This is a great line to take, David. Genuine, personal, relatable human interest together with adult development theory. I'm going to be sharing it with plenty of folk.
This was a very interesting read. I got the notification for it just as I was feeling bored and stuck in my apartment on a cold day with very little energy. So thanks.
I do believe you in your remembering of your relationship with Elena 100%. It is a believable story, and there is no reason the story fitting very well into adult developmental stage theory should mean that it's not believable.
Your recent pointing-out about developmental lag within stage theory, where a person's selfness may have reached stage 4 but with relationship dynamics lagging behind in stage 3, gave me an interesting point to relate to my own life and how this applies to me. More and more I am starting to think that I have completed the transition to stage 4 both professionally and relationally, even though I can remember examples just a few years ago that would indicate I was still in stage 3 relationally. I'm 34 now. I really do feel much more comfortable in my own skin than before, what with wanting to help and respond to people, but at the same time doing so in a controlled way and providing sufficient time and space for myself.
At the same time, it's funny that you seem to have had a lot of experience with women, whereas I did this development with no romantic relationship. (Alas!) Haha.
My transition from 3 to 4 was also caused by a relationship. I married my first wife for all the stage 3 reasons you mentioned: no differentiated self, I took on responsibility for her feelings, she had medical issues and I feared she'd die without me, etc.
The suffering was eventually enough that it pushed me into stage 4. I still remember when it happened. I was talking a shower, and then I just stood there crying because I knew my current life was over. It took two years, but I ended things with her, and it was the best thing for the both of us (and put me down the path to stage 5 and more!)
Hi, just to balance out my occasional whining on your abstract posts: This was fascinating! The ground truth events (about Wicca and mental states) and the diary entries, even without the connections to the theory... Things like this have not even remotely happened to me (or even around me, AFAIK) and I guess you just made my worldview a bit wider. Thanks for doing this, especially since it involves putting personal matters into public view, which is always hard to handle well.
Did you really arrive at MIT after having skipped eighth grade? I can't tell if it's a joke, a typo or that you're so old that they only had eight grades in school back then? You *were*, after all, born in the steam age! 😉😆
This was remarkably good. Thank you for writing it.
I have to admit that one of my first strong reactions was "ah, how unfortunate that you should have spent your PhD at MIT studying something incremental like artificial intelligence rather than something transformational like the fractional quantum Hall effect." :)
This is really great. I agree with your suspicions that, as history, some parts might be a little unreliable, due to time and change and memory and your past self not being entirely available to you. But that seems okay? It’s helpful for understanding where you’re coming from.
I was in a very bad relationship for perhaps three weeks that had some vaguely similar themes, though the problems were less serious than the ones you had to deal with. I don’t think I ever decided that “relationships are everything” and I didn’t want to believe things because she believed them, but I was determined to make a serious try to understand her perspective and make it work. In retrospect, that was a mistake, though fortunately a brief one.
I think Al-Anon tries to teach the kind of transformation you describe here. I find twelve-step groups very interesting because it's cornfed American midwestern spirituality that works strangely (maybe miraculously) well for a lot of people.
Al-Anon is not quite as robust an organization as AA. I can think of many reasons why: not much incentive to stick around once your life is more stable; very different personality type compared to recovering addicts who are often (I think) very competent and motivated as long as they're sober.
Regardless of the actual meetings, when you put together their folksy sayings, slogans, and cliches, you wind up with a pretty useful perspective to get through this kind of thing.
Off thread: looking for 'Drawing Down the Moon' I found another book by the same name which looks equally interesting. 'Drawing Down the Moon: Magic in the Ancient Greco-Roman World' by Radcliffe G. Edmonds III.
This was really interesting! I truly enjoyed it. The style and the path you’re using to explore these themes make them much easier to grasp, I believe.
Your reflections also reminded me of something in Nonviolent Communication. Marshall Rosenberg describes what he calls the path of emotional liberation, a developmental movement that many people go through when practicing NVC. He suggests that most of us begin in a kind of emotional slavery, where we feel responsible for other people’s emotions and needs.
When people first engage seriously with NVC, many shift into what he names the “obnoxious stage.” After recognizing that they’re not actually responsible for the feelings and needs of others, they start behaving as if those feelings and needs were irrelevant or unimportant to them. Even though this phase can be uncomfortable and create conflict, Rosenberg sees it as genuine progress because it helps clarify the locus of responsibility. In NVC, one can only be responsible for one’s own feelings, needs, and actions, even if we may feel care or concern for others. The aim is to reach a third stage: emotional liberation, where we do feel responsible toward others, and hold their needs as just as important as our own, without confusing that with being responsible for managing their internal states, etc.
I found myself wondering whether this developmental trajectory in NVC could be connected to something like Kegan’s developmental theory. There’s something that feels a bit like a temporary regression from stage 3 to stage 2, or maybe a very early, still-immature form of stage 4. I’m not sure, but your post definitely brought this to mind, so I wanted to share the association.
Thanks again for the piece! As always, really stimulating and thought-provoking. I hope you keep developing this work, and I’m looking forward to the next entries. (I used auto-translate, sorry if the style got a little weird)
Found this valuable and compelling. I had been uninterested in Kegan's stage theory but I found the post so compelling, I read the referenced book for once. *The Discerning Heart* was well worth the read. Well written, blessedly brief. I blew through it in two days. The theory's making sense of a lot of experiences I've had in the last few years. I'm now somewhat interested in reading the original Kegans. Thanks, David.
Oh, really glad! This is what I was hoping for... the theory can seem highly abstract until you've seen concrete examples. And those are somewhat difficult to find! Kegan's _Evolving Self_ includes several, but his writing is dense enough that maybe the point gets lost.
This is a great line to take, David. Genuine, personal, relatable human interest together with adult development theory. I'm going to be sharing it with plenty of folk.
Hello David,
This was a very interesting read. I got the notification for it just as I was feeling bored and stuck in my apartment on a cold day with very little energy. So thanks.
I do believe you in your remembering of your relationship with Elena 100%. It is a believable story, and there is no reason the story fitting very well into adult developmental stage theory should mean that it's not believable.
Your recent pointing-out about developmental lag within stage theory, where a person's selfness may have reached stage 4 but with relationship dynamics lagging behind in stage 3, gave me an interesting point to relate to my own life and how this applies to me. More and more I am starting to think that I have completed the transition to stage 4 both professionally and relationally, even though I can remember examples just a few years ago that would indicate I was still in stage 3 relationally. I'm 34 now. I really do feel much more comfortable in my own skin than before, what with wanting to help and respond to people, but at the same time doing so in a controlled way and providing sufficient time and space for myself.
At the same time, it's funny that you seem to have had a lot of experience with women, whereas I did this development with no romantic relationship. (Alas!) Haha.
My transition from 3 to 4 was also caused by a relationship. I married my first wife for all the stage 3 reasons you mentioned: no differentiated self, I took on responsibility for her feelings, she had medical issues and I feared she'd die without me, etc.
The suffering was eventually enough that it pushed me into stage 4. I still remember when it happened. I was talking a shower, and then I just stood there crying because I knew my current life was over. It took two years, but I ended things with her, and it was the best thing for the both of us (and put me down the path to stage 5 and more!)
Much appreciation for these highly personal shares from your own development. Ridiculously apt for and relatable for me right now. Thank you.
Hi, just to balance out my occasional whining on your abstract posts: This was fascinating! The ground truth events (about Wicca and mental states) and the diary entries, even without the connections to the theory... Things like this have not even remotely happened to me (or even around me, AFAIK) and I guess you just made my worldview a bit wider. Thanks for doing this, especially since it involves putting personal matters into public view, which is always hard to handle well.
Did you really arrive at MIT after having skipped eighth grade? I can't tell if it's a joke, a typo or that you're so old that they only had eight grades in school back then? You *were*, after all, born in the steam age! 😉😆
Uh, after but not *immediately* after! I meant that, because I skipped eighth grade, I was a year younger than classmates from then on.
Ha, that was a funny misread on my part 😄
This was remarkably good. Thank you for writing it.
I have to admit that one of my first strong reactions was "ah, how unfortunate that you should have spent your PhD at MIT studying something incremental like artificial intelligence rather than something transformational like the fractional quantum Hall effect." :)
This is really great. I agree with your suspicions that, as history, some parts might be a little unreliable, due to time and change and memory and your past self not being entirely available to you. But that seems okay? It’s helpful for understanding where you’re coming from.
I was in a very bad relationship for perhaps three weeks that had some vaguely similar themes, though the problems were less serious than the ones you had to deal with. I don’t think I ever decided that “relationships are everything” and I didn’t want to believe things because she believed them, but I was determined to make a serious try to understand her perspective and make it work. In retrospect, that was a mistake, though fortunately a brief one.
I think Al-Anon tries to teach the kind of transformation you describe here. I find twelve-step groups very interesting because it's cornfed American midwestern spirituality that works strangely (maybe miraculously) well for a lot of people.
Al-Anon is not quite as robust an organization as AA. I can think of many reasons why: not much incentive to stick around once your life is more stable; very different personality type compared to recovering addicts who are often (I think) very competent and motivated as long as they're sober.
Regardless of the actual meetings, when you put together their folksy sayings, slogans, and cliches, you wind up with a pretty useful perspective to get through this kind of thing.
Wow. Thank you for sharing so generously and personally. Inspiring and challenging.
Off thread: looking for 'Drawing Down the Moon' I found another book by the same name which looks equally interesting. 'Drawing Down the Moon: Magic in the Ancient Greco-Roman World' by Radcliffe G. Edmonds III.
https://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Down-Moon-Ancient-Greco-Roman/dp/069115693X
Heh. Sounds very familiar to me, maybe not in the exact details of relationships, but in the motivations and thoughts behind it.
Great to hear your story - concrete examples of stage transitions are rare, but very helpful to me
(link typo - random extra "m" at the beginning of the "developmental lag" link)
Definitely appreciating being reminded that developmental stage changes can lag across different areas of life
Thank you—I have fixed it now!
This was really interesting! I truly enjoyed it. The style and the path you’re using to explore these themes make them much easier to grasp, I believe.
Your reflections also reminded me of something in Nonviolent Communication. Marshall Rosenberg describes what he calls the path of emotional liberation, a developmental movement that many people go through when practicing NVC. He suggests that most of us begin in a kind of emotional slavery, where we feel responsible for other people’s emotions and needs.
When people first engage seriously with NVC, many shift into what he names the “obnoxious stage.” After recognizing that they’re not actually responsible for the feelings and needs of others, they start behaving as if those feelings and needs were irrelevant or unimportant to them. Even though this phase can be uncomfortable and create conflict, Rosenberg sees it as genuine progress because it helps clarify the locus of responsibility. In NVC, one can only be responsible for one’s own feelings, needs, and actions, even if we may feel care or concern for others. The aim is to reach a third stage: emotional liberation, where we do feel responsible toward others, and hold their needs as just as important as our own, without confusing that with being responsible for managing their internal states, etc.
I found myself wondering whether this developmental trajectory in NVC could be connected to something like Kegan’s developmental theory. There’s something that feels a bit like a temporary regression from stage 3 to stage 2, or maybe a very early, still-immature form of stage 4. I’m not sure, but your post definitely brought this to mind, so I wanted to share the association.
Thanks again for the piece! As always, really stimulating and thought-provoking. I hope you keep developing this work, and I’m looking forward to the next entries. (I used auto-translate, sorry if the style got a little weird)
Found this valuable and compelling. I had been uninterested in Kegan's stage theory but I found the post so compelling, I read the referenced book for once. *The Discerning Heart* was well worth the read. Well written, blessedly brief. I blew through it in two days. The theory's making sense of a lot of experiences I've had in the last few years. I'm now somewhat interested in reading the original Kegans. Thanks, David.
Oh, really glad! This is what I was hoping for... the theory can seem highly abstract until you've seen concrete examples. And those are somewhat difficult to find! Kegan's _Evolving Self_ includes several, but his writing is dense enough that maybe the point gets lost.