Step 6: Where I Go From Here?
You made it Step Six. How you doin?
In couples and sex therapy, I hear one version of a common story all the time. It usually goes something like this:
“When we first started dating or got married, things were great. We talked all the time, had sex a lot, stayed up late and had fun. But that was the honeymoon phase.”
Yeah. I get it.
But I gotta tell you something. The “honeymoon phase” is a myth. It doesn’t exist. The honeymoon phase is actually a period of active rule negotiation. And what happens is we stop negotiating. Each person evolves and changes, and the dynamic nature of system interactions and rules evolves. Before you know it, we have different people in a different system with wonky rules and things are all hosed up.
This isn’t just in couples and sex therapy. How many people entered the work force where the rule was “take care of your employer and they will take care of you.” How’s that working for you?
How many people signed on the line and served with honor under the promise that the country and VA would be there for them only to discover something very different?
We all know how we feel about these kinds of events: angry, sad, hurt, betrayed, deceived.
Conflict in any of our relationships leads to physical (known as organic) and psychiatric/psychological distress. Just like the body cannot exist without the mind, or emotions and physical experiences cannot exist without the rules that govern all the systems. Conflict is endemic to every system. Chronic physical pain leads to emotional distress in the internal interactive systems of humans. Protracted anxiety levels in environmental systems like marriages and work lead to muscle tension and gastrointestinal problems. And all of this- all of it- is about our relationships and about The Rules.
Whether you’re dating, trying to change your body, developing your career, wanting more and better sex, struggling with school boards, or fighting about money, our rules exude an influence on our relational systems that effect every occupant of the system, including you. It’s no different than having a glitch in the endocrine system like hormonal imbalance wreaking havoc on sleep, energy, sex, cognitive function, body temperature, motivation, and mood. Rule disputes create conflict. This is the essence, the nature, of conflict itself. If you avoid conflict, you never resolve the rule dispute let alone discover the nature and form of the dispute. Shit just degrades, whether it is your body or your bang sessions.
I want to empower people. I want them to learn that it is their rules that are screwed up, not them. When we learn and find the rules that are right for us and our relational partners, everything functions better. It is like having a superpower. Depression, anxiety, trauma, addiction, organic health problems, marital satisfaction- it’s all about The Rules. You don’t have to change you. There is not a damn thing wrong with You. What needs changing is the rules. As the architect, or at least one of them, of your systems, you are positioned to do that very thing. The essence of who you are is just fine. You are not the result of some manufacturer’s defect. What is defective is rules, either ones you have written or ones others wrote for you that you still adhere to even though they are not jiving with your authentic self. Master the rules and you master you.
Where do you go from here?
These articles were designed to provide an introduction. To take the next steps and really get into the meat of things, please feel free to begin The Rules course. In it, you will learn about the Framework. The Rules Framework is the rest of the foundation we need to then move into all kinds of issue areas from marriage to sex to fitness and health to depression, anxiety, and stress. Once equipped with Rules Framework and the tools inside it,, we can move from theory to application across all kinds of issue areas. The content in those places assumes working knowledge of the Framework and this introduction that you just completed.
You will get stuck at times. That’s okay! I am here when you get really stuck so go to my Getting Started page and get yourself a complimentary consult. We can build upon and refine what you’ve been doing on your own.
