The Velvet Rage (24 page)

Ultimately, I've come to believe that in each moment, we're all doing the best that we can. When I see life through this lens, I can allow others the space to be themselves, even when I've judged their behavior as inadequate or downright hurtful. When I challenge the belief that others are driven by ill intentions, and instead hold the dialectic that “he is doing the best that he can do,” it lessens my anger and makes the mistakes of others more tolerable. When I walk through the world expecting others to be perfect, I am setting myself up for a miserable existence—for no one, including myself, comes close to perfect. Give the same level of forgiveness to others that you'd like to receive in return. If you do, you'll lessen your own distress immeasurably and increase your experience of joy.

Skill
: Whenever you encounter a problem in a relationship, consider and verbalize your responsibility first before focusing on the perceived error of the other.

Background
: It's an old habit from the days of shame, and it goes something like this: never admit a mistake unless you absolutely have to. When shame was charging at the door, even cracking it the slightest felt dangerous, as if the whole thing would come barreling down upon you. To admit that you were wrong brought up feelings of shame that could not be tolerated.

Now, in stage three, it's important to recognize this old habit that is based in shame. Whenever there is a problem, the first reaction is to blame someone else rather than take responsibility for your part of the problem. This is a tough habit to break and takes a great deal of practice to do so successfully.

Authentic living means that you take responsibility for your own actions. When those actions create problems, you can't escape by denying your responsibility. Owning up to your part
before
criticizing someone else will improve your relationships and strengthen your own self-esteem.

One of the issues that very often arises among gay male couples is the inability of either man to take responsibility for what is happening in the relationship. Each has his own story, and they sometimes become fortified in their positions, refusing to budge. This can create a disastrous impasse for the relationship.

Ray and Gordon came in for couples therapy. Each was clearly angry at the other, and both were wondering aloud if their relationship should be ended. After a few sessions, it became clear that the root of conflict was that Ray felt that Gordon didn't do much around the house, never prepared dinner, and was always working;
and that Gordon felt that Ray didn't appreciate all the benefits they both enjoyed because of Gordon's high-paying job. Neither Ray nor Gordon was willing to admit any personal responsibility for their problems, and both were tenaciously determined to blame the other. At times, it seemed as if the therapy sessions were more about each man trying to win the therapist over to his side of the story rather than owning any part of the problem.

A quite unexpected shift occurred after several months of stalemate. At that session, Gordon started off by saying that he had thought a great deal about it and realized that he needed to improve his involvement in the relationship and reduce some of his traveling for business. It was as if a dam broke. Within no time, Ray was owning up to his persistent nagging of Gordon. From that point forward, the therapy made excellent strides and the two men were able to significantly improve their relationship.

On the surface it may seem overly simplistic, but it isn't. If you, as Gordon did, will own your responsibility in a conflict, it creates a safe place for the other person to own their responsibility. You don't own anything that isn't yours, but simply take responsibility for what may have been your contribution to the problem.

The lesson of taking responsibility first before placing blame would have eliminated a great deal of distress for Gordon and Ray. Sure, they would have still had their differences and occasional arguments, but the tone of their relationship would have been far more loving and supportive.

This lesson works wonders not just in intimate relationships but in all kinds of relationships. Take responsibility for your actions and other people may be angry at first, but in the long run they will respect and trust you. Whenever you are tempted to blame someone else, learn to pause and first ask yourself, “What
have I done to create this problem?” This will allow you to eliminate a great many conflicts in your life.

The essence of living with shame is in not owning your shortcomings and weaknesses. The only way to continue the distress of shame is to minimize the experience of shame. Refusing to admit to personal shortcomings is one way in which gay men often learn to minimize the distress of shame. By owning your own behavior, you not only live authentically but reduce the distress of shame. After all, once you own the injury, you realize that there really isn't any shame in it at all.

Skill
: Allow only those people who are trustworthy into your inner circle of intimacy. Too quickly trusting someone who hasn't yet proved his or her trustworthiness is highly risky. This skill is about being slow and selective in bringing other people into a close level of intimacy.

Background
: We all are susceptible to a contagion effect when it comes to other people. No matter how strong-minded we may be, we are vulnerable to the ideas and judgments of those people with whom we maintain close relationships. Because of this contagion effect, it is in your best interest to surround yourself with people who share your values and who inspire you to grow in life and reach further than you might otherwise.

It's easy to find yourself surrounded by gay men you enjoy but who are also judgmental and not necessarily supportive of authenticity. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but a steady diet of judgment, even when couched in humor, inevitably feeds the judgmental tendency in all of us. Keep those friends at
arm's length and refuse to allow them a seat in the inner circle of your heart. After all, anyone who is judgmental of others will eventually be judgmental of you, despite the narcissistic belief that “I'm different and he'd never do that to me.” A person who is judgmental, inauthentic, and unforgiving rarely discriminates.

Instead, deliberately seek out those friends who aspire to be better men and who are openly willing to own their own failures as well as successes. These are the men who will feed and inspire the highest part of you, and together, you will grow into the men you desire to be.

When John found himself single after a seven-year relationship with a successful public relations executive, he realized that if he wanted to change his life focus away from the materialism that colored his previous relationship, he would also have to change his circle of friends. After a year of attending local meditation groups, exercise classes, and volunteering at a hotline for gay youth, John had cultivated a new set of friends who were also interested in living authentically. As he looked back at those previous years, he noted, “I never realized how strong of an influence my ex and all our friends had over me. Having friends who walk a similar path makes all the difference.”

In life, you will meet all types of people—many of whom are the antithesis of who you want to become. The problem isn't that these people exist, or even that you have met them. The issue is that you don't have to give them your number. Knowing who to let in and who to gently keep at a distance is an immensely important and necessary skill for positive growth. Surround yourself with only those people who share your values and whose behavior is consistent with the type of man you want to be, and gently let go of those friendships that aren't.

Skill
: In a relationship, seek to validate what you perceive is valid in another person. Let him or her know what you respect in his behavior. Never give compliments that aren't true or are insincere, for we all have a sophisticated radar for detecting when someone is patronizing us and when they are sincere.

Background
: An important skill in maintaining any relationship is learning to validate the other person. In fact, validation is what makes a good relationship mutually satisfying.

The lesson in validation is that you always validate the valid and never the invalid. What this means is you acknowledge or praise only those things that are good and appropriate but never those things that are not. An easy pitfall to fall into is to be overly validating in a relationship, which is likely to be perceived as patronizing by the other person.

Maintaining authenticity in relationships requires that you are always on the lookout for what is valid in the other person. For example, if your lover comes home and rants about how badly he was treated at work, but you sense that he may be deserving of some of this distress, you can validate him by not agreeing that he was wronged but by agreeing that it is stressful to be in such a situation. In this case, you would have validated what you believed was valid.

Why validating the valid is important to authenticity is because gay men who enter stage three sometimes take the path of trying to be overly accepting and supportive of the people around them. At the time, this may feel like a good strategy for building solid, emotionally connected relationships. Unfortunately, it is a strategy that most often backfires. Other people are suspicious of someone who is too validating, and they eventually begin discounting anything that person validates.

While authenticity involves such things as adopting a nonjudgmental stance and no longer seeing others as mere sexual objects, it does not mean total and complete acceptance of everyone you meet. The most authentic person learns to find what is true and honest in another person, call that out, and support it.

Skill
: You are responsible for your feelings and only your feelings (not anyone else's). Take responsibility for your feelings without pushing them off onto others (i.e., “I feel unattractive.” vs. “You make me feel unattractive.”)

Background
: While it may not be apparent on the surface, this skill strikes at one of the core ways in which shame has shaped us as gay men. Because so many of us learned to live our lives according to the expectations of others (rather than following our own dreams), we became experts at holding other people responsible for our feelings. As the years progressed and you came out of the closet, this troubling habit of abandoning yourself, accepting other people's feelings as more valid, and consequently holding other people responsible for how you feel continued. The truth is that your feelings, values, and dreams are just as valid as anyone else's. Learning to assert and own your feelings, even when you perceive that others may not accept or approve of them, is a critical turning point in overcoming the ill effects of toxic shame.

The skill of “owning your side of the street” is all about knowing what you feel, expressing those feelings honestly, and taking responsibility for your feelings without blaming others. Other people can have a strong influence on you, but ultimately you are
in control of how you feel. This is one of the great insights that psychotherapy has to offer—simply, you are not a victim to your feelings. You are in control of how you feel.

Steve complained often about how his partner made him feel “shut down” and “small.” Steve had a good job running a small bed and breakfast in San Francisco, and his boyfriend Peter was a highly successful film producer. The couple had a whirlwind romance after first meeting, and everything seemed to work perfectly between them until they had been together for about a year. That's when Steve started to feel that he was somehow “less than” Peter. Over a year of therapy, it became apparent Steve had a history of feeling inferior to the men he dated that stemmed all the way back to always feeling as if he never measured up to his overachieving brother in his parents' eyes. As Steve began to embrace the reality that his feelings of inferiority were
his feelings
and not the responsibility of Peter, he quite naturally began to feel better about his relationship with Peter.

Skill
: When experiencing conflict in a relationship, express your feelings to the person with whom you have the conflict rather than talking about the conflict with other people.

Background
: Werner Erhardt, the enigmatic and controversial founder of EST (a self-help seminar that swept the world in the 1970s), was famous for asking this question: “When you have a conflict with someone, who is the first person with whom you discuss this?” Of course, reason tells you that you would likely discuss it with the person with whom you have the conflict. Experience, for most of us, says something quite different.

Many gay men have a habit of talking about conflicts with everyone around them
except
the person with whom they have the conflict. Why is this?

I believe one of the roots of this troubling habit can be found in the deeply held belief that we can't trust our own experience to be valid. Therefore, when we find ourselves in conflict, we go about seeking the validation of other people to help bolster our own position. By the time we actually get around to confronting the person with whom we have the conflict, we have involved several other people, asking them to support our side, and inevitably making the conflict worse.

The habit of involving other people in our relationship conflicts can be truly devastating, especially when the conflict involves a romantic relationship. We mobilize our friends and polarize their feelings about the relationship, so that they believe we have been unduly mistreated and our partner is the one to blame. This puts into motion a troubling scenario where friends of one person in a couple develop strong negative opinions about the other person. The tension and conflict that then develop around the couple have ended more than a few gay male relationships.