Alice and Chris are married. Alice is alcoholic. Chris isn't. Alice left Chris. Alice proposed divorcing Chris, and Chris agreed. Chris slept with Alice's best friend, Amy. Amy revealed this to Alice. Alice is devastated. She has attacked Chris.
Why is Alice upset? She is not upset because of the behaviour directly: not everyone is upset when their ex shacks up with someone else, especially an ex that they themselves left. It's also not uncommon for the shacking-up to happen within the circle of friends and acquaintances. Again, not everyone is upset in that situation. So why is she upset? Chris's behaviour has breached Alice's internal rules, rules she may not have known she had.
Alice's rules:
Rule 1: If you are my ex, you are not allowed to sleep with anyone.
Rule 2: If you do sleep with someone, they are not allowed to be [list of names: A, B, C, etc.]
(It's possible Alice has only Rule 2, but her discourse suggests that the fact it was Amy was an aggravating factor, not the primary factor.)
It is unclear whether these rules are due to obtain in perpetuity or if there is a statute of limitations.
The act of Chris sleeping with Amy has literally caused no harm to Alice. It does not affect any actual aspect of her life. In fact, it represents happiness and fulfilment for two people she cares about. Why is she upset then? Because she has rules for how someone she is not in a relationship with should behave. She hasn't conveyed Rule 1 and Rule 2 to Chris. But, as soon as they were broken, she exploded. She is placing her notional happiness (= compliance with her rules) over their actual happiness (= the ability to express their love for each other). She does not care about them. But she does care about their compliance with her rules.
This is a perfect exemplar of every resentment I have ever had, particularly in the domain of jealousy and possessiveness: the only thing that matters to me is compliance with my rules, because of the way my self-image and identity is established in the world.
What's so interesting about the exchanges is how none of them have addressed these unspoken rules. In my experience, no one ever wants to address the unspoken rules. If a person is upset or offended, they are 'right' by virtue of the upset or offence, and, by virtue of their rightness, they are justified in unloading that upset on the external trigger. This is a common response to any form of upset. Even a psychotherapist friend of mine stipulated that the sexual act between Chris and Amy was 'inappropriate'. I know not to enquire further when a subjective impression is presented as a fact (I've been demoted from Inquisitor General), but I would like to ask myself that question. It's easy to jump to conclusions based on a visceral identification with someone (I identify with Alice!), but, when I have a visceral reaction of identification with another person's upset (beyond a poised compassion), it means I have an unresolved grievance in my consciousness that has been reactivated.
But let's get back to the question of whether what Chris and Amy did was 'inappropriate'.
Why might it be inappropriate?
To be inappropriate means that a moral rule has been broken.
What is the moral rule that has been broken?
If that rule were to be made explicit, how would it then sound?
What is the basis for that moral rule?
Pro tip: the appropriateness of a moral rule is not established by reverse-engineering the upset. Someone who is mortally upset because their child is gay is not morally right by virtue of the upset. Upset is not self-justifying. Reverse-engineering the upset identifies the rule but does not justify it. Upset always 'feels' reasonable, but that does not mean it is.
What the AA programme has taught me to do is to identify whether my perception of the facts is accurate and whether my moral standards against which I am measuring those facts are reasonable. A good test for whether moral standards are reasonable is to fully articulate them and to then 'test drive them' by imagining oneself either as the stipulator of such standards or the prospective complier with them.
What is extraordinary is how 'ordinary' upset (e.g. jealousy because an ex—who one has actually left—is now sleeping with someone else), which appears to reasonable, starts to look wholly unreasonable when spelled out.
Let's imagine this rule-setting were actually played out in practice: Imagine that, when leaving Chris, Alice had written a list of people who Chris was not allowed to sleep with, the duration of the prohibition, plus the duration of a general prohibition on sleeping with other people. Would you have the guts to actually instruct someone in this way? If someone thus instructed you, would you undertake to comply with these instructions? Would you actually comply? Or would you, as the recipient of the instructions, say, 'You're leaving me, and, having left me, you're giving me instructions on who I am and I am not allowed to sleep with? You've relinquished your marriage vows towards me, but are enforcing mine in your favour? You've got some nerve!'
Incidentally, the notion of actually telling people what our requests or requirements are is a perfectly well-established means of interacting with people, in many different settings. Barbara Taylor Bradford once said, 'Never make silent demands'. Al-Anon gives me clear guidance on how to set boundaries: If I require someone to act a certain way, I have to tell them, and the requirements must be 'SMART' (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). I also get to communicate, in advance, the consequences if the requirements are not met. The same applies to requests. The same principles apply in business: when negotiating a job, clients tell me precisely what their requirements and requests are, and I tell them mine. If either party thinks the other is unreasonable, they say so. If we cannot agree, the deal is off. What is a contract or a law but a set of boundaries? The marvellous thing about this system is that I am taking responsibility for having requirements, and the other person is perfectly entitled to say 'screw you!' Everything is above board and out in the open.
This is sanity.
What is insanity?
Having silent demands, which, if communicated, would be thoroughly objectionable, then blowing up when they are not met.
There is a huge gap between what is considered reasonable in terms of emotional response and what is actually reasonable when examined in the cold light of day.
So, should I never be upset?
That's not really the right question.
When I am upset, my questions are these, based on Step Four:
Who am I upset against?
What did they do?
What do I think they should have done instead (personal / sex relations)?
How would my life have been better off if they had acted differently (ambitions, security, pocketbooks)?
How is my image affected (self-image = self-esteem; others' image of me = pride)?
I then get to examine the demands in the areas of personal and sex relations, ambitions, security, pocketbooks, self-esteem, and pride.
Are they reasonable?
Are they rational?
Are they realistic?
Are they legitimate?
What do they say about my self-centredness / others-centredness / God-centredness?
What do they say about my values?
If I had demands of others, did I tell them?
If I did, how did they react? Did they agree to comply? Or did they refuse?
If someone else made those demands of me, how would I react?
I invariably find these questions deflating.
It turns out that most of my wishes are self-centred, ego-driven, imaginary entitlements to be the centre of attention, and to receive love, admiration, obedience, sex, success, money, and security in the superlative degree of comparison.
Sometimes the wishes are reasonable in that they represent fair boundaries that enable everyone to function effectively, efficiently, and harmoniously. But in these cases, I often discover I never actually set those boundaries explicitly, or I deliberately placed myself in situations in which those boundaries were bound to be breached, even where they were communicated.
Lastly, there are wishes that are reasonable (in the above sense) but unrealistic because the world just doesn't operate like a perfectly oiled and harmonious tableau vivant. As they say, shit happens. Disease. War. Misadventure. Vicissitude. These wishes are pie in the sky, and the problem is not that they are not universally and consistently met but that I have often lacked the character to respond to setback with courage, cheer, and pragmatism.
So where does this leave the feelings? Well, I certainly must not take them out on others, or vent or vomit them in meetings where I am effectively taking other people hostage (like a skunk spraying in a confined space). What do I do with them? Feel them. And let them go. And then look at where I'm making myself the victim of the world by writing private rulebooks then monitoring the world for its compliance.
The aim is neither to 'validate' feelings (feelings are neither valid nor invalid: they're the surface flavour of assessments, and the validity of the assessments is a function of the validity of the underlying data, interpretations, values, and analysis), nor to deny them, but to feel them and use them to investigate the underlying causes within me, for that is where their cause lies: not in others.
After all, I do not want to be a puppet, with the world yanking my strings.