One day, a student came to a rabbi and asked, “Rabbi, what is hell?” After a few moments of reflection the rabbi answered, “Hell is an enormous hall, with a big table in the center, completely filled with food. The people in hell can come just close enough to the table to reach the food and pick it up, but they are not able to eat the food because they cannot bend their elbows. They can only hold the food in their hands and want it. So hell is a place of perpetual hunger and wanting in the midst of abundance.”
The student then asked, “What is heaven?” The rabbi answered: “Heaven is almost the same as hell. There is the large hall with people and the table with food. The people are unable to bend their elbows, but in heaven the people have learned how to feed each other.”
As a couple who have been together 36 years, we are familiar with both the heaven and hell of being in relationship. Also, as couples therapists, we know the suffering of couples who feel acute relational hunger because they cannot give to and receive from each other. We have found that the most important way we can help couples learn how to feed each other and their relationship by giving and receiving whatever is actually available in the present moment.
We believe that life is the activity of giving and receiving. For example, as animals we give carbon dioxide to plants and receive their oxygen. People exchange goods, services, currency, and credits with others. In intimate relationships we exchange attention, feelings, favors, meanings, dreams, intentions, and, perhaps, vows. We see intimate relationships as a process of giving and receiving that enables bonding to occur.
When this exchange goes well, relationships thrive. Both partners become increasingly present, alive, and aware. They become deeply connected with the other, yet are respectful of their separateness. Partners are able to freely share with each other the unique truth of their experience and both are able to value, receive, and learn from their differences. Both partners give and receive. Both recognize their own limited range of experience and capacities, and they see how the other enriches their own life. Through giving and receiving, both partners become more flexible, compassionate, and whole human beings.
That is to say, they change. They learn from each other. The exchange between them changes them both.
When the process of exchange is not working, both partners suffer. There is a sense that nothing is changing. Often there is also a power struggle between partners in which they try to control, devalue, and even hurt each other.
Giving and receiving are skills that are gradually learned through experience. Inevitably, habits are transferred from past to present relationships. In the best case, both partners become aware of these habits and learn how to refine their skill at giving and receiving. When there are breakdowns, the couple focuses on learning from them. In the worst case, couples endlessly repeat the same failed exchanges without learning from their failures. They see their relationship as something that just happens—or doesn’t happen.
Knowing how to relate successfully requires four things: being present, being aware, sharing responsibility, and practice.
Being present is essential because one can’t have an exchange in the past or in the future. Exchanges can only occur in the present and they can only make use of what is authentically available in the present. An intimate relationship is present experience itself — the ever changing flow of moment-to-moment aliveness. This is the essence of intimacy.
Awareness is the simple act of noticing how one is actually relating in the present. One must notice what both partners are doing and the effects of what they do. In relationships, as in driving a car, there are fewer collisions and injuries when one stays attentive to what is happening at each moment.
Where there is a sense of shared responsibility, each person is responsible for the successes and failures of relating. This reduces the power struggles, and makes it possible to learn from each other.
We learn how to relate through experimentation and practice. If we fail, we must be willing to observe carefully, and to notice what works and what doesn’t. In this way, each failure creates new learning. Continual practice and refinement increases the level of skills.
What, then, are the skills? We have developed a model we call the Cycle of Giving and Receiving, which defines four phases of giving and four phases of receiving. All phases of this cycle are necessary.
Although we will describe the phases separately, in actual experience giving and receiving happen simultaneously, much like dance partners who take turns leading and following each other as they dance.
Giving
Gathering. A prerequisite for all giving is having something to give that is available now, not something one used to have or would like to have in the future. In our view, the most precious thing that one can give is the truth of one’s present experience — one’s sensations, feelings, thoughts, needs, impulses, hopes, intentions. Doing this creates a feeling of authenticity and integrity.
Offering. One must offer something of oneself. A statement, a feeling, a need, or simply offering one’s attention can creates a feeling of generosity.
Aiming. To reach the other, one must focus attention on where the giving is going. Aiming gives a sense of direction and intention and makes the giving personal.
Releasing. To be complete, one must release what is being given. It is now in the hands of one’s partner. Doing this creates a surge of energy, excitement, joy, and a sense of freedom and ease.
Receiving
Reaching. To receive is not a passive process. One must reach out to find, select, and take from what is available. Reaching is the first step in the process of receiving and evokes desire and longing.
Readying. The second step involves opening one’s self to receive, a process that evokes feelings of hope and anticipation.
Accepting, To receive one must accept what is given. Acceptance involves expanding one’s self. This creates the experience of love or compassion.
Assimilating. To feel nourished, we need to digest what has been taken in, making whatever has been received one’s own. When this happens, feelings of gratitude and satisfaction arise.
In our work with couples, we see most difficulties as failures in the process of giving and receiving. Rather than asking why there is a failure, we look at how the giving and receiving are not working and try to help both partners learn to improve it. Our model helps us locate where the process is breaking down. We can see which phases of the cycle are missing, poorly developed, or stuck. We can see and describe how partners are “out of phase” with each other, enabling us to identify which partner is best able to give and which best able to receive at a given moment. Our model helps us decide where, when, and how to intervene. It helps us find our next step.
The principal task of intimate relationships is an ever-deeper giving and receiving. As we learn how to do this more fully and more fairly, we are able to be together intimately, authentically, in true mutuality.
We believe that to see and accept the truth of this present moment, no matter what it is, is an act of great courage. To wholeheartedly offer this truth to our partner is an act of great generosity and to wholeheartedly receive this truth from our partner is an act of deep compassion. The process of giving and receiving is how we create and sustain our bond with each other.
Adapted from On Intimate Ground: A Gestalt Approach to Working with Couples, by Antra and Rick Borofsky.
*Richard Borofsky & Antra Kalnins Borofsky will be leading a workshop Mar 16-18, 2007.
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