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Authenticity in Relationships

  • “The actor’s art is the art of deceiving; the art is the deception. To be able to deceive is the great thing, and to allow oneself to be deceived is just as great. Therefore one must not be able and must not want to see the actor through the costume.”

    ~ Kierkegaard

    ***

    We live in a profoundly inauthentic society in which all of us are socially conditioned to pretend to be honest whilst fearing honesty and the consequences of being honest. Children are taught this duplicity from an early age, and quickly learn to function as little actors, and to relate to one another inauthentically and through social games of pretending to be genuine whilst avoiding the discomfort and risks of authenticity at all costs. We convince ourselves we are genuine, whilst living a life of division, using our social masks and well-rehearsed scripts to separate us from the deeper truths and realities we keep hidden behind them. The resulting culture of routine falseness, passive-aggression, role-playing, superficiality, pretentiousness, cowardice, and conflict, causes all of us to struggle, feel lost, and to suffer unnecessarily, when we all have the faculties at our disposal to be able to live with greater sanity, self-respect, love, peace, courage, and integrity.

    Many people today - out of ignorance, fear or preference - are neglecting relationship skills, basic courtesy and boundaries, and our relationships are suffering for it. Diminishing person-to-person contact, undeveloped empathy, and low emotional intelligence, are all the result of our alienation from, and often rising fear and misunderstanding of self and others. And as phone texting replaces direct speech, eye contact, verbal interaction, and intuitive connection, we now live in a society of escalating mental health problems associated with poorly formed and maintained relationships with ourselves and other people, and the stresses and game playing that inevitably grow within them.

    The psychotherapy relationship offered by this practice allows you to raise your critical awareness and hone your abilities to live in a state of greater authenticity, security, empathic understanding, and emotional harmony with yourself. And with others in your life, if they are also inclined to bring an end to the games that keep us in fear and conflict with one another. Like any skillset, relationship and emotional intelligence skills just take awareness, persistent effort and daily practice.

    The individual of conscience can learn the skills required to live with greater confidence, self-respect, and inner peace, so that relationships become less co-dependant, fear-driven, and conflicted. Learning to listen and communicate well; to spot and disengage from peoples’ darkness; to bring an end to the inauthentic habits of people pleasing and being two-faced; and to feel less threatened by others who may hold very different views, allows us to live with greater dignity and self-reliance so that we can focus on what is important and valuable between us. Where other people are not interested in greater authenticity with us, our skills of quietly divesting energy, of disengaging, and of clearly maintaining boundaries become all the more important to our ability to remain well and stable, so that we can focus our precious time and life energies on what truly matters.

  • All problems can be worked on, including:

    • “We’ve just grown apart”: Working on your relationship with your partner, friend, colleague, family member, etc.

    • “I just seem to attract needy/ controlling/ abusive/ disrespectful/ dishonest/ aggressive/ narcissistic people”: Partner selection problems, people pleasing, rescuing, critical awareness, and boundaries

    • “I always end up with the wrong partner”: Habits of repeatedly choosing and settling for the wrong partners and friends

    • “I want to get it right this time”: Learning how to seek the right partner and friends for you

    • “I thought she was the one”: Surviving and healing from abuse, betrayal, deceit and infidelity

    • “I’m not rushing into another relationship”: Healing and being better prepared before looking for another relationship

    • “My partner doesn’t understand my feelings”: Difficulties with intimacy, openness, expressing oneself, communication, and trusting others

    • “I don’t know how I can go on without him”: Coping with a relationship ending

    • “We’re always arguing about something”: Acting out, co-dependency, triangulation, and victim dependency

    • “He hits me because he was abused as a child”: domestic abuse tolerance, trauma-and abuse-based relationships

    • “I need to know who he’s with and when he’s coming back”: Insecure attachment/ fear of abandonment

    • “I’ve been checking her phone”: Distrust, insecurity, and controlling behaviour (giver and receiver)

    • “She just doesn’t listen when I try to talk”: Mediation between separated or conflicted partners and family members

    • “I feel broken”: Surviving relationships of dishonesty, betrayal, exploitation, abuse (including narcissistic or sociopathic exploitation; sexual, emotional, financial and other forms of abuse)

    • “I can’t tell anyone because they wouldn’t get it”: Surviving childhood abuse, shame, and poor parenting

    • “I know he loves me, I just get on his nerves”: Domestic violence (both sides)

    • “I feel like throttling him sometimes”: Anger, rage, violence and passive-aggression (giver and receiver)

    • “He was my life and I don’t know how to go on”: Bereavement, grief and loss

    • “She just needs to make more effort”: Sex, sexual intimacy, inequality, and sexual problems

    • Develop and improve social and boundary skills

    • Empathy

    • Confidence

    • Authenticity

    • Non-Violent Communication Skills

    • Ending subservience and people pleasing

    • Developing your interpersonal ‘radar’ and self-protection when engaging with others

    • Skills in identifying and dealing with highly toxic people, including insincere, fraudulent, narcissistic, and sociopathic individuals

    • Develop skills for finding the right partner and avoiding wasting your energies on the wrong people

  • Interpersonal manipulation and dishonesty have, sadly, become increasingly common in our society. A cultural decline in integrity and emotional intelligence is a significant cause of relationship stress and mental health problems. In this practice you can learn discreet boundary and critical awareness skills that, with practice, will allow you to minimise interpersonal stress, by quickly detecting and refusing dishonesty, and attempts to exploit you, and to divest your energies early, from relationships that are bad for you. One example is ‘Less is More’:

    Less is More

    Manipulative and dishonest people are energy traps, and will tend to elicit your attention and your mental, emotional and physical energy through responsibility shifting, ‘gaslighting’, entitlement-driven blaming etc. Realise that the more you invest of your attention, thought, words, time, money, or physical energy in defending or justifying yourself with such people, the more you may be feeding the manipulation itself. Divesting and minimising one's investment is a crucial boundary skill. To do this takes critical self-awareness, practice, and the ability to slow down long enough to make careful, self-respecting choices focussed on looking after your best interests with quiet confidence.