Twelwe. New Relationships.

People find richness in each other as they open up in focusing and listening.

As a result, relationships grow fuller and more solid. An appreciative climate develops. In each person a striving for rightness is sensed and respected.

Focusing can help free stuck relationships -- even those that have been stuck for a long time. Consider, for in­stance, the case of Ken and Ed, two professors at my university. They had an argument almost twenty years ago. It didn't get resolved. Ever since, they have avoided each other except at official meetings. They are often both involved in decisions that matter to them. They cannot avoid talking to each other. Their relationship is not bitter, only stuck. They don't do anything de­liberately to trouble each other, but nothing helpful ei­ther.

A few years ago I was involved in one of their de­cisions. I sat in Ken's office as he pondered the decision. He knew what he wanted, but he also guessed that Ed would have complicated feelings about it, probably in opposition. Ken needed Ed's support. At least he needed Ed not to oppose actively. Ken decided to ap­proach Ed directly. But how did he do it? Ken decided to approach Ed on the phone to talk about it, even though Ed was in the same building. Nothing much changed, of course.

These two do not know about focusing and listening. They think they know each other, and of course, in a sense they do. They have observed each other for twenty years. Each predicts correctly what the other will do in a given situation. But they don't know that a shift could happen if they focused and listened to each other. They don't sense the richness that lies just beneath the dis­agreeable traits each knows in the other. They don't know there can be movement in such stuck places.

The usual thing to say to them would not be useful. "Why don't the two of you just talk it over?" That would only result in more bad feelings. Each would probably begin by saying what's wrong with the other. If they did, they would only justify their opinions of each other and also justify their general view that peo­ple are what they are and stay that way.

But in a real focusing-listening process both could change. The change needed in each one isn't drastic: only a change in how each feels about the other.

Ken, underneath those traits and habits that bother Ed, is different from what either man suspects without focusing. If that rich human texture could emerge, both would feel differently.

In arguments both people endlessly repeat their po­sitions, over and over. It saves a lot of time if you re­state the other's position: "I don't agree but let me see if I know what you're saying. Your point is "This permits the other person to stop repeating, and to listen to you, or to focus and see what else he feels.

Or let's take an example from a closer relationship. She wants the freedom to have more than one lover. He is jealous and anxious. They have been stuck there for some time.

Their interaction has repeatedly gone something like this: whenever she felt comfortable with him, she would express her love for him but also mention her need to go out with others. He would question her. Go out with whom? When? How often? She would lock herself into silence and resentfulness. Then they would be stuck.

His "knowing" her went this far: he sensed that she then felt withdrawn, but he didn't understand why.

Her "knowing" him was in terms of his possessiveness. She saw him as wanting to own her, limit her life.

At last, after months of this, they focused and lis­tened. One step went this way: he said, "When I ask you those questions and you get mad and won't talk to me, what are your feelings? I can listen now, for a change."

Instead of repeating her usual complaint about his possessiveness, she focused. For a while she stayed si­lent, and so did he. Then she got it: "What makes me so angry, Hank, is that when you ask those things you suddenly turn into an unattractive, unromantic, scared man for me, and I lose my sexual turn-on for you. That's really what happens."

He simply said, "Oh, I didn't know that. I'm glad you found that and told me."

This one focusing step did not solve their whole prob­lem, of course. But even this one step had the effect of moving their relationship on past a stuck point.

Focusing can save time. It might take only a few min­utes a day. You get to where the trouble is and it shifts. How much more efficient that is than to be stuck in an unchanging relationship, spending time and energy on repetitious quarrels that go nowhere.

It seems obvious that close relationships can benefit from regular focusing and listening. But how about work situations? Wouldn't everyone become too close person­ally? Might the atmosphere grow too sticky? Would people talk deeply with each other all the time so no work could get done? Imagine spending fifteen minutes listening to someone every time you go to the purchas­ing department for a simple form!

No, it wouldn't be like that. Rather, it's more like that without focusing and listening!

Most work places are dense with bad feeling and bad relationships. Every time Rhena goes to the purchasing department, she has to take those sick smiles from that woman who last year tried to get her fired. Bill is de­structive and doesn't trust anybody, and Jim plays along with him and tells him every bad thing about all the others. And so on.

Many people work every day in places like that. And even in pleasant places, work would be expedited if peo­ple would listen.

People like to get work done, and done well. They get discouraged because in most places there are too many ways to get stuck.

It will take much time to improve our work situa­tions, our schools, hospitals, churches. Spaces and times for focusing and listening can be made in any institution. But even when focusing and listening are learned by everyone (probably in schools), our work places and institutions will still change slowly.

Our structured institutions today offer little oppor­tunity for personal living and speaking. The real living of people is mostly dulled and silent, inside them, alone. In terms of social institutions, that space is empty.

If you want to meet someone more personally, mod­ern society offers only a few poor choices. You can go to psychotherapy. You can attend a weekend encounter group. If it is successful (about one out of three is), you will come close to some people and they will come close to you. Then it breaks up. If you want more, then a week later a new group of strangers confronts you. You can have the same initial experience over again, but there is no continuing social structure.

What is the answer? I believe it lies in a new kind of social structure called a "Changes" group.

Several such groups have been developed over the years, in various parts of the country, by people who know focusing and listening. Such a group brings peo­ple together in the closeness of focusing-listening. What is important is that it is there—a continuing social structure. It is a place where you can go when you need to focus and need someone to listen to you.

You can very easily start a Changes group yourself. To show you how such groups work, let me describe one of them: Changes in Chicago.

On a typical Sunday evening, there is a big meeting in the church at 57th and University Avenue. Two large rooms are full of people. You look more closely and see that they are in pairs. At many little tables, in corners, and in the hall you see two people sitting. One talks, one listens. After some time they will reverse roles.

К you had walked in earlier you would have seen a large meeting of the whole group. You would have seen listening in action. Someone says something im­portant. Someone else turns to the speaker and says, "I think what you're getting at is...." The speaker pauses, focuses briefly and says, "Well, yes, but more like...."

I am always impressed at Changes when this happens so regularly. Although I have trained people in listening for many, many years, I often forget to listen when I am in a big group. I am always glad when others don't forget. If I interrupt, someone says, "Wait, Gene, I think she's trying to say...."

Once in a while, someone shy will want to say some­thing difficult and will ask an individual in the group to listen. It looks odd. I remember Susan standing up at a meeting and saying, "Um... Joe, will you listen to me so I can get this out?" Joe nods. She says something and Joe says back the crux of it. She continues and so does Joe. In this way she gets her thoughts said and heard, before anyone else in the group can interrupt or argue. Everyone understands what she wanted Joe to do and why.

Another purpose of listening in that community would become clear to you during the break. People mill around and talk in little informal groups, as they do anywhere else. Someone comes up to a man and says, "Hello, Tom. I'm going through a tough time and I need to be listened to. Are you in a shape to do it?" "Sure," Tom says. "Does it need to be right now?" "Well, yes, if that's OK." They walk off to find some quiet corner.

Or Tom might have said, "No, I don't want to listen now. Sorry." The focuser would walk off to find another listener. Or Tom might have suggested a time for some other day. Or he might have said, "Yes, sure, but I need a listener, too. Can we share the time?"

As we've noted before in this book, real listening is rare. When Allan moved to a job in Tucson, he would come back to Chicago every few months, just to be listened to!

Once people experience what is at first vague and murky opening into step after step of one's inner detail and change, then living without this in people becomes lonely and shallow. Without some people who listen, it is hard to hear oneself. One is often frustrated with people who don't know focusing. Every little while one wants to say, "Could you go see more what that is?" but the person doesn't know what that means.

People think they already know what they feel. They may be in excellent touch with their "gut feelings," but then they let it go at that. They don't know that a road of many steps would open if they sensed beyond the obvious feelings, into what is not as yet clear.

So one usually wants to teach focusing to those with whom one wants to be close. Not that one must hear what comes. In silence, too, it is good.

It is lonely also if I am taken as static in what I feel and say, if you won't listen knowing that there can be steps into depth, and shifts. It is boring if you take what I express as my "position," and in response you state yours. Then we are done. We are both flat, like a closed door in a wall.

It is not surprising that Allan came to Chicago to be listened to. Now that these skills are spreading, Changes is no longer such a rare island.

After the mutual listening part of the Changes eve­ning, there is a short break. Then people go to special groups. There are Ustenmg-training groups. There are several focusing groups in which a very gentle climate prevails, and they would be shy to let you in. There are also other activities. Someone might have stood up spontaneously in the big group and said, "I would like to lead a dance movement group tonight. Meet me in this corner." Or it might have been behavior modifica­tion or a group on Jungian dream interpretation.

Focusing makes all other methods more effective by putting them in relation to the body's felt sense. We don't make a "sect" of focusing. It goes well with, and can be added to, anything a person already finds help­ful. Conversely, we are glad for anyone to teach us other skills. People talk about different methods as though they contradict each other, but in the human body what helps doesn't contradict anything else that helps. Focusing lets you sense whether something is helpful for you at a given time.

Self-help skill training is essential for such a network, and focusing and listening involve specific steps in which anyone can be trained.

You would often find more real psychotherapy hap­pening in that community than in formal therapy. It might worry you to see seemingly untrained people doing this. What if Tom is no good at listening, or what if he pushes his views on others? Is this safe?

It is safer than doctors. No one thinks the other per­son is an authority. No one here is likely to put up with being told what to do, imposed upon, or interrupted. The person they have asked to listen is just another person. If Tom's listening doesn't feel good, the focuser will go away.

A psychotherapy patient who is getting little from therapy requires months or years to change therapists. Usually, the patient thinks, "The doctor must know what's going on. There must be good reasons for it." Changes are far safer than psychotherapy. When psycho­therapy is effective, it is irreplaceable, but then the pa­tient can feel some changes going on in the body.

How can you start your own Changes group? Begin by finding one person who will focus and listen with you. If that works out and you both want a Changes group, invite a third person in, and plan gradually to let others in. Encourage each person who likes it to bring others.

What makes any Changes group work is the focusing - listening approach. There is no need for a "policy," and Changes as a whole has none. Of course, there are housekeeping decisions. Someone has to decide when to meet, what to do with small amounts of money, and so on.

In the traditional organizational model -- not at Changes -- such decisions are handled by a small power group others cannot join. Another model is "participa­tory democracy," in which everyone tries to make all decisions. But decisions are boring, people grow im­patient, and meetings get rancorous, even though the decision being made is trivial.

Changes has a third model. There is a small group that makes housekeeping decisions. But everyone knows where and when it meets and is always invited to be part of it: for one time, occasionally, steadily, or never. Most members don't come, but all may.

Each Changes group is organized as its own mem­bers want it. There is a "Changes International," but it only keeps a list of Changes groups and mails out occasional literature. It enforces no "policy."

Focusing and listening are not the only things prac­ticed, or the only viewpoint. But they are shared and learned by all who wish to. There is much therapeutic changing and human closeness.

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