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Some of us like rules. In fact, some of us just would be happy to have someone reliable tell us exactly what the rules for having a happy and healthy married life are, and they will then follow those rules to the end of their days. They don't question the rules. They just wanna know what they are. These are the folks my minister calls "easy learners."

And then there's the rest of us.

It's not that we don't like the rules. It's not that we're not looking for some semblance of order in the chaos of our lives. It's just that we can't escape that niggling little question that tickles the back of our brains: "Why?"

This thread is for those folks (which includes me) and is intended address that question. Why the Harley rules? Why boundaries? Why "no contact"?

Lesson 1: Chewin', Spittin' and Noddin'

My dad is quite the horse trader when it comes to cars--always has been. It used to baffle me. I don't recall him ever asking a guy outright what he wanted for a car. There was some elaborate etiquette system involved in the "good ol' boy" network. When I turned old enough to drive a car myself, it drove me absolutely nuts. I like things with nice, neatly-labeled price tags. Sometimes my dad would agree to sell or buy a car, and I'm not sure either party knew exactly what the price was till the money changed hands.

People who are natural-born bargain hunters will have an easier time understanding the upcoming concepts than I did because the model that we're gonna discuss for behavior is much more like a Persian bazaar or a flea market than a stroll down the aisles at Wal-Mart.

The Harleys (and Gary Chapman) talk about the concept of "Love Units," which is a variation on the Transactional Analysis concept of "strokes." Here we need to get into a little vocabulary. When we talk about "strokes" we are not talking about brain-damaging mobile blood clots (although they can sometimes seem to give a person brain damage! LOL.) We're talking about human interactions. Every encounter we have with another human being involves strokes. I say "Hi." to you and smile as we pass in the soup aisle. I just gave you a stroke. I acknowledged your existence, and it probably felt good, to some degree. You smile back and say "How you doin'?" You have returned a stroke, and the two of us have just completed a "transaction."

Just like my dad looking for a beater car, or Billy Bob at the flea market looking for a rocking chair, or Habib at the bazaar looking for the right rug for his living room, I made an "offer." I offered to acknowlege your existence in hopes you'd acknowlege me back and "pay me back" in strokes. You accepted the offer, and paid up. We may each walk away satisfied with the transaction, or one or both may walk away feeling gypped. But a transaction has happened nonetheless.

Which brings us to:

Lesson 2: The Stroke Economy

We all need strokes. Everyone knows that babies die without attention and being held. Harley is absolutely right in saying that humans have emotional needs. The common ones he describes in HNHN are "denominations" of strokes, if you will. And like certain businesses prefer certain means of payment, certain people prefer certain types of strokes.

One thing that Harley doesn't get into much is that people tend to want the types of strokes they are used to receiving. Even if those strokes are negative or unhealthy. Kind of like the crotchety old store owner who loses business because he refuses to get a credit card swiper in his little general store--he's just not used to it, he doesn't trust it, and it's scary to him.

And some people want the types of strokes that were scarce growing up. Like the bandits in the movie "Maverick" with Mel Gibson. He underpaid the group of them, and they never realized it because they were so dazzled at the site of a $100 bill--something they'd never seen up close before.

Last big concept for this post: as the case in financial investment, there is a risk/benefit relationship in strokes. The risk of investing in the stroke economy is REJECTION--the other party refuses your offer and denies you any strokes. They ignore you and do not acknowlege you. This is registered as a LOSS in the stroke economy. Receiving attention and acknowledgment, even negatively, is a GAIN of strokes. The risk of rejection is relatively low when the investment is a simple "Hi" to your neighbor in the grocery. But just like in your 401k plan at work, when the risk is low, the payoff is low. Strokes are measured in INTENSITY. The more intense a stroke is, the higher it's value. So a low risk offer of "Hi" only nets you a low-intensity payoff of a returned smile and "How ya doin?" As the risk of rejection increases, so does the intensity, and thus the value, of the payoff.

That's alot for right now, but I'll leave you with just this to stew in your brain for a bit:

+ We all need strokes to survive
+ We all unconsciously exchange strokes continuously
+ We have very strong preferences for certain types of strokes.
+ Intensity determines the value of the stroke.
+ Our ego/inner child doesn't distinguish between healthy, positive acknowledgments of your existence and negative, unhealthy acknowledgments. The only thing it registers as a "Loss" is a LACK of interest or a refusal to engage in a transaction or exchange.

More later. Discuss at will.

Now on to

Lesson 3: I ain't got no stinkin' inner child. So there! [Razz]

Some people get hung up on the head shrinker lingo. When I say "inner child" they start thinking "Love Ins" from the 60's and new agey rhetoric and just shut down.

So let's back up a little. Before we go any further, let's clarify a little. Anybody here watch "CSI"? I don't much, but I saw an episode recently. A man and a woman were dissecting a body looking for evidence, and the man made the statement regarding DNA that from the moment the sperm hits the egg, all that you are is set. The woman said no, that who you are is the combined total of your inherent traits and all the experiences you've ever had. The guy then said "I stand corrected. DNA contains what you are, not who you are." Her reply was "What you are never changes. Who you are never stops changing."

The lady M.E. was entirely correct. Our personality or sense of self or ego, whatever you choose to call it, it constantly being gradually rewritten by our experiences, choices and decisions. Anyone familiar with the old saying that who you are in five years is determined by the people you'll meet and the books you'll read before then? The information we take in about the world and how it works changes how we perceive ourselves and how we behave flows from our perceived self or identity.

But your brain is like the hard drive for your identity. Each day, you hit "Save As" and save a little snapshot of who you are on that day, and file it away in the archives. So essentially, somewhere in there is all the "yous" you've ever been, filed away in storage. The five year old you who was afraid of the dark, the sixteen year old who got sick from smoking behind the barn, etc. etc.

But unlike a computer's files, the stuff you file away in the archives doesn't always stay neatly and tidily in its place. Sometimes, old data from those files "leaks" into your currently open file, and "corrupts" it. One way in particular that this happens is if a current situation somehow resembles a previous one. Your brain is constantly linking files, sort of like the internet. It looks for cross-references between old and new data, and creates memory links. So sometimes, a new experience will call up an old file through that "link" much like you can pull up files through links on the internet. Only usually, you don't consciously click that link--it's automatically triggered. In javascript for the geeky among us, it's an "onstart" or "onmouseover" function, not an "onclick" function. LOL.

So your brain sorts all these filed versions of your self/identity into categories. All the judgments and opinions are filed together in one folder. All the current datastreams from your senses and data processor are in another folder. All your emotions are filed away in another folder. In transactional analysis, we divide the personality into three "ego states": Parent, Adult, and Child. Those roughly correspond to "unconscious preconcieved judgments and opinions," "logic, reason and current sensory information," and "emotions and childhood experiences." For more on this, do a search for an old thread of mine called "Inner Child Stuff and other Helpful Stuff from My MC" or something thereabouts.

The Adult ego state is good for lots of stuff. Taking in data, making analysis, balancing pros and cons, assessing current conditions accurately. However, its the slowest ego state in terms of reaction time. If you operated entirely out of Adult, every decision you made would take forever.

All the ego states have their place. People who walk up to the counter at McDonalds and know before they even get there exactly what they want are masterfully utilizing the opinions of their Parent state. (People who stand there staring for 20 minutes, besides annoying the people behind them in line, are in Adult and probably overwhelmed with the data on the menu board.) People who have no idea what they're going to get till they look up and see that juicy looking picture of a burger, and go "Ooooo! I want that!" are operating out of Child.

The problems that come from operating out of Parent and Child is that:
1) decisions are made outside of conscious awareness; and
2) decisions are made based on old (and sometimes extremely inaccurate) data.

Ever wonder why people seem to make the same mistakes over and over again? They are operating out of Parent and/or Child too much, and not engaging their Adult enough.

So how does that relate to Lessons 1 and 2? First of all, transactions are made from one ego state to another. And we tend to respond out of a complementary ego state. If someone gets Parental and judgmental on me, I'm most likely to respond by acting? Childish. If someone is acting Childish, I will feel provoked to lecture them like a Parent. And remember that we like the kinds of strokes that we're used to. So when we're operating outside of our conscious Adult, we tend to gravitate to relationships that will replay the predictable exchanges of strokes that we are familiar with.

Ever feel like you married your dad or mom? Wonder why all your relationships seem to work out the same way? Or why you and your spouse repeat the same argument over and over? Because you are both seeking the predictably exchange of intense, high-value strokes.

More later, if anyone is interested.

Now, ready or not, on to

Lesson 4: Games and Drama are not just what makes Reality TV successful.

My husband likes playing Magic. A lot. The person he plays with the most is not the best player he knows (that would be guy from church who is away at college), or the player who is the most fun to play with (that would be the eleven-year-old son of another church friend). It's the guy down the street who is always willing to clear his schedule to play, and generally keeps Friday or Saturday night open for playing Magic with hubby.

And that brings us to Time Structuring. We set up our day unconsciously loaded with opportunities to get strokes. Because we need them. See Lesson 1.

We like our strokes as predictable, low-risk and high intensity as possible. There are lots of ways to structure time: rituals (like greeting people), pastimes and activities (like playing Magic or chatting about the weather), games, and intimacy. But when I say "Games" and "Intimacy," I probably need to use quotes, because I'm not talking about Parcheesi and sex.

Games are sets of interactions that are set up for the purpose of exchanging intense and fairly predictable strokes. That's ALL they're really for. That argument you and your spouse keep having over the way the toilet paper is put on the roller is never going to get resolved. The reason for the argument isn't the toilet paper. Let's be honest, unless you're severely OCD, the way the TP hangs is not worth arguing over weekly for years. The point of the argument is the intense exchange of strokes you both get. When you're having an argument, you're DEFINITELY acknowledging the other person's existence. You're feeding each other's hungry need to be seen, heard and understood.

Intimacy is too complicated to get into at this point in brief, but the best shot I can take at it is that intimacy is all about being authentic, honest, and upfront about your need for strokes--not trying to provoke them or "steal" them by hook or by crook. Intimacy is the highest level of Time Structuring.

But back to Games. Games have rules. They follow a predictable pattern. The players can choose to play or not. They have a beginning and an end. And they have "tokens," called Roles. In the beginning of the Game, you choose a Role just like you choose the shoe or the little hat in Monopoly. But unlike Monopoly, you can switch tokens in the middle of the Game.

The Roles involved in all Games are Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer. These three Roles make up what is called the Drama Triangle. A Victim sets the stage for drama, or the intense exchange of strokes. After all, if there's a Victim, there's conflict. But a Victim all by her lonesome on the stage doesn't provide much drama. It requires another Player to step up onto the stage as Rescuer or Persecutor.

Games begin when one person makes an "offer" for a transaction in the Role of Victim, Rescuer or Persecutor and thereby invites the other person to play. That person can then step into a Role, or refuse to play.

Which sets us up for...

Lesson 5: What does Psych 101 have to do with marriage and cheating?

Answer: Nearly everything.

Lots of different experts have lots of different flavors of theories about this, but when you boil them down, you get a lot of common ground.

First of all, because we like the strokes we're used to getting, we set ourselves up (mostly outside our own awareness) to continue our old family structure into our new family when we marry. We do this in a number of ways. We pick people who like to play Games we're already familiar with. Sort of like when you go to a party, you gravitate to the table where everyone is playing Phase 10, because you never learned Texas Hold 'Em and darn it, Euchre is too darn complicated.

This begins to get into the stuff Stillwed is discussing in her "Shame" thread. In our relationships we sometimes define our Roles more specifically than the three basics of the Drama Triangle. A "Martyr" is a specific kind of Victim--the longsuffering, hard workin' Mother Theresa that the world has done wrong. A "Star" is a specific kind of "Rescuer"--the type-A overacheiver who is constantly trying to drag their screwed up family out of the gutter with his or her shining acheivements.

For some people, their usual Role in the Games of their family and relationships becomes superimposed over their entire sense of self, like a Dungeons & Dragons player who can't stop being their character, Gilgamesh the Conqueror. Mostly, that's because they like being Gilgamesh, they know who he is, the Butt-kickin' Barbarian, and they have NO CLUE who they really are.

A "Juliet" will seek out a "Romeo." A "Bonnie" will seek out a "Clyde." A Marge can sniff out a Homer in a room full of Flanderses.

Okay, that's enough for now. We're almost ready to get into Chapter 6: Lyin', Cheatin, and Recoverin'

Alrighty then. In the face of an overwhelming lack of response, I press on to...

Lesson 6: Lyin', Cheatin, and Recoverin'

We've discussed strokes, and the fact that they are acknowledgment and recognition of your existence--basically, it's fancy-schmancy shrink talk for "paying attention to you." We've discussed that you need them, that orphaned babies literally wither away and die without them, and that they come in different shapes, sizes, colors and flavors.

We've talked about the inner programming of our brain and personality, and seen that sometimes our current functions get cluttered up and buggy because of old data from our childhood experiences or "what good ol' pappy always said." And we've acknowledge (some of us grudgingly) the subconscious/unconscious and the fact that we aren't always fully aware of why we do the crap we do.

Then we moved on to the way we arrange our lives to a certain extent around opportunities to score big hits of strokes. Habit, familiarity, personal comfort-zones, all play into what kind of strokes we like and how we like to get them. We play Games to get predictable intense strokes, and we to a large degree pick our marriage partner unconsciously based on their tendency to play the same Games we grew up with and allow us to remain in the Role we are comfy with.

Movin' right along.

Let's get back to my Magic-playin' beloved hubby. He has a tendency to find something he likes, run it into the ground, then get burned out on it and drop it for months or years. He'll play Magic morning noon and night for a few weeks then not pick up his cards for months or a year. He'll listen to every Prince song from "Do Me Baby" to "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World" till I'm ready to drive to Minneapolis and assassinate the little purple guy, then put the cds in the closet for a year or more.

The point being, we get bored with stuff. Part of us craves the familiar, and part of us craves something new and different. I'm pretty sure you can see where I'm going with this one.

So we set ourselves up in a marriage with the Homer or Marge of our choice, and after a while, the bloom is off the rose. The same old arguments aren't getting our dander up like they used to. Between work, school, kids, bills, housework, etc., we start going through the motions and only half paying attention to each other.

Relationships usually start out at the Ritual level of Time Structuring. Greetings over the coffee pot at work. A smile across the gym and returned. The vast majority of our Rituals never lead to a relationship of any sort. The strokes are usually too low-value to be worth stalking every stranger you meet, LOL.

If you are around a person repeatedly for a long period of time, you may move on to pastimes and activities. Pastimes and activities give you the opportunity to feel each other out for the possibility that they are willing to move on to Games and Intimacy with you. One person shares something personal as an opening bid for Intimacy. Whether they get a response or not will usually determine if the relationship continues or not, because that's a fairly high risk bid for rejection. If they get a positive response, the relationship will become more bonded and valuable, because it has now become a source of high-value strokes.

That's basically how all friendships and romantic relationships start and progress. Which brings us back around to the beginning of this thread.

Why?

Why does the Harley stuff work? Because human beings are hard-wired to seek strokes. Intimacy and the drama of Games provide the $100 bills of the stroke economy.

Left to our own devices, the odds of the average person passing up an obvious and available source of those high-grade strokes is about the same as the odds that a person strolling down the sidewalk passing up Benjamin Franklin's smilin' face looking up from a crisp hundred dollar bill.

Now let's say that hundred dollar bill is laced with cyanide or anthrax. Whether or not you pick it up depends on whether you know or believe that fact. And to a certain degree, how desperate for cash you are. A homeless guy will most likely take his chances and pick it up even knowing it's poisoned.

Doctor Harley's program is basically a big warning sign on the street saying "CAUTION: $100 Bills Found On Sidewalk Are Laced with Anthrax." Are there people who will still pick them up anyway? Yes. And a big part of recovery is figuring out if you and/or your partner are the kind of people who will heed the warning, or the kind who figure it's a conspiracy to keep you from getting that cash, and keep right on picking up money off the street and living in denial that you're in danger.

Another big part of recovery is to use this information to Structure your Time effectively for :
A) Your own mental and emotional well-being; and
B) The well-being of your marriage.

A starving person will eat food off the ground and not worry about salmonella. A complacent person will eat whatever junk food is cheap and convenient, and then wonder why their health has gone to crap. A smart person will figure out a way to get safe and nutritious food.

Strive for Intimacy with your partner. Learn to recognize your Games, and when you are playing them, and with whom. Develop a wide network of same sex friends to supplement your "diet" with healthy, high-quality strokes.

If there are people who provoke you or situations that make it hard not to revert to your same old Games, avoid them till you break the habit. It's exactly like a smoker who always smokes while they're drinking coffee--at least for a while, and possibly permanently, they'll have to give up coffee, too. At least, if they want to quit smoking.

You can't (and shouldn't) avoid the opposite sex. Be aware of what level of Time Structuring you are in with them. Ritual gets a green light. Pastimes get a green light. Activities get a big FAT yellow light. Anything beyond that, Games and Intimacy, with the opposite sex, and you've crossed the boundary into basically what amounts to an emotional affair.

That said, hindsight being 20/20, I've had "EA"s with at least a few men. And if I'm honest (and it hurts to admit it), they were a sucking drain on my marriage. Perhaps a slow, tiny, unimportant drain, but the hole in the dyke in Amsterdam started out a teeny-tiny leak, too. Even if the men themselves didn't (and may never) realize that we were playing Games and exchanging Intimacy, it's still a bad situation. It's still wrong, and as soon as I become aware of it, I need to end it.

I recognized this a while back, and had a few long heart-to-hearts with my hubby. For one thing, it's caused me to stop "keeping count" on him. You'll notice there are no dates or number of OPs in my sig line. Because if I am keeping a running tally on him, then the only fair thing to do is keep one on myself--and for one thing, I know HE's not doing that. For another, it becomes almost impossible to know exact how often you've crossed the line in the past. Heck, it's darn tough telling when you've crossed it in the present. The point is, you can't do anything about the past. You only have the power to affect the present and the future.

Lastly, those irritating Yellow Lights. I'm not going to tell you to never participate in Activities with the opposite sex. But be aware that you're in a Caution Zone. Some people are involved in work and ministry that is very important to them, and it requires working side by side with members of the opposite sex. Hindsight being 20/20, I wouldn't engage in any of my favorite recreational activities with men unless hubby was right there beside me 100% of the time. That's just me.

It's also another reason I'm not returning to this board--I enjoy message board discussions very much, so for me personally, since JABL/DULAIA doesn't participate here, the opportunity to get into a Games or Intimacy situation with another poster is just too great.

I love writing. This year, I plan to take part in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November. They have message boards there so the participants can help each other brainstorm and work out plot points and characterization. I will probably take part there, because it's for a very limited period of time. I won't join an ongoing, year round writing discussion forum, unless it's an all-women's board.

In closing, it's all about awareness. We are all naturally prone to running on autopilot to a certain degree. In fact, some of the time, it's a necessity--can you imagine how taxing life would be if you never went on autopilot to some degree? But you can't afford to just leave yourself there. That's the way folks get off course and crash into the mountains.

If you want to learn more about Transactional Analysis, Roles, etc. you can read up on www.boyceco.com, www.coping.org, or read any of John Bradshaw or Eric Berne's books. There's a wealth of information out there on the nuts and bolts. The "Boundaries" books by Cloud and Townsend. All of Harley's stuff, it goes without saying. Useful stuff, all, depending on how deep you want to get into it.

Well, in the immortal words of Forrest Gump, "That's all I have to say about that." Thanks for letting me spew it all out here!

<img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" /> <----- Back to the zeitgeist!

In the second readthrough, I need to correct something. Or at least clarify.

quote:You can't (and shouldn't) avoid the opposite sex. Be aware of what level of Time Structuring you are in with them. Ritual gets a green light. Pastimes get a green light. Activities get a big FAT yellow light. Anything beyond that, Games and Intimacy, with the opposite sex, and you've crossed the boundary into basically what amounts to an emotional affair.

There is, of course, the little matter of the "When Harry Met Sally" question. Can men and women be real, true, authentic friends, without sex or romance getting in the way? Oh, the knock-down, drag-out fights I've witnessed and participated in over that question.

My most recent answer is: It probably doesn't matter. I had a buddy in Junior High--we'll call him Tom. He was my hanging out pal and shoulder to cry on over my adolescent infatuation with the elusive Marvin the Brainy Jock. We were best buds for three years, spent tons of time together, and there was never so much as a whisper of romance or sexual tension between us, as far as I knew.

BUT--we did play Games. I was the Victim in my futile attempts to win the heart of the fair Marvin. He was the Rescuer, my confidante and adviser. And I would do the same for him in his quest for the lovely bespectacled Casey. Lots of strokes being exchanged. And guess what? That situation kept both of us from having to actually take a risk and pursue Marvin and Casey, or anybody else.

And then there was Brad. Brad was a single airman in JABL's flight in the Air Force. Poor Brad was the quintessential Nice Guy Who Finished Last. Not exactly confident with the ladies. The Anti-Player. I think he spent so much time crashed at our house, people thought we'd adopted him through World Vision. We spent a lot of time together. I did (and do) consider him a friend. And neither of us ever said we had any inappropriate or romantic/sexual feelings for each other. But the guy had like two dates in the entire couple of years we knew him. And my dysfunctional marriage kept cripping right along without me feeling particularly motivated to work on it. Did he secretly harbor feelings for me? Or me for him? Who the he!! knows. But sometimes I think the most loving thing I could have done for the guy was to boot him off my couch, and tell him to not come back until he'd successfully entered into and was maintaining a real live girlfriend/boyfriend relationship.

So before any of my old buddies start scanning their databanks in angst, wondering if they've tainted the purity of their recovery with me or any of the other folks here, STOP. This ain't about that. Put a little mark by those names in your mental address book in the "Friend" column. No need to move it to the "OP" column, LOL.

Paraphrasing the Bard, I come not to judge the male friends I met here, and not to bury them either. (Does that earn me extra bonus points, C?) I come to make peace with them, and to wish them well, and to let them know that I'm not "ditching" them. I may be, in effect, booting them off my figurative couch, but I do it in the best kind of love. If I've ever tried to do it less than gently in the past, I apologize. I am a spaz, and as pulled together as I can seem at times, I'm learning this stuff as I go along, too.

I will pop in from time to time, scan posts, etc. I'm sticking around at the Ladies board indefinitely. But I will never again be one of "the regulars" at Cafe Harley. I paid back my debt in full [note for GQII readers: over in Recovery. It's true I haven't helped out much here.] It's not that I don't want to help. I'm trying to quit "smoking" and this place is full of coffee.

Best wishes and prayers to everybody. Love you all bunches!! --Kat