On Marriage...Fifty-Two Years of Being in the Dojo Together; One Thing I Learned that Rattled My Head - Made Me a Little More Humble, a Bit Wiser, Kinder, Tougher, and More Relationship Savvy

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.  Anaïs Nin

I wrote most of this blog in the past, but wanted to re-visit it because first, John and I have just celebrated an anniversary, fifty two years of marriage. It’s a big marker for us.  We lived through several renditions of ourselves along side of each other.

Second, because relationships, both struggles and successes are the basis of most all our human problems as well as the primary route to flourishing.  Very simply, we must learn to live together to the best of our ability. Why? So that we don’t destroy ourselves and better still…have rewarding lives. Here goes.

About forty years ago I had a quick conversation with a friend.  He had just finished conducting a committee meeting.  I asked him how it went.  “Ok.  Reasonable people can usually come to agreement when the facts are laid out,” he said.

That summation of human being interactions stunned me.  My face, no doubt, showed my bafflement. 

“Aren’t you married?” I asked incredulously. We both laughed.

We see the world differently. The facts I choose aren't the ones you choose.  The way we interpret the facts often does not lead to agreement either.   That seems to be the case even for those of us who consider ourselves rather reasonable.

Why don't reasonable people see the world the same way? Very simple answer. Because we don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are.  We don’t see with our eyes, but rather with our autobiography.

Many years ago, let’s say 48 or so, we were taking a walk around the shore of Lake Michigan.  Afterwards we reflected on our walk.

June: “That couple we passed, must have been honeymooning.”

John: “What couple?”

June: “The couple we passed at least 3 times, the ones holding hands, the ones looking lovingly into each other’s eyes.”

At this point, I’m seriously asking myself some questions about my spouse.

John: “Oh, I was probably looking at the ship.”

June: “What ship?”

John: “June a ship is a big thing.  There was a huge ship docked up at the harbor, that’s what I was observing.”

Usually when I share this story which I have many time, people laugh. Laughter often means confirmation. You know of what I speak. If you have been in a relationship, certainly you must have realized at some point that we inhabit different worlds to some degree.  It can be extremely unsettling.

It helps to know the reason. We humans are not equipped to take in the billions of bits of data coming at us.  This means we must make choices about what we attend to. How do we make those choices? Often fairly unconsciously if we are not intentional.

Our attention is pulled and the world is sifted by all sorts of things not just novelty, but also things like our gender, our age, our background, our fears, longings, aching wounds, interests, education, and predilections. Then, we take these bits we have noticed and we try to make sense of them using again those same things - our gender, our age, our background, our fears, longings, aching wounds, education, and interests.

This way our brain attends to the world and this way our brain makes sense of things - though our autobiography, can lead to divergence obviously. No one has identical autobiographies. It's called schema theory in academia. Usually, we sail along through life assuming we are all seeing the same things and interpreting them the same way... until we clearly don’t. For example...

John: “Let’s go out to dinner.”

June: “Wonderful.”

We end up eating out at Rusty's.  I have on my red high heels and my face is probably close to the same color. Different schemas, different autobiographies. We don't usually laugh with joy and delight and say, "Oh I had a different idea in mind when you asked me out to dinner." Instead, we may often jump to some not so generous thoughts about our partners. "How could they be so___?"

One reason I know about schema theory is that years ago, I taught 8th grade.  I was shocked at how differently students interpreted the texts we read.  The passage might say something about a young woman wearing her grandmother’s wedding dress.  One student might imagine how angry the young woman must feel to be forced to wear her grandmother’s hand-me-downs.  Another student might say how happy the young woman must feel to be able to wear her grandmother’s wedding gown.

Those sorts of divergent interpretations of the same text perplexed me enough to get a master’s degree which heavily leaned toward understanding schema theory. We do see a different world and we interpret what we see differently. Worst of all, we often intensely hold that we’re the ones who see rightly and everyone else is an idiot.

Well, thank God for my encounter with schema theory.  Otherwise, John and I could have had some serious issues in our relationship.  We have both come to accept that we don’t see the world and interpret the world the same. That doesn’t automatically make either of us wrong or bad. In fact, it can be quite helpful - enriching our view, once we get past the headache, sometimes the trauma. (It really can feel earth-shattering to have a different view from another, particularly a loved one; I couldn't sleep for several nights in our early dating relationship after we heatedly shared our different perspectives about issues were were passionate about.)

When I write a blog or article, I ask John to look at it. Sometimes he shakes his head.  “I don’t get it.” I’m hurt and angry, but eventually I can move to curiosity and try to see what he’s seeing, what he’s thinking. I get tougher, not so easily unsettled by someone who sees the world differently.

 We both think it allows us to “see more of the elephant” (referring to the story of four blind men who each examine a different part of an elephant and come to different, passionately held, conclusions about the nature of an elephant... the story seems to be known on every continent. It calls us to be intellectually humble. I have mentioned it many times) and be more effective.

Knowledge of schema theory and hanging out with John has helped me be more aware of the broad strokes of the autobiography I carry around which influences how I see and think about things. White woman born and raised in East Tennessee, a place with drinking fountains and bathrooms and swimming pools for coloreds and different ones for whites. Then college and the army, marriage, kids.  That’s part of my lens. I'm working on it, but it's hard to step outside myself and observe the lens through which I look.

I’m amazed at people who get what’s going on with us humans without any academic schooling around schema theory. People like Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr understood on some level that we come at the world carrying our autobiography – that understanding gave him grace, compassion, and effectiveness in the world.  For example In 1963 King was attacked by a white man in Birmingham, Alabama. The church where King was speaking erupted, there were cries of “Kill the bastard!” But then King’s voice boomed through the room.

“Stop! What do you want to do with this man. Kill him? Beat him? Do unto him what he has done unto us?  That isn’t our task.  Our task is to step into his shoes. To ask ourselves, ‘What would we be like if we were raised since we could walk that the Negro was a thing?’  Where would we be now if everyone we knew – our parents and ministers and teachers – taught us it was okay to hate?....Our task is to understand this man better than he understands himself, to see the hatred in his eyes and refuse to mirror it ourselves, to feel his fear and glimpse his goodness, and to show him what it means to be a human being welcomed into the beloved community that holds us all together.” (Re-told by Frank Rogers, Jr in Practicing Compassion.)

That story astounds me and inspires me beyond my marriage and family and friend relationships because here’s the problem today.

According to religion research, in 1960, 4% of Republicans and 4% of Democrats thought they’d be pretty unhappy if their child married a member of the other political party.  In 2018, 35% of Republicans and 45% of Democrats feel that way.  (During the same period, attitudes toward inter-racial marriage showed the opposite trend, with people of both parties becoming more comfortable with it.)

It’s not about disagreement anymore. Now it’s about hatred of those who think differently. It's not a nice thing to have anymore - this understanding that others have different perspectives based on the lives they have led, the experiences they have had. Our inability to understand each other and even appreciate each other can cause hatred and violence. AND we miss a wonderful opportunity to have strong, prosperous, flourishing relationships. Let's change that.

We can flourish together but it takes some work. I heard one man, a martial artist, say, "Don't get married. Just don't do it. Not unless you are willing to go into the dojo together." A dojo is place where judo and other martial arts are practiced in an effort to immerse yourself in experiential learning. Then the guy finishes up by saying something like, "But, if you are willing to do it, to commit to seriously learning from each other, you will have someone who is your best friend and has your back for life." Let's commit to getting into a serious place of learning from each other. Let's have each others' backs and create incredible places to live and thrive.

How might we journey together to The Good life through strong relationships by understanding that we all see with our autobiography and developing the desire and ability to see others' perspectives?

 Related to this is how we can be more flexible in our thinking which often comes from being able to see "the big picture." But what helps us see the big picture? Here's some research that was new to me, just released online in late September by Cambridge University Press from Psychological Medicine. Endogenous opioids help us see the big picture. How do we activate those opioids in our own bodies? Well, some of the ways are exercise, eating, sex, music, and doing something challenging like finishing a crossword puzzle.

You might find it interesting how the researchers found out that endogenous opioids help us see the big picture. They used "Navon figures" like:

navon figure

The general idea if you consistently see the five or the big S first, then your mind is tending toward big picture thinking; if you see the number 8 first, you are focusing on details. Of course, there are both, so it's a matter of what you see first - tested over many trials. People's attention only broadened after the "reward" of opioids. When people were given naltrexone which blocks opioid receptors, they saw the 8s first...repeatedly. That might be helpful to think about when we want to see a bigger part of the elephant. Go exercise or do a crossword puzzle, or listen to music, or eat. Who knows? Could be an interesting experiment.

Now I hope this doesn't throw people off, but one of the poems that rattled my brain in a good way and led to greater compassion and wider bandwidth for experiencing the whole world is this one "Call Me By My True Names."

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow

because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second

to be a bud on a spring branch,

to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,

learning to sing in my new nest,

to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,

to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,

in order to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and

death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,

and I am the bird which, when spring comes,

arrives in time to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,

and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,

feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,

my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,

and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,

who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,

and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands,

and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my people,

dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life.

My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,

so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,

so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,

so I can wake up,

and so the door of my heart can be left open,

the door of compassion. (I would add, wisdom.)

Now here is a follow up to the power of placebo and beliefs to affect just about everything you can think of. I think this link will take you there. It's a discussion with Alia Crum and Scott Barry Kaufman. Crum was mentored by Ellen Langer who had already found some amazing results with how people age and their mindset.