Unconditional Acceptance

and other life changing ideas

When you are a dispassionate observer of human relationships, you tend to float above your emotions. You’ll yell and cry, but you’ll struggle to really feel anything. Subconsciously, you disengage with your feelings to a point where they just become artefacts of examinations. It’s probably not a good thing, at least not always maybe.

The last two weeks have brought me back to reality. I’ve had more than a couple of arguments with the husband. The kind of arguments that are really banal, yet they leave you feeling hopeless and exhausted.

You are screaming at each other (at very different decibels) and you don’t know why. Your ability to reason dims all of a sudden, because all the energy is being diverted to your audio battle, which anyway runs on autopilot, disconnected from your mind.

But once we were done screaming, and I sat alone with myself, quietly, different parts of me began integrating and the conversation with myself resumed.

I’d fallen prey to a trap that I only spoke about a couple of weeks ago - assuming that time teaches people, and they somehow miraculously change. When I realised this, I had a few questions:

• do I have trouble accepting him as is?

• did I forget that I had accepted him, as is, several times before?

• did I have trouble accepting that I had accepted?

• did I have a change of heart?

• If so, why? why is him changing important to me now?

I told myself that I had new data points to question my earlier decision of accepting him, as is. But may be that acceptance was not unconditional after all?

This superficial acceptance of someone based on a particular incident is a slippery slope, there will always be new circumstances for them to demonstrate their abilities (or the lack there of), so what do you do then?

How do you accept someone as is, truly, deeply and of course, madly?

Let’s say you discover something about your partner, that you find unappealing, for whatever reason. Let’s say you don’t want to accept it, but in that instance, when you view this particular aspect in the larger scheme of things, it feels trivial, and pardonable. Net net, it’s still a largely positive relationship.

So you accept it, and move on.

This is an important decision, even if it may not feel like one.

Then, you have multiple instances over the years where this aspect of your partner gets validated over and over again. Usually, this is result of increased co-dependence - either increased number of joint projects, or fewer independent projects.

But how did this even happen, when you already knew that this aspect could be a possible liability in future joint projects? Well, this is when you go back to that moment when you initially accepted them as is.

The truth is - you didn’t actually accept them as is, at least not unconditionally. It was conditional to them changing, either because they offered to do so, or that you independently hoped for it. Absurd, isn’t it? Especially when you know that people don’t change.

This is probably a controversial statement, but in a trusted partnership, I believe people suffer from the opposite of fundamental attribution error.

As an offender, it may serve your partner to blame the context. But you are more likely to trust their reasoning since it fulfils your conditional acceptance of their “error” since you have committed to playing an iterative game in a trusted partnership.

So, may be, the first step is realising that your acceptance of someone actually has nothing to do with them? It’s a problem, that’s yours only?

Alright, let’s say it’s your problem. What do you do next?

You can project a cumulative liability of this trait based on its manifestation in various aspects of your relationship, and assess whether the relationship will be net positive or not, by end of life.

If you deem it net positive, you must accept the partner, as is, and unconditionally at that. If not, may be its your chance to run now?

Wow, that sounded super easy, and scary.

I think an easier way to address this is just to say that it’s a bummer and find a way to limit your downside - either by capping the number of future joint projects with your partner or significantly increasing your independent projects (stop being so dependent and get a life!).

Phew.

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What I’m reading/ writing/ watching/ listening to:

Prisoners of Geography - Tim Marshall: Loving this book, you have to read it. The next time you see a straight-line border to a country, you know there’s a story hidden underneath.

Paid Sex in Sri Lanka: A memoir of my travels to Sri Lanka. This is my first piece of travel writing for public consumption.

Migrant Food in Netherlands: I wrote about my culinary experience in Amsterdam, which I’d never written about before.

Modern Love Amsterdam: I am such a closet hopeless romantic, I cry bucket loads every time I watch a new version of the Modern Love. Every version (New York, Amsterdam, Japan, Chennai, Bombay and Hyderabad) is so beautifully made.

Starting something new By Sari: This popped into my inbox just when I needed to read it. I am getting back to being an entrepreneur once again, and this time, I think I know better in terms of pacing myself, and not running myself dry. Hopefully, there won’t be yet another pandemic to challenge my resolve ;)