Free Nonviolent Communication - A Language of Life, Second Edition @Team LiB by by Marshall B. Rosenberg Page A

needs of the beloved. In the early days of a relationship, partners typically relate joyfully and compassionately to each other out of a sense of freedom. The relationship is exhilarating, spontaneous, wonderful. Eventually, however, as the relationship becomes “serious,” partners may begin to assume responsibility for each other’s feelings.
    First stage: Emotional slavery: we see ourselves responsible for others’ feelings.
    If I were a partner who is conscious of doing this, I might acknowledge the situation by explaining, “I can’t bear it when I lose myself in relationships. When I see my partner’s pain, I lose me, and then I just have to break free.” However, if I have not reached this level of awareness, I am likely to blame my partner for the deterioration of the relationship. Thus I might say, “My partner is so needy and dependent it’s really stressing out our relationship.” In such a case, my partner would do well to reject the notion that there is anything wrong with her needs. It would only make a bad situation worse to accept that blame. Instead, she could offer an empathic response to address the pain of my emotional slavery: “So you find yourself in panic. It’s very hard for you to hold on to the deep caring and love we’ve had without turning it into a responsibility, duty, obligation. . . . You sense your freedom closing down because you think you constantly have to take care of me.” If, however, instead of an empathic response, she says, “Are you feeling tense because I have been making too many demands on you?” then both of us are likely to stay enmeshed in emotional slavery, making it that much more difficult for the relationship to survive.
    Stage 2: In this stage, we become aware of the high costs of assuming responsibility for others’ feelings and trying to accommodate them at our own expense. When we notice how much of our lives we’ve missed and how little we have responded to the call of our own soul, we may get angry. I refer jokingly to this stage as the obnoxious stage because we tend toward obnoxious comments like, “That’s your problem! I’m not responsible for your feelings!” when presented with another person’s pain. We are clear what we are not responsible for , but have yet to learn how to be responsible to others in a way that is not emotionally enslaving.
    Second stage: “Obnoxious”: we feel angry; we no longer want to be responsible for others’ feelings.
    As we emerge from the stage of emotional enslavement, we may continue to carry remnants of fear and guilt around having our own needs. Thus it is not surprising that we end up expressing those needs in ways that sound rigid and unyielding to the ears of others. For example, during a break in one of my workshops, a young woman expressed appreciation for the insights she’d gained into her own state of emotional enslavement. When the workshop resumed, I suggested an activity to the group. The same young woman then declared assertively, “I’d rather do something else.” I sensed she was exercising her newfound right to express her needs—even if they ran counter to those of others.
    To encourage her to sort out what she wanted, I asked, “Do you want to do something else even if it conflicts with my needs?” She thought for a moment, and then stammered, “Yes. . . . er . . . I mean no.” Her confusion reflects how, in the obnoxious stage, we have yet to grasp that emotional liberation entails more than simply asserting our own needs.
    I recall an incident during my daughter Marla’s passage toward emotional liberation. She had always been the “perfect little girl” who denied her own needs to comply with the wishes of others. When I became aware of how frequently she suppressed her own desires in order to please others, I talked to her about how I’d enjoy hearing her express her needs more often. When we first broached the subject, Marla cried. “But, Daddy, I don’t want to