Know Your Animal

The process of learning goes on and on through life and some of them effect your relationship with just one person and others of them effect how you see the entire world. This is one such lesson that I find I use in all my dealings with the world now.

It is a concept that came about slowly to me but it was really working on my relationship with Master that brought the whole thing into focus.

We go through life, we look at our friends and family and laugh off qualities in them that we know are there. Like always being late or some personality thing that if you had to deal with it all the time you would find annoying. We accept them for what they are with no demands to change the behavior and really most of the time we don't even get that ticked at them. We just go around say of that is Jane she always does that or oh that John you just have to plan on him being two hours late and give him an early time so he shows up on time. Why do we do this with people we love who touch our lives but not with the person we love most in the world, our life partner? From them we demand they change, we fall in love with them the way they are but get in a committed relationship and you will see over and over people saying but I want him or her to do it this way? Making these big issues out of stuff that really doesn't matter all the much and believing in that relationship that they have the right to demand those changes. It isn't even just actions that we demand change on... we demand of the more basic places of personality too. When we don't get what we want it we just get mad and resentful about them not loving us enough to change how they behave.

Let me put this in perspective for how I learned it. Master isn't what you call the great communicator. He isn't always very clear about what he wants or needs. And Honestly, Master really doesn't like to talk about things having to do with emotions, especially his own. Does this make him wrong? Well no it doesn't. Does this make it something that is easy for me to deal with? No it doesn't. I have always been very comfy with talking about my feelings and the feelings of others. Did I try to make him change this? Oh yea!! My thinking was Hey it is good for people to talk about there feelings and I really need to know what he is feeling so I know what is going on between the two of us. Hell I had a whole list of things that should have meant Master should just talk to me because after all I loved him and he should trust me with those feelings.

Do you see the problem in there yet? Is it about doing Master and doing for him? Or is it just about me and what I want and what I am comfortable with? The easy rationalization answer would be of course it is about Master, I love him, I want the best for him. The reality answer when someone really looks in their soul is that I wanted what I was comfortable with. It was about me and selfish in nature. Oh I fought with myself a lot about it. I wasn't that selfish. I went around and around and in the end I could only face one reality, I was being that selfish. I did want Master to change how he dealt with the world and how he processed things to make me more comfortable. On the Master/slave side of things, where the hell did I get off? LOL I shouldn't have been going there at all. On the human side of a committed relationship I was doing what millions of people do every day but it wasn't working any better for me than it does for them.

When I really began to understand this in the fullness of my mind and body I came to see that I had to change how I looked at myself, at other and at the relationships in my life. And that really did mean all the relationships. I wanted to quit interacting only from my own personality and my needs and really begin to understand those needs of others. And more importantly still to not take their choices personally when it wasn't about me. It was about who they are. I needed to know the animals.

I say know you animal because we accept that animals act like animals. Example if you leave food on the coffee table, leave the room and come back to discover your pig of a dog ate it, would you be surprised? Well of course not, it is a dog. He is doing what is totally natural for him. You may not like it but you would blow it off and probably next time you wouldn't leave it on the table when you left the room. Getting mad wouldn't be worth the trouble. And even if the dog is smart enough to understand what it did was wrong it will do it again because that is the nature of all dogs. Why act surprised? If you kept a wild animal in your house and it had behaved for years and years like a family pet but one day it just went nuts and ate your family, would it be the fault of the wild animal or the fault of the owner? It isn't the animal... he was following his nature, and the owner was arrogant enough to think he could change that nature, you can't, I can't no one can. The animal will always be what it is by nature and trying to change it is just an exchange in energy that will usually end in a no win fight.

My process for growth on this was slow to say the least. I had to pull back and personalize the behavior of those around and really begin to get to know them and their individual natures. This not only included Master but it also included my children, my friends and most anyone I had to deal with. I began to see that I misunderstood a lot of their actions as having something to do with me when in fact it was their nature to do just those things and it had nothing to do with me.

It is Master's nature to not talk about his feelings. It is his nature to sit quietly and work on projects. It is his nature to need his communication in away that still makes it available for him to take a step back and not personalize it himself. I learned this animal.

When I began to see those larger patterns of behavior in him and his nature I could finally relax, change how I dealt with him, and accept him for who he is. When these changes took place for me, the relationship closeness grew enormously. I wasn't pushing him any more and he wasn't stepping back anymore.

I still fall back on old habits sometimes and fall into the trap of seeing what he does as a direct action to me instead of being his nature but as time goes by those are fewer and farther between. I also find I am looking at other people and recognizing their animals and working from that place to. I do it with my children almost all the time now. They mess up because they are learning and make mistakes. It isn't about them trying to make me nuts and sure doesn't mean I am a bad mother. It just means they need to learn more. But it also means they are following the nature of being children and fighting against that just means I am taking from them something they really need, time to grow and time to learn.

What it brought to my life is gifts that have just kept growing. At home there is way less tension and really no resentment about anything. I can now get my needs met because I found a way to communicate with him in a way he could understand and accept without my just expecting him to figure out on his own. In the changes I have learned in how to deal with him, he has also learned different ways to deal with me. And this has improved both our attitudes about all sorts of things and conflict resolution has become much more productive.

So the next time you are annoyed or hurt by that person you care so deeply for... ask yourself was this in his or nature to be this way or I am just trying to get my needs met in a way that would require them to not be who they are? If the answer is yes, take a step back a minute there and ask yourself how you can love them and ask them to be who they are not?