Baggage Reclaim: Empowering advice for helping you offload your baggage & discover the great you that already exists.

Posted: 04 Feb 2015 02:01 PM PST

When I was pregnant with my first daughter, longtime readers may recall that I got into the hidden camera show 'Cheaters' where people who suspect their partners of cheating have them investigated and followed… and then confront them.. I know, I know, but I was signed off with a bad back at 34 weeks. Call it BR research. It fascinated me that people either wouldn't trust the information they already had or that they would go on TV before they would communicate with their partners or make a decision.

There are clues as to why you suspect your partner of cheating (or whatever it is), and unless you're projecting - that's when you're up to something, feeling bad about it on some level and then looking to dispel that feeling by finding a similar fault in them, or when you've already got the story in your head and just want to bring the self-fulfilling prophecy to its conclusion so you can be right and remove uncertainty, those clues, if you pay attention, provide you with a hell of a lot of the information that you need.

The first thing that you have to admit if you're tempted to snoop or already have, is that you have trust issues and a relationship without trust is like washing your front but not your back; mucky.

If you won't use your senses, your gut, your brain, your self-awareness etc., to take a reading on a situation, to open up a dialogue, to help you figure out whether an experience is in alignment with the values you profess to have and the feelings and life you want to experience, snooping, hiring detectives or even dragging your partner on reality shows becomes the substitute for these.

I regularly hear from BR readers who have taken to playing Columbo or Jessica Fletcher behind their partner's backs. It can start out as what seems fairly innocuous but as anyone who has ever had a 'little snoop’ can attest to, like Pringles, once you pop, you can't stop. I don't even eat Pringles that often but leave a red tube in front of me and they will disappear. Fast. Anyway, I digress.
Just in case you have any doubts about what snooping involves, here are a few examples:

Going through their phone and reading their texts, deleting messages etc.
Installing apps on their phone so that you can keep an eye on their movements.
Logging into their email or even onto dating websites where they are registered. Yes… I do hear from people who are keeping tabs on their exes….
Going through their drawers, that's the ones that they store their stuff in as well as the ones that they package their privates in.
Monitoring their movements on social media.
Donning a wig and mac or other such disguises to follow them.

Why do people snoop on their loved ones? Because they are either looking for something to validate the story that they’ve decided on, or they are looking to validate concerns that may be related to code amber and red alerts. There's also a section of snoopers who use it as part of an overall m.o. of controlling their partners movements and being abusive.

If you've ever snooped on a partner, you may have felt insecure and used it as a means of reassuring your doubts and calming your unease, or you may have had genuine cause for concern and not enough faith to cover it, and so you looked for answers to validate what you're feeling and/or to clear away those doubts.

Regardless of how it's packaged though, it is a violation of their privacy but also, it's a breach of trust that can leave you feeling undignified and even trapped in a vicious cycle of shame that ends up disempowering you.

Snooping puts us in a bind because:

Control isn't love; it's control. If we want to be in mutually fulfilling, loving relationships with care, trust, and respect, our relationships cannot be about power and control. Ever been stifled by somebody’s jealousy and possessiveness? Yep, that’s not love; that’s control.

Snooping is temporary protection against doubts. The next time we experience the feelings and thoughts, if we haven't addressed the root cause and learned how to self-soothe and also communicate with our partner, we will snoop again. And lather, rinse, repeat.

It's pseudo control even if the other party doesn't know about it. We're trying to remove uncertainty but we cannot control the uncontrollable and we are engaging in snooping in lieu of having more command of ourselves and being conscious, aware, present, and responsible in our relationships.

I've also noticed something quite interesting about snooping:

Often when we snoop on partners, we rationalise that it's OK and that we have legitimate reasons for doing so that are different to say, an abusive person's reasons for doing so. What also happens is that even if we do find evidence, we keep it to ourselves, not just because we don't want to reveal what we've been up to, but more so because we see the evidence as an indicator of something about us that becomes our motivator to step up with some pleasing to try to influence and control their feelings and behaviour. We might blame our worth or think that we haven't 'proved' ourselves enough, or feel that we've 'done' something to provoke the existence of the evidence and then reason that if we want to feel better, we have to make them feel better so that they behave and the evidence ceases to exist.

We also have that sense of knowing what we're working with, so that uncertainty has been removed (for now) and we can just bury our heads in the sand. In some respects we can be reassured that we are in our pattern so it ends up validating our unhealthy beliefs.
The funny thing is – and this could the subject of a post all by itself – if we fess up to snooping after finding evidence, sometimes the other party starts up with the, "Oh! So you obviously don't trust me! Right, well I might as well not bother anymore. I won't stay in a relationship where I'm not trusted!" malarkey when presented with that said evidence. What the what now?

It’s true – you don’t trust them and you have good reason not to, because even without your snooping, they were up to no good. Your lack of trust is an issue but, it's not the reason for the existence of the issue of their actions.

They didn't know that you were going to snoop in advance of them deciding that they were going to deceive you.

Whether it's a momentary lapse in judgement or a series of lapses that have made snooping a habit, halt, because it's not the kind of behaviour that you can carry with you if you're on a journey where you want to feel good about you and enjoy healthy relationships. No one wants to feel unsafe and ultimately, where do you draw the line? You can't keep crossing their line in order to make you feel better.

If you have snooped, even if you have found evidence, apologise with no equivocations because just like you don't want anybody blaming you for what they do, you need to own your actions so that you can learn from them. If the evidence shows where they've erred, you apologising doesn't change that.

The urge to snoop or even going ahead and doing so, has often proved to be a watershed moment, because it can force you to acknowledge that you're either not happy within and that you need to focus on supporting you, that you need to work on your personal security, or you recognise issues about the relationship that you've been denying, rationalising and minimising. If staying in a relationship or feeling 'OK' is going to come at the cost of your dignity due to snooping, that relationship and/or the snooping isn't worth it. Snooping never leads to anything good; you either end up feeling crap for doing it or you end up finding evidence of what you already know but are too afraid to admit. There are better ways to calm insecurity and there are better ways to bring concerns out into the open or to exit the relationship.

Your thoughts?

Don’t conflate common interests with character and shared core values

Posted: 27 Jan 2015 02:26 PM PST

we have so much in common

It's not the biggest leap in the universe to think that because you've met somebody who shares similar interests to you that you also share similar values, but in practice, it's an enormous leap that ignores the fact that a person could have a fundamentally different character and set of desires to you while still working in the same field, or enjoying the same shows, or enjoying the same hobbies and interests.

The leap in thinking comes from an underlying belief that you having these particular interests is linked to your values but let's think about this for a moment:

Let's imagine that your interests are being a wine buff and travelling to as many vineyards as possible to fine-tune your palette, as well as growing your own food, 90s hip-hop, skiing in the winter, windsurfing in the summer, salsa at night, and reading about globalisation, and then you meet somebody who enjoys all or most of these things. Eureka!, you think, especially because on some level, in these situations we tend to imagine that the combination of things that interest us is obscure enough that if we were to meet someone who ticks all or most of those boxes, they must surely be our soulmate? They must surely be similar to us, shouldn't they?

Going deeper now, you might be loyal, conscientious, caring, honest, loving, hardworking, ambitious and more. You at some point want to settle down and enjoy a long-term committed relationship. You've tried casual but you value monogamy and are ready for more intimate relationships. Here's the thing though: The fact that you have the above interests bears no correlation to your values and aspirations. You're not, for instance, a wine buff who loves 90s hip-hop because you're loyal, conscientious etc; you're a wine buff who loves 90s hip-hop and is loyal, conscientious etc.

Those interests don't speak for your character; they tell you what your interests are. Don’t conflate common interests with character or shared core values.

The way some of us cling to our interests and even personality traits and quirks, you'd swear that they were badges of honour, social proof and personal validation. We think that it means something about us that we're interested in something. It’s as if we think that ‘certain types of people’ have ‘certain types of interest’ (or personality trait) covered.

Sharing common interests doesn't mean that you share common character traits or core values; it means you have some interests in common

People of certain character, don’t have certain interests. They don’t. I’ve had a hell of a lot of mail from vegans, vegetarians, environmental campaigners, people who work in the charity sector etc., who are perplexed at being burned by their ‘own kind’.

Sometimes we think that we're making a statement with our interests and it's as if the idea of – oh I don't know – having to stretch ourselves and actually have to step out of our bubbles and get to know somebody who isn't our mirror or who has different interests, is a terrifying thing. Why is this?

Because we make the mistake of believing on some level that if people don't share our interests and even our values, then it calls the validity of ours into question.

It's as if a person being different is a trigger for self-doubt. We may also be assuming that if we go out with somebody who has different interests to us that people might think something about us. This is in much the same way that people who are scared to go out with somebody who doesn't have the same IQ or intellectual interests or score the same or more on their beauty scale behave.

You could meet somebody who shares all or most of your interests and they may be the opposite of the core values that you represent.

Those interests will ensure that you have a good time together to a point and that you also have something to talk about, but if their values are the opposite of the values you embody or are even working towards, your relationship will not work and you will run out of things to talk about that relate to adding depth and strength to your relationship. You will be with a wine buff, 90s hip-hop loving person who you cannot rely on and who doesn't want to be and do the things that stack up to a mutually fulfilling relationship.

If they're not sharing your core values, the ones that speak for your character and also the direction and depth of your life, you're just play-acting at a relationship and effectively trying to make a pig's ear into a silk purse. They might make great 'casual relationship' (oxymoron alert) partners, friends, colleagues etc, but to commit to a long term romantic relationship with? Um, no.

We trust people who share similar core values to us so aside from the fact that you'll only be undermining your own progress by pushing for something that they cannot give you, by trying to impose your values on them, it will also undermine the love, care, trust, and respect.

We only have to fear getting to know others if we’re afraid of getting to know and be ourselves, or are afraid of taking action.

I was adamant that I wouldn’t be involved with a guy who liked sports, especially cricket (negative associations with my father and one particular ex) and who isn’t into sci-fi, ideally not some IT geek or what I used to call a “p*ssy Pisces” (more negative associations). Who am I married to? A Piscean that works in IT who will pretty much watch any sport (currently nodding off watching the frickin football) and during the cricket season, he tries to keep the telly on all night so that if he wakes up, he can see the score straight away. He has recently been watching Stargate Atlantlis all over again (how many times can this man watch these feckin series?) and whatever sci-fi show there is, he’s watched it. He wasn’t looking for a woman who was into these things (and he didn’t get one – and incidentally, I rarely hear men saying that they can only be with a partner who shares all of their interests) plus it’s not as if I needed to be with a man who takes an interest in collecting vintage bits and bobs including books and toys from her childhood, crafting, sewing, a spot of pilates, and who loves thinking and talking about human behaviour and interpersonal relationships as well as creating stuff on the internet. We take an interest in each other’s interests and we’ve gathered shared interests along the way, but what we ultimately share is love, care, trust, respect and core values and this leads to a shared life.

Don’t let interests blind you to someone’s character and always take an interest in character, values, and having as a bare basic, mutual care, trust, and respect.

Your thoughts

Online Dating Insider

Wednesday, February 4, 2015