Whether it be shallow or not, commitment is the foundation, the bedrock of any genuinely loving relationship. Deep commitment does not guarantee the success of the relationship but does help more than any other factor to assure it. Initially shallow commitments may grow deep with time; if not, the relationship will likely crumble or else be inevitably sickly or chronically frail. Frequently we are not consciously aware of the immensity of the risk involved in making a deep commitment. - P140
Problems of commitment are a major, inherent psychiatric disorders, and issues of commitment are crucial part of most in the course of psychotherapy. Character-disordered individuals tend to form only shallow commitments, and when their disorders are severe these individuals seem to lack totally the capacity to form commitments at all. It is not so much that they fear the risk of committing themselves as that they basically do not understand what commitment is all about. Because their parents failed to commit themselves to them as children in any meaningful way, they grew up without experience of commitment. Commitment for them represents an abstract beyond their ken, a phenomenon of which they cannot fully conceive. Neurotics, on the other hand, are generally aware of the nature of commitment but are frequently paralyzed by the fear of it. Usually their experience of early childhood was one in which their parents were sufficiently committed to them for them to form a commitment to their parents in return. Subsequently, however, a cessation of parental love through death, abandonment or chronic rejection, has the effect of making the child‘s unrequited commitment an experience of intolerable pain. New commitments, then, are naturally dreaded. Such injuries can be healed only if it is possible for the person to have a basic and more satisfying experience with commitment at a later date. It is for the reason, among others, that commitment is the cornerstone of the psychotherapeutic relationship. - P141
One of the problems that people commonly have in their adult relationships if they have never received a firm commitment from their parents is the "I‘ll desert you before you desert me" syndrome. This syndrome will take many forms or disguises. One form was Rachel‘s frigidity. - P145
It is impossible to truly understand another without making room for that person within yourself. This making room, which once again is the discipline of bracketing, requires an extension of and therefore a changing of the self. - P149
So it is in good parenting as well as in good psychotherapy.
The same bracketing and extension of ourselves is involved in listening to our children. To respond to their healthy needs we must change ourselves. Only when we are willing to undergo the suffering of such changing can we become the parents our children need us to be. And since children are constantly growing and their needs are changing, we are obliged to change and grow with them. - P149
For the truly loving person the act of criticism or confrontation does not come easily; to such a person it is evident that the act has great potential for arrogance. To confront one‘s beloved is to assume a position of moral or intellectual superiority over the loved one, at least so far as the issue at hand is concerned. Yet genuine love recognizes and respects the unique individuality and separate identity of the other person.
(I will say more about this later.) The truly loving person,
valuing the uniqueness and differentness of his or her beloved, will be reluctant indeed to assume, "I am right, you are wrong, I know better than you what is good for you." But the reality of life is such that at times one person does know better than the other what is good for the other, and in actuality is in a position of superior knowledge or wisdom in regard to the matter at hand. Under these circumstances the wiser of the two does in fact have an obligation to confront the other with the problem. The loving person, therefore, is frequently in a dilemma, caught between a loving respect for the beloved‘s own path in life and a responsibility to exercise loving leadership when the beloved appears to need such leadership.
The dilemma can be resolved only by painstaking self-scrutiny, in which the lover examines stringently the worth of his or her "wisdom" and the motives behind this need to assume leadership. - P151
There are, then, two ways to confront or criticize another human being: with instinctive and spontaneous certainty that one is right, or with a belief that one is probably right arrived at through scrupulous self-doubting and self-examination.
The first is the way of arrogance; it is the most common way of parents, spouses, teachers and people generally in their day-to-day affairs; it is usually unsuccessful, producing more resentment than growth and other effects that were not intended.
The second is the way of humility; it is not common, requiring as it does a genuine extension of oneself; it is more likely to be successful, and it is never, in my experience, destructive. - P152
The same holds true for friendship. There is a traditional concept that friendship should be a conflict-free relationship, a "you scratch my back, I‘ll scratch yours" arrangement, relying solely on a mutual exchange of favors and compliments as prescribed by good manners. Such relationships are superficial and intimacy-avoiding and do not deserve the name of friendship which is so commonly applied to them. Fortunately, there are signs that our concept of friendship is beginning to deepen. Mutual loving confrontation is a significant part of all successful and meaningful human relationships.
Without it the relationship is either unsuccessful or shallow. - P153
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