“We weren’t taught how to care for relationships”

More and more people live alone, many do not have a partner and children. At the same time, we may well feel good, live a rich social and professional life, without feeling inferior. On the contrary, many experience loneliness more as a resource or as freedom.

On the other hand, psychologists may have gone too far, appealing to self-sufficiency and self-reliance. We sometimes forget that other people are good, including for ourselves. By dealing with them, we ourselves change for the better.

Where do you think we are now? Is it time to call on people to open up to each other, or is it more important to say that our path now is self-sufficiency?

Svetlana Krivtsova: You are talking to a psychotherapist, which means that there are no general rules. Psychotherapists view each life situation as incomparable to another, unique. In one life situation, it is good to develop self-sufficiency and independence, to learn to defend the boundaries.

And in the other – on the contrary, it is important to go to people, open up, take risks. There is no single rule for everyone. Although, of course, you are right that the priorities have changed.

Our generation of 40-50-year-olds has been brought up on collectivist values: by the whole world, by the whole collective farm. And modern culture is built on the great value of individualism.

Our October Socialist Revolution was in many ways similar to the French Revolution. They were both great. But the French Revolution defended equality and fraternity, the interests, rights and freedoms of one person, each individually.

And our October Revolution never talked about individual freedoms: only about freedom for a certain class, the class of workers and peasants. Which, however, did not see their freedoms, but the ideas of collectivism were received very well.

And yet, returning to relationships: what place do they occupy in our lives?

Relationships are both the most beautiful thing that happens to us in life, and the worst: dangerous and dramatic. Relationships can be destroyed or rebuilt.

As an existential psychotherapist, I work on the methodological foundations of existentialism and can only repeat its main thesis: no person can be self-sufficient.

We are not born self-sufficient, despite the fact that you can survive and even live your whole life alone. By nature, man needs to be supplemented. This addition may be something that lies outside the person: another person, a matter.

First of all, we are talking about connections with other people. We create these connections, we take care of them, and sometimes we tear them or they become thinner and turn sour if we do not take care of them.

Philosopher Martin Heidegger said that a person is born in a web of relationships. In fact, he enters into a relationship even before he can consciously think about it. And then he can choose among them those that he wants to look after, in which he will be ready to invest.

If you look closely, we have hundreds of relationships. We are in relationships with people whom we personally do not know. With everything that somehow affected us, we already have a relationship.

Psychologists often suggest setting aside time for communication with a child or partner, focusing on this communication and not being distracted by anything. How else can we take care of relationships in practice?

Our upbringing is practically oriented. We survived: the life of an entire country, an entire nation in the XNUMXth century was all about survival. When I talk about “courtship of relationships”, I understand that sometimes a person cannot even imagine what it is. This is a completely new idea for people.

As a rule, people only care for those relationships on which they depend and which bring them some benefit. Then they do not forget to congratulate a colleague on March 8, ask about health.

But as soon as the benefit disappears (for example, you have already been fired), then the truth begins about what kind of relationship was valuable in itself, just humanly.

For them to occur, a certain respectful distance is needed in which I listen to the other person.

At the same time, I’m not just interested in some information. I am trying to find out where he himself is inside this information, and not just “was there and saw this, talked to that”. Personal attention is an important part of caring for a relationship.

For a conflict-free relationship, when everything is fine for everyone, the recipe is very simple: two people meet, they have a period of time. If we have friendly relations, then half the time you tell, and I give you my attention, my interest, we discuss something, and then it’s my turn.

It seems that we do not need anything from each other, everyone has their own life. But in these kinds of conversations, when you feel understood and accepted, you get a lot.

Can people in such communication influence each other, change the other and change themselves?

A person changes only in dialogue. If there is no dialogue, there will be no change. Especially when it comes to personal development, to strengthening the “I” of the child, when some aspects of this personality have not yet been formed.

I mean conversations in which there is no pragmatic sense – not didactic conversations, not teaching, but conversations in which you simply interest me. Such conversations develop personality.

In a good conversation, we also help by asking, asking clarifying questions, trying to understand what happened to him today. We help you to analyze what is happening. So many great philosophers knew this: in order for the “I” to grow, we need a “You”.

Nietzsche once said: “You” are older than “I”. That is, “You”, the interlocutor, is a person who should have a more adult “I”. I call such a person an “Adult Adult.” The meeting that develops the personality is the meeting of the Adult Self, which is on good terms with the still immature Self and helps to find its answers by conducting a chain of analysis.

Imagine a situation: we come to a nursing home or help the disabled. It is clear that we are not the same as those we care for. How to find a natural tone so that there is no pity, no condescension, no indifference, but also not hypocrisy: they say, we are all the same?

This is part of a larger theme, which in the existential approach is called “the problem of otherness of the other.” Otherness is the biggest challenge for us. It is very easy to spontaneously build a relationship with a person who is similar to you: he thinks the same way, he likes the same thing.

These are the people we want to see around: those with whom we really have a common semantic field. And when we meet a person who initially and immediately seems different from you, this is a challenge. Emmanuel Levinas called it “a slap in the face”.

Why does it hurt so much, touch us? Because in this otherness, as in a mirror, I see something about myself. Old people, disabled people, infirm people hurt badly, without realizing it and not wanting it, of course. But who will they hurt?

Those who see weakness in them and are afraid of it: they are not afraid of this person, but of death, illness and weakness in themselves. Then every time we see another who confuses us, this forbidden topic begins to torment us. And the other becomes the scapegoat.

Why do psychotherapists need many hours of self-knowledge? Because every time we meet with clients, we rediscover our weaknesses, discover what else we need to work on in ourselves.

And how then to build relationships with dissimilar?

Suppose I don’t have this feeling of kinship at the level of the stomach, fluttering in the stomach. But this is not the only level of relationships! And then the best setting is the setting of curiosity: what are you like?

Why are so many people still sitting at home alone? They cannot see their weaknesses. And other people show them in bold type and emphasize: here you are weak, here you have failed.

This is the biggest danger in relationships: that we will not look with gratitude at the one who can teach us something, but will declare him responsible for the unfinished moments in ourselves.

The loop with the world touched you – and the loop back to itself. The biggest problems are people who do not have the second part of this eight, do not have a loop to themselves.

People who are always outward-oriented are constantly hurt. They are offended and do nothing about it, they lack this internal processing.

Why did it happen? In childhood, no one had conversations with them over tea. We nurture relationships when we give each other attention and do things together that we both enjoy.

And another way to care for a relationship is to clarify conflicts, and not bring them to an allergy to a person when you can no longer see him. But we were not taught this. We are all long-suffering, for us this is strength.

A strong personality in Russia means long-suffering. But this is wrong. And it is correct to deal with small misunderstandings, with each one individually, until they reach the level of aggression.

And then it will be possible to gradually untie them, like knots …

Of course, such knots are untied without any problems. Nobody taught us to take time for this. We have no sensitivity to this moment. It seems to us that this is unimportant, and then it is not known where the persecution, hatred comes from.

You can’t remember the roots of this story, and if we weren’t so forgetful, the roots would come out. There are very sensitive people: maybe you measured by yourself, and the other person is “without skin”. You have to be careful with him.

There is a rare breed of people, real nuggets who naturally, despite the fact that they were brought up in the same conditions as all of us, are geniuses of relationships, delicacy, unobtrusiveness, accuracy. They know how to take care of relationships.

Well, if there is such a person nearby, you can learn from him. Even if he is weak in everything else, it will be calm and good next to him.

The interview was recorded for the joint project of Psychologies magazine and radio “Culture” “Status: in a relationship” in March 2017.