Figuring it Out Never Worked, Even More So for Your Intimate Partner

Guess what? You don't have to understand him. You can’t figure him out.

Even if you think you can, stop it. It’s not nice. It’s actually violent to ‘figure’ someone out.

It’s not nice to reduce a complex human being into something you can write on a piece of paper.

And I am a psychologist for 30+ years now. So I certainly have tried.

Big sigh of relief. You're never going to understand. So stop trying.

You could write a doctoral thesis on him but still not really understand why he does some things he does. Or actually anything. Understanding is over. It never worked.

It’s not helpful. When we ask ourselves or our intimate partner "Why?" there is an implied criticism there. We might not notice the criticism because this quest to figure ourselves out is so pervasively accepted in our culture. To figure it out and improve it.

But 'figuring it' out means it needs to change. It's wrong. Everything we do has an unknowable but good, logical purpose.

Wrong includes the violence of criticism.

Did self-criticism ever help you, or stop or change anything? Did it ever stop your own 'weird' behaviors? For more than temporarily? And then the behavior most likely popped up again harder, or a replacement behavior popped up in its place?

Did trying to understand motivations ever really help? Dredging up past interpretations and reinterpretations? All the years of psychotherapy?

So why try to understand him? Using our minds in this way was a false idea in the first place. It was an idea we learned growing up in a culture where we were taught we could dominate our environment rather than taught to listen to it.

What is actually finally, functionally helpful is simply knowing what to do in a certain situation. Our own natural knowing is instinctive, spontaneous and brilliant.

Very simple. Don't be mystified by being in the 'now.’ Simply stop trying to ‘figure it out.’ Your knowing is your nature.

Always trying to understand is blocking us, confusing us. We're not using our natural human brilliance. Always trying to be smart and figure stuff out is actually making us more stupid. Or more confused. Or more depressed. More helpless.

Our own knowing is helpful, is sturdy. Simply knowing what to do in a particular moment.

Simplify, get back to basics. Using our own native intelligence makes us stronger and more empowered. Or native intelligence is not complicated.

Knowing what to do in a particular situation always comes from paying attention to what's best for everyone in the circumstance, in that moment. What suits that moment, and everyone involved, is what is most true in that moment.

There are way too many factors in each situation for rules or for analyzing. Systems Theory, the Butterfly Effect, Choas Theory—these all clearly demonstrate how impossible it is to do the math of 'why?' Of the origin of anything.

Listening to our hearts, listening to our knowing is useful. Turning the ‘now’ into a useful practice. We can listen when we decide to stop 'figuring out.'

We can't pay attention to what’s actually happening when we have a bunch of ideas about what is supposed to be happening. We've lost touch with our brilliant knowing by following rules and trying to analyze everything.

Our intimate relationships are suffering because we are trying to know what others should be doing. And we've exhausted ourselves with relentlessly self-analyzation.

Trying to understand ourselves, to "figure it out,' is simply an attempt to control what we can't control anyway.

We can stop now. What a relief.