FAMILY MATTERS August 2011 THE TWELVE C’S OF LOVE
C IS FOR COLLABORATION
Introduction
A person with low self-esteem and a lack of self-love fears their needs are not worth meeting so they tend to keep them hidden, expecting another to know they are present, but fear keeps them from stating them up front. And when they are not met by another, who is assumed to know they are there, often reacts to their unmet condition by coercion, manipulation, begging, insisting or passive-aggressive forms of controlling in order to get them met. This is what can happen when love is not present and actively engaged within the relating. Can you think of examples of such among others you know? They fear collaboration for it may reveal their weakness and thus make them vulnerable to another’s control.
Collaboration is so frightening for them that it becomes impossible. Yet, sitting down together as equals and working together on what is needed and desired for mutual need-satisfaction is how love operates. Collaboration is necessary for one to know and understand the needs of another. If one has an itch the other needs to know about it so they can come to the rescue. We all have an itch now and again, but where it is may not be apparent. Love reveals it and love responds to it in full measure. Love functions on the basis of collaboration. This is how two become as one.
Love is up front and personal in sharing life’s needs. It speaks in “I statements” such as I need, I want, I desire, etc. It responds well to the “I statements” of the other. “I statements” lead to understanding and honest communication. This is how love operates. Anything less than this can lead to misunderstandings, frustration, a real lack of communication, and alienation. Instead of building intimacy, it works against it at all levels.
Love works at creating and maintaining intimacy at all costs. Intimacy is the heart-beat of love and loving. The goal of love is to form what is needed for all heart-hungers to be met in good measure and no real need left unmet. When one is asked, “How well am I doing at understanding and meeting your real needs?” the other responds openly and honestly and then asks the same question of the other. The basis of such intimacy is built through collaboration.
Here are some of the questions love asks in order to know how to function best.
1. What is our relationship to be like and why?
All of us were raised within relationships involving parents, family, and significant others within our families of origin. But whatever they were like, they differed from that of our partner. So what is our marriage to look like? What is there in our backgrounds that need to be assimilated into our present relating? It cannot be all of one’s and none of the other’s. What elements do we want to incorporate; what elements do we want to discount? What do we want ours to be like, and above all, why? How can we collaborate to come up with what God wants for us and what we want for ourselves? What we determine at the start may need to be altered as we go along, but the altering needs to be a collaborative event as well. We can’t afford to be like Topsy and just let it grow. We owe it to God and to ourselves to shape it as He leads us. We are collaborating with Him as well as with each other.
2. What is our family to be like and why?
Our marriage is off to a great start and our collaborating together for its formation and maintenance made it so. When we are planning to expand it into family life, a deep sense of collaboration is needed in forming what we believe our family is to be and why. If we just add children, taking what seems to come along, and allow circumstances to dictate to us, then where will we end up? What is our family to be like? What style of parenting are we to adopt? What is the role of discipline? How will it reflect our values? It may be very obvious to us what we don’t want it to be like, but, beyond that, what are our goals to strive toward in its creation? Not wanting it to be like we ourselves experienced is not enough to conclude. What does God want to see in place here, and how do we collaborate together to make it happen? In this we are collaborating with Him as well as with each other.
3. How are we to relate to each other in all phases of life together?
What we built together during our earlier years may get challenged in many ways when we shift into family life together. How is this to work for us? There are many areas in which our collaboration is essential. It cannot be left to hit or miss circumstances. We need to be able to have a plan and to work it meaningfully. If we are not careful, it is so easy to put the marriage on the back burner because of the overwhelming needs of a child and children. How are we to keep our marriage central and vital when time becomes hard to find for just being us together? With each new change comes the need to be open about us, and if we are not careful and purposeful, the marriage can be ignored until we reach the Empty Nest Syndrome and wake up to find there is not enough present to be recaptured. We have let too much slip away.
4. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours but who gets to go first?
When needs get ignored they don’t just go away. What may go away is the ability to communicate about them. If there is an itch that goes too long without being scratched, it can become an irritant that colors the relating to where it can’t be met or one loses the desire to focus on it. When this happens, a level of alienation sets in between them and continues to grow. With some couples the itch has been there so long they quit expecting it to be resolved. They just give up or sublimate for it in other ways. Love is fractured and in many ways becomes inoperative. Collaboration has ceased. This may mean outside help is needed to bring things back into focus. Know that there is an itch that is there. Know that it shouldn’t have to go away on its own. Love loves to scratch another’s itch. They know how good it feels when theirs gets scratched, and it delights them to have their partner experience such a relief. So love always acts first. Love puts the other ahead of itself. If one acts first, the other acts in kind, and no body goes away with an unmet itch. This is a perfect example of True Love at work. In this we are collaborating with Him as well as with each other.
5. How well am I doing as your life-partner?
Love always begins by calling the artillery in on itself. Love begins by asking the question of how well it is doing in being all the other needs me to be. One may think we are doing well; in asking of the other one comes to know and be reassured or corrected, or, better yet, both. Collaboration begins by asking the right question in the right way so as to acquire meaningful and helpful results. It is asking the question needing an honest answer and whatever is shared back becomes the focal point of the discussion. We need to know how we are doing in the perceptions of the other. Now we know we can affirm our own perceptions or work on changing them to meet the real need that is presented to us. On a scale of 0 to 10, anything less than a ten needs to become the focus of further collaboration. In this we are collaborating with Him.
6. How might I improve?
Even when a relationship is progressing well and real needs are being met, there is always a danger in allowing a given plateau to be viewed as the best it can be. But how often does God have something more for us to achieve together but it is never allowed to become a part of our consciousness. There can be hidden hungers that need addressing, and clinging to what is already in place may keep it hidden from us. So in our collaboration with Him can we isolate anything that needs our attention, either personally or collectively? For example, when we come to the Empty Nest Syndrome, or the Grandparent Syndrome, or the Retirement Syndrome, or the Because We Can Syndrome, how should any and all of these impact our relating to each other? Each of these provides an opportunity to reassess where we are at and opens before us possibilities we did not have earlier. A good marriage is not the same as having a great one.
7. Knowing there is nothing we cannot negotiate together?
Life together because of our level of love and ability to collaborate has proven to us how well we can face what comes our way. He is present not only to Guide us but also to Empower us to the meeting of each and every real need. But what lies ahead? There are uncharted waters to be sailed and how little we really know of what is going to be required of us. What may mystify us most is the physical needs of life as well as the familial ones. There are children and grandchildren with real needs. There are so many things that flesh is heir to. And what of the great challenges that might come our way such as a catastrophic illness, financial reversal, or a terminal disease? We know we can count on Him who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. But what of us and the small vessel in which we sail?
One day visiting Donna’s mother at her retirement home, the three of us had lunch at a table and Nick joined us. We thought he might be a widower since he was alone. He told us “no”, that he was “happily married but his wife was in a Memory Care Unit. She has Alzheimer’s Disease.” She did not recognize him anymore but he went there three times a day to feed her her meals. He added, “She doesn’t know who I am but I know who she is.” Love does that.
As I write, friends of ours are in California helping the family of their oldest daughter Sara cope with the death of their mother. They lost their father to cancer a few years ago. Now they will go and live with one of Sara’s sisters and her family. The daughter is 13; the son 9. How does love embrace them in such a time of deep and overwhelming need?
As for us parents we always pray we’ll go before our kids do. How do we make it through such a loss? In the midst of our loss how do we help the kids in theirs? Love learns how. We put their needs ahead of our own.
In our Family Issues Support Group at Church we have couples facing the divorce of a child or grandchild, drug addiction in the family, abuse, homelessness and alienation, to name a few issues. When left on our own there is such a feeling of helplessness and powerlessness. It can be so overwhelming.
Our resources to cope are limited, to say the least, but we are not in it alone. In this He collaborates with us as well as we with each other. We are never in it alone. At the same time we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. Faith and trust work!
Conclusion
If we need help collaborating the Holy Spirit is present to lead us into the answers that come from above. No one has more of a vested interest in our marriage and family life than does God.
Knowing He is with us leading us in all we have to face, and it is always together, never apart from His presence and promise.
The things that we need to renegotiate He will lead us through to His Answer for us. We can trust Him for that. Whatever patience and grace we need He is there to provide it in full measure. As we put out trust in Him and allow Him to lead in each and every decision, we see His will being done and it is marvelous in our eyes. We don’t know where life will go from here but we do know Whose hand we are in. In His love and grace He has brought us this far, and He will lead us Home. When all is said and done, He will prove His faithfulness to us no matter what our real needs may be. And when it has run its course, in all of it He will have proven to be all we could ever need Him to be, and so much more. To God, be the glory; great things He has done and is still doing.
Dr. Emil J. Authelet
eauthelet@cox.net
Next Month:
C IS FOR CONSIDERATION
