Approach, Avoid, Attack

All interactions are based on three behaviours.

In love relationships:

Approach is showing interest, enjoyment, compassion and care. You turn towards each other.

Avoid means you want to get away from your partner, blow off their perspective or have them shut up. The implication is that the other is not worth your attention.

Attack is an attempt to undermine confidence, to get the other person to agree with you and do what you want.

At the root of avoidance and attack is a failure of compassion.

Compassion for the hurt and pain of the person you are attached to keeps you from avoiding and attacking, motivates you to improve your behaviour.

Compassion for others also improves your self esteem. Remember the last time that you devalued your partner. If you think about it right now you will likely get a sinking feeling in your stomach.

Attack and avoid behaviours damage love relationships, even if they are only in your head and never become overt behaviours. They betray the implicit promise that you made to each other when you fell in love that you would care about the way the other feels.

Even in your head, an impulse to avoid and attack represents a failure of compassion, which probably violates your deepest value.

When you are not living in alignment with your values there will be turmoil and disconnection.

Tags: Approach, Attack, Avoid, Behaviour, Relationship

This entry was posted on Monday, October 4th, 2010 at 1:00 AM and is filed under IMAGO and Relationships. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.