One of the sailing teachers is an older gentleman named Neil. He’s getting married this weekend. I first met Neil a few months ago when he, another sailing student named Joyce, and I went on a cruise to Sam’s in Tiburon for some vegetable soup. It was a really special day.
You know me, within about 5 minutes, I had them both talking about their loves and losses and what they thought it all meant. Neil took a class in relationships, and he’d learned some very interesting things there that both Joyce and I have been telling our friends ever since. The bottom line is that relationships work best when you are with someone just like you in 3 ways. I’ll try to explain what they are:
1) Assertive vs. receptive… or, as Neil described it, masculine vs. feminine. That is, whether you live in the world responding to others’ needs or expressing your own needs.
2) How you respond to things: people react to the events of their lives in a variety of ways: action, emotion, analysis…. And as time passes, that reaction moves to the next type of reaction. For example, you first react to something upsetting by yelling (action) and then the next day you might start to analyze how to fix it and only a while later do you begin to process your feelings about it. Each person, Neil learned, does this differently; you’ll get along well with someone who does it most similarly to your way.
3) Focus… are you a tinkerer or do you fixate? When approaching a project, it matters if you become obsessed with it or if you graze or even how often you forget what you’re working on or what else you’re doing. I wanted to call this competence as Neil described it, but that’s too value-laden for this application.
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