And Not But: Celebrating Contradiction in Relationships

~Nancy Shainberg-Colier was raised in the traditions of the East, primarily Buddhism, and is now most closely connected with the Vedanta/Hindu path, but always learning and seeking. She is also a psychotherapist, writer and Focusing practitioner.  With her husband Frederic and a five year old daughter Juliet, Nancy lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

I met Samir recently at an interfaith gathering and it was there that I first learned of Faith House.  At the ceremony he raised the question (and I am paraphrasing here) of how we could be alive, engage in dialogue as human beings, and not talk about God or meaning of life itself.  This comment resonated deeply within me. Having grown up and lived in New York City for many years, I have felt the great need for a place where people are talking about the real issues of being alive, of having been "given" life.  There is definitely a place in this city for an intergenerational interfaith community that includes the "all" without diluting the weight of the "each."  So too, I share the desire to participate in raising our particularly American consciousness out of its materialistic malaise and into something that includes our whole being and is ultimately more satisfying.  Here is my reflection about relationships between people and the role of contradiction.  This can be applied to relationships between groups or religions as well.

The Problem with Contradiction

Nature abhors a vacuum, or so they say.  Similarly, it seems that human beings abhor contradiction, particularly in the context of intimate relationships. People attempt to package their feelings as positive or negative, believing that contradictory feelings cannot and should not co-exist.  In approaching their relationships, people use the word but to connect their contradictory feelings, as if the positive wipes out the negative and vice versa.  In fact, for a relationship to succeed, and not but must be the approach we take when linking the inconsistent feelings that are at the heart of all relationships.  

All relationships resolve in contradiction. Why then is it so difficult for us to accept contradictory feelings inside ourselves?  First, we are trained to believe that consistency is the basic nature of all things, that there is an answer to all questions, one answer.  Human beings ask the question “Is it good or bad?”  Science asks the question “Is it true or false?”  Religion asks the question “Is it right or wrong?”   We like simple, clean, straightforward answers.  If it’s both simultaneously then we are in for a more complicated consideration, a more unsettling resolution. 

We seek to obliterate internal contradiction because it causes discomfort and pain.  As humans, we are always trying to grasp pleasure and avoid pain. It doesn’t make sense that we can feel both love and hate, appreciation and disappointment, relief and frustration, all at once.  In relationship, when we open to our full experience we must face the truth that all of these contradictory feelings exist in our experience of our partner.  Such an openness of vision means accepting that we are receiving certain joys and being deprived of others.  This can be quite painful and unsettling to live with. 

Celebrating Contradiction

And not but is perhaps the most important concept in relationship.  Contradiction is truth; there is always both positive and negative existing simultaneously.  When we recognize difficulty in our relationship, we must relate to that difficulty as an addition to the positive, as an and.  It is not a but, not something that eliminates the positive. 

When we operate from a place of and, we can stand back and look clearly at the entire landscape of the relationship, make room for the full spectrum of our experience.  From this place of clarity we can make free choices.  By laying out what we are receiving and what we are missing, we can choose if we want to stay in the relationship and/or how we want to stay in it.  We can determine if what we are receiving is that which matters most, and conversely if what we are giving up is acceptable to give up. Being able to allow the whole relationship to exist with all of its contradictions, all its ands, allows us to get to know ourselves, our truth, our priorities.  It helps us determine our “non-negotiables,” those aspects of a relationship or life that we are unwilling to do without. Further, in recognizing the places where we are sacrificing, we can more fully appreciate the places we are receiving.  We generate compassion and appreciation for ourselves when we are able to accept the whole picture that is relationship. It is a compassion borne of  awareness, recognizing the profundity of the choices we are making.  Free to acknowledge and experience our partner’s value in our life, we can now fully appreciate our relationship, which is ultimately what makes it work.

Comments

[Samir]

Thanks Nancy. Here is Rumi's poem that echoes your reflection:

OUT BEYOND IDEAS

Out beyond ideas
of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.

I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down
in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language
- even the phrase "each other" -
do not make any sense.

[Sam]

Thank you for this thought provoking article.