14.  Areas of Observations for Equity

EXERCISE 14.1

Consider and discuss the following issues regarding Table 16.1 and the ennead matrix of growth steps in marriage:

• How would these observations help you in assessing the quality of relationship of couples you know -- yourself and others?

• How do you explain these observations--what do they show or why are things this way?

• How do you now understand gender relationships in terms of dominance, equity, unity, biology, culture, spirituality?

This is Table 14.1

Areas of Observation for
Sensorimotor Male Dominance vs. Sensorimotor Equity vs. Sensorimotor Unity
Zones 1, 4 ,7

1. Who gets to hold and control the TV remote

2. Whose choice prevails for what home movies to watch

3. Who chooses what restaurant to go to

4. What interaction dynamics goes on in each other's appearance--clothes, body shape, hair, etc.

5. How much influence is each partner willing to take from the other regarding how to behave with friends or family, or others

6. How do they talk to each other and what does the talk reveal about their cognitive and affective self

7. What are the conditions under which they are physically intimate and how do they act and react

8. How do they coordinate their movements while walking, doing tasks at home, sitting beside each other

9. What kind of facial expressions do they have when alone together

10. Are their preferences in tastes, colors, odors, sounds, lighting -- compatible

11. Who changes topics in a conversation or introduces new topics and what does the other do with it

12. Who is attentive to the other

13. Who doesn't answer, looks away, avoids, ignores, walks out

14. Who yells, expresses angry and hurtful words, hits, acts threatening, throws things

15. Who marks dates, events, anniversaries, celebrations, birthday cards, flowers

16. etc.

Areas of Observation for
Cognitive Male Dominance vs. Cognitive Equity vs. Cognitive Unity
Zones 2, 5, 8

1. What do the two partners think of each other in terms of who controls whom, when, and how

2. How do they use "equity philosophy" in their relationship (i.e., how they decide about sharing work, duties, money, responsibilities)

3. What is their attitude about one partner trying to influence the other (e.g., when  trying to change the other's habits, beliefs, loyalties, personality traits)

4. What does each partner think of the other's opinions and views (e.g., dislikes them, ignores them, isn't interested in them, argues against them, etc. -- or the opposite of these -- likes them, pays attention to them, is interested in them, goes along with them, etc.)

5. What do the two partners seriously disagree about or argue about without resolution of the problem

6. How much agreement or disagreement exists between the partners regarding God and their being together in the afterlife

7. How much do the two partners let themselves be intellectually influenced by each other's ideas

8. How clear are they to each other when discussing things (e.g., hiding things, keeping secrets, being touchy or oversensitive to some topics, talking guardedly or with reserve, -- or the opposite)

9. How much does each believe in marriage myths like "Passion decreases with time" or "Absence makes the heart fonder" or "Wives tend to nag" or "Husands need thier own hobbies" etc.

10. etc.

Areas of Observation for
Affective Male Dominance vs. Affective Equity vs. Affective Unity
Zones 3, 6, 9

1. How motivated is each partner to remember relationship things (dates one of them considers important, celebrations, joint memories, intimate events, preferences of the other for various things like food or activities)

2. How motivated is each to the idea of putting the partner ahead of everything else--children, friends, family, career, attachments.

3. How committed is each partner to the idea of total unity (e.g., feeling free to raise and  talk about any topic, feeling motivated to eliminate all disagreements between them by wanting to change for the sake of the other, and so on)

4. What motivates them to consider each other ahead of everything else, or not

5. How much do the partners try to hurt each other (e.g., retaliation, punishment, sulking, staying away, breaking promises, being unfaithful or disloyal, being uncaring or unloving, manipulating, forcing)

6. How passionate is each partner towards the other (e.g., in being romantic, in making the other feel special and exclusive, etc.) Is she his Sweetheart? Is he her Ideal Man?

7. How much are the partners motivated to stay together as much as they can (e.g., shopping together, leisure activities, lunches, watching TV, hobbies, house tasks, seeing others, vs. doing separate things each on their own  (e.g., seeing friends, sports and games, hobbies, TV programs, shopping separately)

8. etc.

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15.  Behavioral Indicators of One's Relationship Model

EXERCISE 15.1

Here is a table that shows some contrastive elements that differentiates the three phases of growth in marriage.

Table 15.1

 

This type of contrastive analysis shows that the dominance phase has an 84% overlap in answers with the equity phase but only 16% overlap with the unity phase. Similarly the equity phase has only a 16% overlap with the unity phase. This shows that the unity model is most different from the other two. It is also the most difficult to achieve unless the husband is spiritually enlightened and has the afterlife in mind regarding their eternal conjunction.

Construct your own table as above, making up new items for each row. Discuss it with your partner and friends. What did you learn through these discussions?

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16. Gender Discourse Within the Three Phases

16a: Sexy vs. Unsexy Conversational Style of Husbands

 

Consider why a wife needs girl friends to talk to, to go out shopping, to go to lunch, call each other on the phone, send birthday cards and give gifts, keep each other in the loop about happenings, etc. Husbands and boyfriends have to acquire similar conversational skills if they want to be their wife's friend, and even best friend.

 

A woman affiliates with women friends more when their husband or boyfriend hasn't learned how to act like a friend. She tries to talk to him, hoping he can be a friend, but he resists and acts like he doesn't want to learn how to talk to her like a friend. Being friends is different from being just lovers and roommates. To be able to talk like friends two people have be mentally intimate at the cognitive level (C), and to be best friends, at the affective level (A) as well. To be best friends with his wife, a husband has to remember her topics and keep track of all the details of her involvement with some issue, person, or activity. This is cognitive intimacy (C).

 

In addition, the husband has to care more about making her feel good about herself, than caring about the topic or his solution or opinion or analysis. So he needs to perform the speech acts that make her feel interesting, approved of, accepted, even admired. This is affective intimacy (A). A husband can be best friends with his wife if he is willing to learn how to talk to her in that way. But to remain best friends on a long term basis, or even forever,  the husband has to maintain this style of talking to her in everything and all times. You can see from this that a wife whose husband is her best friend will derive more from this relationship with him than with any other person -- girlfriend, family member, old friend, good friend, high school friend, team buddy, etc. The husband-wife conjunction as best friends and soul mate lovers is the highest mental state that human beings can achieve in eternity and heaven.

 

Best friends never yell at each other, never get mad at each other, never lie to each other, don't like to keep secrets from each other, always try to promote the other, always show admiration for one another, like being together and having fun, and support each other in whatever they do never showing disapproval or rejection. Women can achieve some of these things with a girlfriend or family member, but only with her husband can she achieve this fully involving all of herself and body.

 

Why does the man resist this process of increased mental intimacy with the woman with whom he is being physically intimate? One reason is that it takes mental effort to progress on the path of intimacy and in order to put up that effort the man has to feel enough of a reward to go through with it. This is a selfish and foolish reason. An enlightened man thinks about being with this woman in eternity forever as best friends and soul mates. This is an immense reward, greater than all the others he can amass. He knows this rationally. Through this rational knowledge he can gain intentionality and motivation to work towards achieving progressively deeper states of intimacy with his wife. Heavenly life in conjugial union as a conjoint self -- this is the greatest reward there can be. The man has to think this as the true reality from creation.

 

When a man and a woman are in a permanent love relationship, sexual union is at the centre of their relationship, like the hub of a wheel holding the spokes in place. Through the spokes, the central component or hub, comes into contact with every part of the surface of the wheel. Sexual union or sexual love between husband and wife is the hub or central component of all other activities of the couple. Each spoke represents some area of interaction like going shopping, playing games, raising the children, keeping house together, dealing with the extended family, finances, etc. Each activity or area of concern is connected to the hub, which is their sexual love. There is a popular saying that a marriage goes on the rocks in bed. In other words, when sexual love dies, the hub or center of the relationship can no longer hold the marriage together.

 

Here is an illustration from the NetDoctor Web site that relates to this topic:

From: http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/ate/sexandrelationships/relationships/200720.html

My marriage is on the rocks

Question

My marriage is on the rocks, both myself and my husband have talked things through - we love each other a lot but no longer cuddle, kiss, show each other affection and we only have sex about once a month. My daughter is one year old.   (...)

I would even go as far as saying that I feel I would rather not be here and life hurts too much sometimes.

My husband is a good man but things have reached a peak. He says he would never leave as he loves me loads and would also never leave because of our daughter but he can't take the fact that I show him no affection whatsoever.

I feel really selfish - I always want him to cuddle me when we go to bed and I don't even think about cuddling him. I never feel like sex, which is one of the major problems.

I so want my sex drive back again. I just don't know where to start.

The love is there but we seem to have been taking each other for granted and the affection has gone and we don't know how to get it back. If things don't change I don't know what'll happen - I can't even think about us splitting up, the tears start and I really don't think I'm strong enough to go through that again - please help.

Is there anything I can take to kick start my libido. I should mention that I did have a period of postnatal depression and I also have low self-esteem and confidence. I am not on the Pill - I have the contraceptive coil fitted.

We do not want any more children - we just want our old selves back.

Answer

David writes:

Well, your letter strongly suggests that you are depressed. I beg you to go and see your GP this week, and discuss whether you should be on antidepressants.

As regards your sex-related problems, these need discussing with a counselor. There must be some reason why your sex drive has disappeared, and you need to find out why. (Depression, probably plays a part.)  (...)

Christine adds:

Yes, I heartily agree with all of this. I really do think that you are depressed.

Your husband clearly loves you, so I really don't think there is any prospect of him asking for a separation or anything.

I wonder how well you've bonded with your child. You don't say much about her but say that you don't want more kids and 'just want our old selves back'.

So it sounds as if motherhood may not be all you had hoped for - but again, this could be the depression talking. (...)

Last updated 1.10.2002

The above is from: http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/ate/sexandrelationships/relationships/200720.html

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 10 ways to keep intimacy in your marriage

By Anna Sobrepeña, Philippine Daily Inquirer, First Posted 05/11/2008

(...)

So how to account for the last 24 years of marriage which have been the best years of my life?

We’ve picked up learnings along the way and we’re still at it, discovering avenues to make life for better and not for worse.

This is hardly a comprehensive list but doable and bite-size efforts go a long way for a happy togetherness till death do us part.

1 Keep a weekly appointment with each other. (...)  Knowing I had this weekly venue freed me from nagging about a repair that need to get done or calculating the best time to bring up a sensitive issue.

2 Share thoughts. Besides doing things together, we talked about the experience. It keeps us in touch with each other’s thought life. We have animated discussions on movies, books, current events and homilies. Things happen to us during the day when we are apart. During the evening, we fill each other in on what happened and reflections we may have had. He talks about the latest successful microfinance initiatives and his continued hope that things can get better for this country. I tell him about a new restaurant and the amazing local chef who is on par with the world’s best. Besides bringing one another into each other’s day, we develop a communication skill that enriches not just the one speaking but also the listener.

3 Read the same page. There is some effort to build commonalities beyond what we normally share. (...) We forward e-mails we find worthwhile to spend some precious moments on.

4 Speak gently. Modulated voices encourage listening to each other. One decibel higher can trigger a negative response. We have had to learn nuances in language that affect each other. I remind him that his management style of giving instructions sounds like he is talking to his secretary and not his wife. He will pause in the middle of a conversation to clarify if I am angry because my responses appear terse.

Timing is also important. (...)

Most importantly, the way we speak to each other and the way we speak of each other conveys, not just to one another but also to our children, household staff or anyone within hearing distance, respect or lack of it. Respect establishes the person and accords dignity that enables one to be their best selves.

5 Do things together. There are some things we both enjoy like spending hours in a book store, watching a play or cheering at our son’s basketball tournament, even if our understanding of the game is limited to getting the ball into the correct basket. (...)

6 Wear something nice. The children used to ask when they were younger where I was going when they saw me dressing up. I told them their daddy was coming home and I was preparing to look nice for him when he walked through the front door. Besides being a pleasing sight, it also made me feel good about myself. The most important person in my life was the one I slept with at night and woke up beside with in the morning. The way I looked was one way I conveyed my regard for him. (...)

7 Give gifts. I have a photograph of my husband precariously leaning to pick wild flowers on the roadside. He had asked the driver to take the picture to show the lengths he went to bring those to me. It was certainly more precious than the washing machine he told me to buy for my birthday present. His efforts counted more than the cost of the laundry device. (...)

8 Hug. Smile. Cuddle. Laugh together. Litter the day with gestures that affirm each other. Touch each other constantly with hands and eyes, notes and text messages. Morning rituals like rolling into his arms when he wakes up, or hugging skin to skin after a shower have been starting off our days well and brings pleasant anticipation of homecoming at the end of the day.

9 Share meals. Some of the most important decisions and agreements have been made over the dinner table. Dining is meant to be pleasurable. It is done at leisure in relaxed circumstances. Lectures and unpleasant subject matter is discouraged. Serving palate pleasers is an important factor. (...)

10 Remember the spouse is not the enemy. We do not always agree on things but cultivating a mind set that we are on the same side helps to keep discussions reasonable. In the end, after we have listened to each other and still do not agree, I let him win. (...)

Most often, it is not a matter of right or wrong but of preference and in the end, we both win because giving in brings out magnanimity on his part and we become generous with each other. In the end, curling up with a good book doesn’t come close to having someone who laughs at your jokes, rubs your soles and finishes what’s left of a coke.

Read the original article. The above is from: http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/lifestyle/lifestyle/view/20080511-135842/10-ways-to-keep-intimacy-in-your-marriage

 The marital counseling exhibited here is clearly from the male dominance perspective. We have encountered this type of advice giving in our discussions on Dr. Laura, Dr. Phil, and Dr. Gray. This approach consists of focusing in on the woman as the source of the problem, and avoiding attributing any responsibility to the husband. This type of advice is devastating to the woman, shaking her self-confidence, if any is left, and driving her deeper into despair, into the feeling that she is all alone and no one will legitimize her.

In this case the woman writing the letter has been affectively abandoned by her husband.

 

Her self-confidence is shaken to the core, even to depression, because she is made to feel that her lack of sexual love for her husband is her fault. The male dominance perspective wants to put her in a bad light, making her feel guilty because the husband is a good man and says he loves her and will never leave her. This declaration puts the wife into an emotional, moral, and spiritual double bind. On the one hand she is supposed to return the love of a good husband, and on the other hand, she hates the idea of being sexually intimate with him.

 

Women have been impressed with the idea that if a man loves her she is supposed to want to have sex with him. And if she does not feel like it, or does not want to, or cannot bring herself to do,  then she must be a bad woman. This is the male dominance perspective. It lacks affective intimacy. It feels to the woman that she is being turned into a sex slave or a slut or a prostitute. She has lost her freedom as a human being of dignity.

 

As we will see in the following discussions the cause of the wife's aversion to sexual love is the husband's resistance to affective intimacy with her as a context for the sex. To declare his love to her and his lifelong loyalty to the marriage, is a good thing, but it is not affective intimacy. If the wife realized this clearly she would not feel depressed because she will not attribute her sexual aversion for him as being her fault.

 

Take for instance the man's conversational style with her. When husbands continue to put up resistance to affective intimacy, they generally don't get to find out that women intuitively evaluate the man's conversation as either unsexy or sexy.

 

A woman responds with warming inner feelings to her husband or boyfriend when he uses a sexy conversational style with her, but she feels an inner turn off or aversion to him when he uses the unsexy style of interacting with her at the verbal level. The level of his verbal interactions with her with is a direct indication of the level he is interacting with her mentally, whether intimate or not. She feels the warming feelings throughout her chest and hands, since his sexy talk streams out from his sexy thoughts.

 

Men think that having sexy thoughts refers to talking about sex or making sexual references in his conversation with her. This is not at all what's being described here as a sexy conversational style.

 

Rather, a sexy conversational style for the husband or boyfriend refers to whether his thoughts are focused on self, the topic, or the wife. Only when he is focused on the wife as the center are his words and thoughts sexy and personal.

 

What are the contrastive characteristics of sexy vs. unsexy conversational interactions by the husband or boyfriend?

 

Focus on self is the least sexy style for a man. When the husband is activated by the male dominance phase in his mind he doesn't care if the wife finds him sexy or not. It's more important to him that he control his wife so that he can have sex with her when he wants, in the way he wants, and the wife is a secondary consideration to him, or none at all. He is full of himself. His focus is on himself. She is expected to cooperate or be obedient.

 

So he gives himself permission to constantly interrupt the wife when she is talking. He expects her to allow him to interrupt her and not try to finish what she wanted to say. He acts like he is not interested in having her say what she wants to say. He acts like he is annoyed when she says what she wants to say, instead of carefully editing herself, and saying only what he would approve. Through these kinds of daily interactions, the wife's sexual feelings for him are injured, and even eliminated. Instead of sexual attraction and responsiveness, she feels aversion and anger. She cannot just forget how awful he makes her feel when he talks to her in a threatening, impatient, or denigrating tone. And he does this whenever he gives himself permission to do so. His declarations of love sound ironic and hollow to her if he allows himself to treat her bad when he feels like it, when he feels it is justified.

 

One of the symptoms of this killing of the sexual love of the wife for the husband is that husbands in the male dominance phase mentality frequently make jokes or complain about the fact that their wife is not giving them enough sex, or that the wife is not as hot and passionate towards him as she was when they started going out together, or before the second child arrived. The letters from men that Dr. Laura selected in her book often do this kind of complaining, or bad-mouthing, of their wife, and Dr. Laura supports them in this attitude, giving advice to women that they should give their men all the sex the men want, as long as the men have a regular job and aren't having extra marital affairs. However, this kind of advice is unsexy to women. It feels to them like sexual blackmail to which they have to submit, or else they are considered bad wives by their husband and by mental health professionals like Dr. Laura and Dr. Phil who give marital counseling within the traditional male dominance perspective on marriage.

 

Besides constantly interrupting, which shows the absence of the man's focus on the wife of girlfriend, the man will persist in changing the wife's conversational focus in various ways. To the wife, this change of topic focus is felt as unsexy, irritating, frustrating, lonely. She feels alone. There is no cognitive intimacy (C), and yet this is what she wants and needs from a good friend. The man who calls himself her devoted husband, and to whom she is talking, is not acting like a friend but like a stranger. She needs for him to be familiar with the topic focus she wants to maintain in the conversational interaction with him. This is something personal about her that he needs to learn and respect.

 

For instance, suppose the woman, as she gets home, is expressing her conflictual and disturbing feelings and thoughts about her boss and the day's events at work. Or else, he comes home and she is expressing her thoughts and feelings about what happened with the kids. The man can handle this conversation in an intimate, personal and sexy style or in an impersonal, hurtful, unsexy style.

 

He must stop interrupting her or giving advice to solve her problems.

 

Both of these speech acts are disjunctive, unsexy, unfriendly.

 

He needs to understand how the woman he is interacting with actually responds. He needs to consider her actual feelings. He can notice this if he watches her face when he interrupts her or starts solving "her problems." Even if he operates from the male dominance phase, rather than the equity phase, he still is going to interrupt her and change her topic focus from where she wants to go, to where he thinks the topic should go. He retains a focus on the topic from his own perspective, but he does not focus on her and what she wants, and needs. When she talks to her girlfriend she experiences the intimacy, but it is not a sexy intimacy, like it could be with the husband or boyfriend.

 

So conversational intimacy with a husband or boyfriend can be a more satisfying fulfilling experience to a woman than even talking to her best girlfriend or her mother and sister.

 

The husband needs to learn how to give his wife the feeling that he is interested in maintaining her topic focus.

 

He has to show her by his speech acts that he wants to hear what she wants to say to him.

 

He has to want this more than he wants to say something himself "for the sake of the topic or the task" or "for her own sake."  He has to sacrifice and give up his focus on himself (what he thinks should be said). He has to give up his focus on the topic or task (how her problems can be solved). He needs to make himself want to give her the feeling that he wants to hear what she wants to say. He needs to give up the idea that he has the right to make comments on what she brings up, since this is his focus on the topic or task -- male dominance phase.

 

In the sexy conversational interaction style, the husband needs to learn how to give his wife the feeling, over and over again, that he wants to hear what she wants to say. Without hurrying her and acting like he wants the process to be over already, or to go at a faster pace than it is going.

 

But he also needs to do this by being very reactive, rather than subdued and silent or passive.

 

The husband needs to act like he is hot rather than cold to what his wife is saying and implying, directly and indirectly.

 

To act hot is to show emotional reactions or affectivity.

 

Men may sit quietly while their wife is talking to them. She might be doing two or three minutes of talking while her husband looks on blandly, sometimes frozen like a statue, or fidgeting like a puppy. This style of conversation is unsexy. The man needs to allow himself to be activated by his wife's spirit. He must keep his eyes on her face while she is talking. There he will find clues as to how to synchronize his breathing and vocalization to match hers.

 

If she smiles, he smiles. If she frowns, he frowns. If she tells something she finds surprising, the husband is to act surprised -- but he must not interrupt the stream of her verbalization. If she was amazed at something, he now is to be amazed also, and this visibly to her eyes. If she makes a hint of a joke, he is to pick it up and either laugh or show that he got it. This gives her the feeling that he is paying attention to her, hence values her views. This in turn gives her the feeling of self-confidence that her relationship is in a good and healthy place. This allows her to experience inner peace, which she craves for and needs in order to survive as a woman.

 

And then, and only then, can she feel sexually attracted to him from her freedom, from her love, from her feminine sweetness. Lucky and smart is the man who wants to go that far with his woman.

Look at some of these videos on Love and Sex:

http://www.nationalpost.com/loveandsex/video/index.html

Video interviews with Dr. Deborah Tannen. Mother and daughter communication:

http://www.youtube.com/v/sFqwwvvorJ0&rel=1

Review of Dr. Tannen's book: You Just Don't Understand

 http://www.youtube.com/v/nucV2B5hIZg&rel=1

 

16b:  Spiritual Dynamics Between Husband and Wife

It is important for a husband to learn to recognize his wife's verbal humor to make sure he can laugh at those moments. His wife will be noticing whether he laughs at her jokes or innuendoes and can pick up on her humor and wit. It's easy for a husband to make his wife laugh because she has had to learn his brand of humor, which is often related to his family and ethnicity. But a husband is less inclined to learn his wife's sense of humor. As a result, the wife feels that she is kept away at some distance by him, in certain areas of his thinking and intelligence (C). Therefore the husband must try to love (A) his wife's humor like he loves her beauty and style (S). For wife and husband to laugh together, especially in a simultaneous explosion, is an intimate transaction that she finds sexy and agreeable. It is a spiritual togetherness that builds friendship and the desire to conjoin still further.

 

A husband must want to show that he is having a good time being with his wife, whenever and wherever -- that's his job as husband-friend and soul mate.

 

He is to be her sweetheart forever. If a man knows this and loves it, he is a real man, an enlightened man, a wise man, a conjugial husband. He is able to ascend into conjugial love in the third heaven of his mind, where he becomes one with his soul-mate, the wife he married and loved on earth. Swedenborg interviewed many such couples who have known each other for "ages and ages" living in their endless eternity at the top portion of the human potential called the third heaven of rationality in the afterlife.

 

A man resists the idea that his job in life is to give his wife the feeling that nothing else matters more to him than to be with her, to enjoy her, to have her enjoy herself by feeling free, taken care of, protected, cherished by him above all else in the universe. Every husband that Swedenborg talked to in the third heaven was in this kind of love to his wife, called conjugial love .

 

For a woman, the most unsexy thing a husband can do is to disagree with her and to let her become disturbed and angry with him.

 

"Unsexy" means that her feeling of conjunction and intimacy with her husband has been broken and needs fixing. When a man disagrees with his wife or girlfriend, he is breaking intimacy with her.

 

Without intimacy, a woman feels resistance to engaging in sexual interactions. To repair the situation, the man must reverse himself and agree with her. Then he must show regret for upsetting her. After this, their mental intimacy is restored.

 

It's easy for a husband to drive his wife to paroxysms of frustration by his relentless refusal to go along with her on something she wants him to do or to stop doing. He just digs his heels into the carpet and refuses to budge no matter how upset she gets. This is what kills the sex factor of mental intimacy between them.

 

His refusal no matter how upset she gets, is proof to her mind that he does not love her more than he loves himself.

 

She feels that if he truly loved her, he would come to her rescue and not let her sink deeper and deeper into her hell feelings. How can he be so cruel and cold as to stand by and not do anything to help her get out of it?

 

He is keeping her in excruciating hell feelings by continuing to refuse to give up his position and refusing to agree to do what she wants him to do.

 

He just refuses, and she feels that their sex life is dying. Denigrated. Seduced and abandoned. She feels denigrated by the man who swears he loves her. She feels cheapened as a woman. Now he is going to have to work twice as hard to restore their intimacy. It would have been easier for him had he remembered to stop expressing disagreement with her, to just go ahead and do what she wants, what she needs for him to do. This is her life. She wants him to honor her life. If it's important to her, she wants it to be important to him. He must not be affectively independent from her. His feelings should be made to match her feeling. This is unity.

 

Watch this video:  John Gottman: The Magic Relationship Ratio

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Xw9SE315GtA 

 A man must understand this spiritual dynamic of zero tolerance for disagreements between conjugial partners in training.

 

In the enlightened perspective of the unity model, the man sees the woman as desiring to conjoin herself to him. Before this, he saw her as the woman who is constantly on his case, bothering him, do this, don't do that. He hated her insistence that he should see all things her way. He thought of her as pushy, a nag, never satisfied. But now he is shocked that he would think this way about her. He sees her in the effort and passion for him, for conjoining herself to him, mind and body. This is very sexy to a man who leaves his male chauvinism behind.

 

She wants to know where he is every moment of the day and what he is doing -- not because she is jealous or controlling, but because she is conjoining herself to him, to his life. Her threefold self to his, her thinking to his thinking, her willing to his willing.

 

When he disagrees with her or thinks that she is being controlling, she is defeated and devastated. He is showing her that he doesn't mind breaking intimacy, that his feelings are more important to him than hers. She feels attacked, neutralized in the game of hearts. Her life of love and sex is ending within her. Quick!  He must come to her rescue and save their intimacy, their sexual passion for eternity, their conjugial love and unity as bosom friends and lovers forever.

 

He must win her broken heart back and treat it gently so she can recapture her trust, her confidence, and her feeling of love for him that he so carelessly shattered by neglecting her, embarrassing her, refusing her, disagreeing with her, accusing her, complaining to her, scolding her, showing anger at her.

 

If he sees this dynamic and understands it rationally, it is his enlightenment. He is lucky. The worse is now over. What remains is to practice the new sexy way of interacting with his wife. He instantly discovers that he likes it, loves it. His enlightenment grows as he for the first time begins to understand what is woman.

 

Swedenborg explains that God created the universe for the purpose of conjugial couples living in the heaven of eternity. Conjugial love is the attainment of unity between husband and wife in the eternity of their heaven. This endless and constantly increasing happiness and bliss between wife and husband, is the supreme love and the highest good from which all other loves in the human race are derived from. In other words, all human potential is derived from the unity relationship between wife and husband. This is the purpose for which God created the universe, and all things in the universe exist to serve conjugial love.

 

The unity couple make a single conjoint self. What the husband thinks is always agreeable to the wife. His agreeableness comes from his affective organ operating in a heavenly order, that is, in the order of his heaven, or highest potential. By refusing to disagree with his wife in his own mind, he had made his heaven to be in the order of his wife's heaven. His heart is connected, not to his own lungs, but to hers. His heart can no longer function without her respiration. His blood, or what he loves more than anything, is purified by her lungs, or what she thinks he should be doing about this or about that all day long every day. He loves what she thinks, so he does what she loves. He is content and in peace. He loves what she thinks more than what he thinks -- that's what it means that he wants to arrange his heaven in the order of her heaven.

 

God has created a conjugial heaven in the wife's mind. This is something every woman has from birth. Now the husband can become an integral part of this conjugial heaven by conjoining himself to his wife in a unity relationship. He can do this, if he wants to, by learning to love to do what his wife tells him to do, more than he loves to do what he chooses by himself or from himself. Through this method he forges for himself a mental heaven that is in the same order as his wife's conjugial heaven, so that the two may be one life in one heaven. This conjugial heaven where they can both exist together is called the conjoint self.

 

Learning a sexy conjugial conversation style with the wife is therefore the husband's first big task. It is more important than all his hobbies and guy friends put together. More important even than advancement in his career and financial growth.

 

How a husband talks to his wife is the single most important determiner of how satisfying and healthy the couple's sex life is.

 

This is because an unsexy conversational style inhibits and freezes over a wife's feelings of warmth in the chest and hands. When her sexuality is frozen above the waist (due to lack of mental intimacy) (C, A), the wife also senses a coldness below the waist (feels aversion to having sex) (S). In contrast, the husband can sense a cold in his chest above the waist, like feeling annoyance or anger against her (A), yet he still wants to use her by having sex with her, and he can enjoy it and be content with it.  But not the wife. She does not want to have sex with him after he turned her into an icicle inside by the unsexy and offensive way he talks to her on a daily or regular basis.

 

She has to spend immense mental and emotional energy fighting to resist sexual blackmail imposed on her by the husband, the marriage counselors, and social expectations of a male dominated society .

 

The husband must at all cost avoid sexual blackmail in his conversations with the wife.

 

Since every husband expects his wife to have sex with him on a regular basis, he is living the life of a sexual blackmailer if he uses an unsexy conversational style that she finds abusive and denigrating.

 

We men all start our marriage relationship that way, and it is to the credit of our wife that she is able to forgive our abusive verbal treatments, laying their feelings aside, tucking them away in a fold somewhere in their mental world, so that they can continue to love their man sexually. But this hurts the women deeply, and they cannot keep this up endlessly.

 

Hence, the man is putting their future unity into jeopardy. Many men blow their chance at life in eternity with their wife. Swedenborg reports that after resuscitation, every woman meets her soul-mate, recognizes him from within herself, then conjoins herself to him from within, and the two as one, now enter together their joint heaven in eternity. This soul mate is her husband from earth, if he has learned to talk to her like a conjugial husband. But it is another man, if her husband has failed to learn to treat her with dignity when talking to her.

 

The first and most basic dignity, from which all other dignities follow, is the dignity of being talked to in a friendly and loving style.

 

And yet, there are few men who know how not to abuse their woman by the way they talk, stand, or gesture. For instance, suppose the wife talks to her husband, trying to get his attention and focus. The husband's response frequently is to resist her efforts or defeat her efforts in various ways that he acts. He may be looking at the TV screen while she is talking. Or holding the director in his hand, to give her the message he wants her to stop talking already. Or continuing to work at his computer, or on his bike, or whatever. Or not turning the volume of the music down so she has to shout. Or continuing to eat as if he was alone, instead of being in a conversation with her. Or giving her mean looks. Or giving her cold looks. Or being non-reactive, silent, cold, when she needs for him to be reactive, passionate, agreeable, supportive, pulling where she is pulling. He is being unsexy when he could be sexy.

If he commits himself to the unity model by weakening in his mind the equity and dominance phases, he then puts himself in a position of being able to find out what woman is, and thereby be enlightened to attain his highest potential, love, and true masculine humanity.

A man's perspective on women's use of words:

Also:   Watch this video:  http://video.ivillage.com/player/?id=179060#videoid=194042

---

 

EXERCISE 16a.1

1) Define sexy vs. unsexy conversational style of men with their partners. Focus on how the woman reacts as the definition for the two styles. Explain. Describe it to your partner and friends. Is there a difference in the reactions of men vs. women? What is your conclusion?

2) Watch these five videos on marriage. Contrast the point of view they promote or display. Relate them to the ennead chart of the three phases of the threefold self of married partners. Find some more such contrasts on YouTube videos about Love and Marriage. Discuss these with your partner and friends. What are your conclusions?

Video 1    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWSQ7sYFFFE&eurl

Video 2    http://www.youtube.com/v/JnOCniCsWuk&rel=1

Video 3    http://www.youtube.com/v/KyQtitfozIo&rel=1

Video 4    http://www.youtube.com/v/6_fux2_-T0Y&rel=1

Video 5    http://www.youtube.com/v/TUaKHWaejtk&rel=1

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EXERCISE 16b.1

 

Analyze the conversational exchange from this video using ideas you obtained from this section and related sections. Discuss it with your partner and friends. Summarize what you have learned from this type of analysis.

You can supplement your analysis with other clips on this movie at YouTube (see Related Videos).

---

 

16c:  Conversational Rules for Husbands in Conjugial Interactions

 

The first rule of conjugial conversation he can follow is to be reactive and friendly whenever his wife is talking to him, as discussed above. This he is able to do, and probably has done it during the time he was dating her and trying to convince her that he is a good man for her. But then he stopped. So now he has to start again. Pretend you are on a permanent date with the woman you are after, and this woman will want to be your date or your wife. A man can do this. All he needs is to want to do it. And this means to make himself want to do it, because at first, he doesn't like it. He doesn't like the idea that he has to be nice to her, or else. But he can convince himself of it, if he reflects on and understands the unity model of marriage.

 

The second rule of conjugial conversation he can follow is to deny himself the right to express disagreement with her. He has to deny himself the right to say No to something she wants him to do. He already knows how to do that with his supervisor at work, but he refuses to do that with his wife. She is asking him to change something, but he insists on keeping it the way it is even though he can see that she wants it changed. This refusal is unfriendly, hostile, and abusive. Definitely unsexy. At first, men might think that this is a terrible way of living in your own home. And yet he expects his wife not to say No when he tells her that he wants something changed. This shows that he is following the lopsided male dominance model in his own mind.

 

The third rule of conjugial conversation he can follow is create a conversational atmosphere in which his wife feels unoppressed, free, and safe because he shows that he cherishes everything about her. She is not afraid to talk intensely about what she wants him to do, and instantly jump to another topic that's on her mind, then go back to the first topic and continue telling him some more about what she wants him to do. Meanwhile he is getting hot under his tee shirt, perspiration forming on his forehead and in his armpit, as he is experiencing the heat of the passion to shut her up, to reassert himself as a man, to respond to her constant invasive instructions by snarling, snapping, and growling at her. This is the moment of freedom and potential liberation for him. This is when he can conquer in battle with his demon self, defeat himself, put himself under her will power, and become obedient, a supporter and friend of her wishes and wants. If he wills himself to conquer, he instantly becomes enlightened and wise. The anticipated torture in his mind of becoming a slave to her, does not materialize in reality. Instead he feels liberated, wise, content, in true control of himself.

 

The fourth rule of conjugial conversation he can follow is to use the conversation as a method of enhancing her mood, of making her feel young in heart and stimulated in mind. A wife conjoins herself to her husband's wisdom and truth and rationality, but not to his idiocy, irrationality, and falsities he may believe. To conjoin herself to his wisdom and rationality and intelligence means that she loves how he thinks when he thinks that way. Conversation is an expression of how we think. Hence the husband's wisdom and rationality must be behind what he says to her at any time. When he focuses on his wife with his masculine intelligence, he appears to her wise and sexy. When he focuses on himself, the task, or the topic (as in the male dominance and equity phases), he appears to her foolish and unsexy her. The first of wisdom for the husband is to value what his wife says to him. To value it means to give it priority over what he says to himself.

 

Of course she wants him to tell her what he thinks about something, or how to proceed in some situation. She values what he thinks when he is in an intelligent and rational mood. She depends on him. She wants to depend on his masculine intelligence. She likes that. It's part of conjugial unity. But she doesn't want him to oppose her when he is telling her what he thinks about something she says. He must find a friendly and respectful way of expressing what he thinks. He can learn how to do this. She is giving him plenty of chances and opportunities to become better at it, by how patient and forgiving she is of all his mistakes and abuses. But he must give her the feeling that he is trying hard, that it is more important to him than other things in his life. Then she can continue to be patient and forgive him over and over again, being full of the hope that he will change, that he is changing, that he really wants to change. She now stakes her entire life and happiness on this hope.

---

 

EXERCISE 16c.1

1) Explain what are the four rules of conjugial conversation. Focus on what the woman wants and what the man needs to do to give it to her. Discuss it with your friends. Are they willing to go along with this perspective? What are your conclusions?

 

2) Analyze what is portrayed in the following video between a boy and a girl who have a date appointment. What does it show about the difference between an adolescent boy and girl? Give specific examples of what you see in the video. Discuss it with your partner and friends. What are their views? What does the discussion reveal to you about the difference between men and women in relationships?

 

http://www.youtube.com/v/0aghvnK5Mgk&rel=1

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16d:  Characteristics of Husband's Threefold Self During Discourse

 

Now, having studied what was discussed above, consider Table 18d.1 below on the characteristics of the husband's discourse.

 

Keep in mind that when we talk, the threefold self of the person is always involved. The words we speak, the tone of voice, the gestures -- are the external sensorimotor effects (S) of what we are thinking (C) and feeling or intending (A) on the inside. The cognitive self (C) is doing all the thinking. But it is the affective self (A) that motivates and directs what we are thinking, and hence, what we are saying (S). So when you read the chart, think about how the husband's affective self (A) controls the cognitive self (C), and the two together, control the sensorimotor self that is doing the talking and gesturing (S) through the physical body.

 

This is Table 16d.1
Characteristics of Husband's Discourse
(READ TABLE FROM BOTTOM UP)

 

 

Try to memorize the chart. It will help you learn this new technique of using the ennead chart (9 zones) of the threefold self so you can make objective and useful observations about the three levels of marriage interactions of people you are observing.

 

Watch this video:   http://video.ivillage.com/player/?id=179060#videoid=196628

 

What the wife is hearing and experiencing from her husband through their overt interactions are the things listed in the sensorimotor column (S). This is what reverberates in her threefold self, her sensations (S), thoughts (C), and feelings or emotions (A). From her sensations, the wife can recognize what the husband is thinking and feeling.

 

If she regularly has the sensation (S) of being interrupted by him before she can fully express herself (S), or she feels physically intimidated or scared of him (male dominance phase), then she knows (C) that he thinks (C) of her as less intelligent, or that he thinks (C) her views on the matter are to be dismissed (S). And then she also knows (C) that he loves (A) to dominate her more than he loves (A) to actually be intimate with her in a mental and personal way (C, A).

 

If the wife observes that her husband talks like the main thing for him is to defend his views or rights, then she knows that he thinks his views should rule her mind because his views are "fair and rational" (he thinks) while hers are "biased and feminine" (he thinks). And from this she then knows that he loves to put her views aside, or below his, which means to her that he is not committed to her fully and absolutely, and that he wants and intends to retain for himself areas or zones of independence in his mind and personality.

 

On the other hand, if the wife experiences her husband's talking as pleasant, agreeable, gallant, considerate of her feminine status and position, then her consciousness enters a conjugial sphere of heavenly peace, which she can almost smell in the fragrance of the air around her, in which she sees her husband talking to her with such attention, care, and gladness of spirit and heart.

 

She also has a sensation (S) of this in her chest and hands, by which she senses the exciting warmth of sexual feelings, spreading from there throughout her body, if conditions allow. And from all this heavenly zone around her, she knows that her husband thinks that her views matter to him more than his own, and from this she knows that he wants to form a conjoint self with her. This is the ultimate happiness and peace she wants, and can feel, under earthly circumstances.

 

Sexual love in the dominance and equity phases normally begin below the belt and move upward into the chest. But tin the unity phase sexual love is turned into conjugial love and this begins in the chest and only then moves down below the belt.

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EXERCISE 16d.1

 

1) Use the ennead chart of marriage to characterize the discourse of husbands with their wives. Give illustrations from the lecture notes as well as some from your own observations. Discuss with your friends the conversational dynamics of men and women in specific movies you're familiar with. What is the relationship between conversation style and mental intimacy?

 

2) Read the advice given in the article linked below regarding gender communication in the work place. Assess their advice in terms of the unity model's distinction between conjunctive-disjunctive:
www.exe-coach.com/CrossGenderCommunication.html

 

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EXERCISE 16d.2

Analyze the mentality from which this dating advice is given to men. Discuss what they call "myths" with your partner and friends. What views are you getting from them? What is your reaction?

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16e:  Field Activity:  Monitoring Disjunctive vs. Conjunctive Discourse

 

After studying and understanding Table 16d.1 above, you can use it to make a list of your own observations of gender discourse. If you are a man, you need to observe your discourse during interactions with your wife or girlfriend. If you are a woman, you need to to observe your boyfriend's or husband's discourse with you. If you prefer instead, you can observe the discourse interactions of a couple you are familiar with. An additional variation is to observe the discourse interactions between couples in novels, movies, TV, song lyrics, and the other media.

 

You can write down short snippets of an exchange after it happened as best you can remember. Some of these snippets or replies may occur frequently so that you can almost predict what they will be. Each verbal snippet can be analyzed to show that it is either a disjunctive exchange or a conjunctive exchange. Longer snippets or conversational interactions should be recorded and transcribed since you cannot rely on memory.

 

Each verbal snippet or longer conversational exchange needs to be analyzed using the threefold self as defined throughout the Tables in these Lecture Notes. In other words, you can use the ennead matrix of the threefold self within the three marriage phases, as a template to analyze or locate the characteristics of the verbal exchange.

 

Here are examples of disjunctive replies of husbands and boyfriends

 

1) Negation, Denial, Refusal

 

• she says "Let's do x" to which he says "Let's do y"

• she says "That's not what it is. This is what it is." he says "No way, it's that"

• she says "It's not the right way to it" he says "Yes, it is."

• she says "You did x" he says "No, I did y"

• etc.

These are disjunctive replies. They happen very frequently in the dominance and equity phases, but only sometimes with the unity model, at the beginning before the husband is able to control himself fully.

 

If you are a woman and are analyzing the exchanges with your partner, you can add how his disjunctive replies make you feel, what your reactions and thoughts are. Wives and girlfriends have an immense capacity to take abuse from their partner. They are willing to put up with this negativity in their partner because they have hope that he will eventually change his model of interacting with her. She is looking forward to his awakening and enlightenment when he will want to treat her nicely and with male decency.

 

Here are the equivalent examples of conjunctive replies of husbands and boyfriends:

• she says "Let's do x" to which he says "Ok, if you want to."

• she says "That's not what it is. This is what it is." he says "All right, I'll adopt your view on the situation."

• she says "It's not the right way to it" he says "I understand what you are pointing out. OK, I'll go along."

• she says "You did x" to which he says "Strange how I remember doing y, but OK, we will accept your version."

• etc.

These are conjunctive replies. They happen once in a while with the dominance and equity models, but not enough to make the woman's life much easier on the whole. But when the husband is governing his interactions from his understanding of the unity model, he compels himself to inhibit disjunctive replies to his wife, and to give her conjunctive replies.

 

Disjunctive replies are unsexy, while conjunctive replies maintain a romantic tension between husband and wife that is delightful to both of them.

 

God is maintaining the wife's mind to fit conjunctively with the husband's mind, and the husband's mind to fit conjunctively with the wife's mind. In this conjunctive mind (or conjoint self), the couple becomes one merged individual. Swedenborg presents much evidence from his observations of couples in heavenly eternity, that shows how the conjunctive self of a couple in conjugial unity, is incredibly superior and empowering. The wife feels completed and endlessly loved. The husband feels expanded and endlessly enthusiastic.

 

Watch this video:   http://video.ivillage.com/player/?id=179060#videoid=191617

 

2) Disloyalty, Secrecy, Lies

• he talks to the children about his wife, not telling her what he says

• he talks to his guy friends or strangers about his wife, in ways she wouldn't like

• he tells her lies about various things he knows or does, as a way of controlling her

• he keeps her out of the loop without explaining to her that he does that or why he does it

• he embarrasses her in public in front of others by contradicting her or criticizing her, or by bringing up things that she considers private between the two of them

• etc.

These are disjunctive conversational acts performed by the husband. They happen very frequently in the dominance and equity phases, but only sometimes with the unity model, at the beginning before the husband is able to control himself fully.

 

The equivalent conjunctive acts would be these:

• he never talks to the children about his wife, without telling her what he said

• when he talks to his guy friends or strangers about his wife, he acts like his wife is listening

• he never tells her lies about what he knows or does, and avoids acting in a way she wouldn't approve if she knew all the circumstances

• he keeps her in the loop about all things without exception, explaining to her all that he does and why

• etc.

These are conjunctive moves the husband makes towards his wife. It is his will and desire (A) to become mentally intimate with her, to share minds with this one woman. He can easily see from this enlightened perspective that if he deceives her, or keeps what he thinks from her, he cannot be fully united to her in eternity because that kind of uniting must be total mental unity.

 

It works differently for the wife. She carries secrets in her heart that she may not want to share with her husband. These secrets are not lies and deceptions, like it is for husbands when they keep secrets. The wife's secrets are spiritual secrets, not physical and social secrets, like the secrets of the husband. His secrets are disjunctive because the purpose of keeping things from his wife is so that he can get away with doing disjunctive things that oppose unity. But the secrets of the wife that are spiritual are for conjunctive reasons. She is afraid that if she told him what she knows about their unity or lack of it, he wouldn't be able to handle it in a right way, and his reaction would be deeply disjunctive. So in her zeal to protect their potential conjugial unity, the wife keeps spiritual secrets from her husband.

 

Swedenborg was once interviewing a group of wives in one of the heavens of their eternity. They told him they did not want Swedenborg to write down and reveal to the public on earth, certain of these spiritual secrets that wives knew about their husbands, and which they had just discussed with him in the interviews. They told him that if husbands knew of these spiritual secrets of their wives, they would turn cold towards them, first mentally, then sexually, and this would be the end of their happiness in the marriage. But Swedenborg answered that he had no choice but to report accurately all that he was able to observe in the spiritual world of mental eternity.

 

What are these spiritual secrets?

 

Swedenborg describes them as a special womanly perception in the interior mind that God gives the wife about her husband's unconscious or subconscious affections, desires, proclivities, inner make up. In my own experience as a husband who is striving to govern my actions through the principles of the unity model, I found that my wife's extrasensory perception of my unconscious or subconscious affections, have always been correct in the long run. A wife can share more and more of these secrets as her husband progresses and practices with the unity model in his mind. It requires that I give more credence to what she says about me, than what I say to myself about me. This was a huge battle in my mind for many years.

 

At first I flatly rejected such an idea, while I lived the dominance and equity phases in my mind. My philosophy of justification was that we are all individual human beings and we each have the right to be who we are, etc. She was to be responsible for herself and her emotions and coping, and I was to be responsible for mine. We can help each other of course, since we love one another, but we cannot invade or occupy each other's respective mental zones or territory, so I thought. But eventually I started adopting the unity model as I began studying the Writings of Swedenborg in 1981, at the age of 43, as I was starting my second marriage with my new wife. This required me to trust my wife's thinking and judgment as much as I trusted my own, and eventually, more than I trusted my own.

 

This is the right thing to do because the wife has intuitions and perceptions from God about the husband that he himself does not have. Through creating and managing this difference in the mind of the couple, God is trying to bring the husband and wife together into a unity that will continue into their endless conjugial eternity . The husband must give up relying on himself independently of his wife, for any single decision he makes or idea he has about himself and his wife. By accepting and loving this reliance and dependence on his wife, the husband makes it possible for the couple to become a conjoint mind or self. This is what the wife has been patiently and hopefully waiting for. Now she can be fulfilled as a woman, and he can be fulfilled as a true man.

 

3) Abusiveness, Swearing, Yelling

• he continues to use derogatory names when he is in a bad mood, or when he is mad at her and is criticizing her for something she has done or not done. Examples include the "b" words used to put women down, the "f" words to show disrespect to women, or else comparing women to their feminine parts and organs, and using prejudiced expressions to refer to what women do, like "nagging" , "complaining", "never being satisfied" etc.
   

• he raises his voice in a harsh and menacing tone, trying to intimidate her, yelling, throwing, breaking things, walking out, and other forms of abuse
   

• he uses silence as a form of passive aggressive control over his wife, or he refuses to address the specific point she wants him to address, talking around it instead of to it, even making jokes about it or else denying it, which puts her in a cruel double bind as he does one thing, while claiming he is not doing it
   

• he fails to keep up with the topics she has already mentioned earlier in the conversation, or in an earlier conversation to which she wants this to be a follow up. But he acts like she has to start all over again. This exhausts her emotionally and makes her feel desperate. Will her husband ever start loving her more than he loves himself?
   

• etc.

These are disjunctive conversational acts performed by the husband against his wife. They happen very frequently in the relationship of the married partners, until the husband is enlightened and becomes willing to start being governed by the principles of the unity model.

 

4) After Disturbing His Wife, Not Making Up Adequately Enough

 

• he doesn't make up for his disjunctive acts but expects her to forget about it after awhile

• he refuses to accept the idea that his wife needs for him to make up in a way that is enough for her

• he continues to insist in his mind that saying Sorry, or Giving a special treat or gift, is enough

• he continues to hang on to the false idea that if she loves him, she should forgive him

• he uses all sorts of justifications to explain away what he did to her, which is to cause her to be disturbed, and instead talks about why he did what he did, refusing to address or acknowledge what he did to her feelings

• etc.

These are disjunctive acts that hurt the future unity of the couple, now and in eternity. In my own experience, I have had to learn in middle age that the thread or mesh that holds my wife and me together, is an actual thread made of spiritual or mental substances . When this thread or mesh work is injured by the husband's disjunctive act, the wife feels it on the surface of her life, making her miserable and anxious. But the husband is able to push it away outside of his focus, thus hardly becoming aware of it, and not paying any attention to what he could be aware of. In my case I had to compel myself to pay attention to her emotional distress caused by my disjunctive act. I had to repent and repair the damage. She can sense it when I repent vs. when I just go through the motions. I had to compel myself to perform the conjunctive acts that repaired the injured thread in my wife's affective organ.

 

This required that I humble myself, which took a long time for me to accept and be willing to do it.

 

The conjunctive model would be:

• he compels himself to make up for every disjunctive act he becomes aware of, knowing that she cannot forgive and forget without making up in a way she finds satisfactory. He must find out what that is by observation and discussion. This is called making an effort towards mental intimacy.
   

• he accepts the new idea that his wife cannot repair by herself the mental injury he caused to her
   

• he learns new and more adequate ways of apologizing, realizing that treats and gifts are also necessary, but not sufficient to prove to her that he is sorry for causing her emotional stress
   

• he abandons the false idea that if she loves him, she should forgive him, seeing forgiveness in terms of repairing injured threads, rather than merely dispensing verbal expressions of apology or being sorry
   

• he stops using justifications to explain away what he did to her, and admits that he was wrong in causing her to become disturbed. Instead, he talks about what he did to her feelings and mental states.
   

• etc.

These are conjunctive acts of repair. The husband or boyfriend lover has to teach himself that when a woman gives herself physically and sexually, she does it either in freedom or under pressure. If she has sexual activity with him under pressure, then there is no internal conjunction between her and the man. It is merely an outward act that may hurt her physically and socially, but not mentally and spiritually. But when she gives herself freely, without pressure and without being motivated by some ulterior motive or plan, then she forms thereby an inner relationship and tie, an inner conjunction that is localized in the mental threads that unite their minds and mental organs.

 

A frequent way that a man hurts these conjugial threads, is by not making up adequately for his disjunctive acts. What is adequate is determined solely by her and he must find out what it is.

 

It is extremely difficult for a man to believe that he can be incredibly happier and more masculine if he puts his wife ahead of every thing else in the universe. Yet it is true.

 

Even God is to be served by a man through his wife, not apart from his wife, according to the unity model of thinking.

 

This is obviously true when you recall that God made conjugial love between husband and wife the highest love in all creation, which means, that everything else you can name, is not for its own sake, but for the sake of contributing to conjugial love in the human race. This is God's wish, plan, and created reality. We know this from revelation in Sacred Scripture.

 

For the husband to serve God through his wife is to honor God's highest purpose for creating him.

 

But this is only true from the perspective of the unity model which is based on conjugial togetherness in eternity, as observed and confirmed by Swedenborg. This issue is a controversial one in religious thinking but it deserves to be examined independently and scientifically, as is done in theistic psychology.

 

For more on this subject, you can read Volume 1 of Theistic Psychology which discusses in detail the positive and negative bias in science in relation to the Swedenborg Reports:

www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/

 

Watch this video. It discusses more aspects of communication and conversational style between couples:

 

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3173881615196062057&q=couples+therapy+site%3Avideo.google.com&total=352&start=0&num=100&so=0&type=search&plindex=60

 

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EXERCISE 16e.1

 

1) Explain the difference between disjunctive and conjunctive replies a man gives to a woman during conversational interaction.  Give several specific illustrations of various types of replies. Discuss it with friends. What difficulty are they having in understanding the difference? What is your conclusion?

2) Observe the discourse of two or three men you talk to as friends or at work. What do you notice in terms of patterns relating to conjunctive and disjunctive replies. Compare the results with two or three women friends you communicate with. What are your conclusions?

3) Analyze the conversational portrayal in this video between husband and wife. Identify the conjunctive and disjunctive interactions. Is this kind of exchange usual in your experience? Discuss it with your partner and friends. What is your reaction to their observations?

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17.  Happiness and Unhappiness on the Ennead Chart

 

Now let's use Table 19.1 below to help us identify various concepts in marriage. Let's start with happiness, since this is a critical part of marriage. I entered one specification of being happy in each phase. Whenever we operate within that phase, what makes us happy is specified in ALL CAPS in each zone.

 

This is Table 17.1 -- Happiness
(READ TABLE FROM BOTTOM UP)

 

After you processed the meaning of each zone and its example (in ALL CAPS), focus on each portion of the threefold self by looking at the table up and down within each column.

 

For instance, in the sensorimotor areas (zones 1, 4, 7) I give examples relating to physical intimacy. When husbands try to behave according to the dominance phase, their sensorimotor happiness depends on the expression of self-centered sensations like "being pleasured by the partner." This is another expression of the underlying phase: sensorimotor dominance (zone 1).

 

When husbands try to behave according to the equity phase, their sensorimotor happiness is different. It now depends on more intellectualized sensations motivated by their equity phase (zone 4). Their focus is intellectualized upon equity in everything in the relationship. It is an "economic" focus and involvement, and comes out as a concern for equal pleasure. They want it to be balanced so that neither gives more than they receive (sensorimotor equity, zone 4).

 

When husbands try to behave according to the unity model, their sensorimotor happiness is still different. It now depends on more altruistic sensations motivated by their unity model (zone 7). Their focus is upon unity in everything in the relationship. It is an "altruistic" focus and involvement, and comes out as a concern for the partner's pleasure. The focus on one's own pleasure (zone 1) and the focus on the equal amounts of pleasure (zone 4) now changes to a focus on the partner's pleasure (zone 7). One's own pleasure may be there but only as an indirect result of succeeding in giving pleasure to the partner.

 

After you processes the sensorimotor column, move to the cognitive column.

 

For husbands choosing to behave according to the dominance phase, "thinking that the partner is compliant in all ways" (zone 2), is necessary for their happiness. If they notice any hesitation or refusal in the compliance of the wife,  they immediately begin to exert their pressure and power to make the wife obedient. Husbands have different styles and methods for doing this, some using violence, some persuasive strategies, some relationship blackmail (e.g., holding back, pouting, and staying away), etc.

 

But when they move deeper in the relationship to the equity phase, husbands "think that they each must respect the other's point of view" (zone 6). This intellectualized economy governs their relationship in all its details. To be happy, husbands operating with the equity phase must think that they each respect the other's point of view. Often this interpretation is delusional. When the wife wants to influence the husband in a decision, he reacts by saying that she is not respecting his point of view. Clearly this is not adaptive to a close relationship. The wife has to be able to express her true feelings without her husband accusing her of not respecting his point of view.

 

When husbands are willing to finally move into a closer relationship, their cognitive unity is their happiness, that is, "thinking that they are each other's more and more" (zone 8). The husband is alert and looks for any sign that his wife thinks differently than he does on some issue. He then explores it with her, being motivated to eliminate ideas in his mind that are not compatible with cognitive unity between them (zone 8).

 

Finally look up and down the third column.

 

Husbands choosing to operate according to the dominance phase will strive to "maintain primacy over the partner" and must see himself succeeding if he is going to be happy (zone 3). This is an expression of his self-centered feelings that are motivated by his affective dominance and the satisfaction it gives him to achieve it and maintain it, even increase it as he gets older.

 

Husbands choosing to operate according to the equity phase will constantly be involved in justifying themselves to the partner" (zone 6). This is an expression of their intellectualized feelings that come from a focus on affective equity. This is non-adaptive to achieving a deeper relationship because the husband's economic focus on equity keeps the wife out of his heart. His focus on equity in feelings is a strategy to maintain his affective independence.

 

The wife doesn't want him to see himself as independent in his feelings, hence independent of her. This threatens her influence on him, by which she strives to conjoin him to herself. By insisting on affective independence through equity considerations, the husband remains cold in his heart towards the wife. He has removed any power she may have over him. Without this affective influence by the wife on the husband's feelings and motivations, the husband cannot achieve a deeper relationship with her.

 

On the other hand, husbands who choose to move forward and behave according to the unity model, are happiest when they succeed in aligning every single feeling and affection they have with the wife's feelings and affections (zone 9). To "align" means to "make it agree with" by eliminating anything that does not agree. This is the maximum closeness that they can achieve together. Once this affective unity defines the marriage relationship, the partners can grow spiritually into a celestial couple that can live in conjugial love to eternity.

 

Watch this video and compare the views of men and women:  http://video.ivillage.com/player/?id=0#videoid=164547

 

What would the previous Table above look like for "unhappiness"?

 

This is Table 17.2 -- Unhappiness

 (READ TABLE FROM BOTTOM UP)

 

Now practice applying tables 17.1 and 17.2 to other important traits in being married: feeling separated, feeling close, being satisfied, being respected, being disrespected, getting along, going through a difficult period, etc.

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EXERCISE 17.1

 

Discuss what these two article say and how that relates to the three phases of marriage in the unity model.

From:   ReligionAndSpirituality.com  at: http://www.religionandspirituality.com/relation_sexuality/view.php?StoryID=20071119-054526-9814r

Just because two people are having sex,
it does not mean that they are experiencing union

Does sex equal intimacy?

Column: Married Sex

Dr. Sorah Dubitsky

November 19, 2007

 

(...)
I think that one of the problems people have is that sex is equated with intimacy, love and filling emotional need or enhancing self-esteem. Sex can be the most intimate act in which two people engage, or it can be the most divisive. Just because two people are having sex, it does not mean that they are experiencing union. There are too many jokes about women lying back and thinking about what to cook for dinner or men actively fantasizing about Angelina Jolie. Everyone also knows that love is not necessarily a prerequisite for sex. Sexual attraction does not equal love. And as far as filling emotional need or enhancing self-esteem, the flood of ecstasy that sex provides is like a temporary drug high. As with all highs, the effects soon wear off.

(...)

 

What is real intimacy? Does sex equal real intimacy?

(...)

Other levels of relationship are partnership, caring, concern, companionship, meal planning, being best friends, playing an active part in helping someone else grow, raising kids, planning, scheming, loving life and on and on.

Real intimacy is cutting your spouse's toenails when he or she is just home from the hospital. It's putting a Band-Aid on a cut that's in a hard-to-reach place. Real intimacy is telling your spouse that you don't like it when he or she is being sarcastic toward you. It's also talking about politics and your hopes and fears about the future. Real intimacy is sharing your thoughts about the latest Robert Parker novel. It's critiquing your husband's artwork or his editing your essays. Intimacy is holding hands, hugging, kissing, laughing and telling jokes. Intimacy is presence. It's being here now, fully focused on Being with your spouse this moment.
(...)

Of course, when sex is accompanied by intimacy, the ecstasy stops time. It's union with God. Couples in long-term relationships need to take time to have sex. They need to relish one another physically. Taking time for sex is part of a "relax/refresh/renew" lifestyle that leads to all-over health and well-being. But sex alone does not create intimacy, and just because bodies are joined, it doesn't mean that hearts and souls are joined. Building intimacy in a relationship takes the same qualities that are needed in building character: trust, faith, and patience and honesty. An intimate relationship makes for great sex, not the other way around.

The above is from:   ReligionAndSpirituality.com  at: http://www.religionandspirituality.com/relation_sexuality/view.php?StoryID=20071119-054526-9814r

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From: Reader Blogs at http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/beastmom/archives/128557.asp?from=blog_last3

Reflections On The First Decade Of Marriage

I read a marriage book with my husband several years ago. The book is called, "The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work" by John Gottman. This is the BEST book on marriage I've ever read. Both husbands and wives can learn from this book. This book was life-changing for me. I can't speak for my husband, but as a wife, I will tell you what I learned from it...

The first thing I learned from this book is that my ideas on conflict resolution were wrong. I believed (ideally) that every conflict is resolvable. This is untrue. Some conflicts are not resolvable; they are perpetual and crop up over and over again.

Related to this first thing is that I learned that it's OK that some conflicts are not resolved, that it's actually more important to recognize this reality during conflict and be able to diffuse it as a result. The AFTERMATH of unresolvable conflicts is more important than doggedly trying to solve it (impossible). To be able to say, "This is unresolvable" and to emotionally move towards one another anyway is key.

Also related to this issue is that I could finally and confidently debunk the myth that we married people can solve all conflicts if we only "improve communication skills". I've thought for a while that was incorrect and futile. Most of us do NOT need better communication skills. We're quite adequate. My husband is a very talented verbal communicator. My strength is in writing, and I can hold my own in conversation just fine. We both communicate at sufficient levels. But we still had conflict. I was sick of reading about "communication skills" in marriage books. (I think those sorts of marriage books turn off men in particular.) This Gottman book sent us both a completely different direction. What was that direction? It was towards DREAMS.

This part of what I learned is SO signficant... When I read this book with my husband, I'd been married almost 10 years. I assumed I knew what was most important to my husband. By reading this book, however, and doing a few of the exercises, I came to realize I DID NOT KNOW HIS DREAMS. This was shocking to me. We did one of the exercises where we each privately listed our personal dreams in order of what was most important. And then we each wrote a list for the other person. I was off in my "guess" list regarding my husband's dreams. I was off in both content and order. I got pieces and parts right, but overall, I was quite surprised when he honestly revealed what was most important to him.

This new knowledge has deeply affected my actions since. I may not have the exact same dreams as him, but I can better support his dreams anyway. The book talks about various ways to support your spouse's dreams. This includes things like engaging emotionally and resourcing the other person's dreams (financially and otherwise). I know I used to sometimes throw a wet rag on dreams my husband presented to me. He might mention a wish of his and I'd immediately respond with how that can't work or how we don't have money for it. Or I might not even engage in the conversation in the first place, looking disinterested, drained, or even scowly. (Of course sometimes our dreams directly opposed one another, resulting in my negative reaction. And sometimes for him to get one of his dreams into action meant one of mine would be majorly thwarted. Hence conflict.)

For my husband I've learned that it's not that he's insisting that every single one of his wishes comes true, but that I just dream with him to start, and that we consider together if it's possible to bring things about. If it's not possible sometimes, he can accept that. What's not acceptable is when he feels that I simply don't care and don't even engage in conversation. It's also not acceptable for me to not give his ideas/wishes a chance, financially or otherwise. It's depressing for a spouse to feel like their most important wishes are always criticized or ignored or uncared about, that there's never any money or time for them. It's hard for husbands and wives to feel like by getting something they want that their spouse suffers or gets drained. Many spouses will forgo what they want just to see the other person happy and energetic. This is reality in marriage & parenthood, but it's also dream-killing...

I've done my share of being a dream-buster at times. And I've been working hard to change it. I can tell that my husband has been working really hard to both recognize and better support my dreams as well. We still struggle when our highest dreams clash once in a while - all couples experience that reality and that's the hardest kind of conflict to deal with because neither of us wants to give up our own dreams, even temporarily. But we recognize this type of conflict more quickly now. This alone helps to diffuse conflict, to stop it before it escalates. And perhaps most tangible of the benefits is that we both have committed to moving towards one another even after fighting. This doesn't mean we always contritely apologize and make it all perfect. Sometimes there's nothing to say sorry for - we simply had a clash of dreams and priorities. What it does mean, however, is that we eventually do those little things that say, "I'm still with you." It might take five minutes or five hours, but we do eventually come back together emotionally. This is key. (And it's actually EASIER to move towards each other when we recognize our conflict was about dreams, something that's not wrong inherently. This understanding about dreams offers a new lens to interpret arguments and supposed "wrongdoing". Sometimes we interpret another person's actions as objectively wrong when all they were doing was following a different dream.)

Before reading this book and talking about both our dreams, I realized our marriage felt blah after having kids. We conflicted more and liked each other less. We'd been married for a lot of years already. And then having two kids was a huge dream-dampener in some ways. It definitely limits some parts of adult life. When people date and romance one another, they take all kinds of time to listen to what's most important to the other person. They dream together. They dream often. They talk about possibilities. They go on new adventures. They risk. It's that exact dynamic that helps make dating wonderful - to know this one other person cares this much, is interested at that level, is desirous of spending time together to make each other happy. Married people can revive this dynamic. Personal dreams don't die just because you marry or have kids. There are of course reality checks in time, budget, and energy. But our personal dreams don't go away even with added difficulty. Sometimes our dreams even magnify if we have to mourn them too often. Married people can find each other's dreams again. We recognized them when we dated. We used time and money to help meet them. We went out of our way.

I hope my husband feels more of my support these days than in years prior. I hope he knows I want his dreams to move forward, that I'm interested, even if I don't hold the exact same dreams for myself. I hope he sees that I often try to make things work financially so that we can plan to resource what's important to him. I hope he feels that I engage with him better. I hope he feels loved because of all this...

-bm

P.S. I am not saying this book fixes all marriage problems. Some couples have problems outside the scope of this book. (I think that's obvious, but I'm saying it anyway. :) THIS post is for adults who are currently married and having very NORMAL issues that sometimes feel huge and hopeless, when in reality, they are quite common.

Thoughts?

Posted by Christina Hyun at December 31, 2007 12:55 a.m.

The above is from:
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/beastmom/archives/128557.asp?from=blog_last3

See also this YouTube video:

Dr. John Gottman on TSTN Presents

http://www.youtube.com/v/LOdre3Bra8o&rel=1

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18.  Contrasting the Three Phases

 

Table 18.1

 

Note that Table 20.1 shows different categories of items as defined by the pattern of answers. There are four patterns illustrated by items:

• Yes, Yes, No

• No, Yes, No

• No, No, No

• Yes, Yes, Yes

 

You will note that the unity model shows "No" in most categories illustrated. Within this phase of operation, husband and wife each feel disturbed for the other whenever any difference or disagreement is detected between them. They see a disagreement, no matter how small, no matter about what, as a threat to their unity.

 

They are each strongly motivated to realign their own affections to fit with the other's affections, so that the disagreement is immediately removed and not left festering and creating a rift or division in their mental unity. Further, the unity model assumes that it is the husband who should realign his feelings to agree with the wife whenever a difference between them comes out into the open. This one-sidedness may appear foolish and dangerous (to the male dominance perspective), or irrational and unfair (to the equity perspective). But it makes sense from the unity perspective since by anatomy, women have a deeper perception than men regarding relationship dynamics. Women are the experts and it makes sense to listen to the expert rather than the amateur in a situation where the two don't agree.

 

When a woman is made to listen to the man she is cut off from her freedom and love, hence from her feminine intelligence (C). But when a man is made to listen to a woman he is cut off from his slavery to selfism, gaining his masculine freedom and strength of character (A).

 

When married partners are still operating from the lower two phases, they tolerate many differences and disagreements as part of their normal marriage relationship and partnership. Their goal is not unity, but peace and comfort. In the male dominance phase they want to live and let live within prescribed boundaries. In the male dominance phase the separateness is defined by tradition and the constant striving for dominion, usually male over female. That is why the majority of items for these two phases is "Yes" for tolerating differences and disagreements.

Remember that the four "patterns" reflect habitual behaviors motivated by the marriage model they subscribe to, which governs the way each interacts with the other. But people do not follow their own model in a perfectly consistent manner. The "model" behavior or pattern may disintegrate at times when one or both partners revert to an earlier phase of interaction or pattern.

For example, a husband who is operating from the unity model may become quarrelsome and non-cooperative with some touchy issue which he has not yet resolved in his personality. His wife can perceive this and has no choice for the moment but to put up with her husband's lapse to a lower form of mental intimacy with her. Soon the husband will recover and feel guilty because he can see from his doctrine of the unity model, that keeping himself separated is contrary to his highest goals. He will express his guilt appropriately to repair the injury to his sweetheart so that she can bring herself to accept him again into her inner self and thus make a unity with him.

 

Watch this video and compare the views of men and women: 

http://video.ivillage.com/player/?id=0#videoid=145814

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EXERCISE 18.1