It is a chicken or the egg dilemma. I cannot tell you whether I am an intrinsically curious person or whether my wife is simply the most interesting person in the world. However, I can tell you that curiosity or lack thereof can make the difference in making or breaking a relationship/marriage. What I can tell you is that in the human mind, “Curiosity” lives right next door to “Judgment” and Judgement seems to have a key to Curiosity’s house and seems to be able to enter whenever he wants, and damn it, he just takes over every time.
Think about the last time you were frustrated with your partner. Maybe you are frustrated right now? Where did those feelings of frustration come from? Have you ever actually asked yourself where your emotions come from? That would be a “curious” question to ask while experiencing a heated moment, wouldn’t it? When I ask this question to people who are struggling in their relationships, I get responses that range from dumbfounded to angry-defensive. In most cases, these reactions are followed 20 minutes later by “AHA!”
Part of the human condition that is natural but destructive under relational stress is to simply submit to a linear, cause, and effect line of thinking. Relationships are one place that the “Mismatch” Theory of our stress response actually applies. We do not have use for the “fight or flight” system in our intimate relationships, but we apply it so quickly. If you are honest with yourself you might notice that you actually believe that your feelings are directly caused by the other person’s actions/words/etc. It’s as if they just injected you with liquid anger, sadness, anxiety, shame, or a mixture of all of them. In this quick projection of judgment, we lose ourselves and the meaning of our emotional reactions. We lose the opportunity to grow and self-direct.
Giving Up Personal Power
In our search for vindication, we are giving up power. We are allowing the other person’s behavior to have control over how we feel, and more importantly, how we react. Sometimes after seeing the link between their feeling-responses and their personal history, people respond with, “Yeah, ok, childhood, I get it, but it’s still not ok for them to (fill in the blank).” Taking ultimate responsibility for how we feel and react is not giving your partner a pass. Instead, it is freeing up the communication pathways from irrational garbage and paving the way for depth and meaning to be shared.
If any of the above sounds familiar to you, then what you have done is allowed Judgement to come in and take over the house. Judgment has good intentions because he wants to help you make sense of those bad feelings. He gives you a good line of reasoning to explain yourself, and all you have to do is provide that iron clad reasoning to your partner and have them sign off in agreement. That would, for sure, solve your problem. Interestingly enough, no matter how much I try to explain, with impeccable logic, to my wife just how she has caused me frustration, as well as giving her a complete 5 step plan to change her behavior and prevent the pain in the future, it is never well-received. I hope you hear me laughing right now.
Maintaining curiosity may seem like a nearly impossible task to uphold when we feel under fire. However, curiosity appears to be a skill that can be developed, meaning that our ability to stay in a curious frame of mind is something we can get better at. This is the same skill we develop in mindful practice. The people I encounter who find this self-reflective curious mind frame to be “eye-opening” haven’t yet learned that the magnitude of the stress they experience is measured in terms of their own resilience. Maybe my partner is offending me, or perhaps I am just too sensitive?
Let’s get to the point
When my partner does something that pisses me off, they have provided a trigger, not a cause. The feeling that comes up and takes over is not some new feeling caused by their behavior but rather an internally stored preprogrammed response coming up to the surface. My mind jumps to reasoning away the discomfort, ah la “Judgment,” and in an instant, I have determined the cause of my pain. The reason almost always ends up being my partner or some other external circumstance. When I have made that determination, I have essentially opened the door for more fuel to the fire of emotions I am already experiencing.
Furthermore, I have allowed resentment to begin to build. I may not realize that there is a microsecond that exists before I reach my conclusion. There is a point in time where I have a choice to be “Curious” and maintain that space of non-judgment, rather than follow my natural thought process. I might even miss that micro-moment early in the conflict, but that does not matter because Curiosity always has the power to kick out Judgment. It may just take an intentional time out, but I can regain self-control and personal responsibility.
Be Childlike
Curiosity is a vulnerable state, childlike in nature, but something that we may need to rediscover in adulthood. Science actually tells us that the reward circuits of a curious brain are lit up and primed for learning. Learning is not just about factual information but also about learning life lessons. It is a matter of knowledge versus understanding. Learning about ourselves and our partners should be a continual process throughout life. Stunted learning in this area is stunted growth, which leads to frustration. If we aren’t curious we arent learning or creating. What we are doing instead, is justifying and reinforcing, thus keeping ourselves in miserable stagnate place along the path of life’s journey.
Curiosity asks “Why” questions and leaves all possible answers on the table throughout its process. It even, dare I say, leaves the possibility that you might be responsible for your own feelings as a possible solution to the problem. Curiosity can change the conversation. Curiosity has a broad 360-degree view of circumstances and can come up with solutions that Judgment can’t even imagine. Actually, Judgment doesn’t have an imagination in the first place. In the spirit of “creating” a relationship versus “manufacturing” one, curiosity is an essential mindset to discover, practice, and own. In other words, it might just make or break your relationship.
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This post was previously published on Hello, Love and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: iStock