What happened when I fully committed to bringing Authentic Relating into all my relationships

Sex and love addiction, Transformation at the Speed of Light (TSL), and Trauma

Heads-up that Sophie and I are running a program starting Tuesday Oct. 22 called Practical Relational Leadership in Community, with a free intro on Tuesday Oct. 15. The group is almost full, but we still have two spots left.

Why I write about myself

“The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not” — Blaise Pascal

So I will do here what I always do, which is to unpack my own psychology in relation to my mission of showing up with more truth and care in all my relationships and being a more potent channel for love and transformation in the world. My own psychology is unique, and hence not everything I say here will be relevant to you. I do hope, however, that I am revealing universal patterns here. Inshallah.

Specifically, I will talk about practicing Authentic Relating in a world in which AR has very little visibility or adoption, competes with a vast array of other schools and modalities and communities which are not nearly as effective and often expensive, and many of which (maybe the majority) are cases of what I call "cult-psychology". Cult psychology is a whole other topic, and I can only bookmark an article on that. Just to say that the search for love and community, and especially deep sex, can take us to some quite “dangerous” places.

As is meant to be: If love and sex weren't "dangerous", they would not be so much fun. “Danger” is actually a good thing, if and when you willingly engage the process of re-evaluating everything you thought you knew. You will be different from when you started. And since most people are afraid of change and resist it, this can be quite painful.

My views on AR, and shared-reality within the movement: Why very few people really “get it”

My views on Authentic Relating are not necessarily shared-reality inside the movement. For sure this is, in part, my "story". An expression of my core wound, which is that I am too far outside of the mainstream to be relevant, nobody understands me or cares for me, the world will never give me the attention that I deserve, and hence I will die alone, sick and broke in the gutter.

I am a person who establishes identity by “differentiating” myself, meaning that I am hyper-aware of how separate I am from others. In Landmark-speak, you could say that I have an “already/always listening” for separation (as opposed to resonance). This is actually not a good thing, especially as an AR leader. But I am a pretty good AR leader, so I can only trust that this aspect of me is for the best, ultimately.

I do believe, however -- and this may be completely made-up -- that few people even inside the movement "get" the real power and potential impact of Authentic Relating. They think of it as something fun to do with your friends. I think of it as the most powerful human transformational system to hit the streets since Jesus Christ started teaching. At least before the Roman Catholic church took over the franchise and it became the state religion.

AR is partially sourced from NVC, which has the right idea but doesn't go far enough, and has aspects that are cult-like. Susan Campbell, the “grandmother of AR”, was also a huge influence, and remains as relevant today as she was 50 years ago when she started out. Even so, I will declare that most people in the AR movement don’t get it. I am currently taking a course with Miki Kashtan, by the way, who "gets it" in terms of the real goals of NVC and AR, and who is taking NVC into the world in very impressive ways.

So what happens when you commit to taking AR into the world in all your relationships?

I will tell you: all-hell breaks loose. Of course, I am not certain that this will happen to you. I ardently wish that it NOT happen to you. I am just saying: be prepared. And do not expect the world to shower you with love and appreciation for your AR efforts. You are probably not that good, anyway. I wasn't very good when I started out, and continue to make massive mistakes, 8 years later.

I have written about this already in my most recent article Trauma is good for you: Authentic Relating and "karma acceleration". I am going to go even more detailed here, in this article, about the particular challenges and triggers of my characterology.

So, the first thing you will have to deal with if you are seriously taking on AR leadership is projections. I tend to go non-linear when I receive condescension and contempt.

Here are some examples of the projections I receive

There are people who view vulnerability as a weakness (Brené Brown has abundantly demonstrated the opposite, but not everyone is aware of this). The majority of people cannot tolerate direct expression of anger, even when it is expressed responsibly, which is not always the case for me. There are people (some in my family!) who view me as a fundamentally selfish person whose goal is ultimately to bring all attention back on himself. Who "takes" a lot but doesn't give that much. A brilliant guy, perhaps, but one who is seriously dysregulated, who needs a good shrink (plus good meds) and who compensates by wanting to be a guru. When they hear I am a self-described “bipolar / mixed episode", it’s pretty-much case-closed from their perspective. They feel justified to write me off entirely.

Note-to-self here: I should stop calling myself “bipolar” as its not entirely correct. There is just not a DSM4 category that precisely fits me. Maybe if they had a category called “happy bipolar”, that would be me. It’s taken me quite a while to get to this point, however.

And here is the "problem”: all of these projections are partly true. And needless to say, this can be hugely triggering to me

This in the nature of projections, all projections have a core of truth to them. I DO take up significant attention in relationships. I like to say, my religion of Authentic Relating is not a mass-consumption product. And that Marco Beneteau is not a mass-consumption product either. I tend to “want what I want” and overall unapologetic about that. I love it, of course, when other people want what I want too. When they don’t, I sometimes tread rough-shod on them. I am ashamed about this, but it’s true. I am certainly somewhat dysregulated, some times more than other, of course. I am looking into this, but it’s a work-in-progress. Here is what I want to go on my tombstone, by the way: "He was a crazy fuck, but he got shit done. He loved many people and many people loved him, despite his enormous flaws".

Moving on. Egg-on-my-face here.

Case-study one: condescension

In my last post I wrote the story of my relationship with Sophie. We have known each other for 6 months, but our romantic relationship is only 3 months old at this point, and we have spent only a month together. People in "conventional reality" (as I call it) can't grok how this could be real. Let me tell some of the feedback I am getting about this.

One friend on my personal list replied: "Well, you are kind of crazy, but this is why we love you. Generally marriages where you have known the person for less than a year don't last".

My impulsive reply to this was: "hey brother, thanks for the statistics about the longevity of marriages, I see you have been reading Cosmopolitan magazine and the National Inquirer". Of course I did not say that. What I DID say -- and even this is a bit defensive -- was: "thanks for the feedback, which is good in terms of "craziness", not so good in terms of marriage. I actually score quite well in marriage. I was very happy with Rebekah and continue to receive overwhelmingly positive feedback about the commune which we ran together, 10 years after the fact".

The truth is that I actually DO appreciate the feedback about "crazy". I like to say that all feedback, no matter how bad, pushes you in the direction that you should go in anyway. It surfaces triggers and polarities. This is good AR by the way, which teaches the value of all perspectives. Sophie actually helped me to unpack this. She said: you call yourself "crazy" every second sentence. The guy was trying to be supportive. Can you blame people, for repeating back to you the words you say to yourself?

From this I got a valuable distinction, between "crazy insane" and "crazy genius". The distinction is: "what works". It’s where ideas get reality-tested. The definition of “what works” is essentially, impact. This can include the felt-sense of a relationship or of a group experience, program sales and income, or even hits or likes to an article or website.

Wilhelm Reich, for instance was mostly crazy-genius, with a couple crazy-insane notions thrown in (such as the Orgone machine). People still talk about Wilhelm Reich. But it can be quite costly in Western culture to receive "crazy-insane" projections, and eventually they killed him. It's also impossible (or difficult) in the thick of the action, to know where you stand, exactly. "Truth" (or reality) can only be found by agreement. Deep emotional truth, in particular is only discovered in the we-space.

Case study 2: contempt

Another "friend" response (on Facebook) was even more direct. She said "what you are experiencing is projection. Since you are both emotionally immature, it won't last". I was, of course, hurt and judgmental. Is this person for real, to post such things on someone else’s facebook? I can see a positive intention to educate me and my readers, or maybe a need for self-expression of difficult “truths”. But it’s irrelevant to my condition as I am well aware of the presence of projection in infatuation states. And as for “emotionally immature”… OUCH. I wish I had the courage and discernment to say that, every time I feel hurt (as opposed to wanting to hurt back)

At first I just hid the comment, but a few minutes later I went back, deleted the comment and unfriended this person. This was a significant inflection point for me, by the way, in terms of my dealing with contempt. I decided then and there: it’s zero tolerance for condescension and contempt, going forward. I will tolerate it from certain family members, perhaps, on a good day. I will give it the "benefit of the doubt". Given my story that I am irrelevant (and doomed to die alone in the gutter), I may actually be "imagining" contempt where it doesn't actually exist. Or, at minimum, hyper-sensitive to it. But the situation with the second "friend" was cut-and-dry. I actually felt some joy from unfriending her.

However, I got something of value even from the second comment. What I realized is that people who don't know AR, cannot understand how taking the experience of "being in love" into the we-space changes everything. The problem of sexual loving is, of course, the horniest of all human problems (no pun intended). And since hardly anyone understands AR (or else compatible modalities like NVC), they don't get the potential or usefulness of bringing AR into the problem of sexual loving. They don't get what a game-changer it is.

My Sex and love addiction, and the impact of AR

I bring to a close now this reveal of my triggers, and return to the main point of this article, which is how an irrevocable commitment to “live into” AR ultimately heals trauma, including some of the “core wounds” that I have described. With the important caveat, is that first they will re-awaken the trauma. What I have realized, is that AR practices will re-awaken the trauma with the intention of bringing it to a different outcome. This has been a key realization for me, which has enormously relaxed me as I notice trauma arising.

You know the adage: "the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off?". Well, AR will set you free, but first you will feel more crazy than you did before.

I have been obsessed with love and sex for the last 40 years. Ever since my first girlfriend, named Alexa in my memoir, took me into a deep, 10-year, chemically resistant depression. I call it my "awakening" and the pattern has repeated: all the most important developmental experiences of my life have been related to the women I have loved and who have loved me, however briefly. This has happened three times, in consecutive "epochs" I call them, which is an approximately 10-year life-developmental window. In my fourth and latest epoch, 2013 until now, there was no primary woman, but I did write four books. The latest epoch was very painful, but intensely developmental. My next (fifth) "epoch" is now starting, with Sophie.

Essentially, I have been a Sex and Love addict for 40 years, even before Alexa. I was still deeply unconscious in those days, of course. I have spent the last 40 years unpacking the problem of love and sex in relation to my characterology, cultural trauma and cult psychology, and mostly losing in that game. Banging my head against the wall, what I call "the 40 year war against myself and against the world, trying to make a buck and get a little love, mostly unsuccessfully". And I have finally figured it out, with the help of Authentic Relating, my community there (which includes my men’s group) and Sophie’s love.

This may sound grandiose, and probably is. The problem of human loving is infinitely complex, nobody can ever completely figure it out. But I am at an inflection point, or "point of no return" here. I call this "moving from the red into the black". It means: efforts are finally bearing fruit. I have hurt a lot of people (especially women) through my ignorance, selfishness and stupidity. . Maybe, just maybe, I can finally start doing more good than I do harm.

God's natural therapy

Deep love, or deep connection between people, is God's original, natural and free therapy. It is the fundamental nature of evolution, which is moving into greater complexity and inter-relatedness, as in what happens in the natural world. This is what we are trying to do in AR, through the activation of collective intelligence.

Once deep love is happening, such as occurs in many AR groups, the natural extension of deep sex has the potential to take things over the top. For obvious reasons: deep sex (which can't happen without deep love) is the original act of creation.

My advice: commit to "love as best you understand love" through AR practices. Start leading private groups. If you are in a couple, bring AR into your primary relationship. If you are not in a couple and you want to be, keep up the good work of “loving as best you understand love”. And maybe, like me you will get lucky.

Where to find out more

Sophie and I are running a program starting Tuesday Oct. 22 called Practical Relational Leadership in Community, with a free into on Tuesday Oct. 15. The group is almost full, but we still have two spots left.

This post has mostly been about what I call Transformation at the Speed of Light or TSL. TSL is the amplification of love through Authentic Relating practice, which (according to my theory), is what will inevitably happen to you when you start bringing AR into all your relationships. Essentially, the universe aligns to give you what you want, and you achieve “the dream”. This can take a while, 40 years in my case. I do wish you more rapid success than I have achieved, which is the main reason for my writing.

“Any fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” ― Otto von Bismarck

I am not a Christian, exactly (I honestly don’t know what that means, and it behooves me to find out), but I am for sure “a friend of Jesus”. The “dream” is, to quote Peggy Seeger, “That all may live as lovers do”. Frederic Buechner describes “the dream” as “when your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need”. I call it “communities of fun, love and transformation”. Or maybe “the meeting of hearts and minds”.

What I am calling “TSL Squared” (or TSL2) is an extension of TSL into the domain of eros, which includes both sexual loving and deep connection practices. TSL2 (or TSL squared) is an extension of TSL, and is the amplification of turn-on (or eros) through an understanding of sexual polarity and female orgasm. TSL2 is a whole other topic and I will not be going into it here. Maybe later. For my ideas on that, please read my book, As Lovers Do. There is a quick summary (or high-level view) of the model in the article / podcast A lecture on sexual polarity.