Chapter 15

Trust

“My Love Wound Is Beginning to Heal”

If you say, “You can’t trust men (women)!” you are saying more about yourself than about the opposite sex. Love relationships after divorce are often attempts to heal your love wound, so many of them will be transitional and short-term. In your new relationships with others, you may be reworking and improving the way you got along with your parents. By building a basic level of trust within yourself, you can experience satisfying emotionally close and intimate relationships.

I was doing just fine and enjoying myself. Then he said, “I love you.” I panicked and told him to get up, put on his clothes, and go home.

—Ann

On this trust part of the trail, you will notice people who walk some distance away from members of the opposite sex. They are like wild animals that come close, hoping to get some food, yet run for cover the minute you move toward them. These people talk about relationships a great deal of the time, and they seem to want to date. But as soon as someone makes a move toward them, they run and shout, “Stay away!” They wear T-shirts declaring “You can’t trust men!” (or “You can’t trust women!”). They have severe love wounds.

A love wound is the internal pain felt after the end of a love relationship, but it may originate much earlier in life. Many of the juveniles Bruce worked with earlier in his career suffered from love wounds. They had learned that “love equals getting hurt.” If they were put in a warm, loving foster home, they would run away. People who have painful love wounds will hold others at a distance emotionally until the love wound is healed. It may take months or even years for some people to heal—to be able to be emotionally close again.

There Are Relationships…and Then There Are Relationships

Relationships are important to people after divorce. When seminar participants are asked what topics they want to discuss, every group picks “relationships” as the top choice.

(Have you ever noticed at a gathering of singles how often the word “relationship” is used? One woman suggested that the word be censored with a bleep, she was so tired of hearing it! We use it a great deal in this book simply because we don’t know of a better one that carries the same meaning.)

It is often assumed that the only way to prove that you’re doing okay after a breakup is to become involved in another love relationship. In fact, some experts in the divorce field consider remarriage an indication of divorce adjustment. A research study using the Fisher Divorce Adjustment Scale demonstrated the inadequacy of that assumption. A large number of remarried people have not adjusted to the past divorce.

The idea that another relationship will “prove you are okay” leads many people to immediately start seeking out a new “one and only.” We urge you not to go there. The healthiest early relationships after divorce have the goal of healing the love wound. They are transitional—rather than long-term, committed—relationships. (More on this in chapter 16.)

You may have heard the saying, “You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince.” It would be healthier to reword that as, “You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you become a princess (or prince).” If you can make this transition in your thinking, you can free these early relationships from expectations, pressures, and a futuristic outlook. Consider this: instead of asking yourself, “Can I live with this person for the rest of my life?” try instead, “Can this person and I benefit from some time together?”

Allow your new relationships to flow in the present and to help heal your love wound (and perhaps the other person’s love wound as well). Sit back and enjoy the sunsets each day, stop to “smell the roses,” let yourself heal, and realize that many of these early relationships will be short-term because they are built during a needy time in your life. Let these early transitional relationships help you clear the confusion. You will have plenty of time later to build another permanent relationship when you have rebuilt a good foundation within yourself.

The divorce adjustment process may be viewed in two major steps. The first is learning to be a single person, ready to face life alone, with the rubble of the past cleared away. The second step is learning to love again after you have rebuilt your strength to carry the burden of a long-term, committed relationship. If you complete step one first, step two will be easier!

Styles of Relationship: A “Body-Sculpture” Exercise

Here is an exercise that will help you examine your own style in relationships. It is derived from Virginia Satir’s body-sculpturing work, and you’ll need a friend to help out. The diagrams below illustrate different body positions that show various types of love relationships people have. Let’s look at the body sculptures and consider the feelings underneath each style:

A-Frame Dependency Relationship

In the dependency relationship, two people lean on each other. Dependency upon another person sometimes feels good, but it’s somewhat confining. When one person wants to move, change, or grow, it upsets the other, who is leaning on him or her. Try this sculpture pose with another person and then put into words some of the feelings that you have while you are assuming this position.

Smothering Relationship

Here is a position quite frequently seen in teenage relationships. The vocabulary for this relationship is “I can’t live without you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I will devote myself completely to making you happy. It feels so good to be close to you.” Many lovers start out by smothering, then gradually release the stranglehold on each other to allow more room for growth. This smothering pattern may be particularly significant during the honeymoon stage of a new love. The smothering relationship feels good for a while, but eventually, the partners begin to feel trapped.

Pedestal Relationship

This “worshipful” relationship says, “I love you not for who you are, but for who I think you are. I have an idealized image of you, and I’d like to have you live up to that image.” It is very precarious on top of the pedestal because there are so many expectations to live up to.

You can see the problems of communication here. In love with the person’s idealized image, the worshipper is looking up to and trying to communicate with that image instead of with the real person. There is a great deal of emotional distancing inherent in this relationship, and it is difficult for the two people to become close.

Master/Slave Relationship

The master acts and is treated according to these ideas: “I’m the head of this family. I’m the boss. I’ll make the decisions around here.” Do not assume that this relationship necessarily places the male as the boss and head of the family. There are many females who are masters, making all of the decisions for their families.

In most relationships, one of the partners has a personality that is at least a little stronger than the other’s, and that is not necessarily bad. It is when a relationship becomes rigid and inflexible, and when one person is set up to make virtually all of the decisions, that emotional distancing and inequality take place. Maintaining one person as master and the other as slave tends to take a great deal of emotional energy and often results in a power struggle that interferes with the communication and intimacy of the relationship.

Boardinghouse: Back-to-Back Relationship

Linked by their elbows, these two have some sort of contract or agreement that they are going to live together. There is no communication in this relationship. The typical thing is for people to come home and sit down and watch TV while they are eating, then retire to their own living habits for the remainder of the evening. There is no expression of love toward each other.

Notice as you try this position that when one person moves forward (that is, changes, grows, matures), the other person is linked to that movement. A back-to-back relationship is very confining. Many people recognize this as the pattern that existed just before their relationship ended.

Martyr Relationship

Here is the person who completely sacrifices by trying to serve others. Always doing things for other people, never taking time for self, the martyr goes about “asking” to be stepped on. But don’t let the lowly posture fool you! The martyr position is very controlling.

Note that when the person lying down moves, the other person—who has a foot on the martyr—is thrown off balance.

How does the martyr gain control? You guessed it: through guilt. How can you be angry at a person who is doing everything for you, who is taking care of you completely? The martyr is very efficient at controlling people. It is very difficult to live with a martyr, because you feel too guilty to express your own needs and angry feelings. Perhaps you have a martyr parent and can recognize ways of dealing with that parent by understanding the martyr relationship.

Healthy Love Relationship

Two people who are whole and complete have happiness within themselves. Standing upright, not leaning on or tangled up with the other person, they are able to live their own lives. They have an abundance of life to share with the other person. They choose to stay together because they are free to be individuals who are sharing their lives together. They can come close together and choose the smothering position temporarily; they can walk hand in hand as they might do in parenting their children; they can move apart and have their own careers, their own lives, and their own friends. Their choice to stay together is out of love for each other rather than needing to stay together because of unmet emotional needs. The healthy love relationship gives both people the space to grow and become themselves.

Again, we urge you to try these different positions with a friend and see how you feel in each instance. Talk or write about the feelings you experienced in each body position. Which of these positions describes your past love relationship? Don’t be surprised if you relate to more than one—many people feel that their love relationship went through almost all of the unhealthy body positions at one point or another.

Did you learn more causes of divorce from the exercise? The unhealthy relationships seem to suggest a half person looking for another half person. As you become more of a whole person (do we ever become completely whole?), your chances of developing a healthy, healing relationship are greatly increased.

Feelings into Actions

We tend to act out our internal feelings in our relationships. If you are angry, you probably express anger in your love relationship. If you are lonely, you probably tend to be possessive in the relationship in order to keep the other person from leaving you and making you lonely again. If you are in deep emotional pain, you’ll likely have a relationship full of pain. If you have a love wound, you will emotionally distance the other person to avoid exacerbating your wound.

Many of us seek relationships with people who have qualities we are missing in ourselves. If you are introverted and want to be more comfortable around people, you may get together with an extravert. If you lack confidence, you’ll be attracted to someone who exudes confidence. And if you need to feel guilty, you’ll develop a relationship with someone who makes you feel guilty.

Of course, the coin also has a positive flip side. If you feel happy, confident, and lovable, you’ll act out those feelings in your relationship. We can learn much about ourselves by looking at our relationships. What feelings are you expressing in your relationships? Is there a pattern? (For example, do you always bring home stray cats?) Do your relationships reflect good feelings within, or do they reflect neediness?

Is Your History Repeating Itself?

Another major factor in relationship styles is one we’ve mentioned before: the interaction we had with our parents. Each of us learned how to respond to love, anger, rejection, and intimacy from our own parents. If your parents fought, then you are likely to have a very tough time with fights. If your parents were cold and untouching, then you may find it difficult to touch and to handle warm emotions. Many a marriage is not satisfactory because the partners are interacting just like their parents did.

Jeff put it this way: “Marriage is like a favorite recipe. If you don’t make it right the first time, you keep doing it over until you get it right. In my first marriage, I was acting out the unproductive patterns I learned as a child. I didn’t change internally after my divorce, so I continued to act out those patterns in my second marriage.”

If you can use each relationship to learn about yourself and how you are acting out your internal feelings in your relationships, you can then use each relationship to become more the person you want to be. It is possible to grow from each relationship, and that is a positive way of looking at having had more than one marriage.

After divorce, we often interact the way we did earlier in life. This can be positive: becoming a healthy person emotionally is like climbing a slide on the playground. You progress up so far, then lose your grip and slide back down. The next time you try, you are able to climb to a higher point. Although each relationship that ends might find you back down at the bottom of the slide, when you climb again, you know how to climb higher and become more healthy. In their relationships after divorce, many people are reworking the patterns of interaction they learned from their parents in order to make those patterns more productive.

We hope the discussions in this chapter of various concepts of relationships are helping you carry out the rubble and make room to rebuild yourself. The problem of trust is largely internal rather than external, and understanding your past is helpful in understanding where you are now. The first step of growth is to become aware of ourselves, our patterns of interaction, and our methods of relating with others.

Enough of carrying out the rubble—let’s start rebuilding!

“Where Do I Meet Someone?”

This is one of the questions formerly married people ask most frequently. The simple, almost absurd, answer is, “Right where you are!” People go to bars, singles groups, and ceramics classes (it’s amazing how many once-marrieds do that) in their attempts to meet people. We don’t quarrel with going places where single people gather. But take care. The “bar scene,” for example, typically includes many lonely people who can’t relate until they are slightly under the influence. And bar hoppers are often game players out to practice and improve their games of interaction, with sex frequently being the goal of the game.

The question “Where do I meet someone?” often indicates that the asker is looking for a committed, long-term partner. Perhaps somewhat desperate and thus sending out desperate vibrations with body language, vocabulary, and “the look in their eyes,” these people tend to drive others away. Others fear that they will become sucked in by the neediness; some even call the needy ones “vacuum cleaners”!

How often have you heard it said, “There ain’t nothing but turkeys out there”? Of course, that’s partly true. Many formerly married people are hurting and are therefore not especially attractive dates during the rough periods. But have you thought about what you would do if an eagle landed near you? You would probably run like mad! A person who is eligible and looks like a possible marriage partner scares the hell out of you if your love wound is still fresh. Maybe you are looking for turkeys because they are safe? Maybe you are still hurting and more or less a turkey yourself? Turkeys do tend to hang together, you know. Maybe, if “there ain’t nothing but turkeys out there,” you haven’t rebuilt yourself yet to the status of an eagle.

When you have blinders on and see only potential marriage partners, do you realize how many people you are not seeing out there? When you start becoming interested in getting to know the people around you, then you will start making friends. And some of those friends might become lovers, but looking for lovers keeps both friends and lovers away.

It bears repeating: Your goal (for now) is to get acquainted and develop friendships with the people around you. Pay no attention to whether or not they are “eligible singles”; notice only if they are interesting people you would like to get to know. Develop as many positive relationships with people of both sexes as you can. You can get to know these potential friends wherever you are. When you go to the grocery store and send out positive vibrations and act interested in others, you attract people like flies to honey. At parties, if you forget about trying to find a bed partner or someone to go home with after the party, you might get to know a number of interesting people. If you’ve found happiness within and send out those vibrations, people will enjoy being with you.

There’s a difference in the numbers of formerly married males and females, and the ratio is unfair: US census statistics for recent years show that women make up well over half of unmarried adults. Women live longer than men; for each year of life, there are more females than males living. Also, there are many males who remarry someone much younger, often a woman not married before. (It may be small compensation to women, but it is true that women adjust to living alone much better than do men.)

Ginger posed another issue frequently discussed by recently divorced people: “Every time I go to a singles gathering, it becomes a game of ‘my place or yours?’” There are many singles who have not learned to deal with the opposite sex other than sexually, but that doesn’t mean you have to narrow yourself the same way. Keep developing your personality and broadening yourself. The more interests you develop, the more interesting people you will find. And keep in mind that you can always say, “No thanks!”

Rebuilding Trust

Some ideas that have grown out of the Fisher divorce seminars may help you overcome problems of trust.

Try this one: be really honest the next time you go out. If you are hurting over a painful love wound, explain to the person who seems interested in you that you want to spend time with him or her, but you fear you’ll be a wet blanket. Don’t try to put on a mask of “cool and sophisticated” when in reality you’re scared to death. When you explain your fears to others, you might be surprised to learn they’re feeling or have felt the same way. After all, we’re all human. And you’ll both be relieved to be able to be yourselves instead of some “Joe Cool” you thought you had to be.

Have you thought about learning to trust with friends rather than lovers? If you find someone of the opposite sex with whom you can be friends, that person is much safer for you than a lover. When you add romance to the ingredients of a friendship, it adds instability to the relationship and makes it harder to take risks and learn to trust.

We project our lack of trust onto others. Many parents believe that their teenagers are not to be trusted. Valerie’s parents, for example, feared she would become pregnant, so they wouldn’t allow her to date, even though she was a junior in high school. It turned out that her mother had become pregnant as a teenager and was projecting her lack of trust in herself onto Valerie.

A similar event often occurs in marriage counseling. Tess admitted that her husband, Andre, kept checking on her to make sure she was not having an affair. Then she discovered that Andre was having the affair and projecting his lack of trust onto her! Like so many other feelings, lack of trust may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Valerie said she felt she should become pregnant because that was what her parents seemed to believe was going to happen. And Tess felt she might as well have an affair if that was what Andre suspected anyway!

A severe love wound leads to fear of trusting. As appealing as the warmth may be, to become close is to risk being burned again. Relationships after divorce are controlled by this lack of trust. The purpose of these relationships ought to be to learn trust again and to heal the love wound. Again, this is why many such connections are short-term. Trying to make them into something long-term often does nothing but aggravate the love wound and prolong the adjustment process.

We have all learned how to interact from our love relationships and from our parents. As adults, we may choose to improve the styles of interaction that we learned. Becoming aware of one’s style is an important first step. It may also take several friendships and love relationships to help one develop healthier styles.

We have to take risks to learn to trust. Risks may backfire and lead to rejection or misunderstanding, but they’re necessary if one is to become close and experience intimacy again. The rewards are worth the risks.

Trust and the Children

The problem of trust is especially difficult for children who were not made aware of what was going on with their parents’ divorce. Children have trouble adjusting to the sudden absence of a parent with whom they had little or no direct communication. If the mother, for example, leaves the household without communicating to her child why she is leaving or the problems she was having in the marriage, the child may feel deserted and in turn have trouble trusting that parent.

Kids really are tougher than you think, and they can handle an awful lot of reality if parents would just take the time and find the courage to communicate directly with them. Parents who hide their heads in the sand or feel they cannot share the truth of their situation with their children often create mistrust in the children and lose a potentially valuable source of love and support in the process. It is a very unusual—or very young—child who does not figure out that the parents are going to get a divorce before the parents tell the family. The more you can communicate and level with your children, the more they will trust what you say.

How Are You Doing?

Here are some items to help you see how you are doing and if you are ready to continue the climb. We are nearing the top, so take care not to rush here—this rebuilding block must be securely in place before you proceed.