It’s a vessel my partner and I get into together, with the intention of traveling through life in it. But the ship is given to us empty. The only things inside it are what we put there.
So I can’t expect to take from the relationship what I haven’t put into it.
In my first marriage, we got into that ship with no manual. No sailing instructions. No maintenance guide. No tools. No skills. No lighthouse. No foghorn. Nothing.
Just two young people sent out into the ocean with fifty-foot seas and told, “Good luck.”
Of course we crashed.
How could we not?
That’s why relationship skills matter.
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If someone does something that would normally be called abusive, but I don’t experience it as abuse—if it doesn’t land that way in my body, if it doesn’t take something from me, if it has no harmful effect—then that matters.
So when I try to define abuse, I start with impact.
People behave badly all the time. Sometimes it’s clearly abuse. Sometimes everyone agrees. Sometimes even the person doing it would admit it.
But for me, the first and most reliable indicator is...
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This chapter is about questioning what we’re told is certain.
Not from a place of rebellion for the sake of rebellion—but from observing cracks in systems that are presented as flawless.
When “Foolproof” Fails
There’s a case that should make anyone pause...a parent applied for public assistance and was required to take a DNA test. The results came back saying their children were not theirs...and then they were accused of fraud...
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This chapter is going to challenge a lot of what people believe.
I’m not asking you to blindly agree with me. I’m asking you to look for yourself.
There are many examples throughout history where symptoms were real—but the explanation was wrong. Scurvy, beriberi, pellagra, Minamata… all cases where people blamed the wrong cause before eventually discovering something entirely different.
Symptoms are real.
But the story about what causes them? That’s where I began to question everything...
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Chapter 10: Relationship Skills
