Last month, I took my nephew out to the Long Beach Grand Prix. At some point in our many conversations it came down to sex and romance. I relayed something of the following.
Q: What's the best way to work out relationship problems?
A:I had a system that worked for me and helped me come to a quick resolutions on my side of the equation. I know the answer is 'talk' but everybody knows that. What everybody doesn't quite figure out is how much to let the other person's happiness affect your judgment.
So there are two parts of the system. The first part is the hardest, until you can admit it. The first part is the Power Question. You use this part to know what you can do about it, whatever it is. And I will phrase it as a guy.
1. Who has the power in this relationship? {Me, Her, Tie, Somebody Else}
That frames everything. Once you work that out and decide that you can live with the relationship in that context, then you should have an idea what happens if you disagree in the Elevator of Commitment.
The second part of the system is the Commitment Elevator. Your hierarchy may vary. You use this to determine how much you really care. Note that where you are on this elevator changes, as does which room you want to chill out in when you reach that level.
1. Do I like her?
2. Do I want to date her?
3. Do I want to kiss her?
4. Do I want to have sex with her?
5. Do I want to live with her?
6. Do I want to marry her?
7. Do I want to have kids with her?
That was my elevator. Most of the time I was on the fourth floor with very few times wanting to go to the fifth. Obviously the higher you go, the more painful the fall if you want to jump out.
Now the whole point of this system is for you to use it with her and make it clear to you both. Something like: "I'm at level three in this relationship and I'm happy with it being here for a month. I want to get to level four, but you have the power in this relationship." Now when you both can recognize the truth of that statement, you can deal with the issue. It helps determine if the issue is with you, or her personally or if it's about the way the relationship is being managed. Two completely different classes of problems.
This is not my whole system, but when conflict arose, this was the first place I started.
The Limitation Rule
The second context of this reflects a rule that I came up with a year that I came up with the Elevator ruleset. It had to do with me recognizing several patterns in my relationships up to the point at which I felt like I needed more rules and structure in my decisions with women.
The context was pretty simple. I moved from LA to NYC and realized that I had no known pool of social accomplices. I had to completely relearn what sorts of folks I would meet in what sorts of places - from scratch. In LA I could rattle off three dozen bars, clubs etc where I knew exactly what kind of crowd to expect. Secondly, I had every intent of getting married at age 33 and having kids at age 35. So my rule was to conserve time and effort.
Don’t take the elevator to level 3 unless you’re convinced you can take it to level 6.
So that cut down on the volume and made me deal with a different kind of loneliness. Whereas before I might have blamed the world for my loneliness, I now recognized how I was just shadowboxing with loneliness with a set of shortsighted affairs. Because I could. I liked the boxing metaphor, so the more colloquial version of the rule was. Don’t get in the ring if you’re not going to knock it out. Sexual pun intended.
The Satisfaction Rule
Two years after I implemented the Limitation Rule, I married my wife of 28 years. Well, 28 years as of today. But I still knew I had to get beyond the Seven Year Itch. I cannot say that this was me being prescient because for a long time people would ask me “What is the secret of a successful marriage?” and our answer would be the joke “Separate bathrooms”. First World Solution, which actually I still believe is useful. But the basis of the Satisfaction Rule was quite hard won.
The only way that the Satisfaction Rule works is that you are more committed to the covenant of marriage than you are to your own self-interest. You basically have to be convinced that no matter what (within reason) you are better off as a married person than you are as an unmarried person. So there are two parts to this heuristic.
A. List the top three things you want in your mate. If you only get one, get off the elevator. If you get two, then two out of three ain’t bad. If you get three, check yourself before you wreck yourself.
B. (How to check yourself).
As well as you know this person, visualize them doing the very worst thing you can imagine them capable of doing. Would you then say marrying them would still be worth it? If the answer is no, don’t get married. You can’t handle the truth.
If you and your affianced pass the Satisfaction Rule, then you can have satisfaction in marriage. And believe me, there’s a whole lot of icing that can top a satisfying cake.
The Corollaries
Never joke about divorce. Just don’t normalize the idea that you could handle it without breaking your entire life. On the other hand, if you didn’t realize they were capable of felonious assault, it’s still your fault.
If you feel you have to apologize to your ex-whatevers before you get married, you’re not ready.
If you feel you have to have a super fantastic edgy batchelor(-ette) party, uh… you’re immature. Maybe you should have added a kinky mezzanine to your elevator in the first place.
Recognize with solemnity how ridiculously sensitive you have been to the opinions & tastes of others in order to cure your loneliness.
Ignore other married people’s journeys, trials and tribulations. That’s for when you’re done raising your kids and you’re ready to be grandparents. Don’t make your living room into a rehab.
The Final Rule
This is one that I adopted relatively soon, maybe four years in and before I started talking about the Gay Banana Split. (For another day). “There is Marriage and there is Everything Else. Everything else doesn’t count.”
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Actually I can’t end on this matter without discussing the Gay Banana Split, and I just decided that I don’t want to rehash the matter of commitment elsewhere. This essay is about commitment. It’s about the covenant between two who crave their intimacy.
The Gay Banana Split is the way I approached the matter of Gay Marriage. I basically reasoned that straight couples wanted something and the homosexual couples wanted something else. I say in retrospect that a clumsy compromise has been reached without foundational clarity. Essentially, one side wanted some ice cream, cherries and whipped cream and the other side wanted the banana, caramel & chocolate syrup.
Both sides could do without the nuts and both sides needed a sturdy container. Enough with the analogy.
The idea that homosexual couples would use the term ‘marriage’ means that they required, aside from various benefits many decided to call ‘rights’, a public acknowledgment of the depth of their mutual commitment. Merely calling it ‘civil union’ reduced the resonance of the sentiment in the same way a Las Vegas wedding or a shotgun wedding would. This was something any DOMA activist should have immediately recognized and zoomed in on. That’s what ‘sanctity of marriage’ means. But activists gonna activist. So it became a culture war that had to be legislated, demonstrating the inevitability of the escalation of the country’s vulnerability to the authoritarian impulse. There are certainly a million Christian parishes that could have declared themselves or had themselves declared as charitable in this regard, but that didn’t happen. I think the Gay Banana Split happened, neither side got the entire confection and most remember little else but fights and headaches.
So yes, there is Marriage and there is everything else and everything else doesn’t count. But there are also approximations and attempts at perfection which are along the same vector of commitment - to the mutual covenant of love, respect and care. To make this commitment public and to bind legal and financial obligations to its dissolution, is materially in the interest of the state and the individuals concerned. Common law. That’s one of my serious interpretations of the state interest in domestic tranquility. Nevertheless it is a burden that two alone can bear and sanctify on their own. Then it’s nobody’s business if they do, as it has been throughout human history. Love finds a way.
Today I am not talking about children, but clearly that’s the top floor.
Thank you for another thought-provoking post. There are many nuggets in here. At some point, I may share with my high school son.
Loneliness mitigation was an underlying theme to the piece. If someone does not feel lonely and they are single, do they need a relationship?
I think your insight about the power in a relationship is critical. Can power be shared?
Good post, Sir. Very fortunate nephew! Yes, loneliness, perhaps the biggest problem on the planet, is the driving factor. (I have rarely heard the word *heuristics* — translation: trial and error, discovery, a finding — since divinity school.) So, regarding the power question, let’s travel back to the Garden of Eden for a brief observation: “man dominates — woman manipulates”. Yet they can become “one flesh” in a power-sharing arrangement, if we are interested in pleasing and enjoying each other; and sharing space, beyond mere sensations. (Wife and I, no kids, are still married and living together as best of friends, after 45 years.)
I’m presently reading David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of John Adams, who more than anybody else (including Jefferson and Washington, and countless fallen warriors, seems to me to have given us this republic). He and his wife were best of friends during years of separation due to Independence, Revolution, and Diplomacy-with-France. Yet their marriage survived due to *friendship*. (My wife, our entertainment director, tells me that Paul Giamatti plays Adams in a PBS series which we will now begin watching.).
Perhaps this above-mentioned word is a secret floor on your metaphorical elevator? Getting off at this floor, after the manner of Socrates, rhetorically, I might ask: “What is friendship?” (Ref: John 15:12-15) Note for nephew: Friendship is not transactional in a marketplace: “What can I get for what I’ve got”?! Better question: “What am I bringing to the party?” OR, “What is love?"
~eric.
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