"Trust". It’s one of those sacred words in relationship lingo that automatically projects an aura of goodness and wholesomeness. Conversely, "mistrust" seems to reek of evil and pathology. If you ever want to evoke visceral and mindless reaction from someone, just ask "Don’t you trust me?" Most people will reflexively and thoughtlessly reassure you that "Of course" they do. The won’t take the time to define the various ways in which they mistrust you as well. "Healthy mistrust" seems close to being an oxymoron like "military intelligence"…or "unhealthy trust." That’s unfortunate. It’s also the reason why a lot of people get hurt.
In my line of work, I find it sad to see so many people separating themselves from the tools necessary for their welfare. Mistrust, like fear and anger, has its utility. The trick is to know where and how. Think of it this way: Trust is really expectation. When we trust someone, we expect that he or she will behave consistently with what we envision. We expect good faith and responsibility in fulfilling commitments. But what happens when our expectations aren’t realistic? Let’s try a scenario:
You’re romantically (and sexually) involved with someone who recently has become separated. You’re aware that over the course of his or her previous marriage your partner had several affairs. Every time you raise the topic of commitment, your partner seems to divert the discussion and emphasize instead how much he/she really feels for you. You have little doubt about his or her passion. So why create problems with your mistrust?
Many of us naively fall into such a tar pit and helplessly flounder for years. It would be an oversimplification to say that we do so merely because we’ve been over-indoctrinated in trust. It’s probably more true that we childishly over-estimate the power of love as being able to surmount all obstacles. This kind of blind trust allows us to avoid having to make painful choices. However, it also prevents us from evaluating courses of action necessary for our own welfare. The question of whether or not to have sexual relations is especially important for this reason. Many of us have naively trusted that our passion will bring about commitment while we ignore the person’s stated desire for less involvement.
We may even ignore a long history of inconsistency and broken commitments. We "trust" that we can let ourselves become sexually and emotionally dependent before we realistically weigh the probable risks. Are we really so powerful that our mere hopes and desires can forge a new reality? In this assumption lies the seed of addictive relationships.
One of my most cherished tools has been the ability to give myself the permission to feel trust and mistrust, hope and fear, all with the same person. This permission-giving is not naïve. It’s not the unqualified permission for my "inner child" to play hopscotch on the busy freeway of uncommitted relationships. Instead, it is permission to be free enough from myth and taboo to see the way things really are. With this freedom comes clarity and with clarity comes safety. When my "inner parent" has responsibly attended to the realistic dangers, then I can maintain a more steady and realistic trust.
Perhaps you are one who would be better off by being more cautious in the early stages of a relationship. Instead of incurring a string of "betrayals," you might instead experience some "close calls." Giving yourself permission to avoid naïve trust can help you make the difference.
If you would like to hear my recommendations to people who have written in about their various relationship problems, go to my website at www.carycounseling.com/door/Prototype/marriagehelpfak.html .
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Letting Go of Harmful Relationships
SET AND KEEP FIRM LIMITS
First of all, let’s dispense with the notion of immediate "friendship." If you’ve been struggling with a destructive relationship, then you’re going to need more distance than that. Friendship is possible when both parties have fairly good emotional boundaries around what’s private and not common ground. Coming from a destructive relationship, those boundaries are going to need time to be regenerated. If you’re going to "separate", the harder task is to separate emotionally, not just physically. Casual leisure contact sends your unconscious the misguided message that the relationship will continue as usual. It will prevent you from getting on with the painful but necessary business of grieving over the losses. If you try to keep casual company with each other, you probably will begin to suffer "strategic amnesia" or another form of creeping denial regarding the reasons for the separation in the first place.
Another important reason for avoiding casual contact is that you probably will be very vulnerable to misplaced empathy. One of the biggest hooks back into a destructive relationship is the exquisite sense of guilt you can feel for causing the other person pain. If you try to turn your relationship into a friendship, you will be placing yourself in the immediate vicinity of the other person’s anguish. Your old pattern may have been to try to placate such feelings. Just because you’ve decided to terminate your romance doesn’t mean those buttons aren’t easy to push again. You just may not be that good at ignoring another person’s pain, especially when it seems that you could resolve it so easily.
So how long do you wait before planning friendly company with the other person? Maybe years. Maybe forever. Certainly a long, long time.
SHARE YOUR GRIEF WITH OTHERS
If you have stayed in a destructive relationship for any length of time, chances are there was something positive that kept you there. It may have only been hopes and dreams arising from early days in the relationship. It may have been something as simple as a sense of belonging. It will help you to be honest about what you’re losing. Many people think they have to focus only on the negative aspects of the relationship in order to keep their resolve. Actually, this strategy can backfire. By trying to convince yourself that the relationship only had negative aspects, you may actually be more likely to change your mind later on. By accepting that there are some positives that you will miss, your decision to separate will be more integrated and therefore more stable. Your decision will not be undone just because some of the positives have slipped back into your awareness.
A very powerful (but relatively known) truth is that IT CAN BE OK TO FEEL LOVE FOR SOMEONE WHILE YOU LEAVE HIM OR HER. Love does not conquer all but neither does hate. Your better strategy is to accept that you are a cornucopia of love, hate, and numerous other feelings about your relationship. Hopefully, your decision to separate was not just based on your feelings but also what you judged was the best way to take care of your self. If so, you probably will have some feelings of sadness and grief for the lost positives including love.
With who do you share? Certainly not with the person from whom you are separating. It would be a paradox to try to separate and yet allow yourselves to get emotionally closer by helping each other to grieve. Similarly, some friends may be too closely involved with the other person for you to keep separate in your unconscious. You are best off with safe, intimate friends who can help give you permission to grieve for the positive aspects of what that relationship gave you, even while it was hurting you terribly. In other words, your confidants will need to be mature and wise. If you don’t have any friends who meet these qualifications, then consider a therapist with a good reputation. Whatever you do, don’t try to do all the emotional work alone. You deserve to make it easier on yourself.
If you would like to hear my recommendations to people who have written in about their various relationship problems, go to my website at www.carycounseling.com/door/Prototype/marriageadvicefak.html .
First of all, let’s dispense with the notion of immediate "friendship." If you’ve been struggling with a destructive relationship, then you’re going to need more distance than that. Friendship is possible when both parties have fairly good emotional boundaries around what’s private and not common ground. Coming from a destructive relationship, those boundaries are going to need time to be regenerated. If you’re going to "separate", the harder task is to separate emotionally, not just physically. Casual leisure contact sends your unconscious the misguided message that the relationship will continue as usual. It will prevent you from getting on with the painful but necessary business of grieving over the losses. If you try to keep casual company with each other, you probably will begin to suffer "strategic amnesia" or another form of creeping denial regarding the reasons for the separation in the first place.
Another important reason for avoiding casual contact is that you probably will be very vulnerable to misplaced empathy. One of the biggest hooks back into a destructive relationship is the exquisite sense of guilt you can feel for causing the other person pain. If you try to turn your relationship into a friendship, you will be placing yourself in the immediate vicinity of the other person’s anguish. Your old pattern may have been to try to placate such feelings. Just because you’ve decided to terminate your romance doesn’t mean those buttons aren’t easy to push again. You just may not be that good at ignoring another person’s pain, especially when it seems that you could resolve it so easily.
So how long do you wait before planning friendly company with the other person? Maybe years. Maybe forever. Certainly a long, long time.
SHARE YOUR GRIEF WITH OTHERS
If you have stayed in a destructive relationship for any length of time, chances are there was something positive that kept you there. It may have only been hopes and dreams arising from early days in the relationship. It may have been something as simple as a sense of belonging. It will help you to be honest about what you’re losing. Many people think they have to focus only on the negative aspects of the relationship in order to keep their resolve. Actually, this strategy can backfire. By trying to convince yourself that the relationship only had negative aspects, you may actually be more likely to change your mind later on. By accepting that there are some positives that you will miss, your decision to separate will be more integrated and therefore more stable. Your decision will not be undone just because some of the positives have slipped back into your awareness.
A very powerful (but relatively known) truth is that IT CAN BE OK TO FEEL LOVE FOR SOMEONE WHILE YOU LEAVE HIM OR HER. Love does not conquer all but neither does hate. Your better strategy is to accept that you are a cornucopia of love, hate, and numerous other feelings about your relationship. Hopefully, your decision to separate was not just based on your feelings but also what you judged was the best way to take care of your self. If so, you probably will have some feelings of sadness and grief for the lost positives including love.
With who do you share? Certainly not with the person from whom you are separating. It would be a paradox to try to separate and yet allow yourselves to get emotionally closer by helping each other to grieve. Similarly, some friends may be too closely involved with the other person for you to keep separate in your unconscious. You are best off with safe, intimate friends who can help give you permission to grieve for the positive aspects of what that relationship gave you, even while it was hurting you terribly. In other words, your confidants will need to be mature and wise. If you don’t have any friends who meet these qualifications, then consider a therapist with a good reputation. Whatever you do, don’t try to do all the emotional work alone. You deserve to make it easier on yourself.
If you would like to hear my recommendations to people who have written in about their various relationship problems, go to my website at www.carycounseling.com/door/Prototype/marriageadvicefak.html .
The Paradox of Being Human
To many of us, the struggle for intimacy seems paradoxical. Most of us want to be intimate, to feel emotionally connected with another. At the same time, we want to be independent and self-sufficient. This conflict and tension is at the core of what it means to be human. To emphasize either need too much over the other is to tilt a person into a dehumanizing disequilibrium. If one only seeks a sense of closeness, one loses a sense of oneself as being loveable in one’s own right. If one is totally independent of others, he or she is probably best put behind bars for being a psychopath. I remember a patient who once impregnated the receptionist at the hospital in which I worked and then blew out of town after stealing a friend’s car. He was quite independent.
One of the biggest myths about relationships is that most break-ups occur because partners can’t get close enough or because they can’t communicate. This makes about as much sense as saying that most people die because their brains stop working. The coincidence is accurate, the causality is not. The paradox is that most break-downs in intimacy occur because partners are not sufficiently separate. By "separate’ I do not mean giving each other the cold shoulder or ignoring each other. I am referring to keeping one’s identity separate, valid, valuable, and whole without requiring the other partner to provide the missing pieces. If you feel unlovable and are too ashamed to admit it even to yourself, then you are likely to claw at your partner to restore your sense of worth. You will probably try to obligate your partner as if he or she were a parent, at the same time trying to change that parent. "If you loved me…" is a classic guilting maneuver in this fashion. Such intrusiveness, arising from enmeshed personal identities, is far more responsible for break-ups than mere communication problems. In fact, most communication problems in intimacy derive from enmeshment.
While enmeshment is the most serious threat to intimacy, a total emphasis on independence is stunting. For example, you cannot have a good sexual relationship without losing your boundaries and merging with the other. The French have an expression for orgasm: "la petite morte" which translates as "the little death." Without the death of ego or self-awareness, sex is much less fulfilling. Also, if there are no occasions when you can lean on the other person, you will miss a lot of the good stuff: the back rubs at night, the shared sorrow that helps reassure that you’re "OK", and other affirming reminders that you really are worth being cared for by another. Yes, it is important to learn to do it yourself. But it’s also important to be able to choose when to let another do it for you. The key word here is "choice". Without choice, you will lose the balancing skills required to maintain a healthy intimate relationship.
Balancing is a good metaphor for relationships. Paradoxically, each of us wants to move in opposing directions at the same time. We want to be independent yet we want to merge. We want to rely on ourselves yet we want to be nurtured and affirmed by others. This balancing act needs a lot of skill. Just as the high acrobat must keep his mass in motion to approximate balance, we also must stay in motion by constantly choosing our priorities among opposing needs. If we freeze into rigid roles, our intimacy is lost to the nets below. If we ignore either our need for separateness or our need for dependence, we lurch into disequilibrium. And so, we must keep on choosing, never quite settled, never permanently satisfied with the status of things. We can never finally resolve our paradox. But if we accept it and dare to keep choosing, we probably can negotiate the tightrope of intimacy.
If you would like to hear my recommendations to people who have written in about their various relationship problems, go to my website at www.carycounseling.com/door/Prototype/marriagehelpfak.html .
One of the biggest myths about relationships is that most break-ups occur because partners can’t get close enough or because they can’t communicate. This makes about as much sense as saying that most people die because their brains stop working. The coincidence is accurate, the causality is not. The paradox is that most break-downs in intimacy occur because partners are not sufficiently separate. By "separate’ I do not mean giving each other the cold shoulder or ignoring each other. I am referring to keeping one’s identity separate, valid, valuable, and whole without requiring the other partner to provide the missing pieces. If you feel unlovable and are too ashamed to admit it even to yourself, then you are likely to claw at your partner to restore your sense of worth. You will probably try to obligate your partner as if he or she were a parent, at the same time trying to change that parent. "If you loved me…" is a classic guilting maneuver in this fashion. Such intrusiveness, arising from enmeshed personal identities, is far more responsible for break-ups than mere communication problems. In fact, most communication problems in intimacy derive from enmeshment.
While enmeshment is the most serious threat to intimacy, a total emphasis on independence is stunting. For example, you cannot have a good sexual relationship without losing your boundaries and merging with the other. The French have an expression for orgasm: "la petite morte" which translates as "the little death." Without the death of ego or self-awareness, sex is much less fulfilling. Also, if there are no occasions when you can lean on the other person, you will miss a lot of the good stuff: the back rubs at night, the shared sorrow that helps reassure that you’re "OK", and other affirming reminders that you really are worth being cared for by another. Yes, it is important to learn to do it yourself. But it’s also important to be able to choose when to let another do it for you. The key word here is "choice". Without choice, you will lose the balancing skills required to maintain a healthy intimate relationship.
Balancing is a good metaphor for relationships. Paradoxically, each of us wants to move in opposing directions at the same time. We want to be independent yet we want to merge. We want to rely on ourselves yet we want to be nurtured and affirmed by others. This balancing act needs a lot of skill. Just as the high acrobat must keep his mass in motion to approximate balance, we also must stay in motion by constantly choosing our priorities among opposing needs. If we freeze into rigid roles, our intimacy is lost to the nets below. If we ignore either our need for separateness or our need for dependence, we lurch into disequilibrium. And so, we must keep on choosing, never quite settled, never permanently satisfied with the status of things. We can never finally resolve our paradox. But if we accept it and dare to keep choosing, we probably can negotiate the tightrope of intimacy.
If you would like to hear my recommendations to people who have written in about their various relationship problems, go to my website at www.carycounseling.com/door/Prototype/marriagehelpfak.html .
The Art of Negotiating for Space
"I need some space!" is a familiar expression to most of us, either from the giving or receiving end. I suspect that more women have heard this expression from men than vice-versa. This is probably because more men adopt the evader role in the pursuer-evader dance of boundary-troubled relationships. "Space" is the word that many of us use to describe the sense of being separate, independent, and most especially, not responsible for meeting another person’s needs and expectations. Actually, the desire for that sense of relief is very natural and healthy. It gets tiresome to have to work so hard and to be so considerate in a relationship. Unfortunately, many of us are so unskilled at negotiating for this relief that we eventually feel totally overwhelmed and engulfed. When this stage is reached, it is all too common for a partner to reach for drastic measures such as an affair, a long-term physical separation, or a total cancellation of commitment to the relationship.
The first step for creating a more flexible strategy is to realize that the "space" you’re seeking is not outside in the physical world as much as it is in your own head. A sense of being separate may be helped by being physically apart, but its really the sense of being separate from responsibility and its inherent loss of freedom that you desire. With this in mind, it becomes possible to negotiate for periods of time when you and your partner both understand that neither can expect the focused attention and consideration of the other. For example, it’s possible for one partner to negotiate for an afternoon or an evening when he/she will be focused on other friends or activities and during which he/she will not be emotionally available. This is not a difficult concept.
The second step for devising a better strategy is to give yourself explicit permission to separate emotionally. Many "co-dependent" partners expect this permission to come from the outside world instead of generating it themselves. Unfortunately, it won’t work that way and the engulfment stage is eventually reached with its predictable impulsive acting-out.
If you have reached steps one and two, it is very important that you use some tact in your negotiations for "space". Here are 3 useful guidelines that I have found to be helpful to couples:
1) Give as much advance notice as you can. Advance notice gives another person time to adjust expectations and to start his or her own emotional separation from you. It gives him time to plan how he will take care of himself while you’re unavailable, and he will be much less likely to feel abandoned.
2) If possible, try to allow your partner to have some say over when the period of separation will begin. Asking him or her if there is a better time period is one example. Following this guideline helps the other person to feel like an equal partner because his schedule is not being subordinated to yours without consideration. Pride is less likely to be injured.
3) It is especially important to suggest and negotiate a specific future time when you and your partner can come back together and be available to one another. Suggesting a future time, whether it’s in two hours or two days, is an effective way of affirming the other person’s importance to you and your commitment to the relationship. It will go a long way toward reducing the perception of abandonment if your partner hears that you are looking forward to being with him or her again.
The guidelines I have suggested are very general but they can make a dramatic difference. Unfortunately, tact does not develop immediately and repetition over time is necessary. If you are successful in refining these skills, you will be more likely to create your "space" within the relationship instead of breaking out of the relationship in order to find it.
If you would like to hear my recommendations to people who have written in about their various relationship problems, go to my website at www.carycounseling.com/door/Prototype/marriageadvicefak.html .
The first step for creating a more flexible strategy is to realize that the "space" you’re seeking is not outside in the physical world as much as it is in your own head. A sense of being separate may be helped by being physically apart, but its really the sense of being separate from responsibility and its inherent loss of freedom that you desire. With this in mind, it becomes possible to negotiate for periods of time when you and your partner both understand that neither can expect the focused attention and consideration of the other. For example, it’s possible for one partner to negotiate for an afternoon or an evening when he/she will be focused on other friends or activities and during which he/she will not be emotionally available. This is not a difficult concept.
The second step for devising a better strategy is to give yourself explicit permission to separate emotionally. Many "co-dependent" partners expect this permission to come from the outside world instead of generating it themselves. Unfortunately, it won’t work that way and the engulfment stage is eventually reached with its predictable impulsive acting-out.
If you have reached steps one and two, it is very important that you use some tact in your negotiations for "space". Here are 3 useful guidelines that I have found to be helpful to couples:
1) Give as much advance notice as you can. Advance notice gives another person time to adjust expectations and to start his or her own emotional separation from you. It gives him time to plan how he will take care of himself while you’re unavailable, and he will be much less likely to feel abandoned.
2) If possible, try to allow your partner to have some say over when the period of separation will begin. Asking him or her if there is a better time period is one example. Following this guideline helps the other person to feel like an equal partner because his schedule is not being subordinated to yours without consideration. Pride is less likely to be injured.
3) It is especially important to suggest and negotiate a specific future time when you and your partner can come back together and be available to one another. Suggesting a future time, whether it’s in two hours or two days, is an effective way of affirming the other person’s importance to you and your commitment to the relationship. It will go a long way toward reducing the perception of abandonment if your partner hears that you are looking forward to being with him or her again.
The guidelines I have suggested are very general but they can make a dramatic difference. Unfortunately, tact does not develop immediately and repetition over time is necessary. If you are successful in refining these skills, you will be more likely to create your "space" within the relationship instead of breaking out of the relationship in order to find it.
If you would like to hear my recommendations to people who have written in about their various relationship problems, go to my website at www.carycounseling.com/door/Prototype/marriageadvicefak.html .
Our Most Cherished Myths About Love
In working with many couples over the years, I have found certain themes to emerge again and again. Three of the most frequent themes are really myths about the nature of loving. As myths, they can be very destructive to intimacy. They lead to a misguided effort to create the illusion of love while ignoring the experience of love.
The first of these myths is that loving is giving. This is really just one step up from "love means never having to say you’re sorry." The truth is that loving is a feeling and nothing more. When we turn it into a transaction, we set the stage for us to lose contact with how we feel. Think of it this way. If loving is giving, then if we give more do we necessarily love more? Of course not. How many people reading this article are resentful because their sacrifices have not been appreciated? In reality, mature loving involves more receiving than giving. To love in a mature way we must learn to be attentive and to listen. We receive information from what the other person is telling us about themselves, their experience, and their feelings. Based on that information, we create a feeling within ourselves that is love. This is an especially alien concept to adult children from dysfunctional families because experience was such a devalued commodity within their original families. Many people, especially adult children from dysfunctional families, are taught that somehow they’re supposed to earn love from their parents. Now that they’re adults, it’s an easy extension to earn love from their partner by giving the "gift" of love. Which brings us to our second myth.
It seems a correct and common sense view that we give love. If so, how does that happen? Do we really give away a feeling? This common sense view does not hold up well to close scrutiny. It’s a particularly dangerous myth because it’s easy to use as a manipulation. For example: "Since I feel unimportant, then he’s obviously not giving me enough love." With this distortion, people with low self-esteem can project their dissatisfaction with themselves onto their partner. From the opposite side, the partner may conclude "Because she seems so unhappy, I’m obviously not giving her enough love." (No bias intended with the gender here. Turn it around if you like.) This commodity view of love depersonalizes it and removes it from the realm of experience. In reality, what we give to others is information about how we feel when we love. That information may be received or ignored, interpreted correctly or distorted, believed or discounted, appreciated or devalued. There’s no certainty as to how one partner will feel in response to the information that the other partner feels love. Very possibly, a partner may create their own feelings of being valuable but it’s not a certainty. It’s more accurate to say that love is something that we keep. We keep our feelings within us. They don’t jump outside of our skin. We may give off information but the feelings stay.
A third myth is that we "should" love our partner all the time. This myth ignores the fact that feelings are transitory. It’s also an especially dangerous myth because it sets the stage for turning the feeling of love into a responsibility and that doesn’t work. Many couples have sexual dysfunction around just this issue. If a partner buys the notion that he/she "should" always be interested in sex, then interest will usually atrophy. If you buy the obligation for feeling love, then that too will usually atrophy as a hollow-feeling role takes its place. The reality is that some moments you feel love for your partner, other moments you don’t. There may also be fairly long spans of time when a partner is incapable of love because of stress. That’s natural, it’s real, and it can also be temporary especially if both partners understand the episodic nature of love.
There are other myths about the nature of love but they will be saved for another discussion. What's most important is that we understand that love is a feeling. As a feeling, it's something we experience within ourselves in an episodic manner. When we depersonalize it into a commodity or a role, we set the stage for losing its power in our lives.
If you would like to hear my recommendations to people who have written in about their various relationship problems, go to my website at www.carycounseling.com/door/Prototype/marriagehelpfak.html .
The first of these myths is that loving is giving. This is really just one step up from "love means never having to say you’re sorry." The truth is that loving is a feeling and nothing more. When we turn it into a transaction, we set the stage for us to lose contact with how we feel. Think of it this way. If loving is giving, then if we give more do we necessarily love more? Of course not. How many people reading this article are resentful because their sacrifices have not been appreciated? In reality, mature loving involves more receiving than giving. To love in a mature way we must learn to be attentive and to listen. We receive information from what the other person is telling us about themselves, their experience, and their feelings. Based on that information, we create a feeling within ourselves that is love. This is an especially alien concept to adult children from dysfunctional families because experience was such a devalued commodity within their original families. Many people, especially adult children from dysfunctional families, are taught that somehow they’re supposed to earn love from their parents. Now that they’re adults, it’s an easy extension to earn love from their partner by giving the "gift" of love. Which brings us to our second myth.
It seems a correct and common sense view that we give love. If so, how does that happen? Do we really give away a feeling? This common sense view does not hold up well to close scrutiny. It’s a particularly dangerous myth because it’s easy to use as a manipulation. For example: "Since I feel unimportant, then he’s obviously not giving me enough love." With this distortion, people with low self-esteem can project their dissatisfaction with themselves onto their partner. From the opposite side, the partner may conclude "Because she seems so unhappy, I’m obviously not giving her enough love." (No bias intended with the gender here. Turn it around if you like.) This commodity view of love depersonalizes it and removes it from the realm of experience. In reality, what we give to others is information about how we feel when we love. That information may be received or ignored, interpreted correctly or distorted, believed or discounted, appreciated or devalued. There’s no certainty as to how one partner will feel in response to the information that the other partner feels love. Very possibly, a partner may create their own feelings of being valuable but it’s not a certainty. It’s more accurate to say that love is something that we keep. We keep our feelings within us. They don’t jump outside of our skin. We may give off information but the feelings stay.
A third myth is that we "should" love our partner all the time. This myth ignores the fact that feelings are transitory. It’s also an especially dangerous myth because it sets the stage for turning the feeling of love into a responsibility and that doesn’t work. Many couples have sexual dysfunction around just this issue. If a partner buys the notion that he/she "should" always be interested in sex, then interest will usually atrophy. If you buy the obligation for feeling love, then that too will usually atrophy as a hollow-feeling role takes its place. The reality is that some moments you feel love for your partner, other moments you don’t. There may also be fairly long spans of time when a partner is incapable of love because of stress. That’s natural, it’s real, and it can also be temporary especially if both partners understand the episodic nature of love.
There are other myths about the nature of love but they will be saved for another discussion. What's most important is that we understand that love is a feeling. As a feeling, it's something we experience within ourselves in an episodic manner. When we depersonalize it into a commodity or a role, we set the stage for losing its power in our lives.
If you would like to hear my recommendations to people who have written in about their various relationship problems, go to my website at www.carycounseling.com/door/Prototype/marriagehelpfak.html .
Wise Mistakes
For a good while, I’ve had to talk to numerous people about how to let go of harmful relationships. Getting out of harmful relationships has been a very hot topic in the press for several years. The topic seems relevant to the needs of many. However, there is a danger to such a negative outlook. With such a collective focus on avoiding or escaping from destructive relationships, it’s easy to overlook the natural and non-pathological ways that relationships often do not work out. Many times I have seen people blame themselves mercilessly for having pursued yet another ill-fated relationship, even when the relationship initially seemed to hold much promise. This self-castigation is especially prevalent among the people focussing on recovery from codependence issues. Like most self-blame, it’s destructive as well as unnecessary.
Too many people view relationships from a pseudo-scientific perspective: If you make a wise choice in a partner, then the relationship will work out (assuming you make the "right" moves as well). If you hold this belief as being your own, it may be laying the foundation for accumulating shame and low self-esteem. The problem is that relationship skills are probablistic at best. You can behave in "better" or "worse" ways to influence relationships but you cannot control them. They are NOT scientific and they don’t rely on exact procedures. There are no "right" choices! The myth of control is dangerous even though it seems reassuring on the surface. If you assume relationships can be controlled, then when one doesn’t work out you will likely conclude that you either did not make a wise choice in a mate (i.e. "dumb choice") or that you didn’t manage the relationship the "right" way (i.e. "dumb moves"). These messages accumulate more shame and evidence of your being a defective human being, even though your investment in the relationship may have been a good risk.
You are better off with a broader concept of risk within relationships. Instead of assuming that risk is just a matter of feeling vulnerable., you can also assume that you are operating on very limited information. You can assume that there is a lot about your partner that you cannot know, and perhaps a lot that they may not know about themselves. You can assume that you can’t perfectly predict how your partner’s feelings will change as the relationship evolves. You can assume that changing life circumstances may influence either your partner’s emotional investment or your own. In short, you can assume random and unpredictable influences over which you have little or no control. Which brings me to my main premise: That you can take wise risks for a relationship that doesn’t necessarily work out. Even though you may be disappointed with the demise of a relationship, your initial decision to invest may have been a wise one. This is especially prevalent when one person risks investing with another who is undergoing personal change following a separation or divorce. The newly divorced person may be wonderfully receptive, compassionate, and loving but he or she may be understandably avoidant of new commitments and may not have a stable vision of what he or she wants. Investing with such a person has many risks but also much potential. Will it be worth it? There’s no way to tell for sure. How much time do you have to find out? How important is a future commitment and how much do you want to emphasize the present? How vulnerable are you to the pain of possible disappointment? You may weigh these and other considerations when making a wise choice…and you may still be disappointed in the end. If you considered many of these factors, you don’t have to blame yourself for being dumb or pathological. You can instead appreciate your limitations in being able to predict the future.
So how do you know when you are making a "wise" or an "unwise" investment in a relationship? I would suggest that it is unwise to ignore easily obtainable information that can help your decisions. For example, not communicating with your partner can help keep you totally in the dark. The most unsound choices are made when you are ignoring information that you already have on hand. If you ignore a long and consistent pattern of frustrating behaviors by your partner merely because you keep hoping that he or she will change, then you are certainly exercising unwise choices. The bottom line is that unwise choices will involve unsound consideration of available information. Wise choices involve consideration of available but limited information as well as the real possibility that you may still wind up with having made a wise mistake.
If you would like to hear my recommendations to people who have written in about their various relationship problems, go to my website at www.carycounseling.com/door/Prototype/marriageadvicefak.html .
Too many people view relationships from a pseudo-scientific perspective: If you make a wise choice in a partner, then the relationship will work out (assuming you make the "right" moves as well). If you hold this belief as being your own, it may be laying the foundation for accumulating shame and low self-esteem. The problem is that relationship skills are probablistic at best. You can behave in "better" or "worse" ways to influence relationships but you cannot control them. They are NOT scientific and they don’t rely on exact procedures. There are no "right" choices! The myth of control is dangerous even though it seems reassuring on the surface. If you assume relationships can be controlled, then when one doesn’t work out you will likely conclude that you either did not make a wise choice in a mate (i.e. "dumb choice") or that you didn’t manage the relationship the "right" way (i.e. "dumb moves"). These messages accumulate more shame and evidence of your being a defective human being, even though your investment in the relationship may have been a good risk.
You are better off with a broader concept of risk within relationships. Instead of assuming that risk is just a matter of feeling vulnerable., you can also assume that you are operating on very limited information. You can assume that there is a lot about your partner that you cannot know, and perhaps a lot that they may not know about themselves. You can assume that you can’t perfectly predict how your partner’s feelings will change as the relationship evolves. You can assume that changing life circumstances may influence either your partner’s emotional investment or your own. In short, you can assume random and unpredictable influences over which you have little or no control. Which brings me to my main premise: That you can take wise risks for a relationship that doesn’t necessarily work out. Even though you may be disappointed with the demise of a relationship, your initial decision to invest may have been a wise one. This is especially prevalent when one person risks investing with another who is undergoing personal change following a separation or divorce. The newly divorced person may be wonderfully receptive, compassionate, and loving but he or she may be understandably avoidant of new commitments and may not have a stable vision of what he or she wants. Investing with such a person has many risks but also much potential. Will it be worth it? There’s no way to tell for sure. How much time do you have to find out? How important is a future commitment and how much do you want to emphasize the present? How vulnerable are you to the pain of possible disappointment? You may weigh these and other considerations when making a wise choice…and you may still be disappointed in the end. If you considered many of these factors, you don’t have to blame yourself for being dumb or pathological. You can instead appreciate your limitations in being able to predict the future.
So how do you know when you are making a "wise" or an "unwise" investment in a relationship? I would suggest that it is unwise to ignore easily obtainable information that can help your decisions. For example, not communicating with your partner can help keep you totally in the dark. The most unsound choices are made when you are ignoring information that you already have on hand. If you ignore a long and consistent pattern of frustrating behaviors by your partner merely because you keep hoping that he or she will change, then you are certainly exercising unwise choices. The bottom line is that unwise choices will involve unsound consideration of available information. Wise choices involve consideration of available but limited information as well as the real possibility that you may still wind up with having made a wise mistake.
If you would like to hear my recommendations to people who have written in about their various relationship problems, go to my website at www.carycounseling.com/door/Prototype/marriageadvicefak.html .
Message to a Daughter
If a new partner demonstrates fractured integrity so that future relationship problems are predictable, then it might make sense to reject such a poor gamble. The relevance of this logic was demonstrated when my daughter Heather was twenty years old. She came to me several days after her painful breakup with a second boyfriend in so many years. Heather looked straight into my eyes to underscore the earnestness of what she was about to say.
“Dad?” She said. “Will you teach me to not trust?”
At first I was nonplussed. It seemed a terrible request. Skepticism and cynicism aren’t my favorite attributes. But then I got an idea. Perhaps I could interpret her question to be less absolute. Then I might be able to give her a helpful answer. I asked for a few days to think about her question and she agreed. Several days later, I invited her to go out to our favorite Italian restaurant. After our dinner, I handed her a list of five guidelines to help sharpen her caution when selecting her future partner. Since then, a number of my clients have asked me for similar advice. I’ve given them the same guidelines that I gave her. If you’re contemplating a new relationship, they might be useful to you as well.
1) Quickly leave a new relationship if the person shows ANY lies of convenience. The biggest challenge is to resist your own desire to minimize and rationalize away the lies. If you don’t, it will probably be the biggest mistake of your life. Odds are that the person will be unfaithful over the coming years.
2) Don’t get married unless you and the other person have had three good fights. Until you see him get angry with you, you really haven’t seen his shadow side. If he doesn’t risk conflict, he will gradually distance himself out of the relationship. You want a relationship with someone who isn’t conflict phobic.
3) Team up with someone who can balance pleasure and responsibility. He needs to be comfortable being “healthily selfish.” He needs to love himself as well as you. If he can’t, you will eventually wind up being deprived along with him.
4) Prioritize character over passion. Select a partner who will “pay the price” for the sake of his integrity. You want someone who will struggle to be honest and consistent even when it costs him discomfort. Don’t rely on what the person says. Notice what he does when he thinks he’s unobserved. Don’t be seduced just because he is nice to you. There are many nice people who will show strong feelings for you but who will later betray you because they don’t have much character.
5) Don’t stay with someone who insists you don’t have the right to retreat into your own privacy. Privacy is an absolute right. If a new partner insists that you shouldn’t “abandon” him when you want to be alone, then he’s not accepting responsibility to stabilize himself like an adult. Adults don’t “abandon” other adults. We don’t have that type of responsibility for each other. We do have the responsibility to not abandon our children. If a partner insists that you shouldn’t “abandon” him, then he really wants a parented relationship and not an adult to adult relationship.
If you would like to hear my recommendations to people who have written in about their various relationship problems, go to my website at www.carycounseling.com/door/Prototype/marriagehelpfak.html .
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