Stages Of Awareness: A Real Life Example
You may have read Portia Nelson's Autobiography In Five Short Chapters and felt confused or unfocused, so I thought I'd provide a simple example of a man progressing through the five chapters in his life:
Man Seeking A Healthy Relationship
Someone I know is getting divorced from his wife. They separated physically 10 months ago after a 8 or 9 year marriage, and there are no children involved. The wife has had an affair yet clearly does not want to finalize the separation into divorce, and is clearly doing everything she can to stay in her ex's life.
There's no way she's signing divorce papers and he's too chicken to even present them to her because of the emotional shit-storm that will erupt. He can't handle the emotional barrage and does anything he can to avoid its wrath.
Stage One
"I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost … I am helpless. It isn’t my fault. It takes me forever to find a way out."
The husband, in his conversations with friends when she's not around, is very focused on the fact that his now-ex still won't take a "no" answer from him and respect it as a boundary. She barges in on his life at every turn and has countless "emergencies" that she needs his help to resolve, and is relentless. His "no" doesn't mean a thing, he ends up just going along with whatever she says, and he's feeling very powerless.
In his powerlessness, he's feeling vengeful. He's very focused on all the women around him and says he's girlfriend-shopping like mad, with the specific intent of showing the ex that "it's over".
His close friends are watching in shock and dismay as this man wallows around in the first stage of awareness: He's in a hole, it's dark and confusing and he doesn't know how he got there, and it's "not his fault", and he's scraping and clawing at the walls to try to find a way out.
If this man DOES find a girlfriend that sticks with him once she realizes how much he's still involved with his ex-wife, the funny thing is that this man isn't going to get what he's expecting, either! Sure, for a short period of time he'll feel good having a girlfriend who says all the things to the ex that he wishes he could say, but that will wear thin, and that girlfriend will eventually re-direct her attention... to him. It won't be pretty.
Stage Two
"I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I am in the same place but, it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out."
But, it'll move him solidly into the second stage of awareness: Walking down the same street that got him where he is right now in his current relationship, he'll fall into that hole again because he'll focus on the wrong parts and pretend he doesn't see the red flags. When the attention of the GF changes away from the ex-wife to him, he'll experience disbelief at being where he is again, and probably again think it's not his fault.
It's taking him a long time to extricate himself from ex-wife, it'll take a long time for him to extricate himself from girlfriend, but a shorter period of time this time. There will be improvement.
From here on in, I'm just going to talk about the optimal progression of his awareness - it will depend on focus on healthy behaviors and healthy relationships instead of on dysfunction how quickly he makes it through the rest of the phases, if at all.
Stage Three
"I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in … it’s a habit. My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately."
After Serious Girlfriend #1 and him break up, he'll feel quite a bit differently than he did when he and Ex Wife broke up. He'll be starting to feel his innate instincts about noticing healthy and unhealthy behavior, but his old patterns of behavior and personal programming will still be a strong factor in how he makes his decisions.
Because of his own behaviors and personal programmings, he will STILL attract the same type of women towards him, and because he finds some of their aspects exciting or relieving early on, he'll find himself back in the same thing AGAIN a third time, this time more out of habit than anything.
When the situation starts to take a turn after the honeymoon period, he recognizes it right away and knows - during the fact - that he's there and he's put himself there, and he's got to get himself out.
He gets out of this one very very quickly compared to the Ex Wife or Ex Serious Girlfriend #1, and with much less personal anguish.
Stage Four
"I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it."
He's made a lot of realizations and learned a lot and learned above all to trust his instincts a lot better by now.
He walks amongst the same women as before, only now he puts value on different aspects of them than he did before.
Say he valued only stunning beauties, or he valued someone with a high degree of education, or he thought sarcasm as a way to deal with the world was "cute" and "funny", but now he pays attention to issues like self-esteem and level of overall happiness in life as a priority...
He'd learn to disassociate his body's physical urges and needs (ie: sex) from the requirement of a relationship (ie: love), and when a stunning beauty with self-esteem issues and a bad outlook on life and love enters his orbit, he wouldn't end up locked in a toxic relationship because of sex and his beliefs about "what it means".
In this phase of awareness, he can duck and dive out of the way of the toxic beauties that used to entice and ensnare him.
Stage Five
"I walk down another street."
The fifth and final stage has our man purposely changing his social circles to reflect his new expectations of the world.
No longer is he happy to hang out at the bar or hit on co-workers to do his relationship "shopping". He doesn't walk down that same road anymore, because he recognizes that he's been doing that forever and it hasn't gotten him anywhere good yet.
Now he makes decisions to expand his social circles with specific goals in mind - to fulfill himself as a priority, to participate in something larger than himself, and to meet someone who is already on a similar life path as he is along the way, as something that will happen when it happens.
He walks down a different road.
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