Co-Commitment in Relationships:

Taking Responsibility for Conscious Loving

(By Gay Hendricks, Ph.D, and Kathlyn Hendricks, Ph.D., BC-DMT)

Close relationships of any kind require a certain level of awareness that
I have only recently come to understand. I have never been much of a self-help person, but when Conscious Loving was recommended to me by basically the wisest person I have ever met, it had a huge impact on my life. The fact that we create and are responsible for the difficulties in our relationships was difficult to digest at first, but as I read on, I realized that Gay and Kate Hendricks’ approach was not only ground-
breaking, but was changing the way I related to the people I love and also, myself.

Q – Can you tell us a little bit about it and how you developed your particular methodology?

A – We have basically chosen to turn our relationship into a living experiment and exploration to see if it is possible to actually be fully authentic and real, to shift from the culturally pervasive blame game to wonder, to own problem-solving and to use the increased energy of our relationship to expand creativity and contribution. That’s an experiment that continues to this day, because we have no secrets, and everything we share with others is something we practice. We met and immediately launched into what is now a 32-year practice.

Q – In your book, you speak a lot about the “conscious” relationship.
Can you quickly define what makes a conscious relationship versus a co-dependent one?

A – A conscious relationship is one in which people are awake to themselves, their feelings and thoughts, and are open to the flow of love and attention with one another. In a conscious relationship you can be completely yourself and completely connected. In a co-dependent relationship you have two halves trying to become whole: one person who doesn’t love him/herself trying to get the other person to love them anyway. In a conscious relationship, both people know they’re whole in themselves; they know they don’t “need” the other person to complete them. In a conscious relationship, it’s about two people celebrating together, not trying to get something from
the other.

Q – What are some examples of co-dependent behavior versus
conscious behavior?

A – We excerpted our book, Conscious Loving for a few examples of co-dependent behavior. Here, we’ve reframed each co-dependent behavior into a conscious, and more positive one.

Co-dependent: You have difficulty allowing others to feel their feelings. If someone feels bad, you rush in to make it better because you think it’s your fault. You worry about other people’s feelings frequently.

Conscious: You are able to be present and attentive when people around you are feeling their emotions. You encourage them to feel their emotions deeply and to express those feelings openly.

Co-dependent: In spite of your “best efforts” people around you do not change their bad habits.

Conscious: You commit to stop enabling the bad habits of people you care about. Instead, you take effective actions that give people the opportunity to take full responsibility for their own wellbeing.

Co-dependent: You have secrets. There are things you have done or not done that you are hiding from another person.

Conscious: You have no secrets. You reveal rather than conceal. You understand that hiding your feelings causes you to withdraw from intimacy, and you take every opportunity to speak honestly about your feelings.
 
Co-dependent: You do not let yourself feel the full range of your feelings. You are out of touch with one or more core emotions such as anger, fear, or sadness. Anger is a particular problem for you. You find it hard to admit that you’re angry, and you have trouble expressing it to other people.

Conscious: You recognize the body sensations that let you know you’re angry. You communicate about all your feelings in a straightforward, easy manner that others can understand.

Co-dependent: You criticize or get criticized frequently. You have a strong, nagging internal critic that keeps you feeling bad even in moments when you could be feeling good.

Conscious: You experience very little criticism, either from outside or within. Your internal critic is in full retirement, having been replaced by a strong inner appreciator.

Co-dependent: You try to control other people, to get them to feel and be a certain way, and you spend a lot of energy being controlled or avoiding being controlled by others.

Conscious: You are aware of those things you can control and the things you cannot control. You put your attention on things you can change, such as expressing what’s true and keeping your agreements, and you make choices that support those areas you can actually influence.

Co-dependent: In arguments, much energy is spent in trying to find out whose fault it is. Both people struggle to prove that they are right, or to prove the other wrong.

Conscious: When difficulties or differences arise, you shift into wonder and healthy responsibility, asking, “Hmmm… how am I creating this, and what could I do differently to create a better result?”

Co-dependent: In arguments, you find yourself pleading victim or agreeing that you were at fault.

Conscious: You take full responsibility for the events that happen in your relationship. You invite the other person to take full responsibility, too. You understand that a relationship can only take place between two people who are equals, both taking full responsibility for events that occur; anything else is an entanglement, not a relationship.

Co-dependent: You frequently agree to do things you do not want to do, feel bad about it, but say nothing.

Conscious: You consider every agreement before making it, and listen closely to your body wisdom, as well as your mind, as to whether you should make it. You keep the agreements you make and know how to change an agreement that isn’t working.

Q – What are the most important elements of a lasting relationship?

A – Commitment and re-commitment: Lasting relationships use wholehearted commitment as a place to come home to and to
steer the relationship. Commitment locates you on your relationship map so you can move from where you are to where you want to be. Recommitting when you mess up is the key, and recommitting to reveal your true self and your true feelings is the crux of it.

For example, committing to reveal gains real traction when, in the moment of noticing that you’re concealing anger, you take a breath, recommit to revealing, and share the experience of being angry. What doesn’t work is concealing, noticing the concealing, blaming yourself for concealing, feeling like a failure, noticing that your partner conceals too and jumping on the "blame merry-go-round".

Blame to Wonder: When issues or differences arise, lasting relationships cultivate and use the wonder move rather than
the popular blame move. Each person gets genuinely curious
about how s/he is contributing to the issue. It might sound like this: “Hmmm. . . I wonder how I’m creating this?”

Emotional Transparency: People in lasting relationships savor their
inner experiences and communicate them easily to each other. The art
of being present, giving loving attention to what’s going on and describing that in a way that not only matches the feelings and sensations, but also lands for the listeners, turns talking into discovery. Truth changes from a report of what just happened to a
flow of renewed interest in each other. It’s also really sexy.

Appreciation: Partners engaged in lasting relationships understand that the flow of love is most quickly enhanced by the ongoing and multi-faceted practice of appreciating. We appreciate verbally, non-verbally, in song and spontaneous dances, with notes, through special foods, with essays and flowers. We especially enjoy assisting others to expand their appreciation vocabularies and have created menus of appreciation that people can find on our website.

Creativity: A close relationship liberates a huge amount of energy,
and many people waste that energy in conflict and power struggles. Lasting relationships fuel their creativity and co-creativity with the free attention and flow of love that allows them to co-create. Instead of pushing against each other, they join to move powerfully in
chosen directions.

Q – How can a couple recover from infidelity?

A – Allow yourself to feel all the emotions that come up. These are
usually anger, sadness, and fear. That includes feeling all the emotions and sharing those as authentically as possible over time.

Each person should take healthy responsibility for the events that have taken place. Both people need to ask themselves, “Hmmm, why was it inevitable that this situation occurred in my life at this particular time?” Asking a powerful question like that takes you out of thinking of yourself as a victim.

Talk through what happened, listen generously to each other,
and focus on what can be learned. This way, partners can actually create a stronger relationship than before. Blame and withholding
after infidelity, on the other hand, make it very difficult to recover. Partners then can commit to each other to resolve the issue and create a new relationship based on what they really want.

Q – What do you advise singles to do to be ready to find love?

A – We’ve worked with more than 20,000 singles in our seminars and our eCourses. From that experience, two things make the biggest difference for singles wanting to attract genuine love. First, and most importantly, is to love any aspect of yourself you think is unlovable. When you deeply love yourself, you’re more likely to attract someone who values and loves him or herself. If you don’t love, accept, and value yourself, you will attract people who don’t love, accept, and value themselves, either. Second, get clear on your three absolute yes’s and three absolute no’s. These are the qualities and traits that you most value and those behaviors and traits that are deal-breakers for you. Knowing your absolute yes’s and no’s creates a clear doorway for the person you most want to attract.

Q – Why is learning to love yourself important to making a relationship with another person work? How do we even begin to learn how to do that?

A – Something unloved lurks at the base of almost all relationship issues. The more each of us gives loving presence to all of ourselves,
the more available we become to receive and enjoy the flow of love and harmony. An unloved part of ourselves has a tendency to look like it lives over there in the other person and leads to control and power struggles. It’s much easier, more efficient, and more productive to love yourself thoroughly than to try to get others
to change. And we’ve noticed that the more people genuinely love themselves, the more harmony and creativity they generate around them. The simplest exercise we teach in our seminars is something anyone
can benefit from:

Take a moment to think of someone you know you love. Bring that person to mind and feel how you love him or her. Keep focusing on that person until you generate a genuine felt-experience of loving.

Now, turn the love toward yourself. Love yourself just the same way you love that person you were thinking of.

Feel that love toward something you’ve been afraid is unlovable in yourself. Perhaps you feel a deep hurt or harbor an old fear that you’re unlovable. Love each of those things, just as you would love a child who occasionally makes mistakes. All you need to do is love as much as you can from wherever you are.

Gay Hendricks, Ph.D, and Kathlyn Hendricks, Ph.D., BC-DMT founded the Hendricks Institute together. Based in Ojai, California, it is an international learning center that teaches core skills for conscious living and loving. They have worked together for over 30 years, and with over 30,000 people, to assist them in opening to more creativity and love through the power of conscious relationships and whole-person learning. They are authors of many best-selling books on relationships. Their book,Conscious Loving continues to be a huge success and is used as a textbook in many graduate programs.

Hurts That Can Be Trusted

Sharing an Article by Greg Baker

According to “the world,” to be a “Teacher” you have to be certified. Now personally, I think there have been a lot of people in my life who taught me quite a bit. And although a few of those are teachers, most of them aren’t. To some degree though, I think the others who aren’t teachers are still “certifiable” – but, maybe only in the “crazy” category. Then again, I tend to be attracted to people who are a little crazy. I’m often drawn to people who are “out of the box” and who are the free-thinkers. Besides, in Jesus day,
I get the sense that more than a few people thought He was a bit “crazy.” But typically, it was only those who thought that their personal Theology and Religion was flawless and in order. . . Hmmm?

I recall something in the Bible about our need to “remain teachable,” that is, to be open and willing to continue to learn. At times, it would seem
that the greatest threat to our learning anything from anyone, regardless of their position in life, is our pride. It’s kind of like, “Who are YOU to teach me anything???” Well, so be it. Often another factor involved, regarding our willingness to be taught, is whether or not we respect the person who’s willing to share something they’ve learned.

For me, I was always willing to learn about informational things like the “how to do” this or the “why” of that and even the “did you know” kind of stuff. It was easy for others to share things with me about history, nature, technical information, creative techniques and other outward things. I liked to learn that stuff. But still, sometimes we can get stuck. . .

“I want the truth”. . .
“You can’t HANDLE the TRUTH!”  
(Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson – From the movie, A Few Good Men)

Unfortunately, there was also another side of me that, well, was basically “unapproachable” when it came to learning other things. Truly, I feel that’s a dangerous place to be. When it came to the “inner-most parts” – the things that were going on in my mind and heart (especially the “unhealed broken places”), that’s where my “willingness to learn” came
to a halt. There were some things I just didn’t want to talk about and other things that I just didn’t want to hear. Maybe I was going deaf? And for those of you who know me well, we know that’s not far off – at least not
for me.

A True Friend is the kind that will often “watch our back.”
But ideally, that’s more than just protecting us from harm.

It’s also about showing us our “Blind-Spots” –
the areas in which we might fall short or off the mark.
And yet, still being willing to Love and Accept us, just the same.

I think I put up some rather serious walls with certain relationships in my life. It would seem that at some point, I even climbed up onto one of those walls. And who’d have guessed? I eventually wound up playing the part of “Humpty Dumpty” – and we all know what happened to him. . . Maybe, that was just part of his Journey – and mine. I’m guessing that like most
of us, Humpty actually had some friends who might have wanted to warn him about what could happen, should he decide to go up on that wall. Sometimes, it seems that “loftiness” has it’s “price.” I'll bet Humpty did have some friends who cared. Maybe, it was a friend who had already fallen off that wall and knew about how that would feel?

Instruct a wise man and he will be wiser still;
teach a righteous man and he will add to his learning.
(Proverbs 9:9) 

In reality, I’m just not in any position to give ANYONE advice. I can only share what I've experienced and have been learning while on my Healing Journey. By Grace, I have some truly wonderful friends – people who are willing to help me by sharing what they’ve learned. And, they’re also willing to "Share the Truth with me, in Love," regarding what they see in me. Sometimes that hurts – but it’s “a good kind of hurt” because I know they really care and, eventually, I’ve benefited. Maybe another factor involved in having that kind of a friendship with someone is Trust – trusting that they truly care for you and that they have your best interest at heart. One thing I have come to know – we all have “blind spots” – things that we just don’t see about ourselves. And that’s when it’s good to have someone “watching our back.”

So, did you ever consider what it would take to have a REALLY GREAT friendship with someone? Well I have – and I’ve found that a really GREAT friendship is usually going to involve. . . INVESTMENT. When we actually invest (make ourselves available) in other people’s lives, and let them know that we are there for them – whenever they are ready. . . that’s when they will hopefully come to know that we truly care. Following is an article I found which relates to true friendship.

R Butch David

P.S. Here is an AMAZING music-video I found entitled, "The Friend of a Wounded Heart." I'm hoping you'll take the time to watch it and consider the message it brings. And sometimes, God even shows up with "some skin on him" through others who have been through the same hurts that we're going through, and who are willing to be there for us. . . whenever we're ready.

The Wounds of a Friend

An Article by Greg Baker*

Friendship is not a relationship separate from other relationships. Friendship is the height or pinnacle of other relationships. Thus,
a child or parent can become a friend. A spouse can become a friend.
A neighbor or coworker can become a friend.

But with this closeness comes a particular ability – the ability to hurt you more quickly and easily than others. Just check out social forums and websites and you'll quickly realize that it is those closest to us that hurt us the most.

For a true friend, hurting you will come in two categories:

1. The unintentional or the thoughtless wound.

2. The intentional and purposeful wound.

Too many times we allow the unintentional and thoughtless wound to affect us with more than we should. People say things that hurt us without intending to. People do things that hurt us thoughtlessly. We take these injuries and nurse them, bearing an emotional or mental grudge. But since the injury was thoughtless or unintentional, the other person may be unaware of your pain. As a result, you may see them as callous and cold. Many friendships end up in disaster over this.

Good communication will solve most of these issues. If you will be open and talk about the injury or pain, the other person, if they are a true friend, will help you to heal.

But don't let a thoughtless or unintentional wound consume you. Please, don't make it into a cancer that will poison your entire relationship.

The other type of wound is the intentional and purposeful one. This is where a friend will hurt you in an effort to help you in some manner.
If you have a friend like this, count your blessings.

The Bible says: Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses. (Proverbs 27:6)

A friend is faithful to you at times when they have to hurt you. A true friend won't agree with you in all your decisions. Sometimes, we think a friend ought to support us in everything. But if what you want to do is just flat out stupid, a true friend won't support it! Thank God that there is someone in your life willing to hurt you in your own best interests.

Even if you disagree, you need to realize that having such a friend is a valuable asset. You never want to let go of someone like that! Most people expect a friend to be on their side in every situation. This is just not true. When our side is wrong, when our side is misguided, we need someone who will point out the mistakes and fallacies in our choices, our decisions, and our thinking.

I dare say, if everyone around you has always supported every decision you made, you are either wise beyond imagination, or you've blundered from one disaster to another. I thank God for the friends in my life that have stood in my way when I was headed towards disaster. Thank God for the friends who have hurt me.

* Greg S. Baker is a Pastor, Counselor, and Author specializing in
building and strengthening relationships. Please visit our website at:
fitlyspoken.org