ERP 159: What Happens When Your Partner Is at a Different Stage of Development, with Marin Ucik
Welcome to The Empowered Relationship Podcast, helping you turn relationship challenges into opportunities and setting you up for relationship success. Your host, Dr. Jessica Higgins, is a licensed psychologist and relationship coach who shares valuable tips, tools and resources for you to dramatically improve your relationship.
This podcast is 100% ad-free. To support this show, please subscribe and write a review today. Here is your host.
* * *
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Hi, thank you for joining today’s podcast episode. Today’s episode is 159, “What happens when you and your partner are at different stages of development, with Martin Ucik.” Today’s topic comes from two listeners’ questions. Before I read that, I wanna just take a moment and ground with you in the intention of the Empowered Relationship Podcast – to grow ourselves within intimate relationship.
As we grow ourselves, we also grow the development of our relationship with our significant other, especially if they are engaged in the growth as well… And knowing that sometimes that journey of growth isn’t always pleasurable. Sometimes it requires learning things about ourselves that we have ignored or denied; sometimes it’s looking at old wounds or previous hurts, or attachment injuries that we haven’t gotten met, and that in my mind and what I’m talking about on this show is really helping you use that information as curriculum.
I honor your listenership, your taking time out of your busy day and contemplating these topics, and perhaps applying them to your life and your relationship, knowing that as you grow, you improve the quality of your connection, you also improve your skillfulness and your mindfulness and your consciousness, essentially, which we’re gonna be talking about today… So thank you for being courageous and willing to grow. I am confident that as you grow yourself, you are shining light in your life, in your relationships, and making the world a better place.
In today’s episode, Martin is going to be sharing a little bit about integral theory. Now, integral theory by Ken Wilber is extremely multi-layered, multi-faceted and complex, so he’s just gonna be referencing a couple aspects, and I really encourage you if you’re not driving and you have a moment, to go to today’s show notes and look at the two downloads that he has, to give visual description of what he’s articulating. I think it’s just a lot to observe auditorily, so I really wanna encourage that… And to support you, I’m gonna also put a couple graphics about integral theory in general, because what Martin has done is he has used integral theory and then he has applied that really specifically to relationship, and he has woven all his study of over 200 books into his theory; so his graphics are more focused on relationship.
You can find today’s show notes on my website, which is DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast, and you can find the most recent episode at the top. Again, this is 159, “What happens when you and your partner are at different stages of development.”
Two different listeners had posed questions that in my mind really spoke to possible different stages of development. I’ll read excerpts from both. The first listener writes:
“I stumbled upon your podcast on Spotify and since then have found great value in it with my current relationship of 1.5 years. If possible I have some questions/topics that I would love to hear you cover.” I’m gonna focus on her second question, which is:
“My boyfriend is a police officer and in the National Guard. His jobs have really changed him, like how he judges people really quickly and so on. Have you ever covered a topic similar to this?”
She did share a little bit more about his background, and growing up in a family where there was hardship, and difficulty, divorce, and possibly some trauma, and she’s really proposed more healthy relating skills, and she hasn’t found him to be really that responsive, and that he’s felt highly threatened by those conversations.
Now, I believe there could be a lot going on here, so I don’t mean to say that this episode is gonna address that question fully. I do hear possible attachment insecurities; I also hear a possible trauma… She also spoke to substance abuse/use, which by the way, I have an expert that I’m going to be interviewing, and there’s been several listeners that have asked about alcohol use, drug abuse, and how that impacts intimacy and the different aspects of that, so stay tuned for that episode.
What I heard in this first listener’s question is a real wondering around worldview, and possible beliefs, and how those may be very different than hers, and what do you do about that, how do you negotiate that? Now, I think generally – and I’ve talked about this in my previous podcasts – the developmental process of relationship, the relational stages of development, which if you’re interested, I will put a link to a graphic that really lays out the developmental stages of relationship, which you might find helpful if you’re interested in this topic overall… Well, power struggle is the second stage, and so when we have really gross differences in the way that we perceive the world based on our meaning-making – this could be cultural, in the sense that you grew up on the West Coast, I grew up on the East Coast, or we grew up in different cultures, there might be aspects around how we were raised as it relates to gender, there’s also differences as far as how we orient to the world; some of us are much more thinkers, where other of us are feelers… Or you have the introvert versus the extrovert, or possibly the spender versus the saver, or the one that plans versus the one that’s more spontaneous. The list goes on and on.
With these differences, I do believe there’s a conversation to be had about what each individual needs in that partnership, and how to work together to accomplish a win/win that could possibly be an arrangement that feels good to both parties. Today we’re gonna be talking about the stages of development in the person, and specifically what happens when partners are at different stages of development.
Another listener’s question, she writes:
“My worry is that I’ve grown and matured in my thinking over the past couple months and that my boyfriend and I won’t be on the same page. I tend to overthink and my boyfriend tries to simplify things, so oftentimes we balance each other out. However there are times when I think I’m maturing a lot faster than him and it sort of creates a mental gap between us. I’m not sure if that’s because we’re not compatible or if there’s a better way to communicate.”
To address these two listeners’ questions, today, again, we are talking about what happens when you and your partner are at different stages of development, with Martin Ucik. Let’s get started.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Martin Ucik is a German-born entrepreneur who trained with Eckhart Tolle as a Power Of Now group facilitator and founded www.singles2couples.org, an Organization/Association for Healthy Relationships. His studies with Ken Wilber’s Integral Model allowed him to integrate his personal experiences as a divorced father and the wisdom from over 200 relationship books into Integral Relationships: A Manual for Men, which Ken Wilber calls “a terrific book!” and his new book, “Sex Purpose Love.”
Martin, thank you for joining the show today!
Martin Ucik: Thank you so much for having me. It’s an honor and a pleasure.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, it is an honor and a pleasure too to have you. You’re all the way overseas in Istanbul right now, yes?
Martin Ucik: I am, yes. Very exciting city, with many relationship challenges, and a growing community here, whom hopefully I can help a little bit with their transitions from a traditional culture into a modern culture, and then maybe a few people who are in that post-modern culture. It’s the third country I live in after I grew up in Germany and then lived in California for 23 years… So at my age, that’s a new, exciting adventure.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, I love the continual growth that you, I’m sure, are embarking on.
Martin Ucik: Yes.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Okay, so I guess as you’re sharing in personally, is there something that got you into studying relationships? It sounds like from your bio your own personal struggle… Is there anything you’d like to share around that?
Martin Ucik: Absolutely. As I already mentioned, I grew up in Germany in a traditional family, and all I knew — I was married twice, the second time for 13 years, I think, and we have three daughters together… And I knew how to be the breadwinner and be somewhat of a patriarchal father. My wife worked for me, and that’s what I learned from my grandparents and from my parents. Then when we separated amicably and got divorced in 2002, I entered a Northern California dating world completely unprepared about what modern and post-modern women did. They didn’t just wanna be just cared for for a man and support a man in his career… About the expectations that they had on men that I had never heard of or experienced.
That led to quite a few heartbreaks, mainly on my side, sometimes also on the women’s side, but the interesting thing was that I went through sort of like a bootcamp. Every woman gave me different feedback on what it would take for me to be attractive to her and to be in a long-term relationship. Over time, all these puzzle pieces – let’s say doing some therapy, strengthen my masculine, connect with my feminine, learning about personality types, having no ego, but being a strong man, being spiritually awake… What else can I think of…?
And every time a relationship ended and I learned more, I thought “Okay, now I have the secret, so next time, the next woman will be the lucky one, because she will benefit from everything I learned from the previous one.” But there was always more, always more…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Well, it’s amazing, first of all, that you had that level of honesty with the women that you were dating, that they were willing to give you that feedback.
Martin Ucik: Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And then secondly, I guess I’m so curious what allowed you to have more of that growth mindset, if you will, that you really looked at it as an opportunity to grow yourself?
Martin Ucik: Well, I think my main driver was that I grew up in an environment where everybody was in a relationship, so this idea of being whole and complete in yourself and being happily single, which a lot of people in my culture there in the area pursued – that was totally foreign to me. I always felt being in a happy relationship is the foundation for a happy life… And so it was just my desire to be in that relationship, despite of course my sexual desires to have a sex partner or a romantic partner also for sexual needs and meeting them.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Okay, so basically it was your desire that motivated you to continue to ask the questions and continue to grow yourself.
Martin Ucik: Absolutely. And on the shadow side, of course, somewhat of my inability to be actually alone. There was, of course, the desire, and certainly all the arguments why being in a healthy relationship is advantageous, but it was also my shadow side of not really being able to be alone. So I went back and forth, basically, between being heartbroken and alone and integrating more of that part, and on the other side practicing how to be in a relationship. I think really that back-and-forth really brought me to that point of integrating the two in a healthy way.
As you all know, with attachment theory, if we are avoidant as our attachment style, then we reject relationships, and if we are anxious, always afraid to lose our partner, or afraid not to find someone – these are the two pathological sides. Then there is the secure attachment, and I was always more on the anxious side, of not finding someone, or when I was in a relationship, to losing someone. That was, I think, the underlying driver, as I learned later – to integrate these two polarities in to become secure attached.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Nice. Now, did you do that in relationship, as you practiced, or did you cultivate more of a secure attachment? Because I know that a lot of the research really suggests that you can earn that secure attachment as you develop a really secure relationship… But it sounds like you were incorporating so many things in your own journey. What was your experience?
Martin Ucik: Well, the first step for me to develop that was to become aware of attachment theory. Theory without experience is mere intellectual play. In other words, we need to experience the theory, and I think I was lucky enough to first have certain relationship experiences and then later finding the books that would explain to me what was going on… So reading the book Attached, which is like a layperson’s book for learning about attachment theory, really brought awareness to me that I might have an anxious attachment style. Then that allowed me when I was single to stay with the discomfort of being alone or feeling alone, and when I was in a relationship, to deal with the discomfort of being anxious to lose my partner, or if there were signals that maybe it doesn’t work out, just stay present with myself and with her, not to go into — my reaction was usually passive-aggressive then, getting in some kind of passive-aggressive stance.
Then knowing about the theory, to explain what my experience was and the outer consequences – that woman felt I was too needy, too clingy, too controlling, and such things… That really helped me to hopefully now move pretty much to having a secure attachment style.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Lovely. I just honor the work you’ve done. It is, in my mind, some of the most challenging work and the most fulfilling work, so thank you for sharing that.
Martin Ucik: And to build around, just to say — of course, I didn’t know that, so I thought “Oh, if I learn about my Enneagram type, and I know what my partner’s Enneagram type is, and I learn how to balance these two types, then I come to the secure relationship, where my anxiety around relationship goes away.” Then the next relationship said, “Oh, you need to learn non-violent communication and express your feelings”, so I thought “Oh, that will bring me the security.” Then I learned the next thing – becoming a tantric lover. So I was always in search of that one thing, or the collection of things that would bring me that security that I was so longing for. That was the underlying driver.
In the end, I realized “Well, I’ve amassed all this relationship knowledge”, and I had all these experiences that brought me then ultimately also to be more secure-attached.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Thank you for sharing that. It’s such a journey…
Martin Ucik: Yes, it was quite a journey… And it still is, because now I have the honor to pass all these experiences and that knowledge on to other people, and that’s really the most fulfilling thing for me now.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I’m a big fan of the attachment research and really helping people understand what you’re describing… And Martin, one of the things I was really excited about having you on the show to share about is your experience with integral theory and stages of development, and what happens for couples around this… So if we could shift into that conversation, I would love that, because I definitely had a listener that was really having a question, and I think it relates to the stages of development.
So if we could start, would you be willing, for people that don’t know about integral theory – you know, it’s super-complex and there’s no way to do it justice fully, but if you could help listeners orient to what is integral theory…?
Martin Ucik: Well, integral theory – the context we talk about was developed by an American writer and philosopher named Ken Wilber, who’s still alive, and writes and teaches… For me, the essential learning — as we just talked about, that you were in Santa Barbara, and somebody gave me a CD set before I drove to L.A. from Santa Rosa, and I listened to it on the seven-hour drive, and it completely transformed my life.
The essential thing is that people develop in different areas of their human experience or their potentials. While before women would just say, “Oh, I want a man who is conscious” or “I want a man who is spiritual”, or “I want a man who has no baggage…” Long-term I realized that we develop spiritually, we grow in consciousness, there’s different levels of emotional availability, and so on and so forth… There’s about 20 different areas in which we grow pretty much like we learn math in different stages, or we learn to play an instrument through certain levels of development; our inner awareness or consciousness also develops through several levels of awareness or consciousness. That was one part that really opened a whole new dimension of seeing human growth and potential for me.
The other thing is that Ken Wilber not only has all these puzzle pieces laying around as they were for me – all this experience, and different books – but he also shows how these things fit together. Just to give one example before we go into the stages of consciousness – we have five stages of spiritual development and eight stages of consciousness development, but these two developmental lines just don’t grow independently from each other, but are interwoven. That is what makes it complex, but also interesting, because it allows us to understand other humans and ourselves much better.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Martin, I’ve taken a couple classes, as I’ve shared with you via e-mail, with the integral theory, in grad school, and one of the ways that I understood the lines is that there’s many different types of development, but I think even there was a book written about the different types of intelligence, and that you could be a gourmet professional chef, that you developed that skill, and that’s one line… Whereas a professional athlete has devoted so much development in the physicality of that particular sport.
I’ve had clients that sit before me and they’re really having these expectations of themselves that perhaps they’re a world-renowned scientist, but perhaps they don’t have the relational skills that they’re really hoping for… And then, if I can point out – sometimes when we invest in one area, possibly other areas are not as developed. Or, what you’re saying, if I’m hearing you correctly, is that if we develop (let’s say) as a professional athlete, there could be some things there – the discipline, the focus, the ability to overcome obstacles to win, that that could translate to other areas, or other lines of development, is that what you’re saying?
Martin Ucik: For some lines, that is true. Moral and cognitive development, for example, are related to each other. There’s still a lot of research to be done, but we’re looking of course more on relational skills in our conversation, I guess…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes.
Martin Ucik: …and emotional availability, consciousness, sexual development, spiritual development, and there’s another area – anima/animus complex development. These are lines that I integrated in my model, along with how feminine/masculine polarities shift along these developmental lines. So what your listener asked, and I think what most people might be curious about, is what we call the 8 stages of consciousness development, from which we basically see the world, and how we communicate. We’re now doing classes of communication at different levels of consciousness here in Istanbul, for example.
I’m just gonna mention these eight levels. The way I sometimes like to describe it is like in a bookstore, if they would sort their relationship books based on levels of consciousness. On the first level – this is just pure survival; we’re babies, or early humans, or people with severe illnesses, and things like that. They’re in a pure survival mode, and usually not relevant for healthy relationships — of course, other than that we have to be alive to be in a relationship. So there are really no books there.
On the first bookshelf, which would be the second level, would be books that address relationships from a magical thinking, like a fairy tale type perspective, like the prince in shining armor, the movie Pretty Woman… Like, these “miracles can happen” and “love is magic”, and maybe some superstitious beliefs in astrology, identifying your perfect partner through astrology, and things like that. These types of books would be at the bottom rung of the bookshelf.
On the next level, which we call egocentric, would be basically books – for men, for pick-up artists, like “How to seduce women, be successful in bed, have five different sex partners a week”, the seduction artists… And sometimes these books are actually quite helpful for men who have low self-esteem around women, or sexually maybe have some issues… But of course, they’re not intended to abuse women. On the female side, it’s “How to find the millionaire”, “How to be pretty and pick up a rich, successful guy.” Basically, acting out one’s own self-interest.
On the third shelf we would have books that put men and women in basic gender roles, like “Men are from Mars, women are from Venus”, so the typical book, by John Gray, where he effectively describes the inner workings of conditioned male, who’s conditioned through society to behave in a certain way, and think and feel in a certain way; and women are conditioned by society to think and feel in a certain way… And how they can make their relationships work. Do I still make sense?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, and I’m loving how you’re able to talk about the stages of consciousness and stages of development through the relationship lens. I’m absolutely loving what you’re saying.
Martin Ucik: In my book, Integral Relationships, I reviewed 30 relationship books in the back, and could assign them to these levels, so that that makes a lot of sense for people who are interested in that area.
Now, on the fourth shelf, which is the rational level, interestingly enough we get psychotherapy, at the turn of the 20th century, so late 1800’s, early 1900’s, with Freud and Carl Jung… We have psychotherapy enter the picture.
Here you get books that have a psychological approach, on the rational level… So we get the Hendrix, imago therapy…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah, Harville Hendrix and Helen Hunt, and really looking at how some of your upbringing dynamics impact possibly [unintelligible 00:27:22.02]
Martin Ucik: Yeah. John Gray doesn’t look very much in healing wounds and psychotherapy, and it’s very pragmatic. On the next level you’ve got these books that integrate psychotherapy, like David Schnarch, Passionate Marriage, and things like that… And you also have Helen Fisher, “Why We Love”, to look at hormones, and from an anthropological standpoint why we’re hardwired to be in relationship, and why we’re heart-broken… So it’s a psychological/scientific perspective on relationships.
And then on the next level we get books like “The Way of the Superior Man” by David Deida, and we get books that weave in spirituality and deep emotional connection into the relationships. There’s still of course a psychological aspect, but it’s a more modern approach to psychology, I would say, on that level, which we call the sensitive self. There we also see that the feminine for the first time gets value above the masculine; we very often hear, or men are told that they have to get in touch with their feminine energy… And women very often learn there to really claim their authority, and the whole feminine power movement, with Claire Zammit, and Katherine Woodward Thomas. It’s very much in that area where on one side men are told to become more sensitive and women are told to assert themselves more strongly.
That leads to somewhat of a reversal of the feminine/masculine polarities, where in the previous level both men and women tend to be masculine, and on that next level the women tend to integrate more with their masculinity, and males more of their femininity. Then we have the next level, which is the integral level, which in short we could say integrates the healthy aspects of all these previous levels that we just talked about, and eliminates, or tries to reduce or avoid the negative aspects of these previous levels… Because each of these levels, as you might have felt in your body, they have something exciting, and we don’t wanna lose our wonder at the world; falling in love is such a wondrous experience, we don’t wanna just read about what’s going on hormonally in our body… And of course, we need healthy boundaries, and we need to assert ourselves, and knowing about traditional gender roles and how men and females are in certain aspects hardwired is helpful… And taking a rational approach to psychotherapy and why we love, and being sensitive. All these things are important and also integrate healthy feminine and masculine polarities.
So the integral modern offers basically the wisdom from all these previous stages – hence the over 200 relationship books that I read – and integrates them in probably the most advanced relationship model that is available nowadays.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And this is in your Integral Relationship book?
Martin Ucik: Yes.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Do you also talk about it in “Sex Purpose Love”?
Martin Ucik: Yes, the first part of “Sex Purpose Love” is “Sex as a noun, and not as a verb”, which is interesting, because in Turkish there is no noun for sex, so they think the book is just about having sex. [laughter] So yes, the sex part is understanding the sexes, and the second part is about our life’s purpose and how to share that. The third part, the Love part – what’s interesting is when I wrote Integral Relationships I said “Love is unconditional, relationships are not.” I thought when we fall in love, that’s a given – which now we call the myth of the given, because that’s also not given… But I thought it’s a given, and then I figured, once you fall in love, all you need is basically the relationship skills to make the relationship work. Then later I realized that people have very different capacities to love.
So the falling in love is hormonal, it might be an experience, but to really love another human being cannot be reduced just to healthy relationship skills; we also need healthy love skills… And that emerged for me after I published Integral Relationships in 2010. Unfortunately, a relationship that had afterwards ended, and that showed me that I hadn’t thought that fully through yet, and that I also needed to write about love from an integral perspective, hence the new book… Which just validates the first book is just incomplete, because it only looked at healthy relating and not really at healthy loving.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: It reminds me, I’m like “Martin, I wanna play this game with you…!”, all the relationship books and where they fit… Because John Welwood wrote a lot about imperfect relationships…
Martin Ucik: Oh yeah, I love him.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah, I do too. He’s great. Okay, so do you have, by chance, a visual that people could reference, that you’d be willing to share, or is that something they would just need to get in the book?
Martin Ucik: There are visuals in the book and on my website; those can be quite helpful. Of course, we’re audio-only, so we have to imagine that in our mind…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Well, I do have show notes, so if I can get the link from you, I would love to put that, so people have easy access; if they’re listening in their car, they can make a note to go back to it later.
Martin Ucik: Absolutely. I have something called The Personality Matrix, which shows the eight stages of consciousness development, how the feminine/masculine emerges along these stages, that unfold hierarchically… And then how sexual anima/animus and spiritual development ties into that and personality types.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Fabulous.
Martin Ucik: And to directly answer that question – one basic tenant in my book is just that when couples traditionally met each other, they met in an environment that somehow was at the same level consciousness… Let’s say you met in a street gang, everybody was egocentric; you met in a conservative church, everybody was traditional mythic, you met at the university, everybody was rational, you met in a peace organization, a human rights organization or something like that, everybody was on a pluralistic level, or it was quite likely… So people are naturally bonding at the same level of consciousness, because this is where [unintelligible 00:34:23.27] they met other people.
But now with internet dating, and social media, and mobility and things like that, we meet people of all walks of life, or it’s more likely that we meet people of all walks of life, or in other words at any kind of level of consciousness… And when we fall in love, then of course the love hormones impair our rational mind and all kinds of red flags; we just wanna make it work. Then when they wear off, we often find out – and I see that a lot in Turkey here – that we fell in love with someone who’s at a very different level of consciousness, which means they argue differently, and they have different needs, they have different worldviews, they have different friends… And then how can we be so much in love with each other and cannot make this work, despite all the therapy, and all the self-help books and workshops and whatnot.
Also, interestingly, let’s say somebody from a mythic level is in love with someone on a rational level, and they go to a therapist who’s on a pluralistic level – now you have three people trying to work this out and they’re all coming from different worldviews, from different value systems, from different ways of finding agreement and mutuality, and things like that.
The other thing is that when people are together for a while, it often happens – most likely the woman more often than the man – that the woman evolves in consciousness to a higher level, and then man, because he’s usually focused on working and making money and things like that, or has just different interests, like playing golf or watching sports and things like that, while the woman reads self-help books and goes to classes, the women grow in consciousness or in other developmental lines like spirituality and so on and so forth, and literally outgrow their partner on a vertical scale.
Often people think “We grew apart, like one went to the left and the other went to the right”, but in reality most couples grow apart by one person climbing the ladder, so to speak, to a next, higher level, and then wants to be met on that next higher level, and the other partner then gets very defensive and insecure, because they feel there is something off, but they cannot really put a finger on it. They say “I no longer understand how you think and how you see the world and how you talk”, and then the relationship, as you know very well from your clinical practice, basically falls apart and there is nothing in the world that can save it, when people are different levels of consciousness… The movies they watch, the relationship books they read, and so on and so forth… Like, “Honey, read this book. This is how I want you to be.” That’s typically the end of the relationship, because honey says “I don’t get what this book is saying and what this person is writing here.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right. So you’re speaking to a question that I was gonna ask you, which is if people are listening and this is just a new idea for them, that perhaps they’re in different stages of consciousness… How do you help people identify that this might be going on? Because sometimes will experience power struggle, or – the listener that posed the question is saying her boyfriend is a police officer in the National Guard, and has experienced him to be very judgmental, and that she really struggles… How do you help people recognize that this might be at play?
Martin Ucik: I recognize it through what really matters to them, what is of ultimate concern to them. If they give answers that are mainly pertaining to themselves, then they are on the egocentric level, or at least in that moment, in whatever situation, they are very concerned about themselves. If they’re more concerned about the “we” – the family, their relationships, and close relationships, that’s a next, higher level. If they’re more concerned about the country, or where the world is going, and things like that – that’s, again, the higher level.
If they’re more concerned about not only the people, but also the planet as a whole, and the environmental destruction, and human rights, and things like that – they are, again, at the next, higher level.
We’re all judgmental. I’m not somebody who says we should have discernments or judgments; that’s human nature. But to look at what we’re judging is the key factor. If a person is judging something, that means they’re not embracing it, they’re rejecting it; they’re splitting it off, or they try to pull other people down to their level or up to their level.
In this case, I couldn’t really say what this person is judging; if he judges the Nazis, and that they killed six million Jews, I would say “Right on. That’s a good judgment to have”, and to be a peace activist. If he’s judgmental because of his gay neighbor, because he’s gay and he’s homophobic, that’s a total different level of judgment. So we would look at “What is this person actually splitting off or judging or rejecting, and on what level of inclusiveness is that?
If we pollute the environment and we’re judgmental about that the U.S. went out of the Paris agreement, that’s a different judgment than to judge somebody who is a different skin color or a different religious belief, or something like that. So this woman would have to look — I mean, she has a judgment to her boyfriend too, because he’s judgmental… That’s a judgment in itself.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: [laughs] Right.
Martin Ucik: So that would be the first mirror that I would hold up. Then I would say, “Well, what do you reject? What do you judge in a negative way?” and then we would see “Is this world-centric? Does it include all living things, or only humans, or only her family?” Then if one is way more inclusive, and includes gays and lesbians, and men and women, and black and all skin colors, obviously they’re more inclusive than to just say “No, I only like white Christian men and women, who are straight.” That’s obviously a smaller group of people, so the other person would be at a higher level of development than the second person who’s with the “only white Christians are okay, and everybody else we should be judgmental against.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: When you work with couples, do you teach them the integral stages of consciousness? Do you help them recognize this, do you point it out?
Martin Ucik: Yes, absolutely. I usually only teach classes, I don’t do much one-on-one work… But in classes we start out with the body, mind, culture and social – what Ken Wilber calls the four quadrants – and then the next thing is that we teach levels of consciousness, and I do that first in theory, just explaining the levels, then we do an exercise from birth to where we are now we go through a bunch of these levels, to the highest where we’re at right now, and we do that through autobiography… So people can remember when they were in a magical level, believed in fairy tales, and the Easter Bunny, and stuff like that, when they asserted themselves, broke away from the family, went into some conformist structure, maybe picked up a religion, or had some real authority figures – military, government, a boss, a spiritual teacher who told them from right and wrong, then they entered the rational phase… So we do that through autobiography.
The other exercise we do is that I invite people to find an issue of contention they had with a person and to argue it from each of these levels. That’s a little bit harder… But they find out really quickly from which level they have relatively good arguments to make – it’s like in a role-play – and where they don’t find really any arguments to resolve a conflict with another person… And that’s also a pointer of where they are in their level of consciousness.
Therapists, who I often train, or coaches – they can listen to their clients with which arguments they try to resolve conflicts, and these arguments always come from the highest level typically from which someone has grown into. Non-violent communication would be a level 5 thing, getting to yes without giving in would be a level 4 thing, and so on and so forth.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I appreciate so much — I know I’m asking you hard questions in the sense of being able to distill these very in-depth, rich, complex concepts in just a short amount of time… When you are teaching couples about how to resolve conflict if they are at a different stage of consciousness, what do you recommend for them?
Martin Ucik: I can only make an invitation for the person at the earlier level to acknowledge that their spouse or partner is at an advanced level, and see if there is a willingness for them to work together to either tolerate their differences, or that the person at the earlier level will make some efforts to grow to the next higher level. That usually leads to some insight that one or both are not willing or able to do that… And that’s really the sad part of my work – I don’t come in with this “Oh, I’m the successful relationship helper and I can make every relationship work.”
Very often – not always; I will say very often, but sometimes people really leave the training or the workshop with this insight that it’s better to “consciously uncouple”, as my friend Katherine Woodward Thomas wrote a great book about, than to just keep trying to put a peg into a square, or what is the American expression…? Because these transitions from one level to another are always accompanied with some deep structural changes inside and outside, and usually take a few years. So this is not happening on a weekend workshop, or not even in six months. It usually takes 2-3 years to grow from one level to the other.
Very often people are in transition, so if one partner is already, let’s say, at level five, and the other one is transitioning out of level four, then that can usually work, because they’re in this dark night of the soul, in this place of disorientation, and then if the therapist, or me, or even their partner can help them to grow into the next level, that’s a possibility… But if they’re fairly strongly anchored or integrated at a particular level and don’t see any reason to move up to the next level, which all the people up there seem to be crazy – like “Damn, liberals are all these green environmentalists”, or whatever, and you think they’re all crazy – then you’re not just moving up there because your partner asks you to, or your relationship is falling apart… So that’s where I write in the book “Sorry.” You are at two levels, and you’re both fairly integrated at two different levels, and basically a conscious uncoupling is the best solution, and to find a new partner.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes… And I’m wondering about two things, and then we’ll start transitioning to how people can get more connected with your work, Martin, because what you’re doing is so fabulous.
The first question is – I’m listening to you and I’m wondering that if there’s any focus on the person that’s at a lower stage of consciousness, and helping them more deliberately, intentionally identify with feeling more secure, feeling that their need is met in that stage, does that help any ability to soften, to explore other possibilities?
Martin Ucik: Not in my experience. The only thing we can help people is to become healthier at the stage where they’re at. Each stage has what we call “limited views”, or unhealthy expressions. The egocentric expressing healthy boundaries is obviously an important thing to integrate… But everybody who looks at you, you say “Why do you look at me?” Having too narrow boundaries is not healthy. So we cannot help a person at the egocentric level easily to move up to a mythic level, but we can help them to become more healthy at the egocentric level, and to meet their legitimate needs on that level, and to have ourselves healthy boundaries around their illegitimate needs, or neediness. Then as they exhaust more and more of the healthy possibilities on the level where they’re at, at one point they reach sort of like the left and right boundaries, where it’s fairly well integrated… And then the only next step is basically up to the next higher level.
It would be actually a disservice to say to somebody “Well, I haven’t integrated my healthy egocentric yet, but I’m going to move up to the next level.” This would be like building and saying, “Well, two-and-a-half walls are standing, and I guess we can ignore the other one-and-a-half walls. Let’s just build the next floor”, because at one point your building will topple down, and it leads to a lot of pathologies at earlier levels if they’re not really fully integrated.
So the best for a partner — let’s say you have children, you have a lot invested in a relationship; there’s family ties and you just don’t wanna leave – there’s no point in nagging your partner to say “Oh, you know, I’m more evolved than you are. I’m at a later stage of development, and look, here’s the ladder… Why don’t you start climbing up the ladder?” They need the rungs of the ladder. They cannot just use the sides of the ladder to somehow try to pull themselves up. They need to integrate the rungs of the ladder in a healthy way, and then they can step up to the next level. So that’s the only thing we could help someone to become healthier at whatever level they are, and to have compassion for the suffering that they have because of being at an earlier level… Because the higher up you go in a healthy way, the less you suffer, as a general rule… Unless you have some illnesses, obviously – mental illnesses, depression, that can happen at any level, of course.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I think that’s actually what I was trying to ask – if there’s any support to helping that person more fully integrate… And I don’t know that that really can be facilitated, if there’s attention to “What does the stage offer in the way of growth, and can I be more mindful and intentional about that?” I don’t know that it works that way…
Martin Ucik: Well, only the integral level basically sees what we were talking about. That’s the first level that accepts that these levels exist, because we grew through all of them, with all the pain and agony of going up, and all the choice that each level brings when we enter it, and go like “Wow, this is much better than the life I had before.” But then once we have that life, everybody thinks “Okay, everybody else should think the way I am, everybody should be an environmentalist” or “Everybody should pursue their career and make money” or “Everybody should be a religious advocate for law and order” or “Everybody should just take care of themselves, in kind of an Ayn Rand kind of approach – if everybody takes care of their own needs, then the world is perfect.” That’s why they don’t accept the other levels easily.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Well, Martin, I don’t actually know that I have the second question anymore. I think I was just gonna ask about the willingness to grow, and if I’m remembering what we starting off talking about in your story, around having the desire for relationship and also the fear of not having it, that sometimes that does allow us to face some of the discomfort and be willing to grow where if we wanna be comfortable and not grow, then that’s a choice too, but…
Martin Ucik: Eckhart Tolle in a retreat was asked once, “You tell us that we don’t have to suffer if we live in the now, but pretty much all enlightened people or spiritual teachers awoke through suffering… So wouldn’t you wanna tell us we should suffer, because that leads us to growth and development?” And at least in my case, and I know in many other cases, it’s only when a relationship ends and we’re terribly heartbroken that we’re often only then willing to look at our not-so-glorious sides, to see what went wrong and how do we have to improve, that the pain goes away, right? It’s not even “How can I become a better partner?”, but we just want the pain to go away. And at least in my case, obviously it then led to “I need to understand better why that happened in the first place.”
As soon as we shift the responsibility to ourselves — I don’t know why that is, but I rarely blamed my partner; I always blamed myself in a way, maybe also in a somewhat negative way… But I said “I have to become a better man in order to avoid that. I cannot just blame everybody else, that there’s something wrong with them that they leave me.” I always felt more there’s something wrong with me that they left me… And that led to the curiosity.
I think that’s ultimately the important word – curiosity about ourselves and others, and about our humanness, and why we struggle so much in our relationships now in modern and post-modern societies. That’s the best I can tell… Other people have other motives or challenges to grow.
My house burned down last year in the California fires. That was a new growing experience for me, and a healing experience that was just thrown at me. In hindsight, of course it’s sad that I lost everything, but on the other side it was also a wonderful growth opportunity… And as long as we welcome any challenge as an invitation to grow and to heal, then we’re on the right path. If we go into victim role and blaming others, we’re on the wrong path.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: So beautifully said and so perfect, because I just got done doing a series on the Drama Triangle, and the victim orientation, and that whole thing, so… Martin, thank you so much for being willing to be available and open to these questions, and sharing your wisdom and knowledge, and for the amazing work you’re doing in the world. How can people get in touch with what you have to offer? It sounds like getting the book “Sex Purpose Love” is one step… What else–
Martin Ucik: That’s my latest thinking, yes. My website is IntegralRelationship.com. That pretty much has everything on there, besides the books that I produced in writing. I’m in Europe right now, but I will be back in New York next October, so that’s a while… With Alex and Allyson Grey, the great painters, who also promote my work. I will come back to the U.S. to do workshops probably next year again… Everything is on the website.
If anyone has an inkling to come to Istanbul – amazing city, even though Turkey politically right now is a little troubled, but it’s safe here… So that’s also a great opportunity, maybe a little far-fetched, but who knows…?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Hey, if people are traveling and can hit up one of your classes, that would be a total win.
Martin Ucik: Turkish airlines has great direct flights from California to Istanbul. There we go.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. Well, I will put these links in the show notes for people to easily access, and Martin, I would love if you’d be willing to share that direct link to the graphic that can be a nice visual for people to get a sense of what this looks like, a model of it, and… Thank you so much!
Martin Ucik: Thank you for all the work you do, and greetings in California, and to all the listeners, thank you.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Thank you!
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I hope you have enjoyed this episode with Martin Ucik. I wanna just underscore a couple of things that really stand out to me – the importance of the growth mindset as it relates to development… And also, Martin referenced something really key – often times, our growing does involve some level of discomfort and pain.
On today’s show notes I’m gonna provide a link to an episode that I did a whole back, that addresses a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset, which you might find helpful especially in regards to this conversation.
I’m also gonna post a couple of episodes regarding how to deal with pain and discomfort, because as Martin discussed, as we develop and as we grow, that sometimes involves some level of hardship, difficulty and pain… And learning how to tolerate that pain is key in being able to grow and develop. So I’ll also put those in today’s show notes, along with Martin’s graphics that he’s provided to us out of his books, that help really lay out a nice visual of his theory. I’ll also put all the links to the books that he’s mentioned, as well as the episodes that I’ve just mentioned now.
You can find all of that on my website, which is DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast, and you can find all the episodes there. Again, this is episode 159.
Thank you for listening, your participation and your engagement. Until next time, I hope you take great care!
* * *
You’ve been listening to Empowered Relationship, your relationship guide. Remember to take a moment to write a review and subscribe today. You can also get your free relationship gift by visiting DrJessicaHiggins.com.
0 Comments