Relationships: We Need to Want it to Achieve Understanding

A few days ago I was introduced to an American colleague, a surgeon from New York. He immediately impressed me as most likable. Yet, we ad quite a problem in understanding each other, because I speak only a few words in English, and he buy a few words in French! Even so, we managed to get through to one another, for both of us most ardently wanted to. This remark brings us fully into the subject matter of our study.

We must be reminded that the first condition for mutual understanding is the desire for, the seeking after, and the wiling of that understanding. Such a statement may appear very commonplace. Nevertheless, this basic attitude toward understanding other is far rarer than we think. Listen to all the conversations of our world, those between nations as well as those between couples. They are for the most part dialogues of the deaf. Each one speaks primarily in order those forth his own ideas, in order to justify himself, in order to enhance himself and to accuse others. Exceedingly few exchanges of viewpoints manifest a real desire to understand the other person.

My surgeon friend was completely taken up with his work in a New York hospital. His interesting career and brilliant success brought him a feeling of full satisfaction., there was only one thing wrong: his wife was very nervous. He sent her, therefore to a friend, one of New York's thousands of psychiatrists. Since his mother also was nervous, he sent her to a second psychiatrist. Then he had fulfilled his duty. Surgeons, after all, make no pretense of knowing about psychological matters. For these they refer their clients to a specialist.

One day the psychiatrist who was treating his wife had him come and told him, "You know, you are not giving enough attention to your wife. You should take her out to a show at least once a week." Now the surgeon was not lacking in goodwill; he was quite ready to follow the psychiatrist's counsel. "it is agreed," he soon replied; " I'll take my wife out to the movies every Friday evening." And he did just that. He confessed to me how good he felt in his conscience when they use to come home from the show. Now that his wife had had her outing with him, she could no longer complain of his leaving her alone, because of his work, the rest of the week.

Most couples enter into conjugal life with a high ideal for marriage. Some even have taken courses for engaged couples, have read thick and learned books on sexual life. They have learned many interesting things, studied works on psychology, sometimes even too much so! How many of them can say, a dozen year later, that their home has become what they expected of it? All too few! This is the problem we are confronting and about which we shall be thinking.