Rule of Life (15 page)

I F W E A R E N ’ T TA L K I N G , T H E R E I S S O M E T H I N G

W R O N G .

I F W E A R E N ’ T TA L K I N G , W H AT A R E W E D O I N G ?

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Respect Privacy

“I want to be alone….” Each and every one of us has a God-given right to respect, privacy, trust, honesty. But of all of them, it is privacy that is the most sacrosanct, inviolate, untouchable.

You must respect your partner’s privacy, as she must yours. If you don’t, you have to question all those other things—trust, respect, honesty—as well. If they are all missing, what you’ve got there isn’t a relationship and, quite frankly, I don’t know what it is, except it belongs in the morgue. So we’ll assume you have a good and healthy relationship. This means you have respect for your partner’s privacy. In all areas.

If your partner chooses not to discuss something with you, then that is her right, and you do not have the right to:

• Wheedle

• Threaten

• Emotionally blackmail

• Bribe

• Withhold privileges

• Try and find out by underhand means and methods And no, charming your partner out of it counts as a no-no as well. Privacy isn’t just about not opening someone’s mail or listening to her telephone messages or reading her emails when she’s not looking. Privacy is also about making sure your partner can carry out her ablutions on her own—we all need a certain degree of grace and dignity in our lives, and separate bathroom activities is the standard bottom line actually.

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Sharing a bathroom all the time isn’t desirable, at least not for all activities. Ugh, how horrid. If you can’t have separate bathrooms, at least have some separate privacy in the bathroom. I know, shared baths and the like can be very intimate and romantic, but you don’t have to cut your toenails or squeeze your blackheads in front of each other. Don’t do it. Winston Churchill said the reason he managed to stay married for 56

years—or however long it was—was separate bathrooms. So keep yourself to yourself in your more intimate ablutions, and make sure you don’t intrude on anyone else’s privacy. You can extend this Rule to everyone else in the entire universe, not just your partner.

If you feel a need to intrude on someone else’s privacy, you have to take a long hard look at yourself and fathom out why.

The truth may be unpalatable, but you have to know it.

I F YO U F E E L A N E E D TO

I N T R U D E O N S O M E O N E

E L S E ’ S P R I VACY ,

YO U H AV E TO TA K E A LO N G

H A R D LO O K AT YO U R S E L F

A N D FAT H O M O U T W H Y.

R U L E 6 9

Check You Both Have the Same

Shared Goals

When we first meet and fall in love, we think we know pretty well everything we can about our love. We have so much in common. It all seems so easy, so intuitive, so natural. Of course we want the same. Of course we are two sides of the same coin. Of course we are going to share life’s highway together.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The highway will diverge at times, and if you aren’t on the ball, you will lose sight of each other completely and forever. You have to keep checking that you are both using the same map so to speak, both heading for the same destination, both going in the same direction even.

So what are your shared goals? Where do you both think you’re going? No, don’t guess here. Don’t make them assumed goals or even guessed goals. You have to know what your partner thinks are the shared goals—and what you think. They might be a world apart. Or then again they might be very close. You’ll only know if you ask, discreetly of course. Don’t want to frighten the horses here.

And you have to differentiate between shared goals and shared dreams. We all have dreams—the cottage by the sea, the trip round the world, the Ferrari, the second home in Malibu, the purpose-built wine cellar (fully stocked, of course), the Olympic-size swimming pool—but goals are different. Goals are to have children (or not); to travel a lot; to retire early and live in Spain; to bring up the children to be happy, well-adjusted people; to stay together (!); to move to the countryside/town; to downsize together and work from home; to run your own business together; to get a dog. I guess R U L E 6 9

dreams are things you aim to get one day, and goals are what you are doing together. Dreams are acquisitions that either of you could want, and goals are shared aims that you need each other for, because without the other the goal is pretty meaningless.

This Rule is about reviewing. To review, you have to talk to your partner about where it is you both think you’re going and what you’re doing. It doesn’t have to be heavy. This can be a light review just to touch base and check that you are both on the same track. It doesn’t have to be too detailed, just simple questions to confirm a general similar direction, rather than trying to map out an A-to-Z of your future life together.

YO U H AV E TO K E E P

C H E C K I N G

T H AT YO U A R E B OT H

U S I N G T H E S A M E M A P.

R U L E 7 0

Treat Your Partner Better Than

Your Best Friend

I was talking to a friend about this Rule the other day, and she disagreed with me emphatically. She said you had to treat your friends better because you knew them better and you owed them more loyalty. I then went on to talk to another friend, and she said that wasn’t the case. You treated your partner better because you knew them less well. Intriguing. My point is you should treat your partner better than your friends because your partner is both lover and friend. And ideally best friend.

If your partner is not your best friend, then who is? And why?

Is it because your partner is the opposite sex and you need a same-sex best friend? Or your partner is the same sex and you need an opposite-sex best friend? Is it because you don’t see a lover as a friend? (If you do answer yes to this, what do you see your partner as…what is his role or function in being your partner?)

Again, all this is about being conscious. Treating your partner better than your best friend means you have given it some thought and made a conscious decision to do so—or not if it’s the case.

I would have thought treating your partner better than your best friend would have been a given. This means not interfer-ing, respecting his privacy, treating him like an independent grown-up. You only have to look around to see couples who treat each other like small children, nagging, scolding, arguing, criticizing, nit-picking. They wouldn’t do it with their friends, so why do they do it with the one person who is supposed to mean heaven and earth to them?

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I’ll give you an example. You are a passenger in a car being driven by a friend. She makes a foolish error (though not a dangerous one). You would probably start teasing and laugh a lot. Now imagine the same scenario but with your partner who has messed up. Do you:

• Make him feel very small?

• Not let him forget it in a long while?

• Tell everyone else?

• Take over the driving for a while on the grounds he’s not to be trusted?

• Treat him the same as you would a friend and laugh a lot?

Hopefully the last one, but watch other couples in similar situations and see what they do.

W H AT YO U D O S E E YO U R

PA R T N E R A S … W H AT I S

H I S R O L E O R F U N CT I O N

I N B E I N G

YO U R PA R T N E R ?

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Contentment Is a High Aim

If you ask a lot of people what they want in life, they say, “Oh, just to be happy, I guess.” Same goes if you ask what they want for their children, “I don’t mind what they do as long as they are happy.” You’d be better off wishing that you or your children could be astronauts or brain surgeons—at least you’re in with a sporting chance then. You can train. They can qualify.

Happiness is such an illusory thing that spending too much time chasing it is not very worthwhile. Happiness is one end of a spectrum—misery being the other end. It is a state of extreme, just as misery represents the other end. If you check back at the times in your life when you’ve been happy—or thought you might have been—I’ll bet there were other extreme feelings involved. The birth of a child? Excitement yes. Wonder yes. Relief at a successful birth. Yes. But happiness? I’m not sure.

People think they’ll be happy on vacation when they mean relaxed or stimulated or freed from their cares—and indeed they are. Aiming for happiness is one of those “bigger is best”

things. You’re never going to make it because there is no top end limit. You just have to go on aiming for even bigger all the time. Instead of aiming for happy, it’s better to aim for contentment. Now that’s attainable. That’s a worthy goal.

This applies especially to relationships—both to the quest to find Mr. or Mrs. Right and in what happens when you do.

Most of us want to fall madly head-over-heels in love. Big chemistry—fireworks, butterflies, unbelievable feelings. It’s brilliant. It’s extreme. But that intensity can’t and won’t last.

You have to go back to reality sometime. You have to get on R U L E 7 1

with your life. No one can live at that intensity, that lofty alti-tude all the time. Contentment is what you hope for after the elation has worn off and you settle back into a relaxed and happy simplicity. In fact, contentment is the worthier aim, because it lasts.

And so if you find you are with somebody where there is no big firework display, palpitations, and extreme of feelings but there is a baseline contentment and warmth and love—be happy with that.

C O N T E N T M E N T I S W H AT

YO U H O P E FO R

A F T E R T H E E L AT I O N

H A S WO R N O F F.

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You Don’t Both Have to Have the

Same Rules

Lots of couples make the assumption that everything has to be the same for both of them—that you have to have the same set of rules for both partners. Not true. You can operate under different rules for important areas. The happiest relationships, the most successful, the strongest, are where both parties see the need for flexibility in their rules and adjust their relationship accordingly.

I expect you want an example? Of course you do. Let’s suppose one of you is fanatically tidy and the other fanatically messy (whatever that is). Normally, you would have one complaining to the other all the time about how messy/tidy the other is. There would be arguments and problems. That’s because you are both trying to work to the same rule—we both have to be tidy/we both have to be messy. How about a different rule? I can be messy; you can be tidy. I can have areas where I can be messy, and you have areas where you can be tidy. Now we don’t argue because we have a different rule. I don’t have to be tidy when it isn’t in my nature, and you don’t have to be messy when it isn’t in your nature.

Another example? My wife hates being teased, and she hates being tickled. Me? I’m not bothered. She has the rule that she is not to be tickled—or teased—and my rule is I can.* You may be the kind of person who wants to know where your partner is, whereas your partner is not bothered about where you are and doesn’t expect you to report on it. You can then have a rule where your partner tells you where she’s going, to

* No, this is only for my wife. Of course, you can’t come round and tickle or tease me.

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reassure you, but you don’t need to keep her completely in the picture because she doesn’t worry about it.

Your partner may need constant reassurance that you love them and may need to be told several times a day. You might prefer to be told less frequently but when it’s genuinely felt—

so you would have a rule that you’d mention it often, but she didn’t have to say it back every time. Different strokes for different folks.

T H E H A P P I E S T

R E L AT I O N S H I P S A R E

W H E R E B OT H PA R T I E S

S E E T H E N E E D FO R

F L E X I B I L I T Y I N

T H E I R R U L E S .

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FRIENDS

RULES

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If you imagine yourself as the center of your own universe, then you are the very hub. The next circle around you is your lover, your partner; this is your closest, most intimate relationship. The next circle to that is your family and friends. These are the people you love the most, choose to spend the most time with, love you the most. These are the people you can relax with, kick off your shoes and be yourself. But there are still Rules. There is still a right way to treat them and a not-so-right way. You still have to behave with honor, dignity, respect.

You have responsibilities toward both your children and your parents. You have a duty to your siblings. You have obligations, that have to be taken seriously, to your friends.

You have a whole raft of hats to wear—parent, friend, child, brother/sister, uncle/aunt, godparent, niece/nephew, cousin—

and a whole set of rules and duties to perform. The next section is guidance on how best to wear all these hats.

As we go through this life, we have to interact with other people. We rub up against them (emotionally) all the time, and we have to have rules to govern our behavior so we do right by them, to steer us through tricky situations, new experiences, and ongoing close relationships.

If we want our relationships with our family and friends to be successful and for them to think the very best of us, then we do need to give those relationships some thought—a conscious approach rather than sailing on asleep at the wheel like most people. By consciously being aware of what we are doing, we can improve those relationships, iron out the problems, encourage others, and generally spread a bit of warmth and happiness as we go. What could be finer?