I’m going to start off by suggesting that you read Sue Johnson (Real Love Stories) – then come back.
Any notions I have about the psychology of relationships almost always start with my own experiences and then branch out in to a series of questions along the lines of, if I’m feeling this, surly my partner might feel it too…how can I understand her, and me, and us better? I had never spent much time thinking about relationships until I had gotten divorced. Newly single, I had to figure out ways to navigate some pretty choppy waters. You don’t get to the age of 40 without collecting some experiences (baggage), and it always seemed helpful to assume that everyone else out there had their collection of hurts, big and small – nobody has been fully healed and is 100% good to go. For me, it was my story of being in a marriage in which the affection for each other died many years before we got divorced. I sometimes wore it as a badge of honor – to show how dependable I was. Even without affection, I remained a faithful husband and great dad. This was my differentiating factor, my selling point – many other men would have cheated or left… It wasn’t until sometime later that I also had to accept that maybe stronger men would have demanded better for themselves. It wasn’t until I met my ex-fiancee, B, that I realized there were a whole bunch of defense mechanisms that I had built up over that time.
One of the earliest lessons I learned when I started dating came from my first post-divorce relationship. I went in to it not wanting to date anyone that lived in the city or had young kids. This woman checked of neither of those boxes – she was all city and had two little ones. I liked her right from the start, and the more I got to know her, the dumber my “deal-breakers” seemed. I liked being in the city, and suddenly I could see myself stepping back in to the role of being a stepdad (or at the very least, I wanted to meet the kids). Confronted with this about-face, I had to take a really hard look at why those things were deal-breakers in the first place. The city thing had everything to do with commuting, parking, and the hassle of getting in and out of the city. Not quite on the verge of a phobia, it was a source of anxiety for me (I worry about logistics and being on time). In order for me to function, I needed to have routines established – where can I always find parking, what times are the commutes reasonable, etc. I wanted to do whatever I could to limit my stressors. I hadn’t imagined liking someone enough to make me want to manage those petty frustrations and anxieties. The kids thing, I realized was a hold-over from my marriage. I had gotten so in to the mindset of freedom after kids that I just didn’t want to be tied down like that. I wasn’t able to see other possibilities or other joys. Hearing this woman talk so lovingly about her kids made me re-think this posture. I would have never come to that level of understanding of myself without her help – without her being a mirror for me; forcing me to question what I thought I knew about myself.
From December 2017 through May 2018 I dated another woman. We weren’t a good fit. She was a bit of a lost soul. There’s no kind way to say that she hadn’t found herself. She immediately took to all of my interests. She became reliant on me for just about everything: job advice, volunteer advice, music, activities. She was forever unhappy – didn’t like her job, didn’t like where she lived, didn’t seem to like her family. I was the only thing she seemed to like. She wanted to be rescued. I’m patient, compassionate, and always want to help, but I don’t think I’m the rescuing type. I wasn’t feeling the connection with her, and there were times seeing her felt like an obligation. That feeling can creep in to the best relationships – everyone needs space, but there weren’t any periods where I felt genuinely happy and excited to do things together. At best, it was a relationship where I was going to do what I wanted and she was welcome to tag along. This gnawed at me. She wasn’t able to see how there was no way something so one-sided could work. She had spent years working on herself and not dating anyone. To me, it helped solidify my belief that there really is no such thing as working on yourself in isolation. I don’t doubt that she had done a lot of work, but she had never tested it out in front of anyone. The work she had done was to overcome trauma, she hadn’t figured out who she was or wanted to be. If I had felt differently about her, I would have wanted to help more, I would have wanted to be the person she learned and grew with. I didn’t feel that way about her and I had to leave.
Trust me, having just written that, I have to allow for the possibility that my fiancee felt exactly the same way about me… that maybe she just didn’t like me enough to put in the effort, that maybe I was drawing too much on her and not enough on myself. My only counter to that is that I knew what I liked and who I was, and was learning to sacrifice some parts and hold on to others. Also, we got engaged and we were putting in the effort. Had this other woman suggested couples therapy, I would have said, “no way.” When B suggested it, I saw it as another way to connect on a deeper level (keep in mind, I had never done therapy, and was raised to have a general distrust of it).
It wasn’t until I started dating that I began to pay attention to the mechanics of relationships. It wasn’t until I experienced really bad communication that I started to think about how to model the things I might need and appreciate. It was those deep dives in to the things that caused me anxiety – does she like me, why haven’t I heard back, that made me think about the anxieties I might be causing someone else. I was becoming practiced at anticipating the other. My experiences with these women made me pay close attention to the baggage people carry and how they carry it. I paid attention to how they spoke about other people, especially exes – or if they avoided it altogether. I paid attention to whether or not they were open and trusting or closed and suspicious. I paid attention to how they viewed the world – was it from a place of security or a place of fear? I also started reading about the psychology of relationships. I had read a few things by the Gottmans on how we make and receive bids for attention and the importance of turning towards each other. My experience hiking alone in the Smoky Mountains made me realize that, above all else, I want to create and share memories with someone else, and this made me curious about the physical and psychological benefits of partnerships. To some degree, I was becoming a student of love and relationships (still am).
I’m a firm believer that deep connections happen naturally, and are, at first pretty effortless. I also believe that over time, as two people really get to know each other, they become mirrors for the good and bad in each other. This peeling back of layers means that trust and safety have been established, but it also means that two people have the ability to cause a lot of hurt to each other and will need to work until the knowledge of each other is so deep that things once again become effortless – they learn each other’s sore spots. Jocelyn, the therapist my ex-fiancee and I used, would often tell us that the first year or so is often the hardest. I think she liked working with us… she saw how much we cared about each other and she saw our commitment to the process….
B and I had a breakup in October of 2018. During those few days, I spent a fair amount of time journaling. As I thought about the things she was upset with – mainly feeling claustrophobic, I started to explore my family dynamics and my anxieties. I wanted to try to answer WHY I do the things I do. Specifically, I was thinking about how my brother always walks up to his family and joins a conversation by asking what’s wrong. There’s an insecurity in the tone, a presumption that he’s being talked about. I do some of the same things. Thinking about where this might have come from, I discovered attachment theory. I talked to my mom a bit about her divorce from my dad, and how we as kids took that. She said that we used to watch him from the window as he left after spending time with us. I can distinctly remember having to be ready the minute he came to pick us up for basketball practice – no room to screw around (this is where being on time and ready probably comes from). She talked about how for months, he wouldn’t talk to my brother and I had to relay messages between the two of them. When I began reading and thinking about attachment theory, I could see myself falling in to two camps… sometimes I displayed the characteristics of secure attachment styles, and sometimes I showed all the signs of the anxious and preoccupied style. I could see how my past relationships have shaped the way I approach life and current relationships. I would have never pushed myself to think about these things if it weren’t for the possibility of losing B – again, self discovery through someone else….
This morning when I opened a new tab in my browser, I scrolled through the recommended articles. The one that caught my eye was: Real Love Stories. It had the tag line: “Romantic expectations are often ridiculous and unhelpful, but attachment science can guide us to real and lasting love.” It turns out it’s by Sue Johnson, author of Hold Me Tight, who I’ve referenced a few times on this blog. I discovered Johnson’s writing after B left – I wish we had both read her before the leaving. I wish our therapy had gotten to the level Sue talks about a little more quickly. I think we were getting there, we were starting to recognize certain patterns – the self-fulfilling flee/chase dynamic. The article reinforces much of my thinking on relationships. In it, she talks about the benefits of EFT (emotionally focused therapy). She talks about the replicated studies that show how it helps with things like depression and PTSD… she suggests that it can change our attachment type and help us build stronger, more secure relationships. I’ll quote liberally:
We are wired by millions of years of evolution for this kind of connection, and it is as essential to us as our next breath. Emotional connection with a safe loved other soothes our nervous system; it whispers ‘safety’ to our bonding brain.
I knew B had suffered trauma – most likely something beyond the loss of her husband and mother. She struggled with criticism, and feeling good enough. I knew being with me was, at times, helping, she said it. She was always good and thoughtful in the cards she gave me. One of them had a quote from Lao Tzu “To love someone gives you strength. Being loved by someone gives you courage.” I had tried to operate from this principle. It is, in part, the foundation of my approach to relationships and my anxieties. Get there early, get settled, have fun (establish security). I liked getting to a point of security so that I might have the courage to be daring, and fun, and amazing. On some level, B understood this too. In one of her cards she wrote that she had learned to feel like home can be a safe again. It makes me sad that she ever lost that feeling. I wanted her to feel safe enough to grow. This is why I cherish the word home – it’s the home I thought we were building.
In her article, Johnson talks about benefit of togetherness
The brain takes the resource called proximity to others into account even in basic perception processes such as the visual perception of height. If we are alone, we actually see a hill as higher. If we are accompanied by another, we perceive a hill as lower. The idea that we are better together, sharing the load and the stress, is a physiological fact rather than a sentimental statement.
Predictable physical or emotional connection with a close other calms our nervous system and shapes a sense of safe haven where comfort and reassurance can be readily obtained, and emotional balance can be restored and enhanced. This balance gives us choice. Once in balance, we can choose to move in any direction; without it, we fall haphazardly. This balance promotes the development of a grounded, whole sense of self; a self that can organise the chaos of experience into a coherent whole. The self is a process that is always constructed with others; according to this perspective, you cannot be a self all by yourself.
I’ve said it over and over – my favorite moments were the early morning sitting on the sofa coffee moments. It was the most calming type of love. B an I were always holding hands. Our language was proximity and touch. We spoke it well. The world seemed balanced.
Being able to depend on a loved one also offers us a secure base, a platform from which to risk and explore our world. Effective dependency is a source of resilience, while the denial of attachment needs and pseudo-self-sufficiency are liabilities. It is the child who knows the mother is watching and will come if needed who takes the risk to go down the steep slide …
“To love someone gives you strength. Being loved by someone gives you courage.” I’ve always argued against the term co-dependency, I much prefer the term above – effective dependency. I think it’s important to be able to depend on someone else. B often talked about wanting to avoid co-dependency – she saw too much of it in her parents, and she had been let down by too many people in her life to want to depend on anyone. Depending on someone else is not a weakness, it is the ultimate form of vulnerability, the ultimate show of courage and strength. It is an offering up that says I fully trust you to take care of me. This doesn’t mean that you “need” someone to always take care of you, but that in those times of need, you have no doubt that your partner has your back. It’s a dance, that when done properly, can be transformative. As EFT suggests, it can heal all types of old wounds, it can teach trust again, restore faith in humanity.
I did my best to model that vulnerability – I don’t know that I did it all that well. I’m a “let’s identify what could go wrong, so that we both know what we’re up against type of guy.” I’m a “let’s hit this together” type of guy. Towards the end of our relationship, we had felt like we had made enough progress, that we could stop, or at least dial back, the couples therapy. B liked our therapist, and we both agreed that it would make sense for her to continue on by herself. I hated to hear her refer to herself as broken. I knew she needed and wanted some help – beyond what I could give her. I also knew that solo therapy would absolutely test our relationship. I knew that she would be talking about things that would be painful – there’s no way to go through it and not impact the relationship… it’s why individual therapy often involves the spouse on some level. I told B, that I support her but I am nervous. This was my attempt at vulnerability, my attempt to call it out so that we were both prepared for it. This was my way of saying, this may be difficult, I’m with you, will you be with me when things get tough? I tried to reassure her (and myself) before her first session. I texted her, “One other thing before Jocelyn…. I love you with all my heart. You’re an amazing and wonderful person (a well designed human). I wouldn’t want to be with anyone else.” I was trying to say, you’re awesome, and we got this. The text I got back read: “I wouldn’t want to be with anyone else either babes. Just got to figure out my own shit and hopefully will be better for both of us. Kisses and hugs.”
I never wanted her to feel like the struggle was hers alone – that SHE had to figure out her own shit. She took her “brokenness” to be something she had to fix in order for us to work. Well before I asked her to marry me, I saw her problems as our problems. I was committing to the WE. I wish she wouldn’t have seen it as something she needed to figure out on her own… I would have been by her side ready to jump in whenever called. Of course I was scared. Therapy is about change, and change can be frightening. That first session, I remember feeling like I was back in that hospital waiting room waiting for B to emerge. Happy to see her, worried that maybe she wasn’t ok. “The self is a process that is always constructed with others; according to this perspective, you cannot be a self all by yourself.”
Science and practice with couples and families over the past 30 years tells us clearly that love makes sense. For the first time in human history, we can grasp love and shape it, so that we can, if we chose, fall in love again and again with a partner over a lifetime.
What I’ve read about EFT gives me hope. Hope for B and her future. Hope for me and mine. I’d have loved for us to work through that process together – I always believed we were stronger as a unit and better than most couples. Best Couple Ever. EFT tells me that we still could – I think it makes a whole lot of things possible… Sometimes, when I think about this blog and that whole audience thing, I get a little more comfortable with all of it. If B reads it, I’m not ashamed of believing in us beyond all doubt, I’m not ashamed of the hope I’ve held on to, I’m not ashamed of believing in our ability to really see and heal each other. I think we saw each other better than anyone else had. We had been more vulnerable with each other than we had with anyone else, which is a damn good first step. And if it’s my future partner who reads this – they’ll need to know where my scars are, how deep they run. They’ll need to know that we too will have to peel back and learn and share. We’ll have to become ourselves, together. I believe you have to be a pretty complete individual going in to a relationship, and be willing to be a new individual once in it – that’s the beautiful growth another makes possible. “To love someone gives you strength. Being loved by someone gives you courage.”