NLP: The Three Voices

Our genetically driven instinctive voice is a joy. It makes us feel alive. It fills us with passion and gives us with passion and gives us pleasure. It turns our head when someone beautiful walks into the room. It tickles our ears when we hear an attractive voice of the opposite sex. It gives joy in the arms of our lovers.

Secondly, there is the voice of civilization, the social voice. It comes from the society and culture that we live in. This voice conditions us to live in our society. While the message is from society as a whole, the main messengers are our parents. They also add all sorts of other messages of their own, like a cultural game of Chinese whispers.

The conditioning voice can drown out many others. It affects our beliefs, values, thoughts and actions. Part of the work of becoming mature is to go beyond the limiting messages and influences of first our parents, then our society, then our culture, to a place where we can feel at home in the world, not just in our neighbourhood.

Thirdly, there is the voice of our intellect. Calm and steady on its own, it tells us what makes sense.

Both men and women have these three voices. They may have a different balance or sequence for each of us. They may whisper slightly different messages in different tones.

The first challenge of forming satisfying relationships is to accommodate the energy of the genetic voice. It is deeper than the social, sometimes manifests violently and can be disruptive. The second challenge is to find a place for the social voice so that it does not deaden the joy and energy of the genetic voice. The third challenge is to accommodate the intellect, because we have a life outside of our close relationships as well. Ultimately, we hope to achieve a state of passion tempered by society and guided by reason.

The key to a successful relationship is knowing your own three voices, your partner's voices, and working together to make all six sing in harmony.

So, do good relationships mean an uneasy compromise between nature and nurture? Not necessarily. Not unless the instinctive voice is the only one that you pay attention to. Our genes are only one influence on how we relate to others. Genetic differences will only inhibit how we are with each other if we want them to do so. In the way that a knife can be used to carve fine furniture or to stab someone, our genetic drives may be used to bring shared pleasure or to keep ourselves apart.

Why are we looking at relationships using these three voices and not just taking relationships as a whole? It is because putting a subject into a larger context and then examining its component parts allows us greater knowledge. With that knowledge we can see how the parts combine to make a harmonious relationship. Then we can understand ourselves and others better. With greater understanding, we can make our relationships more satisfying.

If we look at tennis, for example, in the broader context of competitive sport we can better understand the motivation, attraction and the role that it fulfills. We can then look at the different players, styles and roles involved to understand how the details build up to the whole.

So, if we then look at the different complementary parts that make a relationship work (or not), we can then gain a better understanding of how the whole can be improved. We can identify which of these component parts provides the strengths and weaknesses of being together.

Understanding our own three voices will also help us understand ourselves as a whole. The genetic voice is not the villain of the piece, unless we let it be so. If we harness our genetic drives to build the relationship that we and our partner want, they will hold us together, stop either party straying and build a bond that will enable us both to grow and have the life we want. Being in relationships that work is not rocket science - it is far more important than rocket science.