No Such Thing as a Relationship Expert

I hold the title of a senior Buddhist teacher in a lineage with deep roots in Tibetan spiritual and psychological wisdom, and I’ve held this title since the age of thirty-two. People, therefore, look to me as an expert on life, requesting all kinds of advice on situations with which I sometimes have very little personal experience. It’s fascinating how often people want to be told what to do in relationships. We all want someone who knows what they are talking about to be our guide through the Fire Swamps of fear, pain, desire, and miscommunication. And there’s a lot of theoretical advice out there, opinions that suggest we treat human relationships as some kind of “game” to win, or some kind of karmic sweepstakes for which we only need to scratch off a lottery ticket or learn a few “secret” tricks of the trade.

From a Buddhist standpoint, there’s nothing to win in a relationship, just as there’s nothing to win in life—except, of course, the deep satisfaction that comes from appreciation, collaboration, and love. When all that fortune cookie wisdom and quasi-spiritual advice about how to “get what you want” fails, when we find ourselves struggling to communicate clearly or to connect fully with others, we get depressed and think, “I guess I’m just bad at relationships.” I’ve recognized some version of this thought crawling around in the not-so-friendly nooks of my own mind so many times that I’ve lost count.

Guess what: everyone is bad at relationships, at least when it comes to making mistakes. In my humble opinion, nobody is “great” at this dance of desire, love, and humanity. While I might be considered a relative authority on meditation or Buddhist psychology, I am definitely no master of relationships. And I don’t think anyone else is, either.

That’s right, nobody is a relationship expert. Let me be clear: Of course, certain professionals have extensive psychological training to help others with their relationships. I am not claiming that this training is in any way invalid. Seeking relationship guidance from a third party with the skills to help can be one of the smartest and most humbling things we ever do. But the only way to progress with relationships is to connect with our longing to know ourselves more deeply, and to extend that longing to knowing others as well. By definition, no single person can be an expert at relationships. Every relationship is a collaboration between (at least) two people, and an expert is one lone person. A relationship is a movement beyond oneself, a stretch outside the private domain of experience. The very act of relating to another human being is the act of relinquishing your expertise. So “relationship expert” is an oxymoron, and no one should pretend to be anything that has the word moron in it.

Buddhism, however, does offer tried-and-true wisdom on how to work with all the tricky, awkward, and painful states of mind that arise in relationships. It teaches us how to prepare for the obstacles we face, especially those tough moments in which we are triggered by the difficulties of human interaction—all the pain, fear, and miscommunication we encounter. One of the most powerful aspects of Buddhist teaching, especially the teachings on compassion, is its ability to allow us to recognize when we are caught by habitual patterns. This recurrent triggering happens in an intensified way within the intimate relationships involved in close friendship, romance, and family life.

Even if your dharma practice is consistent and wholehearted, it won’t stop you from being triggered by desire or disappointment, or any other feeling on the vast palette of human emotions. Practice does not stop you from feeling, ever. If you are looking to stop feeling, good luck with that. From the standpoint of the Shambhala tradition, the whole problem we face is that we’ve learned all too well to grow numb to our feelings. This avoidance leads to a limited, cocooned experience of life, trapping us in a mostly dead state. All the practices that I know will probably lead you to feeling more. Mindfulness brings you slowly back to life from your distracted, cynical, stressed-out way of being. What contemplative practices can provide is the mental space to see the present moment in the context of awareness and love and, over time, to choose different reactions when you are triggered by karma, your habitual patterns and defense mechanisms.

Life is the opposite of theoretical, which is what makes it miraculous. After all the advice you might get about dating, you just have to show up to the date. After all the therapy you might receive to deal with your parents or your children, the therapist can’t live with these people for you. Nowadays, many of my friends are parents of young children. There are so many theories on parenting, so many of them published and popular and scattered on the bookshelves in the homes of people I love. These books contain complex theories, running the spectrum from attachment parenting to nonattachment parenting. But everyone I know who is a parent, after reading hundreds of books containing a few very helpful tips, says some version of what a close friend recently said: “Being a parent is so intuitive! It’s the most ungeneralizable experience of my whole life. The only way to do it is to do it!”

Intuitive could be a synonym for the new cultural catchword mindful. Mindfulness involves a set of defined meditation practices, yes. But more than that, mindfulness is a frame of reference for one’s life, a proclamation that the present moment is paramount. Our repeated return to now when we wander is the key to harmony and fulfillment in this or any other world. Mindfulness is about showing up and learning from that master known as direct experience. The only way to learn is to learn how to pay attention, and the only way to learn about relationships is to consciously make them our path. This requires the willingness to have no freaking clue what we are doing and to make tons of mistakes, often painful ones, with lessons absorbed over years, decades, and lifetimes. Sometimes Buddhism is referred to as a path of not knowing (also called “beginner’s mind”), but I like to think of it as the path of being willing to have no clue and still be curious. Here’s the most important question you could ask a teacher: “Tell me, oh master, how do I properly live life without having a clue how to relate to these people in front of me?” In the beginning, middle, and end, there is only one real answer to this question: “Just show up. And practice. A lot.”

Excerpted from THE DHARMA OF THE PRINCESS BRIDE: What the Coolest Fairy Tale of Our Time Can Teach Us About Buddhism and Relationships by Ethan Nichtern. To be published by North Point Press, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. © 2017 by Ethan Nichtern. All rights reserved.