Performative Relations
Who are we relating for?
There’s a pattern of behavior that many, many men have in romantic relationships, and once you see it you can never unsee it. I still catch this pattern in myself, and i don’t like it. It’s not a comfortable thing to look at in myself at all. Because it’s uncomfortable, I’m going to work my way around to it, so I don’t spook myself into defensive, reflexive denial.
When I’m alone with my wife, the only things that matter are our experiences. Our individual experiences, and our shared experience. So when I interact with her, speak with her- my words should only be oriented to our experiences. Maya Angelou said: “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” This applies just as much in relationships as anywhere else- how our partners feel around us and how we feel are the only things that matter. If what I say is technically correct, but I say it in a way that makes my wife feel like shit, than what have I done? Have I benefited our relationship? Am I relating in a healthy way? Am I setting our relationship up for success?
This isn’t the pattern we’re working towards, just a step closer, but many men communicate during conflict in relationships in ways that can best be described as litigious. What I mean is that we communicate as though we’re in court, and some judge or jury is going to hear our arguments and only if one or the other of us is proven guilty, then there will be consequences. This leads to defensiveness and accusations. “You can’t prove I did that, and in fact, you did this.” But here’s the thing- there is no judge or jury, it’s just us and our partners. So there is no guilty or innocent verdict coming, and the consequences of our behavior and communication are coming whether or not anything is proven. Those consequences are based on our partner’s experience of us, not some third-party standard of proof. When we communicate and engage like we’re in litigation, the consequences are going to be decreased connection, less trust, less joy, and likely the imminent end of the relationship. That way of communicating is inherently antagonistic, and most people don’t want to stay in relationships that feel like a constant fight. This is a pattern that I see overwhelmingly in men. I’m not saying that statistically, women don’t have antagonistic patterns of communication- our whole culture is wounded, women are wounded, and everyone has a lot of work to do. Some women have this exact pattern of communication, and statistically, women have other patterns of antagonistic communication that need work, because we’re all wounded. But that’s not what this video is about.
I mostly work with men, but I also work occasionally with women and couples, and there’s a pretty common pattern in couples work that comes up. I suspect it comes up more because I’m a man, but I’m not sure, maybe women who are therapists can weigh in- but here it is: when couples are working through tension with me, often the man will turn to me with one of two things. The first is an energy like: “Can you believe this chick?” The second is an in-joke, like an invitation to an eye-roll about what the woman is saying. Women will also turn to me for validation, but it has a very different tone, like the woman might say: “Well, what do you think of this?” It’s less making the man the butt of a shared joke, if you see the difference. Despite this trend being surprisingly common, every time a man does this it catches me off-guard. My internal dialogue often goes something like: “You know you’re going home with her, right? You spend an hour a week with me, you’re going to wake up with her tomorrow morning. If I were to accept the invitation to roll our eyes at her, oh this crazy girl, how do you think that would play out for you? Even when I don’t, do you think she doesn’t see you? What effect do you think this is having on your relationship?”
Now I’m giving relatively extreme examples of this behavior, so that we can all see it clearly and understand it’s effects, but it’s much more commonly just an eye-flick. Or a joke that the guy makes which is clearly not for his partner. The explicit eye-roll is rare, at least in couples who seek me out.
Now that we’re holding these three pieces in mind, that our experiences are all that matter in relationships and that many men communicate during conflict like litigation, and that men often seek escape from tension and/or validation from other men/outside parties in relational conflict, now I think we can talk about the heart of this video. I hope that those three points can create a little corral for us to catch this point of awareness without it dancing off. Here it is:
