Alan C. Fox

Gordon, a friend of mine, recently told me this sad, then happy story about his marriage to Louise.

“Alan, I used to walk around feeling like I weighed more than a thousand pounds.  Most of that was anger.  For some reason I had this crazy idea that if I was super angry for long enough Louise would give me what I wanted.  Every time I was upset I would walk around the house with a mad-on for days, or weeks.”

“Yes, I noticed that a few times when I visited you.”

“But Alan, I found that being angry is no fun.  It colors the world rotten.  And it’s painful. As I said, I finally understood what was really going on with me was the absurd belief that if I hurt hard enough for long enough Louise would cave in and give me what I wanted.”

“That doesn’t make any sense to me,” I said.

“Exactly, and when I really thought about it, that idea didn’t even make sense to me.  But that’s how I felt for many years.”

“So does this story have a happy ending?”

“I think so.  I finally told Louise that when I appeared to be upset and withdrawn to just say to me, ‘Gordon, you seem upset.  If there is any way I can help, please let me know what it is.’”

And what did she say?

“She said, ‘Fine.  I can do that.  Then what should I do?’”

“Then just leave me alone. My anger will dissolve.  As much as I want it to last forever, I never manage to carry anger around for more than a few weeks. But I want to let go of it a lot faster than that.”

“So how did this deal with Louise work out?”

“That’s the good news.  It worked out great.  Even though my anger used to hurt me a lot more than it hurt anyone else, it also felt wonderful.  I felt justified.  But starting from the day of my talk with Louise, with her help I was able to just let it go.”

“You know, Gordon, my father has a theory that no one has to feel negative emotions from the neck down, and that you always have a choice.  That idea must be working for Dad, because he is in a good mood almost all of the time and he’s more than 101 years old. I think my dad, and you, may be on to something.”

Gordon smiled in agreement.

I now suggest that, for all of us, when we are burdened by all those heavy pounds of anger, we simply apply what Gordon and Louise discovered – to just let it go. I even practice this myself.  Today I choose not to be angry, and I never am for long.

Over the past few years, Gordon has lost a lot of weight, and most of that was anger.

Anger is a lonely job.  Fortunately, no one has to do it.

Alan

Many years ago the surface of my desk was a cluttered mess.  I decided to clean it up and, with help, in a day or two my desktop was immaculate.  Perhaps I was motivated to take action because my assistant discovered a rather large check buried under the disorder. I needed the cash for my brand-new business to survive and it would have been helpful to have deposited the check when it was received four months earlier.

My desk remained neat for nine months.  Every single day before I left my office I filed or otherwise dealt with every single piece of paper.  But I still remember the day when, as I stood up to leave, there were three pieces of paper on my desk.

“Alan,” I said to myself, “if you don’t take away those three pieces of paper, it’s over.  Your desk is going to be a mess again.”

The nice part of talking to yourself is that you control both sides of the conversation.  “You’re right,” I muttered in my mind.

“So take them off your desk.  It’s only three pieces of paper.”

A second advantage of arguing with yourself is that you always win.  Unfortunately, you also always lose.  The papers remained, and were joined by hordes of companions over the next few weeks.

As I have previously written, a good relationship can only be built upon a foundation of trust. Lies are like those little pieces of paper accumulating on my desk, first one and then another. If I deceive you once how can you ever trust me?  If you work for me and I pay you two weeks late one time, how can you possibly trust me to pay you reliably in the future? If you lie to your partner about why you were two hours late arriving home, how can he or she not be concerned every day in the future that you might be late again and not tell the truth about the reason.

It’s a slippery slope.

I have met every payroll on time for more than forty-five years.  I always tell my wife the truth about where I am and who I’m with.

And the top of my desk is still a mess.  I wonder how many checks are buried there.

Alan

The foundation of every successful long-term relationship is trust.

Recently I have been negotiating a large business transaction with Jim, a man I met a year ago.  When I am not especially happy with the terms that Jim has offered I ask myself if he is taking a “negotiating” position. A negotiating position is one in which a person asks for more than he or she wants.  This is a typical business strategy.  “Ask for the moon, accept some cheese.”  But, with Jim, I don’t feel that I have to be “on guard” because I trust him.  I trust him because I have known him to be flexible, and Jim has always kept his word to me.

Today Jim interpreted one term of our potential agreement differently than what I had intended.  I believe that his interpretation was reasonable because I wasn’t entirely clear in my communication to him.  In a few minutes we reached a compromise which was satisfactory to us both.  That is how good business relationships work.

In a marriage or other intimate relationship the issue of trust lurks behind every word, every gesture, every separation.  Who did your partner have lunch with?  Why did they arrive home twenty minutes late?  Do they really like my favorite shoes?  There is always the question, whether spoken or unsaid: “How deeply can I really trust you?”  The depth of a relationship can be no greater than the depth of your mutual trust.

But, alas, we are talking about people here, and I have never met a human being, including myself, who is completely trustable.  Each of us contains the possibility of deceit, weakness, or even untimely death.  If I can never be certain that I will see you again, how can I completely trust you to always be there?  Because you are human, and humans are fallible (and mortal), I cannot.  Because I am human I cannot even completely trust myself.  This often goes unsaid, and without consciousness or intent we protect our hearts from the inevitability of disappointment.  This is why, to a greater or lesser degree, we hold ourselves apart from one another.

I suggest that my trust for Jim, or for my most intimate partner, does not entirely depend upon them.  My most sacred trust depends entirely on me.

Do I trust myself to survive, and even prosper, after someone I trust has betrayed me?  That is the real question.  But, as I said above, because I am human it is not possible for me to completely trust myself.  Even so, I accept that condition of uncertainty as a part of the warp and woof of this universe, and I choose to trust myself even as know that my trust is, inevitably, a delusion.

So I trust you to take what I say in the sprit in which it is intended, because our mutual trust will allow us to move closer to each other, and deeply enrich each other’s lives.

I can trust you because I choose to trust myself.

I am always willing to be the first to say, “I love you.”

Alan