I was listening to “This American Life” on NPR today and they repeated a segment from show they titled “Somewhere Out There” (first aired Feb. 13, 2009).   These were stories from people who know they’ve beaten the odds against any two people finding they are a real match.

The segment that caught my interest was about 2 eight-year-olds, Lilly and Thomasina, who each believed that there was no one like her in the whole world, until they met each other, and instantly became best friends for life.   Lilly and Thomasina are both girls who were born into male bodies, i.e., they are transgendered children.   They live as girls, wearing girls clothes, playing girls games.  But they are girls with a secret.  It’s a secret that, if known by their peers, teachers, or other parents, could make their lives hellish.  Listening to them is an extraordinary experience.

There is a moment when one of the eight-year-olds asks her parents to please only refer to her as “she” and “her”, never  again to be called “he” or “him.”  Mom quickly agrees.  Dad repeats back to the child what he heard, but does not actually agree or disagree.  And I feel my heart crack.

I feel the pain of Dad feeling he’s “losing” a son and not knowing what to do with those feelings.  I feel the weight of thousands of years of ignorance and fear blocking from Dad what is so obvious to me, the listener.  I feel angry at our culture, that supposedly values individual freedoms, yet tries to enforce rigid, archaic, ignorant beliefs and behaviors, using the weapons of disapproval, shunning, and shaming.

And mostly I feel the delight if these children discovering that they are not alone.

During the past couple of weeks, several different clients and workshoppers have talked to me about their discomfort with causing pain to their beloved. “I want to ‘open’ our marriage.  How can I do it without hurting my husband?”  “How can I tell my wife about my dissatisfaction with our sexlife without hurting her?”  “Everytime we talk about our financial situation he gets defensive.  How can we talk about this without hurting his feelings?”

The bad news is, we can not take responsibility for our beloveds’ feelings.  We can be empathetic, accepting and compassionate about those feelings.  It is useful and loving to allow those feelings “a voice”, an influence, in our decision-making, but not a vote.  I think this is the distinction between love and co-dependency.  A co-dependent lacks an “internal compass” to guide behavior, so your feelings become the compass.  My duty is make you happy.  If you are sad, hurt, angry, then I have failed at my duty.  It becomes my fault.  In such a relationship, it is not safe for either party to feel anything but happy and content.

In a healthy relationship each person’s behavior is guided from within, taking into account the thoughts and feelings of the beloved but not ruled by those feelings and thoughts.  When my partner is sad, unhappy, or upset,  I am genuinely moved by her feelings.  I want to be supportive and understanding, and accept her feelings as valid and real for her, but not my “fault”.  Her “problem” is not me or what I said or did.  Something I said or did may very well have triggered emotions in her, and I want to be sensitive to my role in that triggering.  But in the end, we each must take responsibility for our own feelings.  As I like to say in parenting classes “the person who has the problem is the only person who can solve that problem.”

All this leads me to the importance of telling the truth, the whole truth, in a healthy relationship.  Yes, sometimes my words or behavior are going to elicit my partners’ pain.  The sad truth is that sometimes life is painful.  That is one of the realities of being human.

Talking to Jason Weston, (HAI Facilitator, philosopher of love) on my podcast, he said “In my relationship, we have an agreement to tell all the truth, all the time…What I’ve learned is, even though all the truth all the time has a certain kind of risk to it, it also has an incredible possibility built into it.”