Honesty: The Only Hope
for Relationships
by Susan Campbell, Ph.D.
(Editor's Note: While this article deals with honesty in dating, its information and advice are applicable to all relationships.)
Everyone values honest communication,
but how many have the necessary honesty skills?
In my
work with hundreds of truth-seeking singles from New York to
California, one conclusion is inescapable: almost everyone seems to
value honest communication, but very few have the skills or the
confidence to practice it consistently. According to most of the singles I have met in my travels, the
typical dating situation is fraught with fear. It seems that when
people believe there's a lot at stake, they get nervous and instead of
being their creative, delightful selves, they resort to various anxiety
management strategies.
Lois met Jeff at a friend's birthday party and felt immediately
drawn to him. But instead of spending time talking with him at the
party, she found herself flirting with other men in hopes that Jeff
would notice her. She left the party that night without having spoken a
word to Jeff.
Lois's behavior is an example of what I call a "control pattern." A
control pattern is anything you do automatically, without awareness, to
manage the anxiety of feeling "not in control." A favorite pattern of
many people is to be overly nice or agreeable. Others try to appear
cool or indifferent, as Lois did. Some try to impress by acting super
confident. Others shrink into the woodwork and try to remain invisible.
When you're in your control pattern, you are usually "on automatic,"
acting from habit rather than choice.
People resort to such behaviors because they cannot tolerate the
uncertainty or anxiety of the typical dating encounter. Lois felt
attracted to Jeff, but she had no idea how he felt about her. She wanted him to be as attracted to her
as she was to him, but since she was not able to control the
situation to insure her desired outcome, she tried to stay in control
by playing it cool.
Truth in Dating focuses on noticing and learning to live without
these habitual patterns. It is about learning to express yourself
authentically — to say what you really feel and think, or to simply be
silent and listen.
Today's Dating Landscape
With the advent and increasing popularity of personal ads,
matchmakers-for-hire, and on-line dating services, it's easier now than
ever before to be introduced to a large number of potential partners
with a minimal outlay of time and energy. Whether you actually use any
of these services or not, you know they're available to you, so you
know that you could at least be having a lot of first dates if you
really wanted to. You are no longer dependent on getting invited to
parties, going to bars or nightclubs, or introducing yourself to
strangers at the supermarket. That's the good news.
The bad news is that many of these newer dating venues emphasize the
checklist approach to dating. You are asked to make a list of what you
ideally want, what you might settle for, and what you have to offer in
exchange. This tends to foster the illusion that if you and another
person match up in terms of traits and preferences, you're well on your
way to successful relating.
The problem with the checklist mentality is
that there is so much more to people than the generalizations they make
about themselves. Generalizations like "I'm the kind of person who
loves the outdoors... enjoys parties . . . needs a lot of alone time
... feels things deeply" tell nothing about a person's capacity for
relating. It is your ability to openly relate to another person that
spells the difference between success and failure in relationships.
Most singles (and couples too) do not relate very well. They are too
focused on feeling in control. Relating is the opposite of controlling.
In my thirty-five-year career as a relationship coach and seminar
leader, I have found that the capacity to relate is the one essential
quality that enables a person to enjoy satisfying
interpersonal/intimate relationships. Without this capacity, you're
doomed to keep repeating the same old script over and over. This
capacity is rarely mentioned in personal ads. It is not something you
can glean about a person by reading his bio. It is not something you
can tell by watching her from across a crowded room. It is not
dependent on body type or physical beauty. It is something that anyone
can learn, if he or she is willing to practice ten fundamental "truth
skills." The most basic of the ten truth skills is the ability to notice whether
the intent of your communication is to control or to relate.
Relating vs. Controlling
When you are relating, you are simply open and present to
whatever is — whether this is pleasurable or painful or somewhere
in-between. When you are controlling, you are trying to make something
happen; for example, you may be trying to appear confident, keep
yourself from looking foolish, get others to like you or pay attention
to you, avoid confrontation or conflict, make sure the other person is
not uncomfortable, get your own way, keep things from getting too
intense, or manage the anxiety of simply being present.
When you are relating, you are curious about the outcome, instead of
trying to control it. You're more interested in discovering and
experiencing what's so, rather than trying to manipulate things to come
out as planned. If Lois had known how to relate to Jeff, she might have
gone up to him and told him she was feeling drawn to come over and talk
to him. Then she would have listened openly to his response, whether it
was what she was hoping for or not.
It is your skill and confidence in
dealing with unknown, unplanned outcomes that make you good at
relating. If you lack such skill and confidence, you'll be more apt to
resort to control patterns. A control pattern is any automatic,
patterned way of thinking or behaving that keeps you from feeling what
is really going on inside you and instead helps you appear more
comfortable and in control than you actually feel.
Practicing Truth in
Dating helps you outgrow this need to protect yourself from reality.
Through this practice, you develop the inner strength required to deal
with what is really going on. You learn to accept the fact that you
cannot control how others feel toward you.
If you are dependent on your control patterns to help you cope,
you'll be less confident and more fearful, less spontaneous and more
rigid, and just generally less resourceful. You'll also be less
attractive to conscious, aware people who are seeking to pair with
other conscious, aware people.
When you are caught in a control pattern, you cannot be present.
When you learn to pay attention to what you're really feeling,
authentic, present-centered relating becomes more natural. You learn to
free yourself from the patterned ways you overprotect yourself, the
ways you try to impress, and the ways you cover your true feelings.
Most singles report that they catch themselves trying to impress and
appear in control more often when they are fearful, nervous, or uneasy
as compared to when they are relaxed. It is this need to impress, this
worry about the outcome of the interaction, that blocks your capacity
for "presence."
Presence is the ability to feel and sense yourself and
your surroundings in the here and now. Presence disappears when you
focus on the outcome, as in "If I do this, will he still like me?" or
"How can I get him to ask me out again?" Presence is critical in a
relationship because if you're not present, there's "nobody home" to
relate to the other person, and neither of you will get the benefit of
learning from your experiences. We learn by paying attention. Presence
allows you to pay attention.
Some control patterns that are familiar to most of us are:
over-talking, explaining; judgmental self-talk, self-congratulatory
self-talk, fearful self-talk; looking intensely into someone's eyes in
order to impress, not looking into someone's eyes in order to avoid too
much intensity, waiting to speak until you are sure you'll be well
received, impulsively speaking up before you know what you want to say.
Control patterns arise whenever you are fearful about being rejected,
controlled, attacked, criticized, abandoned, judged, ignored,
frustrated, or shamed. Most singles have felt at least one of these
familiar fears. How can a person with these normal dating fears ever
get relaxed enough to experience truly fulfilling relating with another
human being? How can we develop the necessary skills so that we can
trust ourselves enough to let down our defenses — trusting that even if
things don't turn out so well, we will still be okay?
Remember, the reason we use control patterns is because we
are afraid. We are afraid to feel what we feel, say what we feel, or
hear what someone else feels about us.
Buttons Reveal Your Fears
Having a button pushed means having an unconscious fear
triggered. This leads you to react in an automatic, unconscious way.
During one interview, a fiftyish single man named Bruce asserted
matter-of-factly, "I consider myself to be very honest, but there's one
thing I won't tell a woman I'm dating. I never disclose how little
money I have."
"And why is that?" I asked.
"Because women will stereotype a man who lives the way I do. They
will automatically rule me out. So I like to wait until after they get
to know me before I talk about my net worth ... or lack of it!"
What do you think about Bruce's statement? Can you put yourself in
his shoes? He has probably been rejected more than once, and this has
probably been painful for him. He understandably wishes to avoid this
pain in the future. But the next woman's rejection of him has not even
happened yet. He is imagining this rejection happening in the future.
So he's secretive and defensive about his money situation — just to be
safe. He is not present. He is engaging in two fairly common control
patterns: avoiding a particular feared topic, and rationalizing his
reason for doing so.
I believe he is also deceiving himself when he assumes that his lack
of financial means is the reason some women won't date him. Any time
you have a standard, one-size-fits-all reason for why something happens
to you, this is simply another symptom of lack of presence. If Bruce
were present to his actual feelings, he would be feeling his feelings —
not thinking up reasons why he might be rejected. Explaining "why" is
usually a control game. It's a way to avoid the discomfort of not
knowing or not being in control of the outcome.
Feeling Leads to Healing
From knowing Bruce as I do, I imagine that the dating rejections
he has experienced in the past have more to do with a core belief about
his own unworthiness. His financial situation may be a symptom of
deeper self-doubts. Bruce has a deep-seated fear of rejection related
to this unconscious sense of unworthiness, which he has played out in
different ways all his life. He has defended his self-image by finding
reasons why he keeps getting rejected, instead of allowing himself to
feel the pain of each rejection experience. If he were able to be
present to his experience, he would simply feel his pain, frustration,
and anger. This would offer him an opportunity to heal. Feeling your
feelings gives you a chance to comfort and heal yourself. If you hide
your real feelings from yourself, you will not heal.
Often a current painful experience will trigger old wounds, such as,
for Bruce, the times in his childhood when the kids at school refused
to play with him during lunch hour. If he were willing to feel his
feelings about this, he would have a chance to heal his old wounds. To
heal wounds from childhood, a person needs to allow himself to
experience as an adult what was too intense or painful to feel as a
child. By using his "adult reasoning," he stays stuck in an old pain
management pattern. His current "reason why" has to do with money. But
such reasoning is nothing more than a mental construct. As such, it is
not real. Until he connects with and feels his pain about the
unfinished emotional business from his past, he will continue to be
vigilant and fearful about being rejected. And, as long as he avoids
handling the real source of his pain, he will keep getting triggered
any time a woman asks him about his financial situation.
Control Patterns in Action
Let's consider what might happen when Bruce gets triggered in a
dating situation. A woman he likes inquires, "Do you invest in stocks
or mutual funds, or do you just keep it all in a money market fund?"
(She's indirectly trying to find out how much money he has.) At that
moment, Bruce's gut tightens and his throat constricts, but he hides
his feelings and replies casually, "Oh I have a little here and a
little there." From this point on, the relating between these two is
compromised. She did not openly ask for what she wanted, and he got his
"not good enough" button pushed, tried to hide this fact, and gave her
an evasive answer. A wall begins to grow between them. Neither of them
notices this because both have gotten accustomed to such inauthentic
relating. They continue to date for several months, but the indirect
communication and evasiveness continue until finally something happens
that brings things to a head, and they stop seeing each other.
In the dating world interactions like this occur all the time.
People go momentarily "unconscious" when their fears come up, and they
don't even realize this is happening. When Bruce hears a woman's
question about the state of his finances, his automatic fear reaction
is, "She'll think I'm not good enough." The woman in this example
happens to have unconscious fears about "not being cared for." So when
he gives her an evasive answer, she imagines that he's distancing
himself from her. The tape she hears is, "He doesn't care enough about
me to be open with me."
In dating, unconscious fears can wreak havoc with people's
interactions. When two people are intent on avoiding the pain
associated with their core fears, they just keep on doing the same
dance with one partner after another — secretly hoping to find someone
who won't push any of their buttons! Of course this never works. They
may find new partners to date, but sooner or later if a fear is there,
it will get triggered.
From Getting Triggered to Being Present
Truth in Dating is about adopting a set of attitudes and
practices that will help you notice when you become afraid and then
help you come back to being present. You become familiar with all your
feelings, including fear, anger, and hurt, instead of pretending these
don't exist. Once you accept yourself as you are, it's easier to be
present all the time. For most people this is an ideal they hardly dare
to dream about. Yet when you learn to live in the present, your fear of
others' reactions disappears. You discover that fear is usually a
head-trip about the future — about your not wanting the past to repeat
itself in the future or not wanting the future to turn out wrong. When
you are able to notice your internal state of agitation, you have a way
to bring your attention back to the present moment. You can be openly
available to the actual possibilities of your situation. This is a big
part of what love is — being open to each moment with all its
possibilities.
Chapter Summary
• Most singles find it difficult to be honest because they give
entirely too much weight to the outcome of each dating interaction.
They imagine their self-worth is at stake.
• People go momentarily unconscious when they fear that some painful
past experience is about to repeat itself. Then they can't hear what
the other person is actually saying. This causes all sorts of confusion
and unnecessary pain.
• Unfinished business from the past always crops up and messes with
us. When you find it hard to stay present, it's probably a sign that
one of your old fears or negative beliefs has been triggered. This
means that there's some buried pain inside you (pain that was perhaps
too much for you to experience as a child). This pain is something that
you now need to fully experience and deal with consciously.
• When we learn to tell the truth to ourselves about our fears, then
we can recognize when our buttons are being pushed and come back to
being present.
• The ability to relate is the essential skill for successful
relationships. Relating means being present to and being willing to
reveal what you are experiencing in the moment — your feelings, your
wants, your intentions.
• Most people are addicted to control and don't even know it. Controlling is the opposite of relating.
• Truth in Dating can help you learn to simply notice your fears,
and not identify with them, so you can stay open to your essential
loving and self-loving essence.
This article was excerpted from:
 Truth in Dating: Finding Love by Getting Real
by Susan M. Campbell.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, New World Library. ©2004. www.newworldlibrary.com
Info/Order this book.
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About the Author
Psychologist Susan Campbell has worked as a teamwork consultant to
Fortune 500 companies, a professional speaker, and, for over 35 years, as a
dating and relationship coach. She is author of several other books, including her ground-breaking The Couples Journey
(over 100,000 sold) which introduced the idea into the mainstream of
using intimate relationships as a spiritual practice. Her website is www.susancampbell.com.
More articles by this author.
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