Curiosity: Inviting Connection

Curiosity

Contempt is an open grave waiting to devour our most valued and intimate relationships. Allowing contempt to take hold of our relationships in and through defensiveness, criticism and stonewalling (rounding out John Gottman's Four Horseman of the Apocalypse), is the death knell for most any connection. These movements poison the wells of our souls, contaminating and corrupting the bonds and ties of our most sacred connections.

Even though contempt can be wildly destructive, it's malicious presence can be checked through the intentional cultivation of compassion which can restore the affectionate bonds of intimacy and connection that are so critical to our human experience.  But compassion alone can, at times, feel patronizing and distancing. It can feel like, "Oh you poor thing, that is so hard!" And if the empathy stops there, our 'compassionate' friend stops short of stepping into our journey with us. Now we feel the shame of having our experience exposed, without a willing party to journey with us.

Enter Curiosity

What is curiosity? For our purposes, curiosity is a posture of openness and genuine interest in and for the inner workings, experience, and feelings of another in the navigation of their story. When coupled with compassion, curiosity invites a real and authentic exploration of our own and another's experience. It is an invitation to co-travel through each other's story with the specific intention of joining and understanding each other's journey. 

A word of caution here; curiosity without compassion will almost certainly diminish one's experience of being cared for; this tends to foster a feeling of clinical sterility, rather than connection. Therefore, to develop and foster a real and lasting bond, ideally, all participants in a relationship must encourage both compassion and curiosity with the aim of deeper intimacy.

When we first meet each other, especially in the romantic context, the compassionate presence of curiosity is palpable. There is intense interest in the inner life of the prospective friend or partner. As we discover more and more about each other, we are surprised by our commonality, intrigued by our differences and eager to learn and understand more of who this person is, and who we are with them. That's right, we discover more of ourselves as we come to know someone else! The most profound experience of ourselves will almost always be encountered in the face of another. 

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

Too often as a relationship grows, familiarity causes our curiosity to fade, replacing it with a contempt-like orientation that a friend or partner will always respond in the same way and will never grow or change. Unfortunately, this often leads to intractable patterns of dysfunction that become self-perpetuating. In the absence of curiosity, our compassion becomes a self-serving way to distance ourselves from our companion. Subsequently, life begins to drain from the relationship, leaving it brittle and inflexible.

The Rescue of curiosity

There is no doubt that relationships in your life have drifted into this space. These spaces feel unsafe, hostile and cold. At this point, it is useful to turn the orientation of curiosity in on your own heart and mind: When did my relationship start to cool? What was going on in my life? What were the thoughts I entertained regarding my friend or partner? What was I looking for from them? What did I need?

If you're certain you know how your friend or partner would respond to an olive-branch, it is useful to ask,  "When did my curiosity fade?" If you have ceased to wonder what your partner or friend was thinking or feeling, when and why did that happen? 

The other day I was out talking to a friend when I realized that I was thirty minutes late and I had a fifteen-minute drive to get home. I was convinced that my wife was going to be angry because I was late (again). I got in my car and I hesitated, wanting to call to let her know I was on my way home and that I was sorry for being late. But I realized that my internal posture was one of bracing for conflict (a pattern that I've experienced in other relationships). I decided to relax take a deep breath, and let her know open-handedly that I was on my way home and that I was sorry for being late. I was genuinely curious about how she would respond, and it turned out that she was thankful for the time.  She was able to take that space and engage in something restorative for her. 

Letting go of my assumptions created room for restoration and connection that would have otherwise been suffocated by judgemental expectation. What would have almost certainly been a conflict was turned into a genuine gift for both my wife and I because of an open and compassionate posture of curiosity.

Invitation to Connection

Contempt is a poison for the soul. Compassion and curiosity, when joined together, are the antidote and revitalizing agent for growth and development in the cultivation of intimacy and connection. When you experience compassionate curiosity, you feel permission for your heart to show up, to be present. When invited in the service of curiosity, the relational space discovered is found to be surprisingly spacious and safe for your heart.  

Compassion: Turning Toward Connection

Compassion: Turning Toward Connection

If contempt is intimacy's insidious killer, compassion is the first step to its restoration. But what is compassion? What does it look like in the context of our intimate spaces? Fundamentally compassion is the capacity to show kindness and empathy while believing the best about the other’s internal world. 

Most of us would like to believe that we have a kind and empathetic view of the world. But when we start to look with some level of granularity at our story, we will begin to realize that our lives are filled with judgment and vitriol. Interestingly enough, our indictments are not exclusively others directed; we are as quick to cast aspersions on ourselves as we are on others. To escape the clutches of contempt, we must orient with compassion toward ourselves, toward our inner world; so that we can be free to offer kindness to others. 

Self-Directed Compassion

"I shouldn't need a break! There are tons of people who have it worse than I do." I have heard some variation of this idea scores, if not hundreds, of times. Nearly any time you "should" on yourself (which by the way is hilarious when you say it out loud), you are moving away from compassion. It is a statement of condemnation that suggests you're not good enough, that you need to be more than you are. 

When life is challenging, contempt and judgment would say that we should get over it, move on, and overcome. There is a space to put aside discomfort and focus on the task at hand, but this is hardly a solution to dealing with difficult seasons in life. Our emotions offer us data to understand those parts of life that are not empirical; we ignore them at our peril. 

Compassion in this context means slowing down and taking seriously the experienced realities of our emotions and what they are saying. Looking at our week, season, or phase of life, we may realize that we've been going non-stop for an extended period; something humans are not designed to do. We may be trying to sit in the tension of some complicated relationships or significant demands at work; perhaps we are still dealing with the death of a close friend or family member. All of these things will deplete our reserves and limit our capacity for normal functioning.

Compassion means acknowledging that we are stretched thin, trying to live beyond our limits and capabilities. And in light of this reality, giving ourselves the grace to attend to only those things that genuinely require our attention right now. It could mean that we stay home Sunday from church to rest, recuperate and restore. It could mean taking a long shower, giving yourself permission to be sad and cry, or relax and let go of your stress. Whatever, compassion looks like in your life it will have three necessary components: kindness, openhandedness, and space.

Other-Directed Compassion

When we give ourselves a break from excessive expectation and judgment, we create the space to offer those same graces to others. In fact, a lack of self-compassion tends to generate a lack of other-centered compassion, which then reinforces our harsh view of ourselves: a self-perpetuating system of destructive engagement. Other-Directed compassion means fundamentally letting go of judgment and criticism, believing that the person that you're interacting with is doing the best they can in their current circumstance. It means giving others the benefit of the doubt, offering them the dignity that we so often desire. In the same way, we let go of the "shoulds" for ourselves we can release those we love from the "shoulds" that we've placed on them. Freedom from these expectations, spoken or otherwise, creates the space in which repair and restoration can be cultivated and fostered.

The Path to Connection

Contempt is the antithesis of connection; it obstructs and erodes intimacy. Compassion is the first step toward the restoration of relationship. It opens the door to offering dignity and respect to ourselves and others. In the space created by compassion, we have the opportunity to explore each other's worlds with curiosity and kindness. As we engage this posture, we must do so with courage, knowing that we may not always find a response commensurate with our own approach. With compassion, curiosity, and courage, we generate a space where we can creatively engage with our partner, friends, or family to weave our hopes, dreams, and desires together to foster connection.

Contempt: Intimacy’s Enemy

Contempt

Our culture is steeped in contempt. Contempt is everywhere. It's in the headline on the news; it's in your favorite magazine; it's on the road. You can find it in the eyes of your partner when you arrive home late from work, or in your child's scowl when you have to set a firm boundary. According to Dr. John Gottman, contempt is the most significant predictor of divorce in distressed couples. However, it is not only an issue in intimate partner relationships. Perhaps the most common place we find contempt is on the face we see every day in the mirror.

Contempt has been explained in many ways, but for the sake of our discussion, we'll define it merely as ascribing indifference or hostility to yourself and others. It means that when your partner is late coming home from work, you think they don't care. It assumes that your parents are putting a boundary in place because they love to watch you suffer. It believes that something is fundamentally wrong with you; a flaw from which there is little hope of recovery. When we walk in contempt, we think poorly about ourselves and those who care the most about us.

Self-Contempt

If the world could listen in on the inner monologue that most of us live with, we would probably want to crawl into a hole and die. Most of us live under a barrage of negative self-talk that would traumatize and scar all but the most calloused among us. Where do we develop this level of venom and vitriol? What makes us deserving of such slander? At some point in our life, we learned that shame and slander would increase our orientation to action. Like the horseman's whip drives the horses, we will beat ourselves to produce results. In the short term, we may see positive gains. But in time, we will stop believing that things could be different. We start to accept the narrative we speak over ourselves and fall into a pattern of self-degradation; we sink into contempt.

The other day I was privileged to hang out with a good friend and mentor. He always asks excellent questions, and I answered them as best I could. But upon leaving, a pit developed in my stomach. I realized that I had been so busy answering his questions that I had not given him much opportunity to speak, nor offered many questions of my own. I felt foolish, and the self-talk started. "Are you a narcissist?" "Why didn't you pay more attention?" "You're a crappy friend." Before I knew it, I was swimming in a pool of self-contempt.

Others-Centered Contempt

It is from this pit of self-contempt that we begin to orient toward others.  In our self-flagellating condition, we look at others with a lens of disdain. We begin to think that we are better than they are. Our stories hold the roots of our contempt; when we were children, we learned the movements of scorn from our caregivers. We would watch our parents berate themselves under their breath after they made a mistake. Even in the best of homes, we had to navigate minefields of disdain and judgment. 

While writing this post, my wife read me a quote from a prominent religious thinker. This individual had summarized some basic tenets of his faith into a pretty provocative statement to which my wife responded strongly. Naturally, I immediately took the antagonistic position believing that she was not thinking clearly about the idea. I wasn't sure I was right, but I was pretty confident that she wasn't! And so we talked for nearly an hour about why she responded so strongly which ultimately revealed my contempt for strong responses. In what could have been an opportunity for me to offer kindness in the process of learning more of my wife's heart, the infusion of contempt turned our interaction south.

From Contempt to Connection

Contempt erodes the foundations of a healthy relationship; safety and connection are undermined when it is present. To preserve our relationships, we must turn from our contempt. The first step toward connection is compassion; for ourselves first, and then for others. Compassion creates the space for curiosity; which needs to be maintained with courage. From here, we have the freedom to engage with one another, creatively weaving our hopes, dreams, and desires into the beautiful tapestry of connection. 

What are you trying to pull?

Ruth

Several years ago, a good friend of mine from North Carolina, told me about his mother's (we can call her Ruth) driving record. She was a single point shy of getting her license suspended. The one time I rode in the car with her, we ended up in the left turn lane of a boulevard in oncoming traffic--but only after driving at nearly 60 mph through a subdivision. In addition to that, over the course of her driving career, she had put not one, but two cars underwater; one in a pool, the other in a creek. The fact that this woman is still alive is a testament to car safety engineers everywhere!

One day, her husband asked her to drive their truck over to his office (they had to switch vehicles for some reason or another). So, she got in the truck and drove it over to meet her husband. When she arrived at the office, she walked in and promptly announced in her sweet southern accent, "Honey, there is something wrong with the truck!"

Having driven it recently with no issues, she had his attention. So, he asked, "What's wrong with it?"  

"Well…" she started somewhat exasperated, "It's making all kinds of noise, the acceleration is sluggish, and the brakes aren't working very well!" 

Curious, her husband walked out the door to investigate. He opened the door and immediately saw what was going on. Their truck was parked in the parking lot, but attached to the truck, was their 25-foot sailboat. His wife, bless her heart, had driven the truck nearly 10 miles through suburban Raleigh and had never once looked in the rear-view mirror.

What's on your trailer?

This entry is not an attempt to make fun of this woman, who is quite spectacular in her own right. However, it does offer an opportunity to explore an essential question: What are you trying to pull? You see we all bring our experiences, both good and bad, with us through life. But if we try to live as if those experiences are not there, or we are not affected by them, it is just like trying to drive a truck and trailer through the suburbs of a major city. We can end up running our friends and families off the road, we may struggle to slow down, and we plow over the people in our path. And when we aren't performing the way we think we should, we start to shame ourselves or blame others for our shortcomings. 

Awareness makes a difference

By acknowledging the influence of our experiences, we can live in compassion concerning our story. If you have an extended trailer with a bunch of heavy stuff on it, you'll drive differently than if you have a little eight-foot U-Haul. You'll make wider turns, give yourself space to slow down, and maybe avoid those little neighborhood streets until you've had the opportunity to unpack what you're carrying to a greater or lesser extent.

It's even possible that you're carrying a fantastic thing that you're just not using well; like a boat. A boat on a trailer is not in the space it was designed for, but in the water it opens new horizons! It sets you free from the confines of roads and land, giving you a unique opportunity to explore and cultivate the new spaces and places that were inaccessible before.

Next Steps

So, what are you trying to pull in life? How do your experiences influence you? Are you living with compassion regarding your story? Many of us just don't know. But you can change that, explore your story with a counselor, friend, or mentor (or all of those!). Don't live life the way Ruth drove in this story. Look at your trailer, unpack your story, lighten your load, discover your strength, or at least begin to live with an awareness of what you're pulling. In this way, you may be able to chart new waters and embark on a fresh adventure.

The Loss of Masculine Intimacy

Men are suffering

We need look no further than the rates of suicide, violence, addiction, sexual deviance, and escapism rampant in our society to see evidence of this. In spite of our "privileged" status, men are struggling to find and maintain meaningful, authentic, and sustained connections.

How is this possible in a society that by all accounts is more connected than ever? The answer is not difficult to find. Brene Brown, in her book Daring Greatly (2012), described an interaction with a man regarding shame. He said, "My wife and daughters...they'd rather see me die on top of my white horse than watch me fall off. You say you want us to be vulnerable and real. But c'mon. You can't stand it. It makes you sick to see us like that." The truth is simple, the vulnerable and authentic parts of men are not welcome in our culture. 

More than Sex

While some people acknowledge that men have unique needs, our culture has said that the majority of those needs are either base, erotic or both. In fact, adult men often experience very little affection apart from their primary partner or erotic encounters leaving them vulnerable to having their needs denied, or ignored if they fail to initiate.

Men have to work hard to meet their needs. But there is a culturally induced shame associated with the very existence of masculine needs. Men have been cast as sexually driven, shallow and interested in nothing more than hedonistic conquest at the expense of their partners, but in actuality, they are merely trying in whatever way they can to meet the needs burning in their chest. Ironically, the partners of men also suffer because society has told them that sex is the primary way that men can meet their intimacy needs. So partners work to fulfill all the sexual desires that a man has, but in the process miss his genuine connection needs behind his sexuality.

The Bind

So we "man up." We put on a good face, one that will be acceptable to both the intimate and distant parts of our world. All the while hiding our face, ashamed of the fact that we are experiencing pain and challenge in the first place. We revisit our failures a million times to find how we could have avoided such defeat in the first place. We walk through life as though it were a minefield designed to expose our weaknesses, desperately attempting to hide the truth of our nakedness. Failing that, we steel ourselves to avoid any future failure, perceived or actual.

It is a rare space where a man can authentically show up. Church groups try to offer this, but too often it turns into an opportunity to fix anyone that presents with a genuine struggle. Or, rather than providing tangible presence, everyone merely validates his battle by admitting that they too struggle and push past the discomfort of exposure attempting to discuss something inane to deal with the awkwardness. The sports bar seems to be a possible space for masculine connection, but it also fails to let men remove the uniforms of their perspective sports teams or the social caricatures required of them.

In actuality, the precious few spaces that allow for men to be genuine and authentic are those spaces that are intentionally cultivated as such. All too often, this is the counseling office, the coffee shop, or the dark corner of the bar accompanied by a man strong enough to sit with weakness.

Cultivate the Space

Men, we need to work hard to rediscover and cultivate the spaces and the relationships that we need for wholeness. From this space of integration, we will have more to offer to our workplaces, families, partners, and friends.

THREE BASIC IDEAS FOR CULTIVATING INTIMACY

• Listening - If you consistently talk more than you hear when you get together with your friend(s), you're likely self-absorbed or a fixer.
• Compassion - Offer kindness, avoid judgment, and believe the best about his (and your) inner world.
• Curiosity - Ask questions to understand and invite your friend, rather than telling him how to change or fix.

Embrace Need and Vulnerability

Men need intimacy, not just sex. We need intimate connection with our partners, with our friends, with our families, and with our communities. This post is not an invitation to deny your strength or the masculine soul. Instead, it is an invitation to embrace the power required to admit our limits and live within our capacity, connected and known, joining with others in the ebb and flow of life, living together as co-contributors in our respective stories. So let's cultivate a space where we can dismount, get off our "white horse," remove our armor and share our true self, revoking the shame of our neediness and embracing those needs as the most profound strengths of our shared humanity.