This exploration is becoming even more fascinating and fun, I am bit by bit actually making proper progress into being a social identity, instead of getting stuck in the intellectual understanding… I am enjoying the discoveries and uncoveries…
I noticed my partner had wished shame on her sister for ‘not learning to cook properly’, so that she would learn to cook and then ‘we (her family) can be proud of her’… to which I noticed I felt a defensive position and the beginning of a response to call out (shame) her for shaming her sister…instead I prompted a discussion where we came to understand she ran a more ‘tough love’ code, and I ran a more ‘compassionate understanding’ code…but also she was much more open about the goal (to shape the behaviour of the loved one), and I realised that is the goal of compassionate understanding also…maybe surreptitiously…also she was open about where she saw herself in the position of the family - as the older sister, she feels like she is the authority, even to her parents now…which results often in frustration of not actually being able to control the other members of the ‘group’, but sometimes yields satisfaction when they do what she says…whereas I try to exert control by validating and understanding the other so that they would ‘see for themselves’ what behaviours must change…
also, my code to use empathy and understanding is a protective measure - I believe that if I default to empathy, validation, understanding of the people I interact with, then they will be less likely to attack me because (in theory) they will be disarmed…
also also, leading on from the discussion about the goal of morality and love to influence another perceived member of one’s group, being cunning is something that my partner openly admits to being, saying sometimes you have to be a little bit cunning…whereas I would ordinarily have felt that to be against my ‘rules’, I recognise the cunning in compassion to kind of ‘fly under the radar’, deflect from accountability.
also also also, she said that if she is called out on her cunning then she will automatically start to deflect or defend, add cunning to the cunning as a way to keep it hidden (cunning is deceit, which only works under camoflage)…
it’s a real can of worms, but so fun to open it up and really start looking at things…