I give a lot of talks and presentations around campus.  Although I can feel the reaction of the audience to my remarks, I don’t often get direct confirmation of what I am sensing as a reaction.  Take my “Honoring the Authentic Self” presentation to students in the Univesity Honors Program at their Convocation (see previous post).  During my presentation, I felt the audience was with me; understanding and appreciating.  After, I got more of that feeling from the students who came down and stood around to get a chance to talk with me.  I got even more of that feeling when a student said to me, “thank you sir… that was helpful.”

    Helpful?  As I drove home I thought about that comment.  I thought about where these young people were in life; at the real begining of being an adult.  Helpful made sense as a comment because these young people are for the first time in a situation where they have to grapple with the hardest question in life; who am I?  And I had talked about developing an authentic self and not settling on being someone else.  So helpful made sense as a reaction.

   So sometimes I know that what I have done has made a difference.  But I don’t always see it in writing.  Lovely though that in the case of my presentation to the Honors Convocation, I found it in writing.  On the University Honors Program webblog I found this summary of the evening:

    For the 2012 UHP convocation, NC State students and faculty alike crowded into an auditorium to hear Dr. Rupert Nacoste address “The Aims of Education.”

    Following a brief introduction by UHP Director Dr. Larry Blanton, honors students listened attentively as Dr. Nacoste gave a moving speech on his interpretation of education as a means of self-discovery. His exhortation to the students was that they should not want “to be” anyone else; in fact to be another person, one would have to share all of the same life experiences. Dr. Nacoste reflected on his personal achievements by emphasizing the obstacles he was forced to face over the course of his lifetime. In doing so the primary objective of his convocation speech was not the generic or prescribed expectation, but rather to encourage the students to discover and better understand themselves as individuals. In addition to captivating oration technique, his stories, so unique to Dr. Nacoste’s life, seemed to strike a chord with the audience.

    Hearing Dr. Nacoste speak and share his own experiences left students with a desire to go forth, pursue, achieve, and possibly fail with grace and a better understanding of themselves from having experienced that failure. By doing so, they can gain not only knowledge about their fields of study, but also become more well-rounded by learning about themselves in the process.

    Good Luck to the UHP students in their studies of both themselves and the world around them.

    I like that summary.  Indeed, I am honored by it.

I am…

• Son of August and Ella Nacoste
• Louisiana bayou-black-Creole
• U.S. Navy Veteran (1972-1976)
• Fan of poetry, music, literature
• College graduate
• Writer
• Ph.D. Scholar

How do I put all that together?  How do I make all these parts of myself coherent to me?

That was the question I decided to take on when I was asked to give the keynote address at the University Honors Program (UHP) Convocation. My only instruction was to somehow deal with the question, “…what is the point of education?”  So the night before the beginning of classes for our Fall-2012 (August 15, 2012) students in the honors program gathered to hear me speak.

After being introduced by UHP Director Dr. Larry Blanton, I began with the statement above about the many parts of my social self.

Then I went on…

Professionally, I am a social psychologist.  As a social psychologist, I was trained by John W. Thibaut, one of the most important theoreticians of the field.

What was the point of my education under Thibaut?  Was it to be like him? Why do I even ask that question?

Well, lately, it feels like people have been hunting me down.  I try to get a moment to myself, and out of nowhere, I hear a voice… Dr. Nacoste. People want to talk to me.  A lot of those people say they want to learn from me.  Lately, too many have said they want to be me.

Now when a student says that… I kind of understand.  Even so, the desire is out of order.  But here’s where I go from feeling hunted to feeling stalked.  This summer, I was walking into Wholes Food and it happened.

I don’t teach in the summer.  But it’s more than not teaching.  I hide in the summer.  I avoid the campus and except for a few close friends, I avoid people.

You see I know too many people.  Actually, to be honest there are too many people who think they know me when in fact the truth is they know about me.  Even so, that doesn’t mean people won’t run up to me and start talking to me as if they know me.

So, I hide in the summer.  I use my summers to give myself time to myself; to read novels; to work on writing projects that are not academic; to travel.   This past summer I did all that.  That’s why when I was heading into Wholes Food, I was all relaxed.

In case you didn’t know, in North Carolina the heat of this past summer was unbearable; 5 days at 105 degrees.  So to beat the heat, I went to Wholes Food in the morning before the temperature made being outside unbearable.  I thought I was safe.  Just as I got to the door, there came a voice from an SUV that was sitting there.  “Dr. Nacoste…”

It was a relatively new NCSU faculty member. This faculty member said, “…I know when you heard my voice you had to be thinking, who is this person stalking me.” Then this faculty member just started talking.

I guess to explain themselves, this person said, I have people in my life, mentors that I look up to, and look to learn from.  You are one of my most important mentors… I want to learn from you… I know its summer but could you meet with me… you have to understand… this is so important… I just… I just want to be you.

Now, as a psychologist, I am worried… maybe even a little frightened. What the hell is going on?    No one should want to be me.  Not if you know my history.

Happy to be born and reared in the bayou country of Louisiana, I joined the Navy at 20 years old.  I was in the Navy during a hell of a time; race riots about ships carrying weapons of mass destruction.  I was onboard the USS Intrepid, an aircraft carrier with 5,000 men, at sea in the Mediterranean, when a race-riot broke out that lasted for three days; at sea, weapons of mass destruction all around. Same aircraft carrier, same deployment, we did search and recovery of bodies from a commercial jet crash.

When I was 23, I took my friend Benson home in a coffin…

I experienced all that, and more, while in the Navy.

Later, while a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Michigan, I set myself on fire.  My left hand was so severely burned the doctors thought they might have to amputate it.  Later, when an assistant professor at Auburn University I had knee surgery and developed a blood clot, that became a pulmonary embolism.  I experienced and survived that.

     I don’t think people who say “I want to be you” really mean that.  It took me a while to figure out why someone would say that.  And part of that was a conversation I had with a really close friend. Basically my friend said that when people on campus observe me, they observe someone at ease with who they are, and someone who does what he thinks is the right thing to do. My friend was saying that people look at me and see someone who lives their authentic self.

     Ok… I thought… that makes sense.  Most people want to live that way.  But too many people want a short cut to get there.  Those people say, “Dr. Nacoste… I just want to be you.”

But that’s not how it works.  We all have a history that brings us to where and who we are. To be me would mean having the same experiences I have had; burned hand, blot clot and all.  It would mean having those experiences and finding a way to integrate those experiences into a coherent self.

Each of us has to develop our authentic self.   There is no short cut to your authentic self.

For me, that’s the point of education.  The point of education is to develop your authentic self. A good education is the pot in which the individual explores and integrates their experiences into a coherent self; a gumbo self.

I loved my parents. My parents loved me. I learned from my parents. I am the son of August and Ella Nacoste.   When they died, I felt a hurt like no other.  Even so, I never wanted to be my parents.

I was John Thibaut’s student.  He was a major part of my educational, intellectual learning.  He was one of greatest minds ever in the field of social psychology. I learned from him. I admired him. I came to love John as a friend. And he loved me likewise. But it was never my goal to be him.

Hear the poet Sterling Brown[1]:

Oh I shall meet your friends, and chatter on

As trivially, as sillily as they,

My talk resembling much the rattling way

Of an incessant mower on a lawn.

Oh I shall smirk, and prink and scrape and fawn

And listen to the nothings that they say

And answer less. And for a juvenile play

Shall all matured integrity be gone.

 

And there are very many things beside

That I shall do. And one of these will be

When you reward me for rank cowardice.

I shall call back, to fretting memory

A hut, pine circled, on a wild hillside

And peace thrown lavishly away– for this…

Don’t put yourself in that position.  Don’t give up on yourself. That’s what that poem is about.

The poem is the lament of someone who gave up on themselves to follow someone else.  They followed someone else’s goals; they followed a path chosen for them by that someone else.  And in the end they felt empty and cheated.

But they had done it too themselves; when you reward me for rank cowardice.  They had behaved cowardly and now, too late, realized what that cowardice had cost them. Don’t put yourself in that position.  Don’t give up on yourself.  It is true what Nietzsche said: “No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”

That’s the point of education; owning yourself.

The point of education is to develop your authentic self.

Be not afraid.

    At the end of the Spring-2012 semester, as graduation approached, I started to get thank you notes and cards. 

      I really don’t think these are necessary, but students give them to me no matter what I think.  May, 2012 the notes and cards began to come to me.  But this year was a little different.  This year, many of the notes gave a summary of what the student felt was so important in my teaching that they would never forget.  A number of students summarized what they thought the important lessons were from my teaching.

     For me it was interesting to read these summaries of the basic lessons students got from my introduction to social psychology-interpersonal relationships class. Since the course is really a course on what it takes to build and maintain healthy interpersonal relationships, what my students said they learned had to do with that.

 P.R., a male wrote:

     “During the last semester of my senior year I expected to be burnt out and want to leave campus by 4:30pm after three hours of class, but I find myself excited and ready for your class every Tuesday and Thursday at that time.  Everybody has internal struggles and questions about who they are and their role in the social world.  Those questions cause insecurity in students that can stick with them the rest of their life and affect them greatly.  You help us answer the one question; “I’ve had so many relationships fall apart in my life; how do I maintain a healthy, positive relationship?”  It’s easy; be honest (to yourself and others), take your time, go slowly, don’t rush things, and listen to other people.  Thank you so much.  I plan to take this knowledge with me forever.”

    One student was insistent that she had something to give me.  Whatever it was, she was unwilling to put it in my mailbox.  When we were finally able to meet this summer, she gave me a thank-you card.  She thanked me in person.  After she left my office, I opened the card and found these words.  She wrote:

 Dr. Nacoste,

     Where do I even begin?  I took Psy 311 (your course) in Spring 2010- best class ever.  I learned so much:

 1.      People do not just spring into existence just because I get interested.

2.      Long distance relationships are always at risk of failing.

3.      You have to work through interpersonal conflict if you want the relationship to work.

4.      Don’t take people for granted because anyone can ‘…walk the hell away.’

     I want to thank you for everything.  Sincerely, G.M.

    Even for me, this particular semester, the classroom experience had been powerful. Through the questions they asked, the way they asked their questions, I could feel my students digging into the lessons; really learning, really changing.  I was convinced of that by what happened after the final exam. 

     By email, a young woman asked for an appointment before she left for the summer.  We set it up and she came to my office, right on time.  When she came in I recognized her from the classroom.  She sat down and said,

     “I want to thank you. I have so much to say that I put it in a letter,” she said.

     “A letter, really?” I said.  I expected her to hand it to me.

    “Yes… and I’d like to read it to you.”

     “Oh… well, please go ahead.” I leaned back into my office chair.

     She unfolded what looked like two sheets of paper.  She started, “Dr. Nacoste…”

     At that beginning she burst into tears.  I searched in my desk drawer and pulled out the packet of tissues I have learned to keep around.  I handed her the packet.

     “That’s why I wrote it all down, because I knew I would be emotional.”

     “I see,” I said and waited.

     “Dr. Nacoste,” she began again.

     …I have to admit your class surprised me.  I thought I knew what I was getting into because I had so many friends who had taken your class and could not stop talking about how wonderful it was. I knew that you were a highly respected teacher. I knew I would love the class, but I didn’t expect to take away so much from it.

     There were so many days where you would say something and it would just hit me.  I wrote about one of those days in my (one new thought) paper.  I had been in a three-year relationship that was not working.  I was miserable, but I stayed.  Thanks to your class I left.  I walked the hell away. I realized that I can still reevaluate my relationship [with my own standards], much like my boyfriend had when he cheated on me, except I could handle things a little bit differently.  I could just leave… so I did.

     I was angry for a long time.  I was angry that the person who was supposed to love me had cheated on me.  I was angry that this wasn’t the first time this had happened to me.  I was mad that my dad told me from the day I turned sixteen that every man would cheat on me… and then they did.

     So this brings me back to what I took away from your class.  What surprised me most?

     Forgiveness and hope.

     I figured out that most of my misery was coming from the fact that I was mad all of the time.

     Over the course of your class I learned what might have motivated people to act the way they did and it was not their ‘selfish, mean, inconsiderate ways.’ You taught us, ‘everyone is fighting a great battle.’ Just as I explain my own behavior in situational terms, so does everyone else. Everyone has something going on. Many times we do not mean to hurt anyone, but we do.

      I realized that my ex probably wasn’t lying when he said, ‘I never meant to hurt you.’ There were times that I hurt him without meaning to and I see that now.  The pain from this failing relationship was not only affecting me. 

     After talking to my father about how much he had hurt me by telling me every man would cheat on me, he told me he was trying to protect me from getting hurt the way he had when he suspected his ex-wife was cheating on him.  I never knew that.

     I will probably never speak to my ex again, but I forgive him.  I cannot hate a person for having natural incompatibilities with me.  We both made mistakes, but we both deserve to be happy.  I also forgave myself for the mistakes I had made.  I have humps on my back, but who doesn’t.  We’re human.

     I also hope that one day I will be in a healthy relationship with a person I trust. I had given up on that dream for a long time, but in one of your lectures you said, ‘…we will all be in relationships with people we should not have trusted but that does not mean we should give up.  When you give up you cripple yourself.’ This quote sticks with me every day now.

     Thank you so much for making me open my eyes.

     I would also like to thank you for being an amazing teacher. I have never seen a teacher who could present anything the way you can.  The way you relate the material to real life, incorporate music and poetry into lectures, and give the subject emotion is absolutely incredible.  Thank you for taking the time and effort to make your class the way it is.

     You said on the first day if we wanted to keep our ‘…naïve, romantic ideas about love,’ that we should drop your class. I’m glad you took those ideas away from me because now I realize that when you look at relationships realistically, they are HARD. It takes a lot to make one work.  There are so many things influencing the dyad that it’s amazing to me that any relationship can last for so long. That’s also what makes it more magical and incredible than any fairytale.

     Thank you for making me see this.  Thank you for everything.

     W.C.

        Throughout her reading of her incredible letter to me, every now and then W.C. had wiped away some tears. When W.C. finished reading her letter, we both sat quiet for moment. 

     “I am without words,” I said.

     “Thank you for letting me read this to you.  This was very important to me.  Thank you for everything.”

     We both stood.  I opened my arms and she came to me like a daughter.  We released each other and said our goodbyes.

    Teaching about relationships is a hell of thing.

     With that, Summer 2012 was starting for me.

    Love cannot conquer all.

    Love cannot even conquer coordination problems.

    I have no idea how it came to pass that we believe that we can just think a relationship into existence.  Look, a relationship, interpersonal-interdependence, has to involve at minimum linked behaviors.

     Here I want to be clear.  Although they are linked behaviors,

     Getting a phone number, does not make it a relationship…

     Being kissed does not make it a relationship…

     Having sex does not make it a relationship…

     Let’s think this through. Why do people exchange phone numbers?  Well, it turns out that before a relationship can be formed, there must be some coordination of behavior.

     Time coordination; when are you available?  And you?

 

    Behavioral coordination; Where, to do what?  What do you like to eat?

     When you want to develop a new relationship, you immediately run into the problem-of-coordination. Why; because people do not just spring into existence, just because you get interested.  That person, who is now making your heart beat faster, was already a well functioning social being, with his or her own schedule, not to mention already with friend and family obligations.

 

     So to develop or to maintain a relationship with a new person, somehow the two people have to find spaces where their two social realities allow for a new set of coordinated behaviors. That is essential, because as Thibaut and Kelley say in their theory of interdependence, “…the essence of any interpersonal relationship is interaction.” And, you see, it is coordination of behavior that will lead to linked emotion.  You can think about the other person all you want, but that does not help the relationship to begin or develop. Actual coordination of behavior is what influences the texture of the relationship. 

   Social psychological researchers (Berscheid, Snyder & Omoto, 1989) have now shown that being close in a relationship is determined by four factors of coordinated of behavior.  They have shown that:

   “…a high degree of interdependence (or psychological closeness) between two people is revealed in four properties of their interconnected activities:

 (1)    The individuals have frequent impact on each other;

 (2)    The impact involves diverse kinds of activities for each person;

 (3)    The degree of impact per each occurrence is strong;

 (4)    All of these properties characterize the interconnected activity series for a relatively long duration of time.”

 Frequency of impact; number of hours spent alone with one’s partner (morning, afternoon and evening) on a typical day. 

        Just thinking about this dimension may raise some red flags. Given the amount of time you spend with a person, how much time does that mean they are spending with other people?  That may be natural and appropriate, but it should also tell you that you cannot expect to have as much influence on your friend or lover as you would like. No wonder that long distance relationships are always at risk of failing. 

 Diversity of impact; this has to do with the number of different activity types in which relationship partners engage together.  Examples include: eating a meal together; doing the laundry together; went hiking together).

    This could be another “oh, oh.”  If all you do is go to bars together, or sit in each others’ apartments together, you are really not having different opportunities to have impact on each other.  Even if you are having lots of sex, if that’s mostly what you do, you don’t have much of a relationship. Again, no wonder that long distance relationships are always at risk of failing.

 Strength of impact; the degree to which members of the dyad believe they are influenced by their partner (when it comes to their joint activities). To feel close, both people should feel that they can have some influence on their partner. Influences on small things, what one watches on TV; what one eats for dinner; what activities one engages in; and influences on larger matters, career plans.

    You have heard people who are having trouble with strength of impact.  “We never do the things I’m interested in; we always do what you want to do.”  That relationship is in trouble because there is no mutual strength of impact.  When that is the case, people feel that and don’t like it.

 Duration of impact; this has to do with more than just time in the relationship.  It’s the amount of time in the relationship when the two people have been having high frequency, diversity and strength of impact on each other. 

     Impact is not immediate; it takes time for each person to be willing to have the other person influence them. Is your relationship close by this definition; or is it that you just think it’s a close relationship?

     To be close, the two people, the dyad, has to engage in some real behaviors. People in a relationship must have real impact on each other before it is a real relationship.

     When you are wondering to yourself, love wherefore art thou?  Remember, love, the feeling is not all you need. 

     Carolyn Hax, the advice columnist, says it quite eloquently.  Responding to someone seeking advice about a long distance relationship, at one point in her response Ms. Hax says:

     “Love’s engine is love in the lowercase, the day-to-day companionship, the intimacy, sex and communal laundry-folding, the countless small rewards for countless small sacrifices.”

     So real love is more than a feeling; it is active interactions with each other; interactions that provide frequent impact, strong impact, diverse impact, over long duration of time.

    Relationships really confuse us. On one hand we say we want a real, intimate, relationship.  On the other hand, we know that relationships are hard.

     

    I see this tension in my students’ struggles to have relationships. When I ask “…why are interpersonal relationships so difficult to manage,” I get a lot of responses.

• Because we disappoint other people
• Because we place expectations on people and are disappointed
• Because we interpret things differently
• Because we are ego-centric (always believe we’re right)
• Poor communication skills
• Situations change (i.e. moving to a new location)
• People have different beliefs
• Because we try to please everyone
• Money
• Because we’re never satisfied
• Because we have difference experiences/backgrounds
• People are selfish (i.e. want instant gratification)
• Interpersonal relationships are too time-consuming
• People lie
• Imbalance in affection
• New/different social influences
• Because we’re scared to be vulnerable
• Because we have a tendency to be judgmental
• Because we have different desires and goals
• Because of the different investments placed towards the relationship
• Lack of respect for personal space
• Different styles of managing stuff
• Trying to fit in too much
• Immaturity/inexperience in relationships
• Different interests
• Sexual incompatibility
• Because your relationship with Person A can affect your relationship with Person B (i.e. your girlfriend doesn’t like your best friend)
• Jealousy
• Because we aren’t mindful of others
• People are stubborn
• Because the more we get to know people, the more flaws we observe
• People are sensitive
• Because we’re not the same and that might cause difficulty
• Because we attribute people’s behavior to who they are, not the influences which might have contributed to their development (i.e. blame others)
• Don’t let go (i.e. hold grudges)
• People have different orientations
• Alcohol
• Because we have images of perfection
• People aren’t faithful
• Stereotypes are placed until broken
• Power struggles
• Inability to empathize
• We all do wrong and we know it

    In the Fall of 2011, from a class of 207 students, those were the responses I got to my query, “Why are interpersonal relationships so difficult to manage?”  And when that last response came, “We all do wrong and we know it,” I stopped and looked up into the auditorium. 

 

     I wanted to look in to the eyes of the person who said that; who admitted that.  He was a young white man with floppy dirty-blonde hair, and a look about him of being separate from others. I looked up into his eyes, nodded to him, and again repeated it for the class…

     “We all do wrong and we know it.”

     Even listing all these facts that make interpersonal relationships difficult to develop and maintain, my students also seem to want to believe that relationships shouldn’t be this hard.  And therein lay the problem.

     Look, relationships are hard not just in our imaginations, but because all relationships involve two people with two different social histories; two reasonable sets of opinions; two reasonable sets of preferences.

     That’s why people say, “…relationships are hard.”  That’s why we find ourselves saying things like:

     “God he gets on my nerves.”

     “I don’t know why she just won’t do it the way I told her to do it.  Humph…”

      Langston Hughes, the poet, describes one part of the struggle of relationships, saying,

            “Late last night I

             Set on my steps and cried.

             Wasn’t nobody gone,

             Neither had nobody died.

             I was cryin’

            Cause you broke my heart in two.

            You looked at me cross-eyed

            And broke my heart in two—

            So I was cryin’

            On account of

            You!”

     Being in a relationship, being interdependent with another person is not easy.  It’s not just a matter of what we or they think. Interdependence is about concrete social connections, social ties, that influence our behavior and our friends’, co-workers, lovers’, teammates’, parents’, behaviors.

     When we take that for granted by assuming that the other person can just think their behavior into shape for us, we deceive ourselves and belittle those with whom we are interdependent. Yet, people sometimes fear the scientific truth.  They fear it not simply because they will find out they are wrong, but more because they fear that it will take away the magic.  But knowing the truth does not take away the power of the magical and inspirational. Fully understanding the real nature of relationships will not make our social lives more mechanical, but will give us an appreciation of the struggle and make what we achieve feel even more magical and inspirational. 

     When the research knowledge developed by social psychologists is brought together with a focus on interdependence, it can provide us with tools that will help us all in our relationship struggles.  Knowing the obstacles, barriers and challenges that relationships face can only help us appreciate the joy and pain of the struggle to create and maintain those relationships.  

     Being in relationships is what activates, heats up all of our human experiences.  That’s why when I teach about relationships, I always begin with the hard truth of interdependence between two people.  I do that so that we can explore and try to understand how human experience operates within and emerges from our interpersonal interactions, so we can know what we are up against, and what joy we can really achieve through the struggle.

    Radioactive love; so many people carry that around in their heads as the ideal, romantic relationship.  A love that burns so hot that it may as well be a nuclear reactor.

  What bullshit!

     It is that kind of naïve, romantic belief about relationships that I confront and dismantle in my teaching about relationships.  Yes, a healthy, romantic relationship should have heat; hot-love, passionate sexual attraction; but not radioactive because we humans do not know how to control radioactivity.  Real love, healthy love, requires control because to love means to be able to fit our emotions into what the relationship requires.

     One of my favorite stand-alone lectures to give is the one I call, “What if the requirements of love are not the requirements of the relationship?”

     So let’s talk about the four requirements of the relationship.

     First requirement: the relationship must develop over time and circumstances; you cannot rush the evolution of the relationship.

     Getting a phone number, does not make it a relationship.

     Being kissed does not make it a relationship.

     Having sex does not make it a relationship.

     Here’s the problem.  Generally speaking, when people think they are in love, they immediately make this mistake.

     They say stuff like:

She’s great; I love everything about her.

He’s wonderful: I love everything about him.

     Problem:  They are still at the beginning of what might become a relationship; so they don’t know everything about him or her.

     That’s why we can end up so angry. At the beginning of the month we say, “I love everything about him or her.”  At the end of that same month we say:

 He’s a jerk.

She’s a … ok, she’s so selfish.

     It is as if the person has betrayed us by being who they really are. But the truth is we tried to rush things. 

     You see, relationships must evolve.  And the basis of the evolution of any interpersonal relationship is social interaction; interacting with that person, repeatedly, over time and different circumstances.  Until we have done that, we do not have a relationship.

     You cannot make a relationship grow by just being nice; you cannot make a relationship grow by partying together; you cannot make a relationship grow simply by spending all your time together; you cannot make a relationship grow by having lots of really good sex.

     Why not?; second requirement of relationships.

     Second requirement: the force that causes relationship development is conflict; relationships cannot develop without encountering and managing conflict.

     She wants to go the tractor pull and he wants to go the opera. 

     What do you do? 

     Interpersonal conflicts must occur for the relationship to grow.  Why?  Because without those kinds of conflicts, you never get to know who the other person really is, and you never get to know what they are or are not willing to adjust to for the relationship.

     So you must not hide your preferences.  You know the situation; you’ve lived it.  The question is asked, “…what do you want to do,” and the answer comes, “I don’t know what do you want to do.”

     Why is that so annoying?

     Because the person is hiding from you or you are hiding from them.

     And you are both lying.

     Always saying, “yes dear” is a sure relationship killer.  Why; because it’s hiding.

     Always saying, “…it doesn’t matter to me, I just want to be with you…” is a sure relationship killer.  Why; because it’s hiding and lying.

     Relationships cannot grow without honest self-disclosures.  Hiding your preferences stops the relationship from evolving.

     The third requirement of the relationship that we must understand is that the management of conflict will either cause the relationship to grow or will kill the relationship on the spot. 

     If any member of the couple decides to blow off a preference of their partner, the relationship is dead.  If you say “oh you don’t really mean that,” the relationship is dead.

     People you want to have relationships with had their preferences before they met you.  People do not spring into existence, just because you get interested.  Mostly they were doing fine… and you just showed up and now you want to object to their preferences.  So, if their preference is not illegal, immoral, dangerous or stinky, when you object then you show that it’s all about you having your way. 

     And that brings us to the fourth requirement of relationships. The fourth requirement of the relationship is this; the proper management of conflict requires each partner to listen for and adapt to the strengths and limitations of their partner.

   If your partner says to you, as the Tracy Chapman song says,

 “I told that I love you and there ain’t no more to say…”

     …you need to hear that as part of who they are and how they can or are willing to express themselves.  If you want or need someone to keep proving their love to you and the person says to you “I have told you that I love you and there ain’t no more to say…” then you have to hear and understand that limitation. If you can’t accept that, the way they are, don’t expect them to change for you.  That means you need to move on. 

     Walk the hell away.

     Listen, we all know that people do try to stick with a relationship because of what they imagine to be the requirements of radioactive love.  But heat is not the most powerful force holding a relationship together.  The most powerful force is adaptation; partners adapting to the strengths and limitations of each other.

     No real relationships are without conflicts. So the point is to be in a relationship that you and your partner believe is worth adapting too.  Since the requirements of your radioactive-love are never going to fit the requirements of the relationship, you must always decide what you are willing to do for the relationship.  If you decide that you cannot adapt to your partner’s strengths and limitations, then get out quickly.  Don’t linger, because lingering will almost always lead to a destructive relationship; a relationship in which at least one person in the relationship is subject to physical or psychological harm.

     Yes it was hot-love at first; radioactive love. Yet it was love without a willingness to learn and adapt to the person we said we loved.  It was radioactive at first sight… but what if the requirements of your heat are not the requirements of the relationship? 

    What then?

     With some frequency I give this talk to college students.  And during the last six summers, I have come out of hiding to give this talk to high school students attending North Carolina’s Governor’s School East held at Meredith College in Raleigh. When I give this talk to 15 and 16 year olds, I rock the house.

  

     After my talk in the Summer 2011, one of the students, Julius Kellinghusen, wrote it up for the Governor’s School East newsletter.  With the title of the article being “Doctor Love speaks out on teen romance and relationships” he ended his write up saying:

    “While being both caring and frightening, Dr. Nacoste and his lessons will be remembered for many years to come. So when you’re in that illegal, immoral, dangerous, or maybe even stinky relationship—just remember: ‘Get up and walk the HELL away.’”

    Apparently at Governor’s School East, they call me “Dr. Love.”

    Dating and marriage are in chaos. Relationships aren’t happening, aren’t working the way we dreamed, the way we always hoped they would.

     With lamentation in her voice, Natasha Bedingfield sings:

                                                                                                           Who doesn’t long for someone to hold…

Who knows how to love you without being told…

Somebody tell me why I’m on my own…

If there’s a soulmate for everyone…

     More than ever, people want to know how relationships work. Jordan Sparks sings:

     Why does love always feel like a battlefield, a battlefield, a battlefield?

      Almost as if he is in conversation with Natasha and Jordan, John Legend sings:

                                                                                                     

‘Cause everybody knows, that nobody really knows

How to make it work, or how to ease the hurt

We’ve heard it all before, that everybody knows

How to make it right, I wish we gave it one more try

‘Cause everybody knows, but nobody really knows…

   

     To get answers to their relationship questions, to find love that lasts, to figure out how to manage their relationships, people are reading relationship columns, blogs, and books. No doubt, more than ever, people are wondering whether there is a course to take to at least understand what the hell is going on. Well, is there?

     Yes there is.

      And I have been teaching that course to college students since 1999. 

     When the summer of 1999 rolled around, I had been teaching social psychology for about 10 years.  And I wasn’t happy.

     Oh, I liked being a professor. 

     

    And I liked teaching the social psychology course.  But I wasn’t happy with the way the field of social psychology was being covered by the textbooks. 

     All of the social psychology textbooks had the same organization, and that meant that interpersonal relationships were buried in chapter 9 or 10 somewhere.  All the textbooks start with psychological stuff; how we think about things; how we feel about things.  My training and my life experience told me that that’s not social. 

     How can we call ourselves social psychologists if we wait to show what we know about relationships so late in our coverage of social psychological topics and research? How can we offer people any help with their interpersonal relationships if we talk as if all that matters is how we think?

     I was really irritated by this because using any textbook almost forced me to teach the course in the way the textbook was organized.

     I was not happy. 

     So, I did something that some of my colleagues thought a little crazy.  I threw away all of the lectures I had developed, used, and refined over ten years. 

     I threw them away.

      Then I said to myself, ok Rupert… put your time where your mouth is. I said to myself, if you can teach the course in a new way, then you can write a new kind of social psychology book. Come up with a better way to organize a book and then teach the course that way. 

     That’s what I did.  I created a new social psychology course.

    In that course, I do not offer one-shot solutions to problems that occur in relationships.  What I do is teach students about the nature of being interdependent with another person.  All relationships are relationships of interdependence; each person depends on the other person for interpersonal satisfaction.  And it turns out that being interdependent with someone, in romance or friendship, has no one-shot, one-answer solution. 

     Interdependence in its completeness is something we all need and want to understand. We search for, we long for interdependence. We have different ways of stating this longing. We say “someone to love me.”  We say “someone to watch over me.”  However it is phrased, what we search for in interdependence with another person is safety… home. 

     Yet despite our longings to be interdependent, we don’t do it very well.  Why is that?  Simple; it takes time to learn how interdependence really works.  That’s the point of my course; to give people a framework, a lens, an eye, through which to see how the interpersonal works. So, in my course we take on these questions:

 What is an interpersonal relationship?

Why are interpersonal relationships so difficult to manage?

What are the types of interpersonal relationships?

What are the general requirements of interpersonal relationships?

What dimensions of interdependence lead us to feel safe in our relationships?

What can go wrong in our relationships because we are so motivated to find safety in our relationships?

     Even books by therapists do not take on these essential questions. Books like The Dance of Anger are books that try to heal the charred skin that remains after people have been burned by trying and failing to find relationship satisfaction by living out their relationship-stereotypes and romantic ideals.  My course is about prevention.

     My idea is that if we give people a realistic, scientifically established, understanding of how interpersonal relationships work, that will go a long way to preventing people from throwing themselves into the fiery pit of relationship confusion and eventual anger.  Once I started teaching my course the new way, with the entire focus of the course on relationship-development, students went wild.

     Students started evaluating the course with comments like this:

     “I would just like to say that I’m glad that I had the opportunity to rid myself of my romantic ideals about relationships.  Although the truth is cold and the reality even colder, at least through the knowledge I have learned in this course I no longer feel lost, confused, or that I will be wasting my time with bad relationships in the future. I now feel as though I have a real chance at developing a genuine, healthy, longstanding, love-filled communal relationship.”

     Also evaluating my course, another student wrote:

     “An excellent course. This should be taught in high schools!! This should be made a university-wide requirement [because] this course… enhances students’ maturity in dealing with others, both in intimate relationships and friendships.”

     So hold on; in my posts up until Summer, 2012, I will give you a glimpse into the teachings of my course.  One of the themes of the course is this: Relationships present to us problems to solve. That means that relationships require work. What surprises my students is that some of that work is us working to understand ourselves.

     Come go with me into a glimpse of a course that causes students to learn to accept the fact that it is only through relationships, through interdependence, that we can discover our authentic-self.  Paul Laurence Dunbar, the poet, puts the invitation and experience I am offering, this way:

 Come, come away to the river’s bank,
Come in the early morning;
Come when the grass with dew is dank,
There you will find the warning –
A hint in the kiss of the quickening air
Of the secret that birds and breezes bear.

     Come along for a glimpse into a course that helps people develop a new way of looking at the interpersonal. Come along for a glimpse into a course that makes the secrets of managing interdependence coherent; the “…secret that birds and breezes bear.”  

     Come; let’s make our way home.