Sermon - Anyone or Only One
Sermon for 1st Unitarian Society of Denver by Rev. Mike Morran delivered on February 14, 2010
Once, there was a young woman who lived alone. She had a job and all the acceptable though unexciting things that a single woman in the early years of the 21st century would normally possess. However, there were two issues in her life that she just couldn't seem to resolve. The first was that her apartment had a cockroach problem. Every night she would come home, turn on the lights and the cockroaches would go scattering off. She tried everything; bug bombs, exterminators, traps, she cleaned meticulously, caulked all the cracks and corners, kept all her food in sealed containers and still, every night she would come home, turn on the lights and the cockroaches would scatter.
The other problem she had was that like many people, she really wanted a life partner for herself and so despite the difficulty, she was reluctantly doing some dating. The problem was that the people she dated were either losers or they were not interested in a long-term relationship. This caused her considerable frustration.
One night, she was driving home from yet another unsatisfactory date and she was thinking about her two problems, the cockroaches who wouldn't leave and the partners who wouldn't stay, when she suddenly sees a connection and gets an idea. She rushes home, walked into her apartment and just like always when she turned on the lights all the cockroaches went scattering. But this time she yells "Wait! And all the cockroaches stopped…! You don't have to go! Just make a commitment!" Then all the cockroaches scampered off and she never saw them again.
So, I don’t know why, but most of us at one time or another make an attempt at being in an intimate, long-term relationship. On this Valentines Day, it is the stages, pitfalls, and potentials of paired relationships that I’m going to explore with you, and I will warn you in advance that as I go, I’m going to drop a few of what I believe to be significant spiritual truths.
I also have a small disclaimer to share, I’m doing this sermon as a kind of valentine’s day present for my beloved spouse, who asked me to revisit a sermon I did way back in 2002. If you were around then, and you have an extraordinary memory, you might recognize some of what follows. And, then as now, I am borrowing from many sources. I believe this topic is of interest to just about everyone, and it doesn’t matter your age, gender, whether or not you are currently partnered, or the relative gender of the person you’re inclined to love.
There’s something funny that happens at the beginning of a paired relationship. The first stage is called Romance. It is generally characterized by a high level of emotional intensity and a corresponding drop-off in the ability to reason. Our culture calls it “falling in love,” and it feels WONDERFUL!
Studies have shown that people in this stage of a paired relationship undergo measurable bio-chemical changes, so to say that there is “good chemistry” with a particular person is more than a metaphor. People in Romance have been known to experience time differently. The time spent with the beloved person just vanishes like smoke, while the time spent away from the beloved person drags on forever. But generally this is OK because we know what to do. We write poetry, fantasize, buy cards and gifts, and even begin to clean up some of our less palatable habits in order to please our beloved.
It’s a huge mistake. Generally we believe we’ve fallen in love with another person. In fact what we’ve done is to fall in love with an idealized version of what we hope is going to bring us into the wholeness of empowered, connected love we were created for. This is why so many of us end up in relationships with people very different from ourselves. We are attracted to the mysteries represented in people whose way of being in the world is different from our own.
It may be that our attraction to our opposite, and this is a Jungian interpretation, is really an attraction to the mysteries within ourselves. Intuitively we feel that if we can understand or be close to these mysteries, we will be set free. This is an illusion because we are already free, we just don’t believe we are. That is one of those spiritual truths I said I was going to drop this morning. We are already free to be who and what we desire to be. We don’t need anyone else to make it happen for us. But in Romance, we begin to believe we have come across a magic shortcut to our own wholeness. All the parts of our beloved that we intuitively or unconsciously sense are undeveloped or un-experienced in our own beings, become a powerful attraction to that part of us which is forever seeking wholeness and reconciliation.
Now, we are not aware of this at the time, and even if we were, we probably wouldn’t do anything to spoil how good it all feels. But Romance doesn’t last. There’s variance of course, but Romance can last anywhere from a couple of weeks to about a year or so. In rare cases maybe two or three years, and if we’re very wise maybe only days. (With people I find rapidly and particularly attractive, I’ve been known to do Romance from start to finish, entirely in my head, in less than a minute.) Romance gets replaced with the next stage, which is disillusionment. We have all been there. It’s when we realize that our partner isn’t nearly as perfect as we had thought. We might feel like we’ve been duped, and we have! We’ve fooled ourselves into thinking all sorts of things about their good looks and charm, their willingness to share themselves, their relative absence of character flaws, and the hope that maybe for once this will be easy.
Wrong. We begin to discover that sometimes the person simply isn’t as available to us as we’d like them to be. Sometimes they shut us out of their lives completely. They have bad moods, say things we wish they wouldn’t, have friends who are from some other planet, and they will probably never read our favorite book. We begin to discover that we don’t always agree like we used to, and that some of those disagreements are over issues that are very important. We notice they have some repetitive habits that just drive us crazy!
Many relationships don’t survive this part. People become addicted to the excitement of Romance and will drop everything at this stage to go off searching for more. There is a myth alive in our culture that God or the universe has created just the right person for us, they’re out there somewhere if we can only find them. Wrong again. There are people lucky enough to find partners with whom they are remarkably compatible, but for most of us, there just is no such thing as a soul mate. Some people at the disillusionment stage realize they should get out. But, if you are someone who grew up in a household where you were criticized a lot, where unreasonable perfection was demanded, where emotional security was withheld, or where your self esteem was significantly eroded, you are going to find it very difficult to get yourself out of nearly any relationship. Even when they don’t work, even when the relationship is hurting you.
The truth is that the end of Romance is the healthiest thing that can happen because Romance is always based on illusions. It is even possible to know exactly just how long Romance will last. Romance will last as long as the other person is willing or able to live up to your expectations, or as long as you are able to maintain the illusion that they are, or even can. Here’s another one of those spiritual truths that I promised. If we, meaning you or I, can somehow manage to give up or get rid of our expectations of ourselves and others; if we can cease hoping against hope that someone else will or even can one day live up to or meet those expectations, you and I will live happier, deeper, broader and far, far easier lives than we’ve ever experienced before. This will come up again a little later.
When we get disillusioned, it seems there are only three things we can do. (1) We can give up, break up, and move on. (2) We can resign ourselves to being stuck with this person who is less than we’d hoped for, settling ourselves in for a long life of frustration, denial, and quiet desperation. Amazingly, some people truly believe that this is only what they deserve and I pray this is not you. Or, and this probably includes most of the couples in this room, fortunately, there are people who really want to make a relationship work, and so they move on to the next stage of a pair bonded relationship. Now you might be thinking, “Oh good. He’s going to get to the positive part.” Nope. Sorry. The next stage in long-term paired relationship is misery.
Misery comes on the heels of disillusionment and is characterized by blaming, feeling stuck, having fantasies about running away, and asking questions like; “Have I made a huge mistake?” “Am I with the wrong person?” “Is there a way out of this?” “What was I thinking?” “Is this as good as it will ever get?” I believe I can guarantee that if you are or have been in a paired relationship, you have asked some form of these questions and (don’t kid yourself) so has your partner. Misery is a complicated circumstance but can be simplified by this definition which I borrow from Rev. Roger Khurt. “Misery is the result of not knowing how to deal with significant conflict in a creative and productive way.” (Repeat)
My wife Tammy and I have developed a creative way of dealing with conflict over the years. When there is some tension evident in our relationship, and the tension begins to have a significant effect on how we’re getting along, we sit down together, carefully discuss the situation and figure out exactly what the issue is. Then we figure out which one of my behaviors or ways of being in the world is responsible for the tension, and discuss all the different ways that I’m going to work on correcting my behavior or my way of being in the world to resolve the tension.
“Misery is the result of not knowing how to deal with significant conflict in a creative and productive way.” You can not get away from conflict. Any two people in a relationship of mutuality will have conflict and over time, some of that conflict will be over issues of uncompromising importance. Typical areas of significant conflict include things like money, sex, how to raise children, how to use free-time, how much to eat, drink or smoke, how much to work, or attitudes about religion, morality or politics, to name just a few. This is also an area where we begin to see that these issues are not limited to romantic relationships. You may experience misery with people in your family of origin, your parents, your children, your boss, or even the otherwise wonderful people here in your church.
The trouble is that most of us don’t really know how to deal with conflict in a way both creative and productive. Instead, we tend to do one of three things. This is another lie we come to believe; we think that in any given situation, there are only a few options available to us. It’s not true, there are always an infinite number of options available to us all the time, but see if you recognize yourself in any of these. When conflict occurs we either give in, try to change the other person, or we withdraw, and I will to talk briefly about each one of these.
When we give in, we will successfully avoid the conflict. We will have avoided the conflict, but we will not have resolved the conflict and so in a long-term relationship it will come up again… and again, and again. A therapist might tell you this is part of your “chronic material.” When we give in, a couple of other things happen as well. We begin to lose a little of our self-respect. Worse, we begin to resent the other person because they have gotten their way while our needs have gone unmet. Another outcome of giving in is that the other person begins to lose respect for us as well. They might begin to feel guilty because of the unsatisfying and disrespectful way that they’ve won, and begin to blame and resent us for making them feel that way.
Another popular approach is to try to change the other person. We try this in any number of ways, but the whole idea is based on the mistaken belief that if we can change the other person so that they will agree with us, then our needs will be met in a win – win situation. But most of the ways we go about trying to change the other person are not very attractive. The most common way of trying to change the other person is by attacking them physically, emotionally, or verbally. The goal in attacking someone is to get them to give in order to meet our expectations and needs. It’s important to note that attacks, particularly verbal attacks can come in very subtle forms. Advising, humoring, ridiculing, sarcasm, analyzing, passive aggression, withholding information, even assuring or praising someone when it’s not appropriate or sincere can be a form of attack. Every one of these is a form of put-down or one-upspersonship. The goal is to make the other person feel guilty, unloving, unlovable, uninformed, dependent, selfish, ignorant