rethink PERFECT

1. You can’t keep doing this!

2. I’m sick of this!

3. You should know better!

4. How many times to I have to tell you!

5. You can’t always think that you’re always right all the time!

6. You should focus on this not that!

7. Your absolutely right!

8. Right, that’s the last straw!

9. That’s bullshit!

10. I know it!

I think that we can tell “demandments” by their tone, and lack of adjustable, accountable and ultimately acceptable language.

Although understandable, demandments are unacceptable to me and I need to be careful not to return demandments for demandments.

Demandments are aggressive to me, although only the beginning stages but still need to be nipped in the bud when heard.

Having agreements in place on how we treat demandments is important I think, when we start a relationship of any type.

The opposite to demandments are enchantments which I will talk about next up.

I ran into an old flame on Twitter the other day and while conversing I was hit with what I considered was a demand i.e. “You should focus on idealising the love not the lover”.
Now the question is how to deal with this demand?

1. I could apologise for not letting them know from the start and let her know that I don’t cope well with people demanding of me and suggest how she could share her thought as more of a request or better still enchant me ie. “can you focus on the idealising of the love not the lover” or “ I think you are….” or best of all “I focus on idealising the love not the lover!”.

2. Or I could simply suggest that that sounded like a demand to me and get her to confirm her position.

3. Or I could have ignored it at my later peril. ( I am not that stupid)

Either way my hunch was right. Dealing with this first demand was the beginning of the end of the conversation. One demand and the whole house of cards comes down if we try to deal with it. But allow it and the repercussions would be far worse, I reckon.

So now it is pretty clear to me that demands and demanding are the key to why relationships are failing. Heck she even admitted it as the reason hers failed.
Rethink Perfect is my attempt to deal with our demands and our demanding. Nothing to do with luck why the more we demand the more failed relationships we have.

My only question is that if I am requesting to be treated without such demands then am I actually demanding this? I guess the answer is who does the runner first. If mine is a request then I will be still prepared to discuss the issue till we get a solution or a resolution. The one demanding will find it all too hard as an addict to their demands and flee looking for some other sucker that will acquiesce to their demanding for as long as they can get what they want from the demander.

I guess it is easy to tell those that are demanding as they are likely to admit it for one as they seem to think of it as some badge of honour. And two they will have a legacy of tragically failed relationships in their wake.

So I say make demands at our own peril but don’t blame luck for our results. Requests or enchantments are so much more civilised and befitting for 2011 and beyond. I think it is time for a rethink!

I think we get aggressive towards a person when we expect perfection from them and  returning aggression makes me the same. Getting an agreement to help each other out of our unresonalable expectations (demands) is paramount to moving forward in a relationship, I think. Otherwise, it is death by a thousand expectations of perfection.

It seems that we all suffer from having demands and imposing our demands upon others and especially within a relationship. How do we know when we are being demanded of?

Simple, just listen out for the tone, and how adjustable, accountable and
acceptable their language is. Demanding and aggression seems to go hand in hand. The more demanding we are the more aggressive we are towards others. I can understand why we have demands of others but I refuse to accept them. Having requests can be so much more constructive in the long term. I guess I do consider demands as a failing but not as much as keeping quiet and failing to express our desires at all. My ideal is the making of requests or being enchanting even to get what we desire.

Aggression just doesn’t cut it with me, sorry.

I came up with an idea that I call Anti-jealousy which goes something like this:

Just because I am with the girl of my dreams does not mean that she is my perfect match or I her’s.
So I would suggest to her that she continue to keep looking for her “perfect match” and I will look for mine.
Only have one agreement that if she finds someone “better” than me that she comes back and tell me what it is about that person that she finds better. And I will do the same for her.
During the process anything we find we can bring back to the relationship and see if our partner can match it.
And if they can then as the saying goes “better the devil we know” so somehow I have strong doubts that I need fear she will go off with this other person. But more so I think is it will add to our suite of skills and character and only make us better and stronger together.

If she does find that the other person is more suited to her then if I really loved her wouldn’t I want what is best for her. And besides wouldn’t it be better for me that we find out that we were not really suited to each other now rather than later.

Anyway that is my theory of Anti-Jealousy

Ask someone today why their relationship failed and they will usually come back with the well worn cliché “We grew apart”. Saying that we grew apart is a kin to saying “it fell out of the sky!” when asked why did the plane crash, I think.

Of course you grew apart and of course the plane crashed but why? Rethink Perfect is my attempt to explain why relationships fail and is based on my own personal experience in a relationship that I had specifically to test my theories on love and relationships. It is also based on my brother’s relationship that lasted for ten years. And finally, all the conversations I have had with people that have failed relationships (no shortage there) have contributed to this thesis.

I have just realised that the last 24 years of seeking an apology from my mum was illegitimate.

Illegitimate, because of the error in the process. Instead of confronting her privately with my dispute I confronted her in front of my dad which resulted in her denying it and effectively lying.

The first 7 years I thought I could simply expect an apology. I then had to apologise for that strategy because I hate anyone expecting anything of me. Then, some 10 years ago I thought that if I apologised first that I had the right to seek and wait on an apology from her. Well once again I was wrong.

I guess what I took away from the last 24 years is that I believe that I am left holding the can in a dispute with anyone, for not having an agreement on how we engage and disengage. That the best way to complain responsibly is to avoid the standoff in the first place.

Hence the desire to find a method of delivery that I can achieve such an agreement before any meaningful engagement. I guess most people understand this subconsciously and avoid any in-depth engagement rather than seek agreements on rules of engagement.

Aka throwing out the baby with the bath water, i.e. don’t talk about religion, politics, sex or engagement frameworks.

From now on if anyone has any complaints about me or the framework for engagement that my brother and I use, I suggest you get an agreement with me <em>before</em> we engage rather than after. Otherwise all complaints in the future will simply be ignored.

I received my first call to silence me and my discussions from a

post from Kim Jones on the Edward de Bono Society:
http://www.debonosociety.com/forum/topics/my-engagement-proposal?commentId=2696260%3AComment%3A50933&xg_source=msg_com_forum

“What you guys are into is "meta-discussion". In other words, you get your kicks by discussing the discussion. In fact you don’t discuss anything much at all. From what I can see, you just enjoy taking issue with just about anything at all. Discussing the discussion does nothing to further the discussion. It is horribly tedious and meta-discussion is banned in many learned discussion lists. If I had my way I would ban it here too. The whole world may get down on bended knee and treat you exactly as you would want but what difference have you made to the world?”

Top of Form

I must be doing something right to get such a response!

Bottom of Form

This is the agreement I will try get with my mum.

That my apology to her was that I am sorry for confronting her in front of my dad and her apology to me was that she is sorry for
lying to me in from of my dad.

If I can get this agreed to, we can put this event, of some 24 years, behind us.

If not then it is on ward and forward with me working how I can explain this more clearly.

Thanks Kim for the contribution it really has allowed me to see more clearly why it was so important for me at the time, and a chance to explain it now.

As I mentioned when you rephrased your question willingly to "propose" as opposed to imposed, you can speak with my brother.

KIM "OK, so what’s the longest you have been able to propose 3A logic during human interactivity in the past? How’s that?"

and my reply then as it is now is the same ask my brother Steve who is now a member.

DES "I will ask my brother Steve to get back to you on this as we have been working on this for some 20 years now. I use him as the sounding board and test subject."

So I did answer it.
I think your question was rhetorical and because of the importance of semantics here,
once a framework is agreement to, "we" impose it not just me.
So I don’t agree with you that there is a "trivial difference between proposing and imposing" or that it can be "overlooked".

When "we" impose something on each other, I think there is a huge difference than one person imposing an idea or concept on another.

For example Franis’s concept that objecting to answer a question "doesn’t work because it doesn’t enhance communication" was never agreed to by me and so by saying I "should know better!" is imposing it on me, I think.

So to me, this difference between proposing and imposing is the difference between chalk and cheese. But due to all of our participation it is made much more apparent to me anyway, so thanks again.