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MAUDE: In our post last week, we wrote about the struggles we have all been going through in the tense situation before this country’s election, the raging wars in the world, climate change, and the overall uncertainty and anxiety caused by all this and so much more. We suggested ways to balance this by creating peace through your deep and intimate relationships.

We received feedback clearly indicating that many people could identify with this description of tension and struggle from their own lives. Many people believe that conflict is inevitable. This is not surprising given the state of the world and the apparent divisions between people. It is our experience that when people are presented with stories of hardship, tragedy and difficulty, they often respond with recognition and a propensity to give them their full interest and attention. There is a willingness to discuss them at length and dwell on these negative challenges.

When faced with the suggestion of experiencing peace within their relationships, and how this has the power to change things, a different response is evoked. This is often met with “Well, that’s all la-di-dah”, or “Nice for you, but not all of us are so lucky!”.

These very different ways to relate to the world are not surprising. The response to threat and danger is a survival skill we all have in our genetic makeup. It was necessary to be alert to so many dangers and to always keep them in the forefront of the mind. We are still doing that.

Peace on the other hand, is just a concept or a word to many people. It has not yet become an experience, a visceral reality. It has the element of fantasy to some, or something that is far off and distant to others.

And it will remain so if you do not make it a part of how you live and conduct your deep relationships. Phil and I know that this is possible, and what we want to share is that there is a choice to be made. There is nothing wrong with feeling bad, but when you are consciously or unconsciously attracted and prone to dwelling in negativity, that is a choice. You can choose peace, you can create peace in your own life. There are many aspects to how, and those are the topics of our posts. The real deciding factor is to make the choice to move in that direction, realize you can, and keep choosing it each time you are confronted with a decision.

The real magic is that the pleasure and delight that peace offers is so attractive, that each time you act in peace, you will move closer to choosing it the next time.

PHIL: It is hard to make this choice for a peaceful relationship because of the commonly held belief that relationships are work; that different people want different things, and therefore conflict is inevitable. With such a widely held attitude, it’s hard to accept that relationships can be any other way, but they do exist. Do you know anyone like that? A grandparent? A therapist? A friend?

So here’s the first thing: you have to believe it is possible, but once you know there is a single relationship suffused with peace, it becomes a choice: which way do you want your relationships to be? And if you want a peaceful relationship, you do that by simply not going there: not creating friction, not responding to friction. Of course it takes effort at first; it’s easier to follow the ruts that have been established than change course.

It’s not a question of ignoring reality. What we think of as real is largely how we interpret events-the term is constructed reality. The idea that people in general are inevitably in competition because they have different interests is a Darwinian view of life that appears everywhere in our culture. Heist movies, the stock market, on sale while supplies last; they all push the idea of neediness. There is little emphasis on the way that humans help and support each other, yet it is the way we work together and care for each other that makes society possible. We supply each other with both material and emotional welfare.

The same attitudes turn up in relationships, too. You have to drop that subconscious feeling of scarcity and replace it with a feeling of connection. Your relationships are miniature societies that thrive on sharing and caring. The more you experience this, the more you know it is possible and the more desirable it becomes, until you would have it no other way.

Photo credit: Maude Mayes
Photo note: Phil and Iris

Originally published at on October 20, 2024.

It’s Important to Know You Can Choose Peaceful Relationships was originally published in Hello, Love on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

PHIL: Let me start with our second date. On a beach walk (what a cliché!), I told Maude that I had never been in a relationship that had lasted more than three years. Her thought, I learned much later, was that was because I had not yet met her. You can see that she was right. All those other relationships dissolved because of two things: they did not meet my expectations of a relationship, and I was losing myself. Not that I was conscious of the latter, but the aftermath was, in part, rediscovering how to live in the world without constantly having to be on guard not to offend and adjusting myself to their expectations.

There are echoes in families down the ages. My mother met her third husband at the same age that I met Maude, and they were happy together for more than 30 years, yet it does not feel that I am following her example and settling down; instead, two things contribute to my relationship with Maude. Over a lifetime, I have changed from an attitude of neediness, of what is missing, to one of appreciation for what is present. I am unsure of how that change happened; maybe meditation, which involves attention on what is present. My focus is now on what the relationship gives me, not expectations of how it should be. Which leads to the second aspect of our relationship: that I feel seen, accepted and not controlled.

Controlled may be too strong a word. I am talking about all those expectations of how a partner should behave: words of love, how the kitchen is kept, how time is spent. With full acceptance, expectations do not exist. No, it is more that her expectations are deeper than that; they go to our wedding vows of openness, truth and positivity, and because those commitments were given by me, not taken from me, they are not a burden. They are how I want to live.

The result is that no part of me is nibbled away; I have no sense of losing myself, because I can be completely myself in this relationship. This, if you haven’t picked up on it already, gives our relationship an extraordinary radical quality of peace. I continue to learn who I am, how to be myself, how to disentangle from a lifetime of injunctions and expectations. For this I am profoundly grateful. Thank you, Maude. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

MAUDE: Mostly, I have learned how to access the highest and best parts of myself in the interactions between Phil and me, and I find that is carrying through to all my other relationships.

This comes in part from the experience of being totally accepted for who I am, of feeling seen, heard and acknowledged. The critical component is of acceptance of me as a separate and unique person. We have learned and continue to learn what it means to be together and connected, while not thinking that you have to have agreement with each other all the time.

There is a deep sense of trust in each other that has developed; trust that we will be honest with each other, that we want goodness for each other, and that we come from a place of always thinking the best of each other. This involves being willing to look inside myself for the causes of any disagreement and being willing to see unnecessary defensiveness or any needing to be right that may be at play.

Interacting with this kind of trust and honesty brings an indescribable pleasure with it; the sense of true peace and harmony. It creates an atmosphere of relaxation and calm that allows clarity to respond lovingly without anything being held back or causing distance between us. It opens a quiet space to all the positive advantages in the differences between us without any need to create sameness.

These experiences have provided me with a road map for all my relationships. The more I am at ease and connect with my own inner world, the more natural it becomes to accept others. Peace is something I carry around inside and it allows me the openness to respond with love toward others without unnecessary defensiveness or protections. (unnecessary is a key word here and this is something that must be assessed in every relationship.)

There are many qualities that grow out of the ones mentioned above, like respect, honoring of each other, kindness, friendliness. There is no magic wand needed to create relationships built on all these factors; it just t akes belief in the possibility and the intent to make it so. Make a commitment to each other that being together in this way is something both parties want and seek.

Sixteen years ago, Phil and I stated this clearly in our wedding vows and we have never veered from that commitment. In our 19 years together, this direct experience has enhanced all my other relationships and shown me what is possible and how to bring it into present reality.

Photo credit: Temogen Amato
Photo note: Phil and Maude’s wedding 9/29/07

Originally published at on September 29, 2024.

What We Have Learned About Peace and Harmony Through Our Relationship was originally published in Hello, Love on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

PHIL: We humans are social animals who need each other to thrive. We need other people to smelt steel, grow wheat, bake pizza, print books, build pianos, and make toaster ovens. People have to work together and agree on how things are done.

Along with that, we have to work out how to live together. For society to run smoothly, we copy each other in many ways: we all drive on the same side of the road, stop at red lights, exchange pieces of paper for meals, and dress similarly.

At the same time, we’re individuals with our own ideas of how things should be, yet to live together, we need to moderate ourselves to fit in with other people. We have to hide a part of ourselves; we are not fully seen.

Close relationships are the forum where we can change this and show ourselves completely. How does that transition occur?

It starts with taking a small risk by being honest and expressing something that might be ridiculed or laughed at, used to shame you, or used against you. When your listener does not take advantage of this, but instead hears and sees you, it increases your trust in how open you can be with them, and you can progressively share more of yourself.

At some point, you can make the leap to total trust and total openness. This is a place where you can find yourself, you can dig down through the cultural assumptions. It is a place of great peace and calm. You can relax because this is a relationship of cooperation, not competition. You are both on the same side. You are in tune with the deep sense that we need each other to survive and thrive.

MAUDE: A relationship that is grounded in the experience of peace is a powerful support for your growth and well-being. It is so far removed from the fears and blockages that interfere with your happiness and ability to actualize your potential that it seems almost magical. It feels both extraordinary and absolutely natural. It seems to require no effort to relate in that space, to feel the sense of the connection; to feel the other person and know where to meet them. There is a strong pull in that direction. Peace is very attractive, and peaceful connections are fulfilling and alluring.

How do we find our way to these kinds of exchanges? It is a process of development and recognition. Once you have had such a relationship, and know what it is to connect in this manner, it becomes a reality to you rather than a concept, and you can find your way there more easily each time.

One of the first keys to moving in this direction is honesty. When you share yourself honestly with another, it moves you forward on the road toward peace. When you speak and listen with openness and honesty in your heart you are setting aside fears and defenses.

Openness is an ongoing process. You can share a bit and when you are accepted and respected, when you feel seen and heard, you dare to open a bit more. You take a little risk and then another. There is always a risk of getting hurt when opening yourself and being vulnerable. Each time you allow someone further into who you are, you allow that possibility. You take the chance that they may abuse your vulnerability. They may respond with an attempt at power and dominance. They may trample on your delicate exposed underbelly.

You should move at your own pace, within your feelings of safety. For some of you this is a rapid progression, and for others it must move slowly, as you gain enough assurance to proceed. Great rewards are waiting on the side of building relationships of honesty and full openness. Peace, a living visceral experience of peace awaits you.

Photo credit: Maude Mayes
Photo note: Couple in the park

Originally published at on September 15, 2024.

How Honesty Leads to Trust in Your Relationships was originally published in Hello, Love on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

PHIL: It’s been a week where we seem to have had frequent calls for help. Maude described herself as feeling interrupted for a second when asked, and then just thought, here’s an opportunity of service, and switched away from the put-upon sensation that she had very quickly.

What I got from that is that you’re in one reality, then reality changes and the question is, how long are you going to be upset at that change before you go “Okay, this is how it is.” And when you can go “Oh, look, a change has happened; this is how it is,” then you totally skip over the regret, the loss, the irritation.

This is a beneficial attitude to have in a relationship because the other person is constantly changing: they’re tired, they’re annoying, they need help with something, they’re off doing something, they’re underfoot. Even good changes are a form of disruption.

So this is about being present, that holy grail of modern-day self-care. It’s about accepting how the other person is right now. And-holy moly-this looks like total acceptance, a central theme of ours. To clarify, this is not carte blanche for every form of behavior; we are talking about relationships with shared values where you trust the other person.

To even see how the other person is right now, you need to pay attention to them. Attention is like a flashlight, only illuminating one thing at a time, and your own feelings and reactions are likely to capture your attention instead. Not that you should ignore them; just don’t get captivated by them. By setting them aside for the moment, you create a gap between action and reaction and avoid impulsive responses.

You create a stillness within yourself that can hear, see, be open to the other person, the situation, or whatever has interrupted your life, and the shock of change is more easily assimilated.

MAUDE: Every relationship feels entirely different when you are truly present in it. This difference can be recognized by both parties, whether consciously or unconsciously. When you have the experience of each person being present, many of the fears that people bring to relationships dissolve.

The sense of having to be on your guard dissipates with mutual presence, as well as many misunderstandings, assumptions, and much of the fear of abandonment. Worries about the past as well as projections of the future do not live in this kind of shared presence.

A quality that rarely gets spoken of, and yet one that is felt keenly when it is not there, is being available; available with your whole person. This quality involves listening with interest and the intention to understand, as well as balancing that listening with sharing about yourself and your feelings. It calls for making the time to be with the relationship in this way.

When you are present, you are aware of the sense of connection with each other, and that sense is pervaded by the knowledge that you are on the same side. You both want the best for each other and want to support one another to be your best. This underlying foundation creates strong bonds and an assurance that enables you to bridge any gaps you might sense in the connection.

Translating these qualities into actions involves learning how to do it, and the intention to be present in this way with each other. No one is perfect, and no one is successful all the time in these intentions. It is helpful to gently remind each other when you feel this kind of awareness lapsing, or unease growing due to a lack of the sense of the other’s presence. Never discuss this with an attitude of blame or accusation. Rather, share your own feelings of any distance you sense from the lack of being present together.

Photo credit: Maude Mayes
Photo note: Phil and John in discussion

Originally published at on September 1, 2024.

Why It’s Important to Be Fully Present in Your Relationships was originally published in Hello, Love on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

PHIL: What we have been doing since the beginning of our blogs is to describe the nature of our relationship.

A long time ago, my sister said “Oh, that’s very nice for you guys…” as if it was some luck of the draw. Such a blessing is true, but it is also something that we actively make happen, and the luck is that we both want this kind of relationship. We try to describe it in as much detail as possible so that our readers can reframe their ideas about how to relate.

One source of peace comes from the knowledge that we are always on the same side. You might think that we would sometimes tussle on which way to go, how to spend (or not spend) money, or any of the hundreds of things that people clash over, but we don’t.

Think of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Let’s group them into physical, social, and self; for a satisfying life, people need all three. The social need is to feel connected to others, and that connection is strongest in close relationships. That is what our relationship provides for me, and it is not at odds with the other needs. My physical needs are made easier by being in a partnership, and my self-actualization needs are not in conflict with the relationship because we practice total acceptance — we recognize each other as independent people, and we move through the world both together and separately.

The knowledge of being on the same side can be a sense and is also boosted by experience. Maybe you meet someone and get a good vibe from them; maybe you see over time how they behave. Whatever the route, it creates a sense of comfort, a sense of ease, a sense of security, a sense of trust.

To maintain it, always assume the best of the other person. Don’t take it as a hostile attack; take it as the result of a different perception or a splitting headache. Stay in touch with that social need.

That’s a trivial event, but it illustrates the point that if you want a peaceful relationship, just stay peaceful. Does this peace exist within yourself or within the relationship? Both, surely; they feed each other; yet I cannot imagine a peaceful relationship where the participants are not peaceful. So find peace within yourself and spread it in the world.

MAUDE: We’ve been talking about our basic reason for writing this blog, which is supporting people to spread peace one relationship at a time. We decided to take a fresh look at peaceful relationships in our experience, including, of course, our own.

I have found that the most important element to creating and maintaining such relationships is that both people share peace as a central . I do not mean having thoughts of peace in some theoretical sense. I mean being dedicated to building the experience of peace within your shared interactions.

It is such a life treasure when you weave and build relationships where peace, between you and within each of you, is a living part of how you are with each other. This can occur when neither of you is looking for power, being right, or remaking the other in their own image! In such an exchange, you actually bring out this experience for each other, and it carries over into how you live, and how you make decisions.

For Phil and I, and in all of my intimate relationships, there are basic elements that are present. The first step is building trust and expressing love through the exchanges. In order to develop a sense of trust in each other, you have to take the time to get to know each other; be interested, pay attention, listen (really listen and hear what the other person is saying), communicate how you feel and share who you are.

These require you to be present and available to the other. As trust develops over time, you come to know through actions and words that you are safe with this person. There will be no attacks, no attempts to alter you, nor actions that leave you feeling that you have to defend yourself from the other person. There is no pulling away or abandonment in this kind of relating, as it is so much deeper and based on core realities and those ever-important true values. And it is thereby so much more attractive.

Honesty reverberates in your connection, and it becomes a joyful exchange that offers support and appreciation for who each of you are. You are on the same side while being different and unique, and yet the same in your primary values.

The strength that you receive from relationships like this is immeasurable. They become the cornerstones of your life. Once you experience peace in this way as a visceral reality, you know where True North is, and you can select and move toward this in your life and your connections. When old habits, fear, or acting unconsciously rear their head, they are quickly banished for the far more attractive experience of life in peace.

I am describing realities in my life; my life with Phil, my deep friendships and evolving connections. Phil and I have been together several decades now, and this has never wavered. This experience of peace is real, and once the shared knowledge of this way of being with one another is learned, it grows ever deeper and more powerful.

As we learn to be with each other in peace, we can carry it forward to others who are a little more distant from us, and it can spread from one person to another over ever-widening circles. This is how we spread peace one relationship at a time. Not only do we , but we live it!

Photo credit: Phil Mayes
Photo note: Stone seen in Alice Keck Park Gardens

Originally published at on August 25, 2024.

How to Experience Peace in Your Relationships was originally published in Hello, Love on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

MAUDE: One of our readers recently wrote asking for more of our writings on the 3 A’s as we have called them: Acceptance, Appreciation and Acknowledgment. We realized that we haven’t written about them as a triad in quite a while.

In any relationship, it is important to be accepted for who we are, to be appreciated for who we are, and to be acknowledged for who we are. Most relationships will blossom when they have this group of responses as an underpinning.

• Acceptance is the recognition of the uniqueness of the other person, that each of us is a totally different individual. Approach this difference as something good, not threatening, with the understanding that it is in fact enriching.
• Appreciation comes when you flip any negative association with difference and instead celebrate it. It contains the feeling that you treasure who the other person is, and that it widens your world to get to know them deeply.
• Acknowledgment is when you communicate to the other person that you see them, like the famous words in the film Avatar. You let them know that you truly see them and that who they are brings you joy and adds to who you are.

The question then becomes how do you use this awareness, how do you apply this way of being and seeing each other directly in your relationships. The first thing is to speak it out loud to each other. If you never communicate it, the other person has no idea; your good feelings stay locked within you. Just because you see it doesn’t mean that they telepathically know it. When you acknowledge the good things in your relationships, the feeling of being seen and appreciated is powerful. Say it in words and show it in actions.

The 3 A’s are things that every person wants in their relationships. Approach each other with this way of seeing each other in mind. The other person is the same as you and they want these three things just as you do. It’s important to realize that these are not very hard to give! You just need to incorporate these into your point of view. Shift around the way you look at your exchanges and be more aware of sharing how you see and appreciate the other person.

We recommend doing this in all your deeper more intimate relationships. Once you experience the power this simple awareness has and the sense of calm and peace you create in your interactions, you can slowly move a little further out to slightly less intimate relationships. If we all learn to be together in this way it can spread rapidly. This is how we spread peace one relationship at a time.

PHIL: A reader asked about the 3 A’s of acceptance, appreciation, and acknowledgment.

Conflicts start with differences. Everyone is different, and it can irk you like a mosquito bite. Why do they do it that way? Why aren’t they ready? How untidy!

But alongside differences are similarities: we’re all human, we all eat and talk and yearn, and in these basic ways, we are all equal. So they have as much right to their choices of how to act as you do (axe murderers excepted), and, to use another “A” word, you should grant them autonomy in their conduct. And this is how you reach acceptance.

The next step is appreciation. Even if it irks you, appreciate that there are other ways to wash the dishes. Be curious. Don’t think worse, think different. And then there is better. Look at all the ways they navigate with ease through the world. It might be putting up shelves or making friends or filling out forms; appreciate how they do with so little effort what would be a struggle for you.

And lastly, acknowledgment. Tell people what you appreciate and what you admire. Here is why that is so important: we all need acceptance, appreciation, and acknowledgment for a satisfying life. Maslow would include them in his hierarchy if he didn’t already. Could you be happy if you were unaccepted, unappreciated or unacknowledged? No, we all need every one of these, which is why you should accept, appreciate, and acknowledge the people you meet.

This may seem a steep order, but the way to get comfortable with it and make it habitual is to start with the people closest to you. Talk about the 3 A’s. This will make the ideas clearer in your head and give you both a framework for how you interact.

Photo credit: Maude Mayes
Photo note: John accepting certificate of appreciation and acknowledgment

Originally published at on August 18, 2024.

3 Things That Every Person Wants in Their Relationships was originally published in Hello, Love on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We each have a strong feeling of being supported by the other person. It pervades our togetherness and is one of the underpinnings of the peace that characterizes our relationship. It is a feeling, an experience, rather than a thought.

It feels good to give support, too. It feels good to wish the other the best, share their enjoyment, and savor their growth. It feels natural and effortless: it is not transactional, there is no quid pro quo, there is no invoice being prepared.

This experience of both giving and receiving support is mutual, and this mutuality is a large part of the peace that we experience together. We do not express it in the same ways. We are different people with different skills, and we do not expect the other to act and express themselves as we do. Yet we are equally invested in giving and getting that feeling.

There is joy in this sense of mutual support, and it creates a feeling of trust that the other person has your back. Note also that trust helps you give and receive support, so the two are intertwined.

The extent to which you have this feeling of support in your relationships will determine your sense of calm, serenity and peace. For both of us, in all our deep relationships, this is a core value. We have written extensively on Core Values and here is for more details.

But what can you do when you don’t feel fully supported? Talk with the other person about support in a relationship and whether it is a core value for each of you. Speaking your values out loud and finding out how much the other person agrees, and a little of how they carry them out is a powerful way of connecting. Knowing that this core value is shared can help you look at actions and words from that point of view. It can create greater understanding and awareness of each other’s actions.

If you find out that this value is not shared, then you need to decide how important such a shared value is for you, and what actions are appropriate for you accordingly.

It is important in such a discussion that you do not let it become a request for specific ways of showing support, or accusations of blame or neediness. It can’t be about how you don’t feel supported; that’s a finger-pointing plaint about the failures of the other person. Instead, you have to keep it to a mutual discussion about the nature of support. The talking should remain on what this core value is and its meaning to each of you. Look for a sense of the connection in any relationship where you are talking about values. You are finding ways to express your mutuality and caring for each other, and to come closer as a result.

This kind of openness always creates a sense of being on the same side and supports each of the participants in exploring their own personal path as well. Phil describes this openness “We both bring our whole self to the table.” Gifting each other with this kind of awareness and trust allows greater understanding and spreads the feeling of support that brings peace to the togetherness.

Photo credit: Phil Mayes
Photo note: A demonstration of support

Originally published at on August 11, 2024.

Why It’s Important to Support Each Other in Your Relationships was originally published in Hello, Love on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

MAUDE: A cautionary word for relationships: Pay attention, be alert, stay aware of the experience of your connection.

All too often, people become so used to the contact and connection in their relationships that they start to take them for granted. You presume upon that sacred gift. You stop really noticing the experience of that connection; how it makes you feel, why you treasure it, why it’s so important.

The less you are aware of it, the less you nurture it and the thinner that connection becomes. Yes, there are memories of the importance, yes, there is fondness and love for what has been. But the actual experience can begin to fade.

In its place grows distance, even a sense of estrangement. These feelings can easily give rise to fear and all its components. The first to go is that feeling of safety and peace that you derive from a living, vital relationship. One where the connection resides in the present; in an experience of the magic that occurs between two people sharing love and awareness and caring for each other.

Openness and trust begin to waver, along with the feeling that it is necessary to defend yourself and to pull away a bit.

That loss of a sense of safety and peace and the substitution of fear give rise to withholding and withdrawal. One of the saddest losses is the sense, the knowing of being on the same side. The strength and presence of the we that is a separate entity from the two in the relationship weakens, and if you are not careful, can disappear altogether.

Phil suggested an exercise that we did last night, designed to bring full awareness to the experience of our connection. This is mostly for couples and those either living together or having frequent in-person contact. We sat on the couch and without speaking at all, we hung out, absorbing how that felt to just be with each other. We did this for about 40 minutes. It was very deep and moving. An aside, but an important one. We didn’t lose our sense of self when we did this; the sense of us was an addition to the experience of being a unique and complete individual person.

For those who are not often in physical proximity in a relationship, you can bring the same attention and awareness simply by deciding to do so, and then keeping that awareness present in your consciousness.

PHIL: We humans are social animals; survival is near-impossible unless we live in a group, and this need to be in a group manifests as a very deep and natural desire that we all have. It fulfills both our physical and social needs.

But in addition, we have a drive to be individual. In Maslow’s hierarchy, this drive sits atop the physical and social needs that the group supplies.

In Western culture, this individual drive has so much prominence that the need for other people is sometimes barely acknowledged. Margaret Thatcher said: “There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.”

A business relationship may be just words and practicality, but personal relationships are about feelings as well.

These feelings are both about individuality and connection, and it is the latter that is more basic according to Maslow, but Thatcher would have you ignore it. So the challenge is to pay attention to it, and of course, feelings aren’t words, so they can get overlooked.

So sit with the feelings. The feelings of being an individual tend to predominate, but listen for that drive for connection that we all have, and part of those feelings that the group inspires is the feeling to give, to care, for that is part of how a group operates. The exercise that Maude describes is a good way to focus on this.

Photo credit: Maude Mayes
Photo note: A walk in the park

Originally published at on August 4, 2024.

It’s Important to Feel the Connection in Your Relationships was originally published in Hello, Love on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

MAUDE: We went away the week before last for a couple of nights. We needed a break from our own sense of bleakness and confusion. Life seemed to be filling up with negative energy and distress over the political mess. It was leaking into our hearts and our relationships as well.

We found ourselves in a very special part of nature, far away from the deluge of projections, divisive storylines and media outpourings. One of the days we walked along the cliffs of Montana de Oro, a California State Park with over 6000 acres and over 7 miles of coastline. It was foggy and pretty empty of people. We’d been walking for quite some time, breathing in the air and the atmosphere, when I grabbed Phil’s hand and motioned for him to stop. I realized our footsteps were the only sound other than occasional bird noises. We stood there wrapped in stillness, in an intense sense of quiet.

The peace that permeated both of us was profound. I felt my hope and a sense of belief in goodness and love flooding through me. It was palpable. It was okay. It was more than okay. It was wonderful. We were wonderful together.

All it took was to remove ourselves from the hammering from pundits and mainstream media and replace that with a few days of concentration on ourselves, our relationship, and of course, the healing power of nature.

And then we returned, renewed, connected, and filled with peace. We were excited over the sense of planned projects we would work on, of the sense of possibilities. This was then strengthened immeasurably by the positive political shift, suffusing us with a sense of not only possibilities but also a sense of hope. Somehow, without either of us even realizing it, that precious sense of hope had been gone, or at least dormant.

Let this be a warning and signpost for dangers we all face every day — the dangers of succumbing to doubt, loss of hope, a feeling of defeat, or just plain tiredness from the extreme landscape of our daily realities. Turn to your relationships to bolster each other up. Listen to the quiet and the strength of hope that you can find within yourself and each other, and face those difficulties with belief.

You can pick each other up when one of you is down. You can help each other remember the open-endedness, and that the field of possibilities is wide open as long as you stay open to it!

PHIL: I love the way Maude recognized the silence of the place we visited, and how that physical silence created a mental silence within us.

The nature of my relationships depends very much on how I see differences. I may see others as better or worse: I’ll never be as good as they are, or they don’t do things right. That is a competitive mindset. But if I drop the value judgment and see differences as just that — differences that arise because we are all unique, then they are no longer a challenge. More than that, differences are to be marveled at. How do they do that? Why do they do it that way? What must they be feeling? And if I really have to think of them as better and worse, then I must also remember a hundred other differences that are the other way around.

But alongside differences are similarities — we each eat, breathe, dream, watch Netflix — that are both fundamental to being human and shared through culture.

People have essential differences, but also an essential sameness. Talking to a human being is nothing like talking to a dog or a table or a computer. It’s a different experience. I recognize them as another human being, although it happens so naturally that it gets overlooked.

It’s when I lose sight of that humanity and only see otherness that alienation and separateness arise, and politics is a difficult test for me. Can I acknowledge that people I don’t even know are acting in the only ways they know, and they deserve love, even when they do not offer it themselves? There is no other choice. If you want love to be in the world, you have to spread it yourself.

Originally published at on July 28, 2024.

PHIL: I’ve been feeling adrift for about a couple of weeks with a kind of “What do I do with my life?” feeling that might stem from having finished FourFit, the phone game, and having finished moving the websites to a new server. I also recently posted my writings after having procrastinated for a long time about their incompleteness; that gave me a feeling of being able to let go of those ideas in some way, rather than their continually pulling me in and saying, fix me, fix me.

I think a combination of putting the writing out and not having any current project has left me feeling somewhat aimless, and I haven’t yet got to grips with how to wrestle with it, move past it, dissipate it, absorb it, whatever needs to happen with it. I thought on a walk how this is not something I can think my way through.

It has made for a rather self-focused couple of weeks, and I feel that during that time, I may not have given Maude the attention that our relationship deserves.

This has been such a tenuous thing even to get a grasp on, to be able to put words on it, let alone grapple with it, that I didn’t say anything to Maude for some time. It felt like it wasn’t a good idea to say anything until I had reached a certain point in it.

There’s something about speaking your position that has two benefits. The fact of putting it into words makes it much clearer, and the more specific the words are the clearer you can be. The English language has a very rich vocabulary for describing things precisely. It brings it into focus for you and makes its outlines clearer.

But the other thing is that having spoken it, you can start to move past it. Because how can you move past something that is at the moment unspoken, just felt? The less you can describe your feelings, the more they are going to come out as actions, probably negative ones.

In contrast, when you can describe your feelings better, they are still being expressed, but as language. That description also has a releasing quality similar to what you get from acting on them, a release from the tension of the emotion.

When uncomfortable emotions start arising, it’s like there’s something wrong. Things don’t feel good, you don’t even notice it, but something is off like you’re grumpy or busy. And when you do notice, you don’t know which way to go with them. The more you look at them, there’s one side and the other and you don’t know which choice to make, but at some point, you reach a sense of what is true for you, and that is the point at which you should speak. It may not be the last word, but it is the truth of the hour.

MAUDE: The other night Phil and I were talking, and he shared with me that he had been feeling adrift for a while because he had just finished several all-consuming projects, and wasn’t quite sure where to go from there. He didn’t have any current projects and was trying to come to grips with how he was feeling. He also recognized that he couldn’t think his way through this and would need to formulate it by speaking it.

At the same time, he also shared that he had been very self-focused for a bunch of weeks and that as a result, he felt he was not giving me, or the relationship, the attention we deserved. This pronouncement had a strong effect on me. I had indeed been feeling his lack of availability and presence. I knew what he was involved in, so I was comfortable to a degree with what was happening, although it was not a way of being together that I would want to go on for any length of time.

As Phil put his experience into words, I felt any distance that was there disappear. It made me aware of how important it is to speak feelings in relationships. Yet, it is also important to wait and not speak hastily. If you say something too soon, before it has coalesced, it may be too full of ambiguity and confusion, and a general lack of clarity. If you wait too long, the other person might start to make things up about your behavior.

This applies to both people in a relationship. I noticed Phil’s lack of availability, but also assumed several things. First and foremost, I knew it had nothing to do with me or us. Second, I wasn’t feeling uneasy or distressed by his preoccupation.

I did start to feel that it needed to change, so I brought up a trip that we had planned to make for a two-night getaway. We had been detoured due to our internet being out for the better part of a week and hadn’t gotten back to it. So I suggested we proceed with our plan and we booked a lovely little adventure.

This could have gone differently, and often does in relationships. I could have taken Phil’s behavior personally and spoken out too early with concerns and feelings of something not being right. It’s a tricky balance to speak your feelings and to realize when they will communicate the essence of what needs to be spoken. It takes trust and honesty to find this balance.

Originally published at on July 21, 2024.

Why It’s Important to Speak Your Feelings in Relationships was originally published in Hello, Love on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.