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About Agreements |
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Marriage Enrichment
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With respect to a relationship seeking deeper intimacy, an agreement is an expression of intention or willingness to do what one says. This first lesson is about agreements. Do we complete our bargains? We know when we keep our word or when we don't. If there is confusion about it, if you are asking yourself "Did I do it?" or "Did I forget to do it?", then you did not make the agreement clear enough or concrete enough. Or as I explain to clients, the agreement wasn't "doable." Observability is the first requirement of an agreement. If you have trouble following this logic, track your decisions for a day. Try to write down every decision you make that involves you stating to someone else that you will do a particular thing, or stop doing something. The more you pay attention to your decisions, the more you will be able to determine if you have kept your agreements or broken them. Check back to your lists of the essential ingredients. The example lists do not contain "observable behaviour" for the most part. People list "love" or "trust" or "sharing." Although "love" refers to a behaviour, in the sense of "loving behaviour", the quality of the experience depends considerably on the person interpreting the behaviour. How often have you behaved in a particular way that you intended to be "loving" only to find that your partner was indifferent or perhaps even upset? You cannot know for sure what your partner may interpret as loving or respectful or compassionate or understanding. What is experienced as loving one day, may even be resented the next. It simply does not work to make agreements around qualities like love or understanding. Love is more appropriately expressed as an intention or a cherished possibility. To put it into the context of an agreement turns it into a demand. We cannot make someone love us. The experience of love, as with most of the other qualities or desired traits people list as "essential ingredients", is the result or product of our interaction. Therefore it is crucial to look at what we put into the equation. A guideline I offer to clients, to help them determine whether they are seeking agreement or a demand, is quite simple. If you are unwilling to hear and respect "no" as an answer, then you are making a demand. During the session in which I explore agreements with a couple, I start with a question. "What had to happen in order for us to be meeting here today?" Very soon one person concludes we all had to get here. Then I ask, "what had to occur in order for us to get here?" Although sometimes one of the couple will refer to agreements, such a response is the exception, not the rule. The notion of simply doing what we had agreed to do seems too basic for most people. Most people are looking for a harder answer. That actually describes my experience of some couples. They make the relationship hard work! The first lesson is an invitation to look at how solid is your word. Do you keep your agreements? If you do not, do you make excuses or attempt to minimize the other's displeasure? Go back to your list of agreements. Look at your partner's list. As you peruse what is listed, look to see if you could observe the behaviour involved. Would you know how to "complete the agreement?" At this point, don't tell your partner your conclusions about which agreements are observable and which are not. First, take a look at your own list. Mark the agreements of your own that now do not look like they meet the requirement of being observable. After you have marked your own that don't appear to meet the criterion, exchange lists. Notice to what degree you and your partner observed similar agreements as "doable." If you have some agreements on both of your lists and they appear to be describing observable behaviour, write them on a new list. This lesson looks at the first requirement for making agreements so that you can know
if you have kept them; they are observable. |
