Free The Conscious Heart by Gay Hendricks, Kathlyn Hendricks Page B

around the neighborhood on bicycles. Kathlyn particularly adored her older brother and adopted a “me too” style in order to be included.
    Probably our essential natures led us toward these adaptations. Certainly Gay requires a certain amount of alone-time to feel in touch with himself that Kathlyn doesn’t require. But we have found, as have our clients and workshop participants, that the dance of unity-autonomy is the baseline in all relationships. It is such a strong pulsation in the relationship that everything else is built on the subtle exchanges and tides of moving closer and getting separate.
    Once we had clarified the source of our particular rhythms, we could give more attention to our day-to-day dance of closeness and separateness. We realized that we had been expecting this dance to be symmetrical, like a minuet. We had imagined that if we really cared for each other, we would want to be close and then alone in a completely harmonious rhythm. We were startled, to say the least, to discover that the dance is almost always asymmetrical. We almost never operated at exactly the same pace. For example, one of us would swirl in for some closeness just as the other was withdrawing into a book.
    Subtle changes in breathing and expression that we unconsciously read in each other give us clues about each other’s needs. Sometimes we read them accurately and sometimes not, based on our ability to see essence clearly. We’ve found it’s a lot more effective for each of us to tell the truth about the sensations andthoughts that signal our own preferences as they occur. A simple communication like “I notice I’m feeling some pressure in my forehead, and I’d like to take some time to sit out in the garden alone” can save days of mind-reading, sabotaging, and distancing.
    The important thing to remember is that all of us have needs both for closeness and for alone-time. If you come from a background where you developed an ease for being by yourself, your learning edge may be to cultivate that same ease for being with people. If you are by nature comfortable with closeness, your learning edge may be to get comfortable with yourself as your only company.
    C OMMITTING TO F ULL E XPRESSION AND T RUTH -T ELLING
    I n our families of origin, people did not tell the truth about their feelings. Instead of speaking about their fears, sadnesses, dreams, and desires, they often hid them inside. Like most people, they had had no education or modeling about telling the truth about feelings, and they probably didn’t know how. Many family members turned to addictions such as smoking to mask these hidden feelings, and many died from these addictions.
    A participant in one of our workshops described the power of her commitment to authenticity and how it changed her relationships. “I was abused as a child, both sexually and physically,” Rosemary told us, “a pattern that repeated in my marriage. After two years and my first black eye, we went for short-term counseling. But I went into complete denial in spite of nonstop verbal battering, continued beatings, and my husband’s threats to kill me.
    “I had numerous affairs during my fourteen-year marriage. The affairs stopped prior to my becoming pregnant with my daughter. Then seven years later I met someone and wanted to haveanother affair. I began to question why I was having affairs. The answer was: I was looking for an escape from the battering without having to change myself. I wanted the situation to change and for me to stay the same. I wanted my house, my routine, my perceived sense of security, and my projection of a successful marriage to all remain the same. Most of all, I’d always viewed myself as a happy person, and I wanted that to remain the same. I was very afraid that if I started to cry, I wouldn’t be able to stop. I was afraid of the cost of getting out, and the benefits did not seem worth it.
    “Several years ago some girlfriends encouraged me to start a