Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More

100%:

A New Paradigm For Relationship

Troy, Michigan, USA

February 18, 2002


"Love is granting another the space to be the way they are and the way they aren't so they can change if they want to and they don't have to."  ... 
This essay, 100%: A New Paradigm For Relationship, is the companion piece to
  1. I Am Love With You
  2. Fulfilled And Accepting
  3. When I Communicate Clearly, You're A Better Communicator
in that order.

It is also the prequel to

I'm clear that for the most part we, the people of the world, have gotten the ground rules for making a relationship work completely confused. It's drilled into us from childhood that making a relationship work is a 50% / 50% paradigm, with each partner being responsible for their 50% of the relationship.

If you look at that paradigm, it's not hard to see that while it's well intentioned, the 50% / 50% paradigm for making a relationship work, actually doesn't work - in fact it's never worked, ever. That means we've never really been clear about what it takes to make a relationship work in the first place.

The 50% / 50% paradigm for making a relationship work, doesn't work because while it charges each of us to be 50% responsible for making the relationship work (ie for our half  of the relationship), it also leaves room for each of us to be 50% not  responsible for making the relationship work. In other words, the 50% / 50% paradigm for making a relationship work, has a 50% not  working (ie failure) rate already built in. Those aren't good odds.

So rather, it's not a 50% / 50% paradigm that works for making a relationship work with each partner being responsible for their 50% of the relationship, but rather it's a 100% paradigm that works for making a relationship work.

Wait!

Did you hear me say that it's a 100% / 100%  paradigm that works for making a relationship work with each partner being responsible for 100% of it?

Not quite. That's close, but it's not exactly what I'm saying. What I'm saying is it's a 100% paradigm that works for making a relationship work. In other words, I'm responsbile for all  of the relationship, independently  of you being responsible for any of it or all of it or even none of it. In this paradigm, you're free to choose to be responsible for 100% of the relationship too, and you don't have to. And listen: it's the "... and you don't have to"  qualifier that allows the space for love. Really.

People are inspired and enlivened in a relationship that works. That's really what everyone wants. And yet for the most part, our established paradigm for making a relationship work, the 50% / 50% paradigm, doesn't work. Because of that, when played out against a background of "it's empty and meaningless", "Anything goes!"  starts to look like a viable option, as we try out new ways of being in relationship in the hope of finding a way that actually works. That's kind of hit and miss, isn't it?

Workability in a relationship can be elusive. Yet if you take on being 100% responsbile for making a relationship work, allowing your partner to be free to choose to be responsible for 100% of the relationship too (and they don't have to), you'll discover you've put in place a foundation that's count-on-able - a rare commodity in a 50% / 50% paradigm.


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