Why I wrote this
The other day, I jokingly said to my friend — “I write self-help for startup CEOs”. What I do there, and what I always advise my clients to do, is to take first principles that they believe in, and apply them to the practical dilemmas they are facing in day to day management, rather than endlessly react to the inevitable challenges and circumstances that arise.
A few days ago, while grinding up a mountain with a 30-pound pack on my back, I was struggling with heartbreak, deliberating for the thousandth time the collapse of my recent relationship. Earlier that morning I was worried over a conversation with a close friend who is struggling with his own, involving his kids, her kids, and their kid… The evening before I spent with a friend who is dealing with his own relationship grief, who said “well everything is fine, but I feel like my life is in black and white right now… you know?” I was hashing and rehashing these ceaseless thoughts, unable to break that cycle of pain.
Somewhere up the 5th mile of Ventana Wilderness slopes, I reached a breaking point in my frustration over the umpteenth “if only” and “why did she” and the “can’t he see what he’s doing”. In my anger I audibly said “So what do YOU want?”. The answer came immediately and clearly.
“I want to be number 1”.
I need to be the number one person in my beloved’s life, she needs to be the number one person in my life, and our relationship is the number one asset in our lives.
… now, your immediate reaction may be the same as mine, the first couple of seconds after I had that epiphany. “Isn’t this childish!? narcissistic!? egoistic? impractical?” “Isn’t it an expression of insecure attachment style?”
But the more I thought about it, the deeper was my realization that it is actually a value-driven, principled and practical approach — if you understand what it means, and how to live it. I am trying to lay it down in writing here. And while I’m hoping it will inspire and help you too, I am writing this in first tense — it is what I believe, and how I want my best self to show up. This is my “relationship management consulting” for me.
Evidently, I am writing this with my A-type personality front and center — I explain, analyze, justify. But even if you are not such a person, even if feeling and intuiting are enough for you, sooner or later a kind soul will be there to advise you why you have to think “rationally” about your situation, why you have to “weigh the pros and cons” or how something is “not a sensible choice”. So I hope you will find useful my attempted deliberate interpretation of an emotional, spiritual, almost mystical subject.
Love is (All) I Need
Underlying all of this is a fundamental belief in the primacy of Love as an organizing principle for human well-being. I am grateful to be alive at a time when humanistic psychology luminaries like Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, and recently, my esteemed teacher Scott Barry Kaufman, have laid down the theoretical and empirical foundation explaining its role in human well being and human achievement. It is a foundation for our needs of Connection and of Love, as defined in Kaufman’s Sailboat Metaphor, outlined in his book “Transcend — The New Science of Self Actualization”. And I could not hope to provide a more thorough discussion of romantic Love’s value than Kaufman’s review of this subject in “10 Principles of Whole Love: A Humanistic Guide to Cultivating Growth and Wholeness in Your Relationships”.
Loving wholly, sustaining and growing this Love in my life powers my ability to be my best self, not only for my beloved but for everyone and everything else that matters — children and family, friends and colleagues, causes and goals. In the presence of Love hard things become, well, easier, and it is easier to sustain focus and motivation regarding every worthy goal. Love is a necessary component of achieving both my practical Safety needs (security, money…), emotional needs (Self Esteem, Exploration) and ultimately Purpose, as explained below.
But in practice, in a relationship, it is hard to sustain Love, if you don’t feel loved.
Why My Beloved Is My Number One — And I Am Hers
Consider a world where, through Love and intimacy, you are the number one person in my life, and I am the number one person in yours. What I mean by #1 is that your well-being is my first priority, and that I can trust that my well being is your top priority, and that our joint well being is our #1 asset.
In such a world, where there is an opportunity to increase your well being, I will take it. When there is an issue threatening your well being, I will do my best to solve it. And when there is a conflict of interests because a decision to do one thing will increase my well being but decrease yours — we will work together to find the best compromise — because each of us takes pleasure in the other’s well being, and can’t stand to see the other suffer.
This is not theoretical behavior. It is practical. It is the essence of how people behave when they Love. Deep emotional intimacy breeds what Maslow describes as Self Expansion — “the effect of this is that one person feels another’s needs as if they were [their] own and for that matter also feels [their] own needs to some extent as if they belonged to the other.” He calls it a “pooling of needs”. I will expand it to a “pooling of well-being”.
When you are my #1, it is easy for me to make choices that would otherwise be painful for me, because the alternative of hurting you or even losing you is going to be worse.
Being Number One Is A Responsibility
Being #1 doesn’t mean I am the one and only. You are a whole person with family, friends, career, calling, values and interests. They are all needed, all valued. You being my number one, implies that I have to enable and assist you in maintaining and growing all of these, because I have a vested interest in your well-being. What that means in practice is that I won’t always be the person you spend the most time with (those may be children, co-workers etc.), my needs and desires will not always trump yours (you will be able to take off with your friends for that month in Provence even if I can only join for a week), and I will happily swallow some frogs for you (whether that means spending time with your ex-husband or supporting you as you raise those young children whose father is absent and abusive). As #1, I am committed to being your go-to person in both your joy and pain.
As should you.
I Can’t Be Your Number One If You Are Not My Number One
If I am your #1, but you are not mine, it means that there is something or someone else who is. There is someone whose well being I prioritize over yours. There will be moments where I’ll make choices that will make you feel that way and cause you pain. Pain that I will dismiss, because I did this for that “higher cause”. And even if we communicate about it effectively (more on that below), it will be clear for you that in our relationship you do not come first.
Over time, that pain and anxiety will compound. You will feel you are not getting a fair deal. You may even suspect that there will be someone else, whom I will love enough to make my #1, and who will take your place. It doesn’t matter that currently that “other #1” are the kids, or a career, or a friend, or something else. The fear that you are “expendable” will always be there, and your faith in the relationship will abate.
Sustaining Love in a relationship requires faith. And while unfaithfulness, when exposed, is an incredibly painful and destructive force, being faithless is just as toxic in the long term. Have faith that you are my #1.
But My Kids Are #1
Absolutely. There will be hundreds or thousands of moments where your child’s emotional, physical or financial need will trump everything else, and your top priority in that moment will be to address that need, and if you are unable to, you will both be distressed. Because you are my top priority, in such a moment, I will do what I can to help, enable, or at least get out of the way in a way that doesn’t make you feel like you are not seen.
That still doesn’t make your children the number one people in your life, or your top priority. Doing that will be doing a disservice both to them, and to yourself.
I do not claim to be a parenting expert, just a reasonably loving, educated and experienced father. Roughly, my belief is that what children need is a combination of unconditional love to drives a feeling that they are being valued, a sense that their abilities are recognized that gives them an inclination to challenge themselves, and a set of boundaries that helps them regulate themselves and find their place in society. Sprinkle on top a whole lot of community, educational, and monetary resources and you can hope to raise a happy, productive adult. The goal of raising children is creating those adults.
As adults, what they will need is to… leave. Find their own way in the world. Find their people. Find their #1 person. Thrive in the relationship with that person. Maybe have their own children…
By making children our #1, we are not doing them any favor. A child can’t reciprocate and take care of our well-being. We get a one-way street, that leads to their stunted development, over-dependence on us, unhealthy attachment styles, co-dependence, even narcissism. In hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution, never have children been doted on and helicopter-parented the way they have been in our society these last 50-odd years. The results is the worst young-adult mental health crisis in history. There is a staggering amount of research on this.
And how would it serve me?
In the short term, if I am not in a thriving romantic relationship, I am not happy. I am not a better parent when I am not happy, nor am I setting a good example for my children how to be a happy person, or how to be a good parent. Being in a healthy relationship also makes me a better parent and sets a better example.
And in the long term — my healthy, well-integrated child, is going to live with me about 20 years and leave. He or she will be a most welcome guest, and those moments when they will spend time with me may be days and weeks of grace. And then they will leave again. Cause that is what they should do. It’s what is good for them. How can they be my #1 people? How will they feel if they know I want them to be, but they have other people to prioritize?
As a parent, and a divorcee, I often hear “my kids are my top priority”. I was raised by a single mother and I believe that’s how she saw things. As her adult son, I am saddened by her lonely years and what they did to her mental and cognitive state. I wish it would have been different. And believe me, I’ve had to unlearn some of her life-lessons in my own relationships. Too often in second relationships, where there are “my kids” “your kids” and “our kids”, these territorial claims rip apart people’s lives, in a way that is good for no one — neither for the couple, nor for the children, who will eventually as adults realize the harm they have done — and that’s assuming the best about who they ultimately become.
So, my beloved, the happiness you get when your children thrive makes me happy. The distress you feel when they need something is felt by me, and if you (or me) are able to provide it, and it’s the right parenting move, I will do what I can to support you. Because you’re my #1.
Of course, parenting is an incredible challenge; there is rarely one way to do something, and no one does it perfectly. We will disagree. I will swallow even more frogs. You will swallow even more frogs. But my voice will be heard where I think I can contribute something, and your voice will be listened to when you think you can, and I will stand behind your decisions and support you emotionally and otherwise — because you are my #1 priority, and I am committed to your well being.
But My Friends / Family Are #1
I love my friends and my family. They often make me happy, enrich my life and drive my growth. I wish they all find partners to love, who put them at the top of their priorities, and who are their #1 people. Either as individuals or as communities, that does not replace and definitely not trump the trust, intimacy and commitment I am looking for from my beloved and want to give. It’s a non-issue.
Do I need time and space to spend with them? Of course I do. If I am cut off it hurts me. I expect to give you similar time and space. Will there be moments when my desire to go on an adventure ride with my crew, your plan for a grad-school girlfriends weekend, or a family birthday party will grate on our other needs? Of course. We will recognize each others needs and work together to increase our “pooled well-being”.
Real problems with friends and family arise when people see themselves as my relationship counsels. Whether it’s because they are truly committed to my well-being and think they know something I don’t (about life, about you, or who knows what) or because they have their own interests at heart (consciously or sub-consciously), they provide advice or “support” meant to undermine our relationship. Often such people have great influence on us — they have been there for many years in our life, and know exactly how to pull our strings. Rarely can they take actual responsibility for our well-being — as they have their own lives, needs and relationships. But still they volunteer to add to our internal entropy.
In such moments, the primacy of the connection is tested. If you are truly my #1, I can either ignore these perspectives or find a constructive way to discuss them with you. I will say more about communications below.
But My Career or My Calling Are My Top Priority
Everyone has a need for Safety (including economical) and Self-Esteem, and we should all wish to also have the foundation that allows us to search for Meaning. Careers are a means to all those needs as they are described in the Sailboat model.
But I am not my job. In my experience, when what you do becomes who you are, eventually pain will ensue. Arthur Brooks tells “A Story That Changed My Life” about just such a person in In “From Strength To Strength”. It is a recipe for painful decline.
Even more importantly — in my career, I have found that I am more focused, more determined, more graceful and more effective — when I have Love. That is exactly what Maslow/Kaufman are talking about when they put Love as a layer in the hierarchy below Meaning. Love is (also) a stepping stone towards Meaning and Self-actualization.
When I think about my beloved’s needs, these needs involving a career, income and self-actualization are right up there too. Sometimes it means she will be away on a business trip. Sometimes it means she will need financial support to embark on a new career. It may even mean that I will need to re-examine where I live and my parenting arrangements because she wants to move to Iowa to take a top job at a local university. All of these are valid discussions in a partnership between people who are pooling their well-being, where pooled gain and pain are on opposite sides of the scale. From the outside, it may look like one person’s gain and the other’s pain. But not to a couple who prioritize each other and their pooled needs. And in examining such decisions, the perspective cannot be momentary — only looking at one’s immediate sacrifice for the other. There needs to be a realization of the balance over the long term. More on that below.
Why Assets Shouldn’t Be Liabilities And What To Do When They Are
Eventually, even these come up in a relationship. My money. Your money. A financial commitment to an asset that can’t be broken in the short or even long term. An emotional attachment to a childhood home. A partnership in a firm that requires certain sacrifices.
Sometimes our attachment to these makes practical sense, and sometimes it only makes emotional sense, given our past experiences or trauma. But the well-being they provide us or the pain in parting from them should be looked at the same way. I will not cause unbearable pain to my beloved by forcing her to dispose of an asset, because I will feel that pain too. We jointly figure out the most balanced way to deal with the trade-offs.
I am not my job, I am not my company, I am not my property. They are my assets. They are not my top priorities. My top priority is my beloved, and our relationship.
Communications, Hard Work, Repeat
Principles are tested on how they are implemented in real life. To make my beloved my #1 priority I have to be aware of her needs, her fears, her desires, her pleasures.
Despite claims to the contrary, I do not possess the gift of telepathy. What I don’t know, I can’t deal with. What I don’t say, she can’t deal with. And as the world throws us curveballs, as new challenges, real and imagined, arise every day, there is no way to know what the other feels without a commitment to communications — frequent, and effective. In the absence of this we often think we know what’s on the other person’s mind, when we have no f-ing clue. In her book “The 100 Essential Questions” Susan Piver talks about “Turning off the projector”, how instead of guessing what the other thinks, which is really just a projection of what’s in your mind, you actually ask your beloved what she thinks. Well, I can’t know if I don’t ask you, and you can’t know if I don’t tell you.
One problem is, we are not very good listeners. Learning to listen to each other, not just ourselves, is hard. And we will have to put in the effort. My commitment is to listen until you feel understood — as explained by Jayson Gaddis’ “Getting to Zero”.
My second commitment is to listen regularly. One of my biggest mistakes was not adhering to a regular schedule of “check-in conversations” where we air our concerns, anxieties, complaints — and listen until we can figure out how to resolve them. Some people say “never go to sleep angry”. Maybe that’s the way. I’m not sure. What is clear though, is that if I don’t know what’s on your mind, then I’m prioritizing my false sense of security in the relationship, or just my desire for sleep or entertainment — over your well-being. No one benefits in the long term.
To sustain happiness we have to talk about the hard things, we have to do it regularly, we have to truly listen, and we have to come back to it the next week, and the next one, and the next one.
“Second” relationships suffer from a lack of guardrails. For young “first-timer” couples, children, marriage and economic dependency often sustain bad relationships, because they provide a framework that is hard to break out of. Second relationships deserve to persist only if they are good — if they drive our growth and our happiness. Keeping the Love and growing through Love is an ongoing commitment to hard work and hard choices.
Long Term Relationships are… Long Term
I am in it for the long-haul. The true value of Love is when we sustain it, if possible — for life.
That means that sacrifice and compromise cannot be evaluated in the minute. This year I (or rather — we) deal with my daughter’s crisis. Next year you (or rather — we) will deal with your parents’ ill health. One month it will be your troubled ex. The next it will be mine. In five years time you will want to retire. In ten, I may lose my job. There is no way to predict that and no way to balance it. The same is true of joyous moments. For you it may be the joint dive in the Maldives. For me it may be hosting a company retreat with you by my side. I can go on and on…
There is no way to keep score because there is no way to decide when to tally it up. People who say “you are sacrificing more” are no different than the people who say “you can do better than him”. They are reducing us and our life to a profit & loss statement. Those reflect at best a moment in time and a skin-deep evaluation of the state of things. They cannot properly evaluate a shared human life.
My commitment is to work hard and consistently to prioritize you and make you feel loved, to look at our relationship as a long-term process, realizing there will be ups and downs, that we will make mistakes, regret and correct them later, and that taking stock at any given point in time is nonsensical. Every day, we should see how we feel and whether there’s something we should do to improve that. That’s all. There are no shareholders to present reports to. It’s just us.
When you are my number one person and our relationship my number one asset — I want this asset to appreciate. The return on Love compounds. We need to hold on to it.
Love Is All We Have Left
Sometimes, to “get perspective”, you need to be reminded of your mortality. No event in my life made my comprehension of the primacy of Love more acute than my sister’s early passing.
Love is all we can truly accumulate, all that we can truly pass on, and maybe, in some way, all that we can take with us beyond this life. For me, writing this was an attempt to provide a roadmap to sustaining Love, despite the entropy of life and my frailties, my demons, my trauma, and my dark side.
I love my children, my family, my friends, my dog, my countries, my coffee and a lot of other things besides. But my beloved takes a transcendent place over all of these in my mind, that Love relationship is like no other, and I would do all I can to keep it alive and growing.
“Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence”. Erich Fromm
If you found this useful, maybe you’ll find the sequel, published a year later intersting too. Commitment will save us.
This post is dedicated to Lou, who made me realize what I want.
