- Articulate
- Align expectations
- Assumptions check-in
Balance - includes boundaries, owning your own stuff. Eleanor Roosevelt's quote,
"no one can make you feel inferior without your consent".Mutuality - a circular thing
"Mutuality in relationships is the shared power to affect and the shared vulnerablity to be affected by another person."Zimmerman, Lindberg and Plsek, the following is excerpted from their book:
We call this back-and-forth sharing of power in a relationship mutuality which is a function of our interdependence as human beings. No one person can live or function alone, in isolation. That is the human condition. When we volunteer to meet one another's needs and have ours met reciprocally, we say we are practicing mutuality.
Mutuality in a relationship means that I am affecting and being affected by the other person. Each of us is open to being touched by the other, to letting them have an impact on us--emotionally, physically, intellectually--in every way imaginable. We are mutually vulnerable and mutually responsible for the relationship, for one another, and for ourselves. Mutuality means that I am open to the possibility of hanging, of becoming a different kind of person as a result of their influence, and they are open to the same. Mutuality cannot occur if one partner holds the power all the time in a relationship.
Codependency means not making choices that please yourself. It means compromising yourself for another person. Because codependency has been misunderstood and misapplied, I think sometimes we are afraid to do something for someone else, even when we might want to. One symptom or component of codependency is enabling. Enabling was originally applied to someone who assisted an alcohol or chemically dependent person in satisfying her addiction. Other forms of enabling take place around obsessive behaviors that are harmful to an individual, like needing to be sexual with every woman you meet, like gambling, like overeating or starving. Minimizing the negative effects of such behaviors on a friend or lover--without confronting the behavior itself--is damaging in the long run.
But caring for one another in healthy and mutual ways is not something we should be labeling codependence. It is not about codependency. It is about love and mutuality.
Some power issues in relationships come about because one partner has more experience or knowledge than the other; some exist because society gives certain people more status. White people, Christian people, physically attractive or able-bodied people, for example, are all rewarded in this culture because of traits they did not earn.
Mutuality, in all of these circumstances, only works if both partners are conscious of the issues and are aware of their own strengths and weaknesses. True mutuality requires that each of us function from strength, not weakness.
Living a genuine life means the people in it want to hear each others' perspective. Think of a rose that's budding. A rose, in order to bloom, needs gentle care from things like fertilizer and warm sunshine. In the same way, without the gentle warmth of a curious interest and the nourishment of the courage to be willing to listen, things left unsaid thwart the process of coming into blossom as individuals. Whatever we resist, however, will persist and get stronger.
Being able to address things as they crop up on the path of life is important. That way, you deal with it, let it go and move on in freedom.
