The best tool I can offer a couple, married or not, is something I call Going-to-a-5. It’s a communication tool. If a couple cannot be present and honest with one another in a mutually safe, reliable way, chances are they will fall apart or fall into a joyless stalemate.
It is not a small thing to have the courage to say what you most need to say to your partner without either coming up short and overdoing it.
On a 1 to 10 scale, 1 is saying, “Whatever you want, dear, is fine with me.” In other words, “I don’t care. Do whatever you want. Doesn’t matter to me since I am no longer in this relationship.”
On a 1 to 10 scale, 10 is saying, “This is exactly how things are going to go.” In other words, “I don’t care to hear one word from you. Doesn’t matter to me what you have to say since you no longer matter in this relationship.”
In both cases, whether at a 1 or at a 10, you are protected from hurt. Though you think you are still in a relationship, you are not. You are safely disengaged. Contempt for your partner has eaten away the connecting fibers of your partnership. No longer is your partner worthy of your respect. No longer do you care enough about this person to be open and honest with them.
Going-to-a-5 means allowing your partner to know what you are thinking or feeling by putting it all on the table. You do so without any agenda. Going past a 5 means you are taking what you know to be true and using it to impose your will upon your partner, coercively telling them how they might better live their life. Going-to-a-5 is all that’s required but requires courage to stand before your partner honest, open and without expectations.
Going-to-a-5 means not editing your life for fear of how your partner might respond. You owe it to yourself, to your partner, and to your relationship to Go-to-a-5. It means being who you are, unpacking yourself, not living as a two-dimensional person. It means popping out, becoming three-dimensional, relaxing into the way you were born to live.
Many couples share an unhealthy dynamic. For example, I might live at a 2 with a partner who lives at an 8. I mostly accept and allow my partner to determine how things will go. But if I begin to move from a 2 to a 3, if I make a move to speak up and maybe assert myself for a change, chances are my partner will push back, will go right past a 5 to tell me from an 8 how I should continue to live at a 2. See how that works? Also, if possible, don’t sit too long at a 2 or 3. Pressure, in the form of resentment, will build until all at once, you, out of the blue, lose it and explode to a hurtful 7 or an 8 and wonder where did that come from!
That said, my partner most likely comes at me as an 8 because I have been living at a 2 for too long. The only way my partner, in a sad state of annoyed exasperation, thinks I can be reached is by going past a 5 to be in my face as an 8. That’s become our way. Not much fun, but there it is.
Intimacy is the glue that holds things together. Going-to-a-5 is about being intimate with your partner. When someone stands before you entirely open and honest, daring to be fully who they are, it now becomes safe to meet them there in similar fashion. There together you stand on holy ground alive, awake, and open to all sorts of new possibilities.
Going-to-a-5. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to your partner. You owe it to the relationship you share. You owe it, as well, to this world we all inhabit together.
The Rev. Bradford Clark is the rector at Ascension Memorial Church in Ipswich.