Cessation and the Committed Couple Relationship

Cessation directly addresses the twin pillars of morality, being –

a. Reciprocity – the first pillar of morality in a committed couple relationship – the equal or unequal give and take between two people in a committed couple relationship over children, parenting, money, intimacy, sex, work, domestic work, leisure, time together, time apart, friends, relatives, difference, conflict, communication, alcohol, drugs, and violence – which directly transacts questions of fairness and justice. Broadly, the give and take between the two people must be experienced by each of them as more or less equal, and any specific inequalities experienced by either party across any of the above lines of discourse must be addressed and remediated – if this is not done then the relationship will become unbalanced and this will most likely be experienced by at least one party as being unfair and unjust; such  unchecked inequality, manifest as  unfairness and injustice will almost certainly compromise the cooperative relationship between the parties over the functional aspects of the relationship.

b. Compassion and empathy – the second pillar of morality in a committed couple relationship – the ability of each party to understand and share the feelings of the other party – a central precept and assumption of a committed couple relationship in Western society, at the very least. An unequal give and take will unbalance the reciprocal interaction between the two people in the attached relationship, and such inequality will unbalance compassion, and tip empathy upside-down, creating  emotional and psychological havoc for the two people concerned. This will mean that one party is called upon to carry and bear more compassion in the relationship than the other; or be more compassionate to the other, than the other is to them; and this will mean that one party is called upon to bear a greater burden of empathy in the relationship; where one party is called upon to be more empathic and emotionally responsive to the other, than the other is to them. Humankind cannot bear too much inequality, especially of this nature.

Cessation remediates such imbalances in the moral structure of a relationship an entirely different way to more conventional positive,  action oriented approaches. Conventional approaches to this dilemma (unequal give and take, and unequal compassion) remediate by renegotiating or paring back the position and power of the more then equal or dominant party. This often acts (paradoxically) to intensify the dilemma, amplify the inequality, not remediate it, especially in more intractable matters – to further unbalance reciprocity and compassion – to entrench the power and position of the dominant party not to moderate the inequality that underpins that power.

Cessation puts the spotlight straight onto reciprocity (as give & take), strips or pares back the interaction between the two people to something more manageable and less out of balance. It is the interaction between the parties that carries the inequality forward.  

Inequality is not an intrinsic quality of the individual parties. Inequality is made manifest through the process of interaction between the parties. It is true that the parties to the interaction may have unequal power to influence that interaction. This is true in socially structured unequal relationships such as that between a parent and a child. In a contemporary committed couple relationship, the rhetoric in the West, supported by Law, is that each party is meant to be an equal partner to that relationship. It is reasonable to note that the committed couple relationship/marriage has a history of structural inequality that is imported into contemporary practice, and this may have some impact on the way in which reciprocity and compassion are managed between the two people concerned.  

 It is also reasonable to note that there may be socially tolerable variations in the way in which reciprocity and compassion are practiced between people and how much inequality is to be socially and legally tolerated in relationship to this major moral question. It is fair to note that we as a society no longer  subscribe to the “rule of thumb”. The “rule of thumb” was an old English law that specified the thickness of a man’s thumb as the maximum thickness of the rod a man was legally permitted to beat his wife with. 

It is important to note that imbalances of reciprocity and compassion mean that the more than equal party to a relationship is possessed of real authority in the relationship without congruent responsibility; whilst the less than equal party carries a burden of real responsibility in the relationship without the congruent authority. 

This is the stuff of madness. Cessation works with this truth, not against it, more like a resistance fighter, guerrilla warfare, not a conventional battle. Cessation is often invisible at first, in full view, implicit in every interaction, but invisible all the same. The dominant party, the more than equal party, cannot see what they cannot see. Responsibility is a peculiar, eccentric, lens. The person with the responsibility can see, has vision the more than equal party does not have. 

Cessation achieves change first by radically altering the emotions, cognition and behaviour of the less than equal party in the relationship; by directly critiquing the emotions, cognition and behaviour of the less than equal, less than dominant party; and by taking an uncompromising position over the less than equal party’s participation in this unbalanced give and take, and corruption of compassion and empathy. This is not about negotiation. This is about participation and non-participation; how not to participate in your own humiliation, demise, your own destruction. 

This is done by invisibly stripping back one end of the interaction, by removing from the exchange, for example, the excessive accommodation or hyper-reactivity, hyper-responsiveness, excessive vigilance, by the less than equal party to the more than equal, other, party.

The more unbalanced and unequal a relationship is in terms of reciprocity, give and take, the more likely it is that the less than equal party will become more accommodating and hyper- responsive to the more dominant party. The relationship will then become increasingly inflexible, the more reciprocity is compromised, and relational atrophy is likely to appear from here. Managing inequality down is central to preserving the flexibility genuine reciprocity brings to a relationship and its members.

Most positive actions taken to remediate this imbalance will fail simply because these strategies intensify the inappropriate imbalance in reciprocity and compassion in the relationship.

Cessation calls a halt to all of this. Cessation invisibly alters the behaviour and the emotions of the less than equal party, whereas most other approaches to these matters focus on the behaviour of the more than equal, dominant party.

Cessation empowers the less than equal party to a committed couple relationship, and other similar relationships, to genuinely and unilaterally decide not to participate in the unequal give and take between them, and not participate in the unequal distribution of compassion and empathy. The idea that the less than equal party does this with the negotiated permission of the more than equal or dominant party is a nonsense, and a contradiction in terms that actually undermines the noble intentions of the action and intervention itself. 

In order to remediate the moral pillars of a relationship, reciprocity and compassion, compromised or damaged by the unequal relationship between the parties over reciprocity and compassion, it is necessary for the less than equal party to make unilateral decisions, and take unilateral action to no longer participate in such inequality over reciprocity and compassion -  to no longer engage in the specific interactions and practices that produce and reproduce, and perpetuate that inequality in the relationship. Such interactions and practices are socio relational in the first instance, but ordinarily carry implications for the internal neurobiology of each individual person. External socio-relational loops of interaction are ordinarily matched by internal neural loops in the brain and in the neurobiology of  each individual person. Each individual is personally and morally corrupted by the interactions and practices they participate in with each other. This is true for the person in the more than equal or dominant position and it is equally true for the person in the less than equal and non-dominant position.  

This is not a tale of guilt and innocence, notwithstanding the fact that this judgement awaits both parties who elect to participate in such a morally corrupt relationship.