“We expect more from technology and less from one another and seem increasingly drawn to technologies that provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of relationship.” 

-Sherry Turkle

A couple of years ago, not long after I won the Angel Conference I got a text message from a successful local businessman who had agreed to become our CEO and probably had a lot to do with my winning the conference.  He resigned over a text message, not even using the 160 characters allotted, “it wasn’t going to work for him at this time” was all I got.   It was devastating, almost a surreal moment where I had to go back and read the message again.   Did this just end- like that- over a text message?  I felt it physically, a hearty dose of adrenaline mixed with old, deep fears of worthlessness and abandonment.  Although this break up was in the business realm, we all know at least one person who has who had their heart broken over text message.

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 “When things come at you very fast, naturally you lose touch with yourself.” ~Marshall McLuhan

It is hard to imagine that we have already come full circle in our relationship to technology. The relentless drive for more access, smaller devices and ever increasing speed is hitting a wall for many of us. Yet, it isn’t so surprising that the wonder has worn thin when you consider the sheer number of hours that Americans spend in front of a screen. Between 2005 and 2009, our time spent in front of a screen doubled to include at least 8.5 hours per day. Television viewing, likewise, has also steadily increased Nicolas Carr, in his revelatory best-seller; “The Shallows” has documented how these technological trends are shaping not only our days, but the very wiring of our minds.

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“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”  ~Henry David Thoreau, “Economy,” Walden, 1854

Our time is our life.  How we spend the hours of our days is the truest measure of what we create, what we value and how we invest our life energy.  This is why the recent statistics regarding the social takeover of Internet gaming and social media should give us pause for wonder and concern. Facebook, the leader in social media reportedly consumes over 8 Billion minutes of time for its collected membership every single day.  It is hard to imagine what that amount of time represents, so I recalculated it in terms of years- each and every day we give Facebook equates to more than 15,000 years of our collective human attention. Gaming statistics are equally disturbing, Angry Birds, one of the most popular web games of all time has been downloaded 300 million times and is expected to hit one billion downloads. Every hour of every day, we collectively give this game 200 million minutes, or 16 years of our attention. While individually these statistics break down to 20 to 60 minutes, the equation for each of us is more complex than the math. We look to our Internet applications to fill us, to calm us, to entertain us, to connect us in a virtual world, but they somehow also leave us increasingly lonely.

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“There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it hardly becomes any of us to talk about the rest of us.” ~Edward Wallis Hoch

My teenage daughter has removed herself from Facebook. Her cold-turkey drop of a technology that had dominated many of her free hours caught my attention. “I noticed how anxious it makes me,” she replied simply when I asked why. “I just want to see what its like; to see if I miss it.” There was surprisingly little withdrawal she said enthusiastically, back to re-reading her favorite books.   “I feel so much better not doing it. I don’t miss it at all.”

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“The finest thing in the world is knowing how to belong to oneself.” -Michel de Montaigne

I am convinced that the most significant and meaningful change we can make within all of our relationships begins with our foundational ability to relate to our selves. This teaching is ancient and lies at the heart of every spiritual discipline.  The Buddha summed it up saying:  “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.” Not only is our capacity for self-love the most challenging healing for most of us to master, but our inattention to this critical inner struggle is often the silent and invisible root of what goes wrong in our other personal and intimate relationships.

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“Most people are slow to champion love because they fear the transformation it brings into their lives. And make no mistake about it: love does take over and transform the schemes and operations of our egos in a very mighty way.”   -Aberjhani

One of the most common ways that we leave each other while staying together is to remove sex from our relationship. This is not a new topic. In recent years the concept of the Sexless marriage has made the cover of Newsweek and other major publications, which reported that as many as 15- 20% of married couples have had no sex in the last 6-12 months. While some may argue the definitions of a sexless relationship, no one is arguing the fact that our ability to show up sexually is an essential foundation for the health and wellbeing of relationships.

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“There is no life as complete as the life that is lived by choice.”  -Unknown

The problem with many relationships is that we don’t trust our own choices. For many couples this lack of trust starts early in the relationship, when we first encounter the difficulties of the relationship or, more challenging still, the foibles of our chosen partner. We question whether we have made a mistake in choosing our partner, and often this question comes in the form of pulling ourselves part way out of the relationship. Look around and notice how many relationships you are in or that you are witness to which are qualified by one or sometimes both partners having one or sometimes both feet out the door.

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“There are times when the actual experience of leaving something makes you wish desperately that you could stay, and then there are times when the leaving reminds you a hundred times over why exactly you had to leave in the first place.”  -Shauna Niequist

Leaving is bittersweet. Knowing when to leave is not always a simple equation. Even the departing itself  is rarely an experience of simple relief; generally, it is weighted by what is lost, even if the loss is only lives in our imaginings of what was possible. Often when we leave, we lose not only our hopes for the relationship that has ended, but more deeply, for our concept of a future that defined us. I grew up  amidst a long series of leaving and being left. I imagine that this has a lot to do with why I am now usually the last one to leave, hanging onto any vestige of hope that things can turn around. Being left so often as a child is qualitatively different than choosing to leave, and creates odd associations to most endings.  Your history of relationship endings is the foundation of your tendency toward leaving or staying.

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“If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.”  ~Buddhist Proverb

Working as I have for decades on learning how to sustain and nourish lasting relationships has brought me continuously back to the same question of how to learn to stay both in my own relationships as well as in many others that I have counseled.   Usually the question is a reflection of the viability of the relationship itself.  We look at our partner and ask if they can change or whether the relationship will improve. Generally the question is provoked when we are in the midst of painful times.  We don’t wonder about staying when things are easy and predictable. It is when things fall apart that we doubt whether the work that our relationship or other life commitments is demanding is worth it.

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“Boredom is nothing but the experience of a paralysis of our productive powers.”  -Erich Fromm

Boredom is defined as the “state of being weary and restless through lack of interest.” Apply this definition to your sex life and you are suddenly in a crowd. In fact, sexual boredom is one of the most often cited reasons for cheating. The drive forces of this weariness and restlessness usually has less to do with you or your partner than it does with the nature of your partnership. There are many bestsellers currently on bookshelves promoting the idea that monogamy kills sexual passion and that sexual boredom is inevitable in long-term relationships.

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