Not Wanting What We Think We Want
“I should have known that something was badly wrong when Mason pulled out Henry Miller’s trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion (totaling 1,462 pages) on our honeymoon.”
At some unconscious level, the couple living in irrelationship finds “safety” in knowing what they can expect from one another and what not to ask for. It’s kind of like an old joke cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek likes to tell about Communist Poland.1
A customer enters a store.
Customer: “Do you have any butter?”
Clerk: “No, we’re the store that doesn’t have any toilet paper. The store across the street is the one that doesn’t have any butter!”
Gina and Mason knew they didn’t have to worry that either would ask the other for closeness and sharing—an idea that scared the daylights out of them. This made it easy for Gina to blame their disappointing honeymoon on Mason’s busy-ness with Henry Miller, with the added value of giving her an out for dealing with her anxiety about whether or not she was sexually desirable. This configuring of their marriage may seem insane, but remaining blind to their song-and-dance routine enabled Gina and Mason to keep themselves blissfully unaware of their fear of intimacy.
“I’d spent years pretending I was okay with a sexless relationship, which let me off the hook from confronting Mason about it. But deciding to get married changed something for me, and I decided I was going to ask for it on our honeymoon. Well, Mason didn’t even try to pretend he wanted me more than he wanted Henry Miller. After six years together, I was finally forced to swallow the hard truth that he didn’t want to be close to me that way. If I wanted sex, I’d have to go elsewhere. And, well, that’s what I ended up doing.
“Still, it was a real shame: all those trips to Victoria’s Secret, having some naughty fun buying naughty nightie things—things I ended up wearing to monitor Mason’s progress through Rosy Crucifixion. If I’m honest, though, I knew a long time ago that Mason just wasn’t a very romantic guy—not the way everybody dreams of, I guess. So where did I get the idea that he loved me—or that I wanted him to love me?”
This wasn’t the first time this had happened to Gina. “I finally admitted to myself that our honeymoon was actually a replay of what happened with every boyfriend I’d had since high school. Then I heard about irrelationship—about people who were really afraid of letting anyone get too close, no matter how attracted to the other person they were, so I finally started wondering, ‘Am I doing this on purpose?’”
For Gina, the upside of hitting the wall on their honeymoon was that it forced her to admit that the “same ol’ same ol’” wasn’t working anymore, which is—or can be—the jumping off place for relationship sanity. So, while Mason wasn’t especially interested in changing their status quo, Gina’s investment in their song-and-dance routine drained away pretty quickly.
In many cases, however, a couple becomes able to break through that denial together and admits that something is wrong—and they want to fix it. In such cases, the couple
1. recognizes their mutual isolation;
2. decides together that they want to recover what excited them about each other when they first met;
3. breaks free from the straitjacket of their song-and-dance routines;
4. faces and works through the buried feelings and fears that had overwhelmed their ability to be there for one another.
Often, opening the door to buried anxiety can be harrowing, and deciding to do so doesn’t guarantee a restored relationship. But the agreement to go through it together, no matter what, gives the couple a better shot at the outcome they’re hoping for.
Exercise: Joint Compassion Meditation2—Learning to Observe Thoughts and Feelings
In this brief section, we outline some basic moves for establishing a practice which you—as partners in a building alliance—can create and then return to at certain suggested key points and/or any time the work in this book becomes anxiety-provoking and overwhelming. We suggest putting a sticky-note on this page because we’ll ask users to return to this exercise a few times in the course of the book.
Observing our thoughts and feelings nonjudgmentally as spectators isn’t something many of us practice, despite evidence of the value of doing so. But cultivating this practice—sometimes known as mindfulness—and using it in stressful situations helps us focus on essential information needed to make better choices, including choices about how to navigate relationships. At times, you and your partner may find it necessary to do this exercise in separate rooms or even at separate times.
• Start in a comfortable, seated position with your feet flat on the floor, your head slightly tilted down, and your eyes partially open, focusing on a spot a few feet in front of you. Avoid falling asleep.
• Sit quietly giving attention to the breath while observing without judgment the stream of thoughts passing through your mind. Then return your attention to the breath.
• Since this is not a competition or contest, even against yourself, there is no good/bad or right/wrong: it’s simply a process for learning about what your mind does and becoming able to step back from it.
• Now, together and using a timer, spend three to five minutes sitting quietly and looking into one another’s eyes. You may find the following questions useful.
º How did it feel to observe your thoughts and emotions without reacting to them?
º What suggestions or reflections can you offer one another about observing thoughts without reacting to them?
• When you share your experience, speaking and listening without interruption, use compassionate listening.
• As you listen, with each inhalation, imagine compassion is flowing into you, from the world, and from you to yourself.3 As you exhale, imagine that compassion is flowing from you into your partner. You may do this whenever listening and especially throughout the exercises in the following chapters.
• After your session, no matter how brief, make notes about how it felt, what you thought about, and how this practice might relate to learning how to be present in your relationship.
Identifying Emotions
“It’s seems strange now,” Mason reflected, “that both of us were too afraid to ask each other for what we wanted. Anyway, I know I was: I learned not to ask for anything when I was growing up. Our family life was such a mess that somehow I knew the safest thing to do was to just keep my head down. Well, what a mess that made for me and Gina. I knew Gina was getting hurt but I was paralyzed. I just couldn’t reach out to her. I excused it by reminding myself that when we first met, she told me how afraid she was of getting too close. Boy, did that come in handy. I used that to let myself off the hook for years.”
“Yeah,” Gina added. “And I was just wishing that he’d show feelings about something, anything, to break up how boring our lives had become.”
“Well somehow, I finally got it,” Mason said, “and when I did, I felt so bad that I was willing to do pretty much anything to figure out how we’d gotten into this dead space of just existing with one another. Thank God, I could still tell that I really loved Gina and wanted to be with her. I wanted to stop that damned dance around our marriage. I just didn’t know what to do different.”
The breaking through of uncomfortable feelings is probably the most recognizable first sign that irrelationship isn’t working anymore. The good news is that the more uncomfortable those feelings are the more likely the couple still has something worth keeping.
The lengths to which we’ll go to prevent others from knowing too much about us is particularly problematic in romantic relationships. But the desire to shield ourselves from exposing our vulnerability and dependence to others can also be isolating among family members, disruptive among coworkers, and counterproductive in any setting where individuals undertake a shared task.
The following exercises focus on how we came to defend ourselves from those on whom we depend. We do this by looking at what it feels like to depend on others, why this makes us feel anxious, and finally by beginning to examine the behaviors we developed to deal with these uncomfortable feelings.
Exercise: Naming Feelings (Individuals and Couples)
During this exercise, you will learn to identify and get to the bottom of strange or unwanted feelings. This is a vital skill for overcoming feelings of isolation. Refer to the Emotion Wheel on this page to help guide your discussion.
• Recall a serious argument you had with your partner and write down as accurately as you can what each party said as the disagreement proceeded.
• What emotions came up most often and what was happening when they did? Distinguish between feelings you showed and didn’t show.
• Make note of feelings both of you had during the disagreement, simultaneously or not. How did this commonality of feelings affect the argument?
Now review the argument you detailed.
• Identify exchanges that sound like avoidance (irrelationship) as opposed to honest sharing (relationship sanity).
• Do any themes stand out in the argument? Which ones?
• Identify implicit or explicit messages you were giving each other.
• Having examined this exchange, what would you like to change? How would you do that?
Associating and Reassociating
Feelings of pain and loneliness, missing each other, and anger at feeling abandoned are warning signs that irrelationship defenses are no longer defending us from our dissociated feelings. Reassociating blocked experience requires compassion for ourselves and our partner if healing is to take place.
Compassionate empathy entails honestly sharing our deepest anxieties and vulnerability with someone who is important in our life—feelings that we’ve deliberately kept out of our own sightlines since we were small children. Such sharing requires mutual generosity and gratitude—the antithesis of the one-sidedness of an irrelationship song-and-dance routine.
Approaching Our Fears
Anxiety can make us overanalyze problems, making our anxiety worse and hampering our ability to verbalize our feelings and solve problems. The result is that we’ll probably return to our default setting of suppressing our feelings, which aggravates the harm done by ongoing anxiety.
The information and exercises that follow are aimed at moving you from anxiety to acceptance of feelings and, ultimately, toward compassionate empathy, the foundation of relationship sanity.
Cognitive Distancing: Our ability to make quick decisions is a skill we developed tens of thousands of years ago to survive life-or-death situations. However, as mentioned previously, split-second decision-making can be cluttered by an unending stream of emotional reactions to information buzzing around in our minds. Pausing and stepping back from that buzzing improves our attempt at better decision-making in stressful situations.
Focusing on Direct Experience: Our minds create stories about how safe and loveable we are based on experiences we had with our first caregivers. As we begin to detach from what goes through our minds, we become able to identify and question assumptions about ourselves and the world. This improves our readiness and ability to encounter life-experiences and other people with acceptance and spontaneity. The following practice allows you to explore the present spontaneously and without overthinking.
• What is “right now” like?
• Where is your mind’s focus right now? Is it on what’s actually happening, what might happen, or on what has happened?
• What’s the difference between what’s actually happening and what you think or fear might happen?
• What’s the difference between how you feel when you think about what’s actually happening and when you think about what might happen?
• What role does fear play in your relationship with your partner? What about in other aspects of your life?
Exercise: Labeling (Individuals and Couples)
This exercise examines how your thoughts get in the way of actual experience.
1. Reflect on the thoughts you noted in the “Naming Feelings” exercise and write down a few words to describe the content of those thoughts.
2. Discuss (or write about) how your thoughts may reveal what’s going on in your head and how they might interfere with being present with a person or experience “right now.” Take note of how labels you give your thoughts might shape or reflect your true feelings and how you honestly view a situation.
Exercise: Staying in the Present (Couples)
One of the main indicators of irrelationship is the repetition of patterns used in unsuccessful relationships. While our past failures are not guarantees that we’ll repeat them, failure to intervene consciously will likely result in our continuing to edge away from our true desires.
The following exercise can lessen the power the past has over you.
1. Set a timer. Take three to five minutes apart from one another to reflect on your past, both before and since you met your partner.
2. Come together again and reflect on how the exercises you’ve done up to this point are affecting your understanding and experience of being with another person.
3. Discuss the idea of being in a relationship as a choice rather than a solution to a problem, such as your fear of being alone or the feeling that you need someone to take care of you.
4. Discuss any new ideas or feelings you have about the idea of losing a relationship.
Exercise: Broadening the View (Couples)
Compassionate empathy is a technique for building intimacy by listening in hospitable silence—the foundation of relationship sanity.
1. Discuss new insights you’re gaining about how anxiety related to past experiences affects how you see others and react to interpersonal situations.
2. Identify simple tools from the exercises that might be useful for countering anxiety-provoking situations while you’re in them.
Exercise: Remembering the First Encounter (Couples)
How did your relationship start? What was it about this person that got under your skin and stayed there? Did it happen fast, or did it take time? Did you have reservations or did it seem perfect?
The following questions will help you reflect on the beginning of your relationship. Take time to sit and ask and answer the questions together.
1. What was it like when we met?
2. Where did we meet?
3. How old were you and what was going on in your life?
4. How long was your previous relationship, and how long had you been single (if you were) when you met?
5. How did your meeting come about?
6. Was there anything about meeting each other that felt familiar? If yes, how did you feel about that?
7. When you met, did you think you saw qualities in your partner that have turned out to be accurate? Which qualities turned out to be inaccurate?
Write down anything else about your first meeting(s) that stand out in your mind—especially feelings or behaviors. Avoid censoring yourself. Compare your results noting points of agreement and disagreement. Take note of questions raised as well as items you prefer to avoid discussing.
Exercise: There Was Something About You (Couples)
Now let’s drill down into what happened on your first meeting. Answer these questions individually.
1. What traits do you remember as first catching your attention?
a. Physical traits or overall appearance
b. Particular emotional or other non-verbal signals
c. The way she or he conversed or shared ideas
d. Purely or almost purely sexual
e. Unable to be put into words? If so, try to do so now.
2. What initial attractions remain appealing to you?
3. What initial attractions or traits have either disappeared or turned out to be erroneous?
Next write a detailed description of what made your partner exciting to you. Was it something emotional, intellectual, physical, or spiritual? Did you like his or her sense of humor? Did she or he make you feel safe? If you felt only sexual attraction at first, discuss that and describe how that changed or didn’t change.
Now share your responses with each other. Discuss similarities and differences.
1. How does it feel right now to be doing this with each other?
2. Are you aware of leaving out anything important? Do you know why you did?
3. Are you aware right now of feelings you had about or for each other when you first met? What is it like to recall them?
Staying on Target: Connected versus Estranged
By now, you’re probably coming to realize that examining the same problems over and over again isn’t necessarily the way you’re going to solve them. In fact, doing so may just feed your anxiety, making it even harder to find solutions.
When your mind is stuck in a loop, you can interrupt it by getting up and moving around or doing a different task or activity. When you sit down again, you should have a different perspective. Truth be told, that’s what you have been doing together as you work on the exercises in this chapter. What’s it been like? Getting up and getting going—not staying stuck in your thoughts and your song-and-dance routines—has been driven by the compassionate empathy and opening up to intimacy that you unlocked and brought forth at the moment you agreed to work with each other—to help in a reciprocal way.
Key Takeaways
• We can be kind to ourselves and to each other in this moment.
• We can give each other the compassionate empathy needed to feel accepted and cared for by each other.
• Compassionate empathy can allow us to reach, touch, and be touched by each other.
• We can break out of isolation together.
• We can verbalize thoughts or phrases expressive of our immediate situation—perhaps returning to the feelings we were experiencing when we began—hurt, sadness, or anger. Then we can verbalize the desire to use that negative experience as an opening to a compassionately empathetic relationship.
Through these means, we can break out of our fear and isolation. We will learn that a healthy relationship is developed and maintained to withstand our conflicts, our ambivalence, and our insecurity—that is, relationship sanity is the place where we are ultimately loved, cared for, and accepted as we actually are.
Now pause and look at each other. Use free association to discuss any thoughts or thought fragments, feelings, reflections, and analysis of where you were and where you’re headed—individually and as a couple—along the road of recovery from irrelationship, the road of relationship sanity.