Living and Relating Carol S.

Becker
What is phenomenology? Pg-5 Phenomenology is the study of phenomena, of things or events, in the everyday world. Phenomenologists study situations in the everyday world from the viewpoint of the experiencing person. This experiential view helps phenomenologists understand people and human life so that they can work effectively with them. Let us look at each part of this basic definition. The Childs Interpersonal Needs Each generation of children shares common needs for human acceptance and validation. All children begin life with a healthy narcissism, a self centeredness that enables them to be totally engrossed in their own impulses needs and desires. As infants and children, we are spontaneously ourselves, without delays or modifications. We coo, cry, babble, scream, smile, grasp, poke, kick, wiggle, look, and sneeze without any thought of being rejected for doing so. Parents who respectfully attend to all aspects of the spontaneous child, mirror and echo the child back to itself. With empathic response from parents, the child can connect these different parts of the self and form a cohesive self, a self that remains whole across diverse experiences (Kohut, 1977, pp.65-139). Through expression of all parts of the self, the child connects experience with behavior, and feeling with response to that feeling. A child who is respectfully and lovingly mirrored and echoed shows all of his or her self, enabling the child to form a cohesive self on which she or he can rely. Parents who feel comfortable with their real, emotional selves can be receptive and responsive to the spontaneous infant or child. They can remain attentive, loving, respectful, and accepting as they interact with and take care of the exuberant, greedy, upset, or messy child. Being connected with their own needs, they can tolerate the emotional needs of the child. They can witness and learn about each aspect of the child without feeling attacked or negated. When children can be all of themselves with someone else, they gain an inner sense of self. This enables children to be aware of experiences and feelings and to trust themselves. Eventually, they feel self-confident, emotionally independent, and self-loving.

Adult Children and Parents As adult children mature, they step into paths similar to the ones their parents were walking while they were growing up. These new developmental events add to young adults understandings of life by giving them a view of it from their parents perspectives. Earning a living, maintaining important relationships, and developing a family of ones own rotate adult children through worlds similar to their parents and help them understand things from a lived-through perspective. Each life event shared by young adults and parents makes their relationship deeper and richer. It helps them develop truly empathic understandings of one another. If parents and adult children have developed and maintained respectful, honest, and loving relationships, they can enjoy the fruits of their labors as they grow older. Being able to be themselves with themselves, they can be themselves together and live separate but connected lives. Parents and adult children who can be honest with one another can revitalize their relationship by risking being who they are and desire to be. Daring to face each other in live, they see themselves and one another. They incorporate changes into their relationship and take the action necessary to keep it alive and vital. Loving themselves, they reach out to love one another. Many adult children, however, are engaged in emotionally limited relationships with parents. They continue to believe messages from their childhoods; loving parents means not disappointing them, making them proud, and living according to their values. If these messages persist, adult children hide their real emotional selves from parents. Usually, they do so through lies of omission. They are not willing to risk the love they do have by being honestly themselves. Not being truly known and, thus, loved for their whole selves, they fear rejection and abandonment. Sexual Love Relationships Pg-181

No love is as awesome as sexual love. Whether it involves a first love, a brief encounter, or a lifelong relationship, experienced of sexual love are a staple of dreams of completion and fulfillment in life. Most Americans have been raised to long and even live for a relationship that is emotionally and sexually satisfying. Often, men are socialized to focus on the sexual side of sexual love; womens socialization emphasizes the emotional part. To all of us, however, sex and love are central aspects of our selves. Relationships that include sexual loving and loving sex can generate complex and, often difficult interactions that, in turn, can transform the participants very beings.

A phenomenology of sexual love extends our discussions of intimacy into the realm of the body, the flesh, and sexual desire. When sexual desire is an essential part of a relationship, it intensifies the pleasures and problems of intimacy. As we will see, penomenologists approach sexual love in different ways: some highlight sexual desire, others illuminate love, still others focus on verbal disclosure and trust, as well as envy and jealousy. Like parent-child relationships, sexual relationships are primary and formative ones that are infused with social prescriptions. Intense feelings surface in both of these relationships because we seek personal and interpersonal fulfillment through them. We can be deeply affirmed or wounded by parents, children, and lovers who are close to our hearts and play central roles in our lives. Unlike relationships between parents and children, sexual love relationships are equal ones between people who choose to be close to one another. Relationships with kin come to us ready-made. Sexual love relations are chosen. These elements of mutual preference and consent make sexual relationships intensely hopeful and potentially disappointing. They evoke our greatest dreams of intimacy, happiness, and wholeness, especially if our relationships with parents have left us emotionally hurt and hungry. Friendships are an important developmental bridge between these two emotionally passionate relationships. In friendship relationships, we gain valuable skills for constructing close, equal relationships. We learn how to notice and talk about thoughts and feelings and to work together to solidify shared intimacy. With friends, we uncover our own and other peoples difficulties with closeness and differences. Friendship relationships give us experience with important aspects of intimacy into uncharted emotional territory. Often, this terrain is filled with pleasure and happiness. Just as often, it contains hidden wounds that we never knew were there. Throughout the world, sexuality and sexual intimacies carry diverse taboos and meanings. Most cultures subscribe to a double standard of sexual behavior. This double standard gives men greater access to their sexuality; it is more acceptable for men to have and express sexual desires. Women are expected to be sexual, too, but not too sexual. Of women are too free sexually, they risk negative evaluations. Sexist restrictions upon female sexuality make it clear that women and their bodies are dangerously powerful. Otherwise, these stringent and almost universal rules that control womens rights over their own bodies would be unnecessary.