Will you leave me?\u00a0What are the limits of your acceptance of me?\u00a0When will you see enough of me and turn your back.\u00a0How much can I trust you to stay?\u00a0What are the limits of my acceptance of your love, care, attention, inattention, and commitment to me.\u00a0Ok, I belong to you, but for how long?\u00a0<\/li><\/ul>Do I belong<\/em>\u00a0is more of a question for ourselves to answer than it is for others. It’s a problem when we only ask this of others.\u00a0If I ask my wife \u201cdo I belong\u201d and her answer determines my mood for the day, I’ve given her too much power. Perhaps I\u2019ve caught her on a bad day, or on a day that I\u2019m in the dog house because of something I\u2019ve done or left undone. So to give her the sole power to answer this question wholly is unfair to her, and to me.\u00a0I need to be able to accept my own belonging to humanity, this planet, the community I live in, the places I go, my workplace, profession, and so forth and so on.\u00a0If my posture towards these aspects of belonging is \u201cI\u2019m not sure that I belong, will you tell me if I belong or not?\u201d It gives the other too much authority to tell me if I fit into their wish for me, and let\u2019s face it, don\u2019t we all of wishes for other people?\u00a0Sometimes these wishes are for the good of the other, sometimes for ill. So why would we subject ourselves to the possible wish for ill from another person? The answer to this question has to do with your story.\u00a0What we know about human development is that the mother, often the primary nurturer, reflects back to the baby their identity. Babies are bon without self-identity. They are a blank slate. Now sure, they have genetic dispositions, personality traits that have yet to be developed, but fundamentally the infant is unknown as a unique individual.\u00a0The infant develops their sense of self and the world around them through their mothers face. When mom is upset and frowns at the infant, the infant is distressed. She believes herself to be the cause of the frown. She does not know mom just got a difficult phone call. She only knows the feeling of stress as a feeling that showed up when mom looked at her. Conversely, when mom smiles at her, she believes that there must be something good about herself. This feels good to infants, and lets be honest, to all humans.\u00a0So back to the question about subjecting ourselves to the ill wishes of another.\u00a0Sometimes in our story there exists an experience where mother took out her own feelings of ill wishes on the infant. Perhaps this occurred during breastfeeding. The infant, unable to control their own bodily impulses, bites mother while being fed. The natural instinct of mom is to wince in pain and withdraw so as to protect herself, and her body.\u00a0Two things happen here. One, mom winces and withdraws. Baby sees this take place and internalizes the experience that she must have done something bad. Secondly, mom now has a choice. She either reengages with baby to forgive, or she will punish the baby for the bite.\u00a0This story now begins to create a \u201csliding door\u201d type moment for the baby (if you haven\u2019t seen the movie \u201cSliding Doors\u201d, check it out. Through the concept of a \u201cparallel universe\u201d, the movie explores how vastly different life can be if we did or did not experience a significant event).\u00a0If the mother reengages with the baby, forgives the bite, the baby is soothed and can now learn that biting is painful, but not so painful to break the relationship.\u00a0If the mother doesn\u2019t forgive, and withdraws, perhaps even scolding the baby for biting, the baby internalizes the feeling that her bite, uncontrollable by her, is bad and it severs relationship with mom.\u00a0The baby cannot understand why mom withdraws except that it must be because she herself is unworthy of love. She only belongs to mom when she behaves properly. Her acceptance is conditional. Now fast forward 30 years and the baby is a single woman looking for a partner. Without any healing of her identity wounds, how likely will this woman be able to manage rejection, being ignored, or the blank stare of a man who doesn\u2019t know what to say?\u00a0Not very likely. Though no fault of hers, she now believes her belonging to the world is conditional. Love is not to be trusted because \u201cbites\u201d happen, sometimes still uncontrollably by her.\u00a0On the flip side, if mom forgives the bite and reengages with the baby, now there is a feeling of acceptance despite painful accidents. She belongs even when she does something that isn\u2019t right. Even when she makes a mistake. Fast forward 30 years and the baby is a single woman looking for a partner. She\u2019s capable of handling difficulties in intimate relationships because repair was a building block her mother taught her.\u00a0This question of \u201cdo I belong” began at birth. It continues into adulthood, and it informs all of the relationships that we engage in. When there is doubt about belonging, we will struggle to be present in our relationships. Especially intimate ones. We will have difficulty trusting others. We will have difficulty trusting ourselves. And we will struggle to maintain stability in intimate relationships.\u00a0As you and your spouse interact, you are both asking each other this question of belonging. It is vitally important that you answer this question over and over and over again. Tell her you chose her. Tell him that you would choose him again.\u00a0Give to the other what you most want to hear.\u00a0Drown each other in gratitude for belonging to each other. Leave no doubt at the end of the day that you belong together.\u00a0One of the greatest tragedies of our Western culture is that we too readily believe that salvation is found in our individualism. In our autonomy from the world. Let your marriage be a protest agains this. Resist temptations to serve yourself alone.\u00a0<\/p>Give yourself over to belonging to another person.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This question might also sounds like:\u00a0 Will you leave me?\u00a0What are the limits of your acceptance of me?\u00a0When will you see enough of me and turn your back.\u00a0How much can I trust you to stay?\u00a0What are the limits of my acceptance of your love, care, attention, inattention, and commitment to me.\u00a0Ok, I belong to you, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1569,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[13,12,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-communication","category-couples","category-life_process"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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