hear yourself you can hear no one.
When you feel intense emotions, listen intensely. Feelings are messages about the state of your life. They often bring helpful warnings. Try to understand what your emotions are communicating. A person can only deal with feelings when they are felt. Trying to deal with feelings when they are not felt is like trying to learn to ride a bicycle by looking at one. When you have understood your feelings, express them appropriately to someone you love. This is an act of love.
The effective listener listens to family members. If a person cannot listen to their partner, it is unlikely they will hear their children, or anyone else for that matter. Try to listen without waiting to speak. Leave your agenda for this time. Give your attention as a gift. Try not to argue, persuade or interrupt. If possible, listen by looking into eyes. Listen to body language. Take the focus off yourself. Is there anything a loved one is trying to say that you are not hearing? If what you are hearing is not pleasing to you, remind yourself that this is not your opportunity to speak. It is not your world being presented.
Listening does not mean that you have to be silent but anything you do say is an effort to clarify meaning. What you do say is not an attempt to steer the speaker in a certain direction or to have the speaker tell you what you want to hear. Listening is not interpreting what you hear but hearing what you hear. The goal of listening is to hear, not redirect, not elicit agreement, not moralize, and not teach. It has no other motive except to better understand the world and the experience of another.
Rod Smith, Copyright, 1998
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He wants sex to see if we are “sexually compatible” before we can go on…
12 Jul 2006 by Rod Smith / 4 Comments
Reader’s Question: My boyfriend says we have to have sex to see if we are sexually compatible before he will continue seeing me. What do you think?
Rod’s Answer: What an old and ridiculous line. Move on! Your boyfriend is what I call a “pp” or “penis propelled.” If you really want to assess sexual compatibility it can be done without removing a single item of clothing!
First, compare credit reports and financial statements to see how each of you handles money. How you respect, use and save money, will exert more power over your long-term sexual compatibility than any immediate sexual encounter will indicate. It’s very hard to be passionate, faithful lovers when you are fighting over maxed-out credit cards.
Second: Compare your attitudes toward and your relationships with your immediate family. You can tell everything worth knowing about a person by how they respect and appreciate their parents and siblings. People who show little respect for their immediate family, or little desire to care for them, are unlikely to be a successful long-term husbands or wives, no matter how good or passionate they might be in a bedroom.
Third: Assess attitudes toward hard work. A shared, healthy attitude and high regard for hard, honest work, will give both of you useful insight into your long-term compatibility much more effectively than will the immediate experimentation with each other’s bodies.
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The myth of love at first sight
22 Jan 2006 by Rod Smith / 4 Comments
Loving someone is about seeking his or her highest interests while, at the same time, not ignoring your own. Love and control cannot co-exist in the same relationship.
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Verbal log-jam
When I was a boy I’d endlessly practice the fluent delivery of my name but it seldom flowed easily from my lips. As if it was new news to me, adults pointed out my stutter. Perhaps they thought I was beginning, at that precise moment, for the first time in my life to spit from the mouth, twist at the neck, jig my head back and forth trying to expel some inane statement log-jammed between my gut and my throat.
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Life in our beloved 122
If the inside of a house (outside, too, I suppose) is a metaphor of the lives of the people who live in it – which is something I once read somewhere – gosh, are we in trouble. Our house is a mess.
I consistently clean it room by room, thinking often of the legend that the Golden Gate Bridge that says there’s some guy constantly painting it. I feel for him. While I am sure the view is wonderful I must believe that the poor guy whose doing it daily from one end to the other must find the wind and the weather quite a challenge.
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Being a white South African can come with complications
Being a white South African reared under Apartheid is no simple matter. It permeated everything for me. While I do not pretend to have been a political activist, I was always cognizant that my privileges, simply a result of being born white, were unmerited, and most unfair especially when enjoyed at the expense of others who were not. I think this unsettling truth (for I took advantage of my station in life) was somewhat of a companion to me from the age of about six or seven.
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Location, location – remembering winter in August
We live very close to our school and church, so close we can hear the school bell from our kitchen and the church bells in my bedroom.
Sometimes we walk to both and we don’t see the car for days.
I like it. I like not having to get in and out of the car. I like not having to negotiate traffic, something as synonymous with life in the USA as Disney, Fast Food, and the Fourth of July.
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Ready to adopt?
If you wait until you are ready to adopt a child you never will because you will never be ready. The baby, and only the baby, will make you ready. Reading the right books will be helpful, but “ready” magically comes upon you when a real baby is sleeping in your arms or crying in the middle of the night. If you are not ready to change diapers – and I always am amused at the big deal about this non-issue – being unprepared will last only as long as a clean diaper.
Life inside the Smith household
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