Listen to the Fair Election Workshop held at UUCB on September 20, 2008
The Art
of Relational Domination
A
Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Gregory V. Wilson
April
2005
Good morning. How often do you hear a minister say as he’s about to
speak that we are going to tread on sacred ground? He’s usually speaking
about theology or God or something. But today I think we are treading on
sacred ground; that is committed couples including the marital relationship,
those people with whom we choose to spend our lives.
One thing I am sure about is that this three part series will,
hopefully, actually stir up some trouble. One time I had a friend of mine tell
me, “If you’re doing a series on marriage and you don’t produce couples
that are fighting, you missed something.” So I said, “But, I don’t want
to get them mad at me! Because it’s easier to be mad at me than it is easier
to be mad at their spouse.” So he said, “That’s what you’ve got to
weather when you do this!”
This is a three part series, and the first part of the series is called
“The Art of Relational Domination.” It
is about the subtleties of who we are in relationship. The second part will be
about the style of reconciliation in marriages. And we know from experience
and statistics that there are couples who fight a lot but have a wonderful
style of reconciling, and there are couples who don’t fight a lot and have a
poor style of reconciling, and couples in that second category have a
statistically higher chance of their marriages ending! So the style of
reconciling and how we come to terms with one another is extremely important.
And the third sermon in the series is going to be: “We have a healthy
relationship. Now what?” What do we do with that?
So, the first thing I’d like to say is that sometimes we might take
relationships for granted. But when you step back and think about it, this is
the person whom you choose to spend your life with, to sleep with, to share
your bank account with, to share your dreams, to share your grief, your tears,
your joy, your very life. Or, you don’t share all those
things. You don’t share your dreams, you don’t share your grief, you
don’t share your joys. And I think that’s extremely important. How are we
to understand how a relationship works? How are we to understand how my
partner feels? What am I to do about it? Am I to seek my own way knowing how
my partner feels? Or am I to give way when I know how my partner feels? How do
I come to that decision? How do I begin to understand the meaning of “being
in relationship”?
I’ve worked with a lot of couples and I work with a model which helps
me to look at relationships. And I thought I’d share that before we get on
to the art of “Relational Domination” to help give us a lens to look
through. In any relationship you have three entities. You have the
relationship and the history of that relationship over here. You have an
individual and the history of that individual over here, and in the middle you
have the relationship. In the middle is what we offer up of ourselves and we
offer it to the relationship. And if that middle ground is not attended to,
but is just allowed to happen the way it will happen, without intentionality,
it’s an extremely lucky couple for whom that goes well. Because
relationships take intentionality.
For
example, let’s say that in my history, I am raised so that when I speak to
my parents, I learn it is better for children not to be heard and not to be
seen. I learned pretty early that my voice is not important. I begin not to
ask for what I want. I’m not going to be in essence who I’m going to be or
who I want to be. As a child every time I express myself, I either meet with
absence of response, or pushing me back so that my response doesn’t matter.
So I learn not to be clear with who I am in my relationship. OK? Now this
other person over here, what they learn in childhood is in order to be heard,
you have to be really loud! You have to really cause trouble to be heard. So
when these two folks get married, what I’m going to offer into the
relationship, what I’m, going to bring from my individual life and from my
history, and place in the relationship, I’m going to put in there in a very
unconscious way that I’m not going to ask you directly for what I want. That
for what I want I’m going to manipulate and go around and not be clear, not
be direct. I’ll kind of see if I can get you on board without telling you
what I want. Now we don’t say that consciously. Because if you were ever
dating somebody, courting somebody, you would not tell them things like that
at the beginning of the relationship. You know that person would say “I
don’t want to be in relationship with you if you can’t be direct with what
you want.” But nonetheless, that’s what I offer to the relationship. Now
this person over here, what they’re bringing to the relationship is, “If
I’m not clear what you want I’m going to get louder!
” Now this person over
here doesn’t fully understand that. Because generally when we date and when we
court, we are very polite. We dress up very well. So we don’t say these
things. After awhile, this person’s over here thinking: “Well what movie am
I going to go to tonight?” And they say, “What movie do you want to go to
tonight?” But I really want to go see this movie. I’m not sure if he will
like that movie. They think I want to see this movie but I’m not sure what
movie they want to see, so I’m going to say I don’t know what movie, but the
whole time I’m thinking pick that, pick that, pick that! Somehow we do that so
this person over here says, “Well, he really doesn’t care, so I’m going to
pick this one.” So this person says: "I don’t really want to go to that
movie.” So he thinks,"What am I going to do? I might get sick.” I might
do anything. I need a babysitter. I might say what are we going to do with the
kids? I want to get out of going to that movie. And this person’s going to get
very confused. This person says: “Well you told me to pick a movie! I picked
the movie and now it’s being sabotaged! What’s going on?” And it’s at
that point, we begin to understand the art of domination. Because the aggressive
person who wants to get their way, and who wants to be heard, there’s a form
of domination in that. And the other person who’s being subtle, who is silent
in the negotiation of life patterns, that’s also a quiet form of domination,
because I’m trying to manipulate the other person, to go my way.
Another thing I’ve learned about couples is that often it’s more
important to be right, than it is to be in good relationship. Have you ever been
in an argument and soon you’re arguing over whose right or wrong? And you end
up right…but your partner’s not talking to you for three days? Right’s
more important than being in good relationship. When do we come to terms with
it’s not about being right? It’s about the relationship. When we begin to
understand the art of relational domination, the subtitles of relational
domination, we begin to understand that I am going to manipulate you in a
particular way. Now I think this is key: I’m going to manipulate you in a
particular way to match the “You” in my head. I want you to be a particular
way for me. And I will work my imagination to find out what I want you to be,
and how you have to be, in order to meet my needs, in order for me to OK in my
life. And when I begin to do that, and when I look at you, I’m not only seeing
who you are, but I’m also relating to you, through the “You” that’s in
my mind.
So now there are three parts to this relationship. There’s “me.”
There’s “you.” And there’s the “You” that I want you to be. But I
might not be real clear with the “you” I want you to be. Because I’m not
going to ask you directly what movie we might want to go see. Because I don’t
do that. So I’ve got an image of you and I want you to guess
what movie I want to see and so I’m going to try to “work” you,
manipulate you to get you to be that person. And I’m not going to be direct
about it.
Now this person over here has the same sort of thing going on. There’s
a particular “You” I want you to be, and there’s a “You” out here and
how am I going to get the two of you to match? How am I going to get the two of
you to become one? And a key question is “do I want the “You” in my head
more than I want the “You” that I’m in relationship with?” And that’s
what we have to determine if we’re going to be in a healthy and good
relationship. We’re going to determine, am I really looking for you to be a
particular way to meet my needs, which is not really a relationship at all? Or
am I going to try to move beyond who I am and to figure out how to be with you
in a mutual relationship where we have our needs met? If I’m going to move in
the direction of getting you to being the “You” in my head, I have to
distort your reality. I have to get you to deny who you are and put you on a
path to match the person in my mind. In order for me to do that I, have to
manipulate how you perceive reality. Because if you’re clear about reality,
you’ll be clear that I’m trying to manipulate you. And if you’re clear
that I’m trying to manipulate you, you’re going to get pretty aggravated
about that. And we’re going to be fighting a lot and we’re going to be in a
jostling match of who’s going to dominate. But it’s not going to be overt
and it’s not going to be clear why I don’t like to argue, because what I
have to say is not important. So I’m going to get good at quiet manipulation.
I’m going to get good at moving you in that direction quietly.
So how might I do that? I thought a good example might be somebody
struggling with addiction, whether it’s alcohol, relationships, or golf. When
I first got into the field of looking at and studying addiction in counseling,
what came to mind was alcohol, drugs, the primary things we think about
addiction. But when you’re studying in that world and you attune to the fine
movements of that world, some say addiction is any activity that moves us away
from our primary emotional state. It is any thing that moves me away from being
centered, no matter what it is. That is one definition of an addiction. Because
if I’m at a sense of dis-ease in my center, I will organize my life not to
deal with that dis-ease, not to deal with my anxiety, not to deal with my
depression. It may be deep within me, and it may be conscious or unconscious. If
I look back on my life, I see myself operating unconsciously at times, and then
all of a sudden I see what I’m doing, and I don’t want to do that anymore.
That’s where unconscious becomes conscious.
So I’ve got to change how you perceive reality in order to get you to
match my image of you. I’ve got to get you to deny who you are, so that I am
at ease inside myself. I’ve got to be pretty good at that. I’ve got to be
pretty subtle. And if I recognize that you have an issue with rejection, say,
and issues with abandonment, I will begin to organize my life so you will live
right on that edge of whether I’m going to reject you or not. But in my
working the situation so that you’re right on that edge, I’m also moving
away from that dis-ease, and my center. So I never have to deal with who I am in
the center of who I am. At the deepest part of my soul, I don’t have to travel
there because we’re in this game of moving eachother around. And that becomes
more important than who we are in relationship. And that’s addiction. Anne
Wilson Schaef wrote a book called
“The Addictive Society.” In it she says that addiction is far more than
drugs, far more than alcohol–that addiction is a way of life. And she even
goes as far as saying this culture is a culture of addiction. Because if we were
true to the center of who we are, we would recognize the inequities and we would
recognize the injustices. And we would do something about them. Because we’re
not doing something about them with the whole force of who we are as a people,
it’s clear we’ve become an addictive society because we are on a
self-destructive path. She points out the self-destructive paths that we’re
on. So in a relationship as we are dealing with today, I don’t want to deal
with that aspect of it, because if I do, I’m going to have to do something
about it, consciously or not.
If I find out you’re manipulating me and, I really love you and I
really care about you, and I find out you’re manipulating me, and there’s
this addiction in our lives, all of a sudden I realize that our life for the
past fifteen years has revolved around this addiction. Now I realize our life
has been a distortion of reality, because I thought it was about us and it
really wasn’t about us. It was about avoiding the deepest intimacy that we had
the potential to go to, because I have a dis-ease inside of me of who I am. So I
have to distort reality. And in order to do that I have to dominate the
emotional life of the relationship. In order to that I have to dominate the
emotional life within my self.
An example of how that might come about: Professor Thandeka who is
a Unitarian Universalist minister who teaches at Meadville/Lombard Theological
School in Chicago, wrote a book called Learning to be White and what she
shares I think is crucial, in trying to understand the art of domination. She
says that what happens when a child is born, she bonds to people regardless of
color. The cultural differences, race, religious beliefs, class, preferneces for
men or women, do not matter–human children reach out. Thandeka says what has
to happen with that infant, what has to happen to that child, when they reach
out for a person of color to bond with, because that’s what infants and
children do, that emotional life in that home has to kill the part of that child
that wants to do that, has to eliminate that part of that child, so that child
does not reach out. And when the child does not reach out, there’s an
affirmation of that child’s not reaching out because they’ve put down that
part of their self. So in a sense I have to self-dominate my truer self in order
to be accepted into my family system.
Many UUs struggle in coming to the UU community. We may have come from
Baptist, Methodist, Roman Catholic, a variety of religious traditions, or no
tradition at all. As we have been on this journey that brings us to this room,
we have been prayed for, rejected, thought odd, and praised and celebrated. Your
conservative Christian family or community start worrying that you are going to
Hell. If you stay in that community or family, you may have to deny in that
setting that you have a curiosity to search for truth and meaning not bound by
particular belief systems. So you would have to be involved in not bringing up
what you want to bring up in
conversation. So in a sense you have to distort who you are in that particular
family or community in order to get along.
So we can see that there is an individual me and that there is an
individual you and that we create this place between us. And that in an
unconscious way I bring to you my fear of rejection. I bring to you the attitude
that if I think you’re going to reject me, I will accommodate you in any
possible way I can, so that you will not do that. This means that even if
you’re not going to reject me, even if that’s not who you are, but I have
that fear, I will begin to manipulate the situation as if you were going to
reject me. So in my passivity, in my compliance, I begin to dominate the
emotional life. So it’s not always the aggressor, it’s not always the person
who we would think of as intrusive. Often it is the passive partner in a
relationship that is most powerful. Often it is both So it’s not necessarily
the overt things that we see in the relationship. Sometimes it’s the very
quiet things that we don’t see in the relationship.
Often when working with couples I recognize that the first thing
we have to deal with is that one person is loud about the obvious things the
couple wants to change. It’s clear. You see it. The difficulty in doing
relationship work is when the person who’s doing the obvious thing that needs
to be dealt with deals with it, calms down in the center of who they are, and
then there’s a great silence. The great silence: this was step one but we’ve
never really looked at step two. We’ve never really looked at the passive
aspect of this dance and so when this person who was loud and aggressive comes
down and steps off the stage, everybody’s going: “Now what?” There’s
often more resistance to look at the quiet part of that dance than there is to
look at that loud part of that dance. Then all of a sudden we begin to recognize
that it’s the quietness that dominates the relationship, not the loudness, and
we find greater resistance to change.
So what do we do if we begin to recognize that I am artful, that
I’ve got the skill to really manipulate what’s going on in a relationship,
and I start to become conscious of that. For example, have you ever heard of the
game “Uproar”? Let’s say you go to a seminar and the seminar is on
relational dynamics and you learned an example about a person who drinks. What
this person will want to do is go out and drink, but no one really wants them to
go out and drink. If I’m that person what I’ll do is step into the living
room and watch. As we’re watching TV or playing cards, I’ll pick a fight.
And the fight gets louder. And the person I’ve picked a fight with will get
really loud and yell. Then I’ll say: “You’re always yelling at me.” Then
I’ll go out and I’ll slam the door. Then there’s total chaos and uproar in
the house and everyone wants to know what’s going on. But as I slam the door I
go “Whew. Now I’ll go get a drink.” Uproar. Well what happens if I
discover I do that? Not that somebody tells me I do that but that I do that?
Then I have to ask the question: “What’s going on with me that I’m
avoiding the intimacy and the closeness that this family has to offer?” What
am I going to do with that? Not necessarily what the family’s going to do with
that. When I realize I’m the one manipulating. When I realize I’m
the one who’s passive. When I realized I really don’t want you here and I
know you’re going to do the game of “Uproar” and there is going to be a
fight with you, and I will not have to put up with you. The dance goes both
ways. And we play at that dance.
Another game for instance, is called “Rapo” and if any of you
know Eric Burns’ work, he says: Rapo in early childhood begins like this:
Here’s this little girl standing in a mud puddle. And she says to this little
boy near her, “Hey Johnny come on over and stand here.” Now Johnny’s a
little boy right so when he comes and stands in the mud puddle he doesn’t just
stand daintily in the puddle. He covers himself full of mud. And so she standing
there with a smile on her face looking at little Johnny covered with mud. She
says, “Hmmm” and she steps out softly and walks away. And here is Johnny all
by himself all covered with mud. “Rapo.” Now in adult hood that might look
like, “I really like you. Let’s go out for a date.” As soon as the other
person says, “It seems like we like eachother. Could we go out on dates?”
“Oh no. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to participate in
that.” It’s the invite in but push away. I was talking with my uncle who is
also a therapist and we invented this word called “pullish”. You pull in and
you push away. That’s what Eric Burns calls the game “Rapo.”
Well you’ll notice in all these games, the addiction patterns,
these other games, what’s going on in these games is I am denying myself, and
I have come to some kind of agreement with a person I’m in a relationship
with, I am denying myself a chance to live in a warm, open, and vulnerable
relationship. I am denying myself the growth and potentializing of what it means
to be a human being. There’s domination going on in our relationship.
There’s no life. We’re only stagnant. It would be like being under water and
being able to breathe under water, and just seeing all the beauty, just seeing
all the things that happen under water and you’re stuck in a sunken boat and
you can’t get free. And there’s all this wonderful life going on. And you
know what’s going on but you’re stuck. And you see it going on but you
can’t move. That’s what domination is. For both people. When you’re
a victim you’re there. When you’re dominating you’re there. Because both
of you are locked up in a way of life that is death oriented. It’s a problem.
And it’s subtle. And it kills relationships. And then when relationships go
through time, and there’s this dominator/ non-dominator/victim patterns going
through time, your life will pass and you will look back and think: “I never
really lived. This wasn’t a good trip for me. I didn’t fully understand what
I was doing.” And that would be sinful, not actualizing our celebrative
selves, not actualizing our participation in a community where we can enjoy each
other and be about something, fighting dominance, say, so we could live freely.
But to get toward the end of life and say, “Whew. Where’d it go?” would
indeed be sinful.
The sooner we can come to terms with ourselves, the sooner we can
come to terms with how I might be playing Rappo…I might be the primary one
that has the behavior that needs transformation, the primary addiction, avoiding
my feelings. I can look back. I can tell. Where was I really close to somebody?
Where have I had that intimate relationship. And when I say, “Hmmm? That
hasn’t been in my life. But I’ve been in 4 or 5 relationships” –it’s
not about the relationship; it’s about me. So I have to come to terms with
myself, and look at myself and look at my own life. Or do I see that I have been
involved in a way of life with groups and always getting involved with
relationships, where in the end I always feel rejected and not accepted and I
walk a way and I go start that pattern all over again. Then actually I’m
dominating my inner world by not being available for closeness to others. The
art of domination in the relational life is furiously loud, or quiet. When we
ask ourselves: “Are we getting what we want out of a relationship? Are we
getting what we want out of life?” And really examine that, are we getting out
what we want out of a faith tradition? And really examine the center of our
souls and who we are. If we say “no” then there is the art of domination
going on within ourselves. And we need to discover what that is so that we can
get free, so that we can celebrate who we are as individuals. So that when I
contribute something to this relationship and I step out of my individual self
and I contribute something, it is something that moves us toward life. I
understand who you are and I know what I’m contributing here would be
welcomed. When I begin to view relationships like that…what I contribute to
the middle of this relationship is welcomed by both parties. Then I can get in
the conversation about what is a healthy and a good relationship. But if I
don’t ask the question, is what I’m doing welcomed in this relationship, if
I am not showing a concern for the relationship, then I need to be doing more
work. I’m suggesting that the relationship is more important than being
right. The relationship is more important than my history. The
relationship is where I live every day. It is the person I look in the eye every
day. It is the person I eat with, the person I sleep with, the person I share my
money with, the person I share my vacations with. What could be more important
than where I live every day? And I’m saying let’s be attentive to that.
Let’s look within ourselves. And find out: is it me? Do I think it’s the
other person? How can I create a dialogue about the art of relational domination
so we can be free of it, and celebrate life as individuals and as a committed
couple.
© 2005, Rev. Dr. Gregory V. Wilson
