Between Week 2

 

So far this week, we have explored the space in you on Monday.  Then, yesterday, the unknowable and frustratingly uncontrollable space in the other person.  Any new insights you’ve had?  These spaces are inexhaustible.  You will never finish knowing yourself and people are an endless mystery.  When the sphere of your life intersects and interacts with the sphere of another, your two circles overlap, creating a third space ~ the Venn diagram of our lives.   In this third space exists a past, present, and future.  You have history with family members and friends ~ which contains the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Maybe that thing your uncle said at Thanksgiving four years ago still sticks with you and visits you every time you are preparing to see him.  Maybe you have friends with whom you have been on great adventures, and that helps define your relationship.  The third space is tended by you and the other.  Relationships and human interactions are a collaborative group project.  One other cool tool to hold as we consider third space is that there is a continuum of ways people show up/tend from enmeshment to detachment.  Enmeshed people tend to over-function in relationships, thinking it is all up to them.  That they can only be happy when everyone else is happy.  Their mood depends on the other person.  We all have experiences and examples of enmeshment, when it felt like someone was smothering us with unwanted attention and presence.  Detachment is the other end, when the person is distant or disconnected.  This can be someone who is aloof and acts like s/he/they have no responsibility for the relationship.  An example is people whose faces never change from neutral when you are telling them about something important.  You might be thinking of an encounter you didn’t feel seen, safe, or soothed by another person ~ or even threatened.  Because the third space is co-owned and managed by both, it is very difficult to change that space.  If you have always been the helper, the one others lean on, the one who cooks and cleans, trying to get the other to live/function differently is like climbing a mountain.  All of this is an oversimplification of the complex dynamics of relationships.  If you’d like to talk more, please let me know. I welcome the chance to explore what it is like to be you and how relationships impact and influence how you show up and the story you live from.  Continue to hold the four spaces in your heart as you move about your day.