The Conversation Part 2: Honesty in Communication, Common Ground

Glad to have you back after last week’s ponderous discussion of historic trauma, albeit, dealing with our cultural and emotional baggage. This week, we continue with the discussion Hill Harper's The Conversation, with a focus on honesty in communication and finding common ground--our shared beliefs, commitments and values. But first, allow me to say this. I imagine…no, I know it is particularly uncomfortable for some to bring historic trauma out into the open, because this issue doesn’t affect just the Black community. Historic trauma is not just “the Black experience,” it is part of the tapestry of American history, and in that sense, can test connections with our multicultural national community.

It is not a stretch to see how the discomfort surrounding historic trauma mirrors what happens in relationships, and families, that keep silent about unresolved trauma. It festers, and shows up in mind/body disease that affects everyone. Likewise, the challenges of Black families and the Black community do not occur in isolation, but reveals a systemic issue in our national psyche, it affects everyone, because, as Martin Luther King, Jr. viewed it, we wear “a garment of mutual destiny.” The way to address this, Hill suggests, is through a renaissance of loving, trusting Black relationships. By first redeeming ourselves and then have our maturity, confidence, strength, and resilience speak for itself. Let’s get right to it.

 Honesty in Communication

A preferred approach to relationship states: A contract of any kind should be based on honesty and should be mutually satisfactory.(1) In other words, to seek relationship poses the question, “how can we make this good for each other?” In that fashion, The Conversation is about finding out what we truly want. Once we’re past superficial, idiosyncratic self-interest, what Black men and Black women really want is very much like what any modern man and woman would want in coupling.

Speaking from a male perspective, Hill naturally had a lot to offer on what men want, culling it down to a succinct statement. The couple relationship men want looks like "a friendship and partnership that includes family, professional ambitions and successes, the creation and maintenance of a home, a solid and secure financial future, conversation, laughter, and of course--great sex--good passionate lovemaking." He adds, “Acknowledge we (men) want to be valued, needed, and appreciated; guys have an innate need to fulfill hunter/gatherer roles: to provide for and protect…a mate who will make a good nest and raise children effectively. There's nothing more appealing than a woman you can trust with your dreams.” Got that ladies? I know you do.

 

In turn, Hill did his best to get into the psyche of the women of his past and present to truly understand their needs. Women “want to be heard, taken seriously but still be seen as sexy and desirable…and dependability (their partner‘s). Ladies have the innate need to nest and nurture.” Perhaps due to the universality of the definition of the desirable relationship in men’s view, not much seemed to be added from the female perspective. Was the diffusiveness of the women’s responses characteristic of women in general or was it due to the questions posed to the women? Could the quality of feedback have been affected by particular women who participated in the focus group type of conversations Hill arranged? Or could it have been simply a question of including a variety of responses in the book’s presentation?

Personally, at times I would have liked to see the women’s responses to some of the questions so eloquently discussed in some of the male conversations. Nevertheless, this is a brother’s quest to answer his own questions so I fully appreciate and felt encouraged by the inclusion of the ladies. More so, it definitely instigated curiosity about how women constructively articulate their needs and desires in relationship, and in life.


Finding Common Ground
An appraisal of our own needs is essential to getting what you want out of life. However, it does not stop at ourselves. Getting what we want often involves negotiation with the circumstances of our environment in a process of give and take. Give and take is precisely the realm of relationship.

For human relationships negotiation does not stop at the best available option, but is necessary over the relationship career, from attraction to what we’ll be doing once the kids have moved on with their lives. Negotiation and relationship requires communication, even special communication as individuals learn each other’s nuances, needs, and vulnerabilities. The amount of ease or difficulty encountered in a coupling relationships depends on awareness and ability to modify self/mate-defeating behaviors involved in these key negotiating points in the relationship career.

• Money, status, sex. The foremost criteria considered when choosing a mate centers around the three Ps--their ability to provide, protect, and procreate. Society may have evolved but our instincts regarding these factors are relatively the same. What matters most, says Hill, is character, that the person you choose is right for you (i.e., your values and habits about money, and sex), and wants to be in a relationship with you. He also recommended a simple strategy for witnessing a person’s character over time, AFI--attraction and friendship before intimacy.
• Language, communication. It can be expected that our ideal romance will likely encounter some travails depending on our degree of preparedness. Hill referred to one view of male-female conversation as “cross-cultural communication”--men as “doers”, concrete and action oriented, and women as “feelers,” empathic and feeling oriented. Establishing “true and consistent personal connection” requires knowing how and when to communicate so that each person is heard, and how to reach agreement on what matters most.
• Emotional baggage, infidelity. Everyone experiences fear and doubt when pursuing something of value. Relationships evoke these same emotions alongside the elation and anticipation experienced in meeting a potential mate. More significantly, relationships are psychological mirrors of our highest and best intentions, and our deepest, darkest fears. Relationships will quickly engage the personal shadow--your fears, hang-ups, and repressed desires--referred to by Hill as the “masks of heaviness to protect ourselves.” Betrayal, infidelity and shame are tools of the shadow in the temptation to betray ourselves, our ideals and values. Betrayal and shame leads us out of that spontaneous, free-spirited state Hill referred to as lightness of being. “If we’ve allowed our (emotional) baggage or someone else’s faulty training to make us heavy, then it is up to us to rediscover our lightness of being, says Hill, “joy matters.”
• Atypical relationships. Truth be told, atypical relationships: divorce, widow-hood, single parenthood, inter-racial relationships, are really the norm. Chances are if you’re single and dating you will encounter the opportunity to consider a relationship involving these factors. It might be that you’re the one bringing these considerations to the relationship. Particularly where children are involved, as in single-parenthood and divorce, blending families or blending cultures(inter-racial) requires conscious choice-making. Hill shared, “Part of the wonder and possibility of a first date is that we get to write our own rules, make our own mark… We get to write our own book on how to be together. After all, you don‘t always choose love--sometimes love chooses you. When we meet the right person, your perspective shifts and judgments just disappear.”

By it’s title, The Conversation reveals essentially what the book, and relationship, is about: communication; ultimately, intimacy. Hill writes in an engaging contemporary style which demonstrates effective communication by immersing the reader into the subject of discussion. When you get between the covers (yes, how dishy!), The Conversation is about the substance of communication--what to talk about, and how to talk about it. The clear objective of such dialogue is for building confidence and a safe environment in which to focus on what really matters--our shared destinies. Rather than focusing on the hurt and difficulties that drive us apart, The Conversation redirects our focus to what we truly desire, what truly matters. Instead of focusing on (the baggage), focus on building a (partnership, family, community, country; your choice here.)(2)

Ultimately, The Conversation is a practical step in getting the various points of view conducive to making an honest assessment ourselves, and to set ourselves up for secure, strongly loving relationships based on trust and true intimacy. In order to gain these points of view, we must first learn how to listen--to our needs and also to our habitual self-talk, the myths, memes, misconceptions about our ability to love ourselves and each other. We must also learn to listen to what the opposite sex is communicating to us--the basic strengths and opportunities of our own condition--so we can legitimize what is constructive, or dismiss what is denigrating or derogatory. This reflective process--understanding each other’s perspectives and underlying emotions--is the junction which fosters intimacy.

Fantastic! This is good stuff. We hope you're finding clarity from these tidbits from the book, and feel motivated to stick with us for Part 3, the conclusion of our discussion: commitment as a path to freedom and authentic happiness. Have an dyamic week.

Ciao!

References:

1. 
   
   A contract of any kind should be based on honesty and should be mutually satisfactory.~Joseph Murphy
2. 
   
   Instead of focusing on (the baggage), focus on building a (partnership, family, community, country; your choice here.)~Former U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell