A week after the Cruise, back in Raleigh, on a Saturday night I began to feel an ache in my right side.  Familiar, the ache had a familiar feel; something from the shadow of my past.  I went to bed and awoke to searing, jabbing pain moving through my right side. 

     It’s serious when it hurts to breathe, but I thought I knew what was going on, so I went to Mission Valley CupAJoes for breakfast.  I looked terrible, bent over, walking like a zombie, sometimes gasping for air.  Looking at me with alarm in his eyes, I had to assure Dave that I was not dying. I got coffee, juice and a breakfast sandwich.  I ate.  Then, I made my way to the emergency room.  In constant pain, I was under the watchful eyes of Dr. Pleasant.

       Yep, I am not making that up; Dr. Pleasant.  When this young, white woman introduced herself, I looked up at her and said nothing.  Despite the pain I was in, I smiled.  She said, “I know… you can’t make this stuff up.”

     For the next five hours, I was under the care of Dr. Pleasant and her nurses.  I thought I knew what was going on, but because I have had a blood clot with pulmonary embolism in the past, many tests had to be run. Blood was drawn, EKG, nuclear breathing tests of my lungs to search for a blood clot.  

     No matter because I was kept by the good company of the atmosphere of Elizabethan London, the School of Night, Matthew, a thousand year old Vampire, Diana, his wife, who is a modern day woman and scholar, who is also learning that she is the kind of Witch who spins time. I was reading the second book in Deborah Harkness’ All Souls Trilogy. The first book was “A Discovery of Witches,” a compelling, multilayered, metaphysical-historical fiction. 

 

     After reading and being overtaken by that discovery of witches in the summer of 2011, I was upset to realize that “A Discovery of Witches” was part of a trilogy and that the second book was not due for another year.  Now summer 2012, the second book, “Shadow of Night,” is published and the story has blown me away.  No it is not the kind of book that stops real physical pain. I have never found such a book. But yes it is the kind of book that helps you hold pain at bay by giving you a delicious story on which to concentrate. 

     

    Diana and Matthew have gone back in time to search of an ancient text that might explain the origin of creatures (Witches, Vampires, Daemons). Imagine being in Elizabethan London in the company of Christopher Marlowe (a daemon), Walter Raleigh (a human), walking the rough, muddy, streets of that London, and meeting royalty because your husband, your Vampire is a spy for the queen. He is Shadow.

     Imagine too that it is in this time you have available to you a cadre of witches (Goody Alsop being one) who can teach you about your powers and your true identity as a creature.  And imagine too the possibility of a child conceived of the union of a powerful, unexpectedly humane (yet to be feared) vampire Matthew and the modern witch-woman Diana he truly loves.  It is Matthew, the Vampire, who speaks of what a child needs.  He says: “All a child needs is love, an adult to take responsibility for them, and a soft place to land.” 

     No wonder that Diana is drawn to him. No less because of her own fierce, independent spirit. Diana is a scholar in search of ancient secrets, and she is possibly one of the most unique witches of all time. 

     Now you’ve got yourself a story, an adventure, and one that is in the hands of a true writer and storyteller.  Pain or no, that’s good company.

     Oh, about that pain. I was right. Pleurisy.  Look it up.

    Sometime in April (2012), I got a call from Phillip, my “…little brother.” 

   “I have a question,” he said.   “Ok…” I said.

    “Well, I have talked to Elinor and J.C., Carlos and Tresha, and they all have agreed to go on a cruise in June.  What about you?”

    “A cruise?” I said.

    “Yeah, five days, leaving Jacksonville.  So how about you?

    My brother Phillip knows me.  After all we have always been brothers.  And although I say he is my “…little brother,” he is 58 years old.  That’s how long he has been my “…little” brother.  So Phillip knows me and knows my tendency to be fine being by myself. In other words, he set me up.  He asked everybody else first, and once they agreed asked me “…well, what about you?”  He set me up.

     Phillip and his ten year old son, Phillip II, had worked it all out.  The two of them had researched the cruise, chosen the Cruise liner and Cruise ship, as well as choosing the proposed dates to coincide with the beginning of summer and for me the end of my semester.  That is how it came to pass that on June 4, 2012, we boarded the Carnival Fascination for a five day cruise with a stop in Key West and one in the Bahamas.

      Let me tell you we had a good time.  The two Phillips had planned this very well.

 

     The two Phillips had a suite, with a large balcony.  On the same deck level, Elinor, our sister, her husband J.C. had a room that adjoined the room shared by their adult children Tresha and Carlos, which also had a balcony.  I was on another deck level with an ocean view window.  So the ocean was ever present.

     Phillip and I both served in the U.S. Navy with duty aboard ships that stopped in ports around the world.  He and I were not interested, and did not ever get off this Cruise ship.  For us, it was about being again on the ocean, out on the big water that mattered most.  Everybody else got off at the ports of call.  Phillip and I stayed onboard the ship and talked to each other as brothers, about events in our lives that we had never discussed with each other.  We discovered that we had the same psychological experience on our first cruise; being on the big water the first time felt like finding our place in the world; a place with nothing but adventures to be lived.

     What a time the family had on this five day cruise.  We sometimes had lunch together, but we always had dinner together.  Before dinner we would gather in the suite of the two Phillips and sip wine, talk, tell stories on each other and on our now dead parents (grandparents to some in the room). On the dress-up dinner night, we had a little celebration for Elinor and J.C. to honor their fiftieth wedding anniversary.  Fifty (50) years of marriage!

  

    When we weren’t together, we did our own thing.  Me, I was in my room reading Stephen King’s 11/22/63.  What would you do if you found a way to go back in time?  Would you try to change history by stopping some awful event?  If you did try to go back to stop that event would doing so be easy? If you fought through the hard parts, changed history, would the change work out for the better?

    Up to this point, the only book of Stephen King’s I had read was his masterpiece, “On Writing.”  I just was not attracted to his novels since they were all horror.  Yet I wanted to read something of his because of two movies made based on his fiction writing, “The Shawshank Redemption,” and “The Green Mile.” I was intrigued because those two movies told a story, were about something, and were filled with the poetry of life.

      When I came across his novel, 11/22/63, I was drawn to it because I was a teenager in Louisiana when John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  Not only that, but my father was a local, grass-roots politico and staunch supporter of Kennedy in the hope that he would lead the federal government to improve the situation for black people in America.  King’s novel was about changing what happened; preventing the assassination of one of our most important Presidents.

    I have so many things to say about reading King’s novel while on this cruise.  First King’s book is a master class on how to write a compelling, can’t put down, intelligent, thought-provoking novel. Every detail brought up was used to strong effect in the novel, somewhere, and usually after you had forgotten the detail.  Second, King’s research on Lee Harvey Oswald and that time in America is impeccable.  Third, I found out King is a romantic in the best sense of that word; a believer that there is hope in what we try to do, hope even if we fail, and hope for the relationships we are willing to really work for.

     In his novel, King reminds us, if not teaches us that time is obdurate; resistant to change.  Time will fight you.  But dancing is life.

     During the cruise I read for hours every day. All twenty-four hours a day, the ocean was under me, dancing.

    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.

    I have a vague image of a woman holding a lamp that lights the way as she walks through a hospital room, watching over the sick and dying. That is the image that pops into my head when I hear the name Marie Curie.  Where in my childhood that I get such an image?

     That is the question I kept asking myself as I read Lauren Redniss book, “Radioactive, Marie and Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout.”  Turns out, I had no idea who Marie Curie had been, how important she had been to the science of radioactivity, and how she and her husband Pierre had shared a radioactive love.

     But theirs’ was not the naïve idea of hot love that we live with today.  Pierre Curie was a physicist who studied crystals, and whose work was ground breaking, setting the foundation for the creation of mechanisms that power things we take for granted today; inkjet printers, medical ultrasounds.

     Marie Curie was never a nurse. She studied mathematics and physics, and when X-rays were first discovered became interested in minerals that gave off light; uranium being one. 

     Both Marie and Pierre were high level thinkers and researchers. 

    Can two geniuses find love and sustain a relationship?  For me, as I read, that became the central question about the life of Marie Curie.  A woman of her own mind, at a time when women usually were mere baubles on the arm of a man, Marie wanted a love life, a family, but she wanted equally to be able to do her independent work.  Pierre was a man who wanted Marie the woman, but who also wanted Marie the thinker.  So they became collaborators in all things; life and work.  Noting this about their relationship Redniss writes,

     “With the constant companionship that accompanied their research, the Curies’ love deepened.  They cosigned their published findings.  Their handwritings intermingle in their notebooks.  On the cover of one black canvas laboratory log, the initials “M” and “P” are scripted directly one atop the other.”

     Today we use the phrase “power-couple.” Well here was the ultimate power-couple who shared marriage, children and a Noble Prize in Physics for their work on radium and radioactivity. It was Marie who coined the word “radioactivity.”  Her work influenced everything we learned about and now know about radioactivity.

     Set up as a graphic novel, Redniss takes us through the many facets of the questions, quandaries and paradoxes that knowledge of radioactivity has brought to human history. That, in and of itself, makes this a book that all of us need to read. And the book, with its colorful, emotion laden art (by the author), is a captivating read that took me away for three hours. 

     For me, the most compelling part of the story is the human story. In her diary Marie wrote: “We [Pierre and I] lived in preoccupation as complete as that of a dream.”  Yet dreams can contain moments of disappointment and even terror. 

     Still learning about the properties and effects of radioactivity, handling radium every day, both Marie and Pierre were being poisoned by their work. Pierre dies in part because he was so weakened by that poisoning.  Four years later, Marie takes a lover, another physicist, who is married.  That caused a scandal so extreme that two men had a duel over her honor, and she was discouraged from going to Oslo to receive her second Nobel Prize, this one in Chemistry.  Marie ignored these requests. That should have surprised no one because Marie Curie had always been an independent thinker.  That is why her greatest joys came in her relationship with Pierre. 

     What is radioactive love?  It is having someone who gets and respects your passion… that’s radioactive love.  Such mutual respect lights things up; it heats things up.  It resists random change, even as it accepts its own natural change.

     To love is to respect.  Sadly and with imminent danger to self and others, too many people use the word “love” when they mean “want.”  That is dangerous because “I want you” is only a statement of passionate desire.  “I love you” should be a statement of the interaction of desire, respect and commitment to the relationship that lights up everything. Love, you see, is a decision to bring and keep desire, respect and commitment together, in order to have an authentic, luminous, relationship.

     

    Marie Curie’s relationship with Pierre was such because they respected each other.  Losing such a rare, radiant, element would be the most difficult thing ever in life. No wonder that when he died, a day after the funeral, in her diary Marie wrote,

     “My Pierre, I got up after having slept very well, relatively calm.  That was barely a quarter of an hour ago, and now I want to howl again—like a savage beast.”

    You want to know what radioactive love looks like.  Read this book.

    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.”