Long excerpt(s):
Now what puers and dysfunctionals and younger souls do is to try to maintain a one way street in which they get and never or rarely give. Children are like sponges and they are in an unequal exchange of energy relationship with the cosmos. The exchange is that as a function of all the cosmic and committed community energy coming in during the formative process, they are then expected to turn around and share all they have become with the Universe as a function of the integration of their soul and genetic gifts with the gifts from the cosmos. They contribute back in the form of new creativity, new generativity and new evolutions as they carry out their responsibilities as mature adults in the community and the cosmos.Feels like I may have quoted this before.
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Similarly, on the soul level, we have now reached the end of the growing up process, and the requirement now is for the collective to contribute back to the cosmos in a co-creative relationship. We have not been attacked up to this time for making first class asses of ourselves in the process of learning the ropes of coping in the physical universe. We were supposed to do that. But if we persist in being selfish for very much longer, perhaps a year or two max is all we have left, we will not make it much past the turn of the century.
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The war between the genders reflects this process and its foundations in 8000 years of oppression in which both genders lost big time. It takes the form of "tripod-rage" and "Goodbar reactions". "Tripod-rage" refers to the irresistible urge to kick anything with three legs. It has to do with the collective cumulative experience of the entire female race. They are involved in a gigantic intolerance response to any of the paranoid patriarchal manifestations. If they see authoritarianism, irresponsibility, exploitation, sexual coercion, corruption, incompetence, weakness or any of the male failure patterns of the past, they respond with intense anger. This is an up with which they will no longer put.
Now that has a profound impact on their child rearing of male offspring. If he is to be trained to be successful in the patriarchy, she has to train him to be an asshole. And if she creates a non-patriarchal male, he is a failure and she has no respect for him. And either way, the son experiences her extreme cumulative archetypal rage at him for being what he is. Simultaneously, as she rears her daughters it has been impossible not to pass on the seven generations of parental failure and pain in the form of training the daughter to have an enormous amount of "tripod-rage". And of course, the patriarchy validates it every day. So she ends up with built-in rage at men, and her brothers get their sisters hating their guts at the emotional body level as well as getting it from their mothers.
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A third reason for the failure of these "fatal attraction" choices is that the parenting process involves the parent(s)' seeking to work out their "most rejecting parent" things on the child. That, in turn, means that the parent will project their most rejecting parent onto the child, which has the ironic effect of generating many of that (grandparental) figure's characteristics in the child, to which the parent reacts with revulsion. And that, in turn, means that anyone who makes you feel like the rejecting parent did is going to have that same revulsion reaction to who you are.
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To make matters worse, the household is expected to be a "hymn to him" process in which he is minimally demanded of emotionally and his word and whims are law. He is also the "enforcer", as in "Just wait till your father gets home!". He IS expected to bring home the bacon and to handle physical maintenance and protection, but anything in the realm of emotions, relationship and child rearing is beyond his call of duty and his ken and his capability.
For the male child, therefore, that means that he has to piece together what it means to be a man from the little snatches he gets of this distant and mysterious figure who won't tell him anything about what is going on inside and who works at a job which is highly complicated, technical and situationally set up in such a way that a child can't comprehend what's going on when his father engages in his work. So he has no one to look up to as a model and he has to fall back on mother's attitude and shaping in terms of creating his masculine manifestation.
He also learns that the real action is in the realm outside the home in a technical society that requires complete emotional suppression. In addition, he learns the "buck stops here" ultimate accountability, responsibility and authority role in which every time anything goes wrong, everybody turns to the male in the situation and he has no one to turn to. It's his job to come up with the resources and the solution to the problem. The result is a problem-solving machine.[...]
An extensive study that did a traceback for four hundred years of families found that successful relationships are founded on four components. The first of these is "orderliness", which could be characterized as "doing things right" so that they work. It is a strong emphasis on pragmatic love. Secondly, there is "connectedness" or bonding. There is a real investment in and vulnerability to the partner.
Thirdly, there is "commitment", a genuine concern for the welfare of the partner, the relationship, the family and their shared resources. And finally, there was "contribution", the manifestation of something more than was there before as a function of being in the relationship. They gave something to the partner, the relationship, the family and the world. These are the characteristics of an "H-Frame" relationship.
Further characteristics of the "H-Frame" relationship are the "four A's". The first of these is "Acceptance". It is based on "agape" love, and it receives the partner just as they are, with no requirements that they change or be something other than they are. If the partner improves or expands, it is greatly enjoyed, but it is not required.
Secondly, there is "Appreciation". This is another aspect of "agape" love, and it reflects an attitude of gratitude for the partner's being who they are and for what they bring to the relationship. It is also an appreciation of who they are themselves and of life.
"Admiration" refers to the individual's really respecting and looking up to the special qualities and capabilities of the partner. It is a reaction of inspiration by these characteristics in the partner and a desire to have them in themselves. It is not a naive or ersatz reaction. It is a genuine attitude of acknowledgement of the value of the other person.
And "Affection" refers to the individual's having a real loving and cherishing response to the partner, and a deep desire to express and share that loving. The form of expression can be as varied as the type of loving affection it represents, but it always reflects a real love reaction to the partner.
Now another component that comes in here in the "H-Frame" relationship is what could be called "individuation" or "maturity". This refers to the degree of self-love, self-empowerment, self-development, self-respect, self-commitment, resources to bring to the world and the relationship, and satisfaction with being alone. It has to do with comfort with yourself, enjoyment of your own company, appreciation of your own value, being aware of yourself and your shortfalls, being able to receive and utilize feedback, ability to derive value from and to accept rewards for your contributions to the world. And of course, being in a position of being able to contribute and of doing so.
One aspect of this is your response to your own and your partner's reactions as you and they go through the relationship development process. For instance, in the trust-testing phase, there is a pronounced tendency to over-react to what have in the past been betrayal situation indicators. Or in the healing process, people will get into some pretty strong emotional commotional reactions such as "Reggie the raging room-wrecker" episodes. Or the "love brings up all that is unlike itself" thing goes off, and all kinds of drastic reactions start occurring. What the individuated or mature individual does with these is to context them in terms of what is going on for the partner, for them and for the relationship, and to see them in terms of what they are -- namely "false alarm freak-outs" and "toilet-flushes" of junk from the past that had to be suppressed before and now can be cleared out.
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The truth of the matter is that you have to speak the truth at all times. The truth will always out anyway -- the Universe sees to that. However, you have to be careful HOW you tell the truth in an intimate relationship. Some TEMPORARY withholds sometimes are required as you sort out what is happening with your attraction to that other person or as you wait for the dust to settle on that threat to your job, for instance. And you have to be sensitive to the other person's sensibilities as you speak of what is true for you. And then there is the "readiness" factor in children as they want to know what "that handle" is for, and the like. But in general, speaking the truth is the only way to fly in an "H-Frame" relationship.
In such a relationship, there is a minimum of denial, suppression, avoidance of conflict or pain, and there is a maximum of willingness to accept accountability and responsibility for your shit. The partner's negativities and shortfalls are seen as a process, not as their problem. Its purpose is seen as generating depth of understanding and growth or healing for both of you. It's not taken personally, either -- and you don't assume they are just doing to hurt you or out of their "moral cretinism", nor do you assume you are just getting your "just deserts" or that you are getting deserved failure feedback.
"Containers" in relationships both exclude and include in a set of self- and other-respecting boundaries of self-love and commitment to the welfare of the partner and the relationship. In other words, you exclude demands, behaviors and situations that are unreasonable or destructive, and you include things that are unpleasant from the other individual that are leading somewhere. There is a minimum of fear-based restrictions on commitment or over-reactions to situations, and there is a firm determination to overcome them when they do occur.
Such is life.
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