Embrace both-and thinking for self-relationships.

Coexisting emotions don't invalidate each other.

Decisions carry both benefits and sacrifices.

In Part 1 of this series, I suggested a relational paradigm shift that could lead you to greater closeness and intimacy in your relationships and to feeling more heard and understood. Specifically, when your partner and you have different truths, when your experience and your partner’s experience don’t align, that you could adopt a both-and attitude rather than one of either or. An “and” not “but” system of relating. I encouraged you to accept and practice the right and right paradigm, rather than one of right and wrong. And furthermore, to treat other people’s versions of reality, different and contradictory though they may be, as equally valid and real, equally true, regardless of whether you agree with them, or if they make you feel good about yourself.

In this post, rather than speak about both and as it applies to your relationships with other people, I want to address how it plays out in your relationship with yourself.

As human beings, our feelings are complicated, fluid, and usually inconsistent. We feel both positively and negatively, about almost everything and everyone we encounter. You might feel profound love and gratitude for your parent and also feel angry that they weren’t able to encourage you in the ways that you needed. You might feel a friend is selfish, and also adore their sense of humor. You might cherish your child more than anything on earth, and also resent him for always demanding your attention. You might feel enormous respect for your partner, and simultaneously despise him, want to stay married and also desperately wish he would leave you alone. It’s normal to feel all of these things—all at once.

While coexisting and contradictory truths are the normal state of affairs for human beings, still, we’re taught to believe that if we feel one way about someone or something, we can’t also, simultaneously, feel something totally different. If you experience two opposing or differing emotions, one must invalidate the other. When contrasting feelings or thoughts exist, one side is necessarily false, and therefore, not how you really feel. Negative or ambivalent feelings wipe out all positive feelings. And so, to allow yourself to feel, make space for, or just acknowledge your difficult feelings and negative thoughts, the parts of something that are hard immediately make you feel bad—and guilty. If you allow yourself to feel a part of the relationship that’s painful and doesn’t work for you, the parts that are satisfying must not be true. Feeling the whole story, the miracle and catastrophe that's part of every relationship, then means you’re ungrateful, because you’re effectively denying everything positive and saying that nothing good exists. To acknowledge any bad is to say that it’s all bad.

The Impact on Decision-Making

We often believe that there can only be one kind of feeling state about something at a time. As a result, we constantly have to choose between our feelings, to pick a side, and vehemently disown and disallow all feelings and thoughts that are not aligned with that side, this one way of feeling we’ve determined is acceptable.

Our misunderstanding of the both-and coexisting and contradictory nature of life also deeply impacts our ability to make decisions. In almost every choice we make, we get something and we lose something. Every choice in life comes with little deaths. If we take a particular path, we give up what might have come from taking a different path. Each decision we make gives us the opportunity to grow in certain ways and not in other ways. Whichever path we choose, we will encounter difficulty. The question is not which decision will bring only positive results but which will offer challenges that interest us. There is no perfect path in anything, no decision or choice that’s free from the reality of coexisting and contradictory truths. There is no reality that is absent of the both-and nature of life.

Still, we hold off making decisions and remain paralyzed waiting for choices to be 100% clear and consistent, perfect in their single-experience-ness. We wait, in vain, for there to be no difficulties involved in a particular decision, assuming that the right decision will come only when all downsides associated with that path have been annihilated. Then, without any inconsistency, it will be the right decision. Unfortunately, that never happens.

We must make choices with the awareness of what we’re gaining—and what we’re giving up. We opt for a certain path not just because it’s the one that will most likely deliver the results we desire but because its hard parts are bearable and can expand us in ways that we’re interested in expanding. We can stop demanding that the right decision be one that has only positive experiences and feelings attached to it. With everything in life, the right choice is one that includes things we like and things we don’t, gains and losses. All of life exists in both and.

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