Being Yourself in Relationships

“I’m at my wits’ end,” said a woman who called me two evenings ago. “Every time I try to be who I really am, my spouse gets so angry that I end up backing down. I just don’t know how to really be myself in this relationship. I feel like I’m losing myself completely.”

The following evening, a post appeared on a website in which the writer said that his or her spouse can’t tolerate a contrary opinion or course of action. For this person to be authentic provokes anger in the spouse. The person asked, “Does my response always have to be acquiescence?”

I seem to be constantly running into people who feel this way. If it isn’t about their partner, it’s a parent or someone at work, church, or a social organization.

Wouldn’t life be nice if such people weren’t so difficult?

Well . . . no. On the contrary, this person who tries to bully us is actually a Godsend. Life becomes quite wonderful only when we get the message God is sending!

Gail Godwin’s novel Evensong revolves around an Episcopal priest, Margaret, and a man who is a chaplain. The two of them are contemplating spending their lives together.

Margaret's oldest friend Harriet says to her, "Remember that nasty old witch you told me about? The one you were scared would drag you off into the closet and make you live with her when you were little? So what's the first thing you do when you grow up and get free of the closet? You look up the witch, you call her up on the telephone, and go and live with her."

That's a pretty good description of relationships, especially romantic ones. You look up the witch and go live with her—in the form of a husband, a wife, a partner. (An equivalent might be going home to your parents for the holidays!)

Of course, when you first fall in love with him, this man or woman you think you can't live without doesn't look anything like the witch from your childhood.

But Prince and Princess Charming have a way of losing their charm. Pretty soon you see the witch. "My God," you tell yourself, "did I pick the wrong person? Have I made one awful mistake?"

In The Presence Process, which is among the most helpful books I have ever read, Michael Brown asks us to see in the person who seems to be making our lives miserable a reflection of what we don’t want to face up to in ourselves.

Early in Evensong, there’s a description of a character called Madelyn, of whom it is said that she "could see around to the backsides of the stage sets people presented as their lives."

In The Presence Process, Michael Brown suggests that this is precisely what relationships are meant to do. They enable us to see around to the backsides of the stage sets we present as our lives.

In other words, the person who phoned me the other evening invited this particular man into her life as her partner because he is what she needs if she is ever to really be herself. His reactions to her attempts to define herself are necessary if she is ever to evolve into her fullest self.

How else are we going to see around to the backsides of our lives—to the things we don’t want to face up to in ourselves—unless someone mirrors these for us?

Adrian, the chaplain, tells Margaret that the ideal career is “a job that would keep making more of you.” This is also what our relationships are meant to do. They do it by reflecting back to us where we are not being true to ourselves—where we coddle our weaknesses, and where we fail to develop our strengths.

When someone resists our attempts to be who we are, tension arises. In response, we become anxious—and perhaps angry. What The Presence Process asks us to do is to become centered.

In our center, no matter how stormy life has become, there is a deep calm. It is always calm at the center, though a lot of the time we can’t feel it because we are so caught up in our emotional reactivity and anxious thoughts.

By not reacting in reptilian fashion when someone opposes us, and instead allowing ourselves to identify with the peace within, we can use our head instead of losing it. We respond in a manner that’s true to ourselves and yet invites connection with the other.

Acquiescence isn’t helpful because who we really are doesn’t “show up” when we cave in. And the point of The Presence Process is to enable us to show up in our lives!

Stilling our fears, while continuing to be true to ourselves in a calm and steady manner, allows our essence to flourish. We learn not to be intimidated.

When our partner, parent, or someone in some other part of our life goes ballistic, the trick is to respond from Presence and not get sucked into reacting. If we can stay calm, and stay true to ourselves, more of who we really are will emerge.

At first it’s not easy to do. For a start, our feelings get hurt. But we can counter this by recognizing, as The Presence Process points out, that the other is doing the best she or he can at this moment. His or her reaction isn’t about us, it’s coming from childhood.

How do you get over your fear of showing up in your life? You have to weather the storm. The storm is there precisely to give you practice in this. (See the helpful book Passionate Marriage by Dr David Schnarch, which goes into detail about how to do this.)

When the storm is raging, you may find it helpful to use connected breathing, in the manner The Presence Process describes. It centers you. Then your anxiety doesn’t take over. You can stay calm and respond nicely to the other person.

It’s absolutely crucial to go against our fears, which cause us to pull away, and instead allow ourselves to feel the love at our center and stay connected. We need to reach out at the very moment we are most tempted to withdraw. We can do this. As Michael Brown likes to say, “Presence knows no order of difficulty.”

Amazingly, when we calmly define ourselves without reacting to a partner’s reaction, the partner also begins to calm down in a lot of cases. Not the first time, nor the second or third, but after we’ve shown our metal enough times that the person knows we can’t be cowed any longer—and sees that neither are we going to lash out, sulk, or distance ourselves.

If this doesn’t happen, then there might come a day when our calm center takes us in a new direction. But only after the witch has done his or her job! (For some of us, where there is physical danger, the witch might be asking us to “show up” more quickly by removing ourselves from the danger we are in.)

How to utilize Presence to enrich a relationship is covered in a truly insightful book, The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle. It can be found on this website.

Also, when your partner lashes out at you and your feelings get hurt, you’ll find much help in dealing with those feelings in Eckhart’s book A New Earth. It too can be found on this website.