How Does Mutuality Lead to Peaceful Relationships?

Mutuality is the experience of being in a space of agreement, and you can only get there together

From Suzanne’s antique postcard collection. Photo credit: Maude Mayes

Hi, Phil and Maude here. Every week, we sit down and talk until we hit on a theme and jam on what we can say about it. Sometimes a dialogue best captures the essence of the conversation.

PHIL: Mutuality is the experience of being in a space of agreement. We are there because we have a way of reaching agreement that we have done time and time again. It starts with a discussion like, “I want to go here,” and a response like, “I would rather go there,” or, “You know, I want to do this,” and “Can we find something we both want to do?” So we’ve run into lots of situations like that where we’ve sat down and gone, “Really, why is that? What’s driving you? What’s driving me? What is the value part of what we each want? Uh, oh, okay, so you think… Oh, so you see it that way. So how about…? Is this possible? No, that’s not possible. But how about…” and we bounce things around and go deeper and deeper into what we’re each really looking for until we find a path that works for both of us. We have done this so many times that we have a sense of the place that we arrive at, and it is so distinctive that these days, we spend most of our time there, or at least in the vicinity of it.

MAUDE: We have written about the method to get to that place, and we call that Our Process. It is a methodology of getting to mutuality, of finding it on a particular topic. I’m interested in talking about the heart of it. What’s the experience of it? It’s very important to know how to get there. And that’s what Our Process describes, but what is there? What is mutuality?

PHIL: It’s a place of agreement.

MAUDE: Yes! And you can only get there together. This is a place that you exist in that is shared, and everything in it you create together. You cannot be there on your own. It’s a different kind of quality. It’s really a thing that takes a behavior between two people to create. It’s not like you can find it by yourself. You have to create it each time together. You cannot get there alone because this is about what happens when two people are able to recognize each other so much, and communicate to each other comfortably and openly what they need or who they are about any particular thing. There’s no charge. There’s a deep attraction that both people have learned to want and are moving toward together, so that they mesh.

PHIL: I love your statement that it’s not something you can do alone, and what follows from that is that what this is, is the experience of somebody – you in this particular case. There is a direct experience of the other person. And I think that the sense of us, this mutuality, is the sense of being in touch with another being. Imagine two squishy balls. When you push the two together, they form a surface, a boundary between them. And it’s the same surface for both of them, although mirror image, so to speak. That’s a very simplistic metaphor. And something like that happens when two people find a place that satisfies what each of them wants and needs.

MAUDE: That’s it! What exists between two people that enables them to have responses and exchanges, and make decisions? What enables them to create an answer, a way, a solution, a decision, a way of being together, in which the important things of value to each of the people are included in it in some way? It’s because together they create through their knowledge and sharing openly and honestly with each other, this place, this understanding. They create together a way of being that fully satisfies what is important to each of the people in any given situation. It becomes one of the core foundations of how you are in that relationship. How the two people are together.

PHIL: With any two people, there’s one connection. And it is from that connection that we view the world and make decisions. That connection is a contribution from me and a contribution from you. Who knows what it is, exactly? That makes it sound as if we lose ourselves within it, which is completely not the case; we remain ourselves because we haven’t given anything up to be there.

MAUDE: So, as you say, between any two people, there’s one connection. I love that. It’s a creation. You create out of that place. You create behavior, decisions, solutions, the way that you interact with each other in that relationship.

PHIL: There is this sense that there’s me and there’s we, and how can there be any argument since I’m on both sides? I think generally in the world, we have a sense of being. We have a sense of that person and that person, but the focus is on individuality in this society, and this sense of mutuality is rarely described, not talked about. It’s one of those things that is there, but if there are no words, if people don’t point to it, it’s invisible.

There is another aspect to this, and that is intentionality. This is an attractive place, right? We choose it because it’s a peaceful place. So there is an active element to this. It’s not like we stumbled across this place in the world, so much as we create it. Instead of being something that you find in the world, it’s something that you create in the world.

MAUDE: Yeah, but it’s not you by yourself. This is a thing that has to do with interaction. This is not a thing that you can do by yourself, it really isn’t, and you can spread it to more than two people. We have a few dear friends with whom we can have that kind of experience when we are all together. We seem to be coming from that place of mutual agreement. I think one of the characteristics that makes that happen is that each one of us individually has chosen to be this way altogether every time we relate to other people. That’s how we want to be, or as you said, staying in the vicinity as much as possible. So each of us, as individuals without any particular interaction, has kind of made certain decisions about interactions in general, like how we are are in them, And the only restrictions that come in terms of being open and flowing would be whoever we’re interacting with and how much they also have this way of being.

Reading Corner

Here are some of our many writings on this topic.

Why is Mutuality Important in Your Relationships? “The cornerstone of peaceful conflict-free relating is the practice of mutuality: the certainty that it is possible to find mutual solutions and the act of creating them. This requires the ability to search beyond differences to find the matching values. It requires the desire to understand and honor the needs of the other. This can be applied in all intimate relationships, and the same principles carry over into larger and larger groups of relationships, your family, friends, community, country, the planet.”

Mutuality is the Core of a Peaceful Relationship “At the heart of our relationship is a process we use to ascertain and co-create mutuality when finding solutions and making decisions together. It is a method that employs many different components of communication. These include a shared respect and honoring for our separate individualities, combined with a commitment to each other, to knowing we are on the same side, and most importantly a commitment to be relational, to find the answer that comes from the ‘we’. We have never approached each other with hostility or a need to be defended. We are not trying to be right or to win. When you are committed to a place of reciprocity, to solutions which are mutual, then winning is not defined as standing alone, of getting your own way, as though your way were juxtaposed to your partner’s.”

Why Mutuality is Important in a Successful Relationship “The direct experience of mutuality is a critical aspect of a peaceful and conflict-free relationship. It is the sense of being in the relationship, rather than just being our individual selves. In fact, “rather than” is the wrong connector here; it’s really “at the same time as.” Yet, many people do not recognize or acknowledge this aspect of their relationship. This is not surprising, as the mutuality we speak of is a transcendent experience; one of those areas which require a suspension of normal boundaries, and a stepping into, an allowing of another dimension. This doesn’t make any sense if you think of identity as residing in your body, bounded by your skin and probably created by brain activity. Concussion or anesthesia will switch it off for a while. Any number of documentaries and neurologists espouse this model. But that is a very isolated view of identity. We are not an isolated universe, disconnected from everything else; we are part of the entire world. A little reflection will show that we identify with our gender, our culture, our family … the list is long.”