HEAVENLY LIAISONS

Relationships are made in heaven, beginning as the sweet promise of a new beginning and progressing into a perplexing entanglement.

 ‘Relationship’ is such a bland word. What we mean by it is really quite modern. We are aware of what goes on psychologically between people in a way our grandparents never were, so there are no old fashioned synonyms for the modern meaning of ‘relationship’. Our forefathers had no language and therefore no insight into the subtleties we perceive. Relationships were defined socially, not psychologically: you were a wife, a husband, a mother, a cousin – and that was that. Only the perceptive Victorian novelist gave us more subtle views.

Since, say the 1950s, many social categories began to break down, which left us in something of a muddle. Couples were living together in all kinds of arrangements. The categories gone, we were force to look more at the nuances that hold people together or spit them apart.

The human psyche is a vast vortex of unfathomable depths, constantly changing. Indifference and kindness, meanness and generosity vie with each other in the hidden caverns of my soul. But in close relationships my darker shades wake up with hints of passion and hate that I have never encountered before, surprising both of us.

More than anything else, relationships are where the great drama of childhood dependency is reenacted and played out. Of course, relationships are also much more than this. But the hidden reemergence of childhood dependency and the infant determination to get what I want triggers the turmoil with our loved one, most often without our realising the connection with the past.

A child comes into the world with two basic requirements. The first is to grow and develop in the way it needs to; the second is to be protected and looked after as it does so. The first is the need for freedom; the second is the fact of dependency.

To be free and grow in my own way means to be independent and self sufficient. And so, as I grow up, anything that reminds me of depenancy is likely to be suppressed and denied – “I wish Mum would stop fussing over me.” But there is another aim of childhood that persists throughout my life: and that is to be safe, to have someone that I can depend on. Safety in childhood essentially means the confidence that I will be looked after and cared for no matter what – what we know as unconditional love.

So, in my early years I have two basic ‘wants’ in opposition: to be free and to be dependant. These basic necessities are once again restimulated by coming into an intimate relationship later in life. The old longings are fuelled by new hope and desire which have all the power of those first vital connections – and all the conflicts and disappointments too. The sweet promise is that I will be unconditionally loved and also given the freedom to be myself.

Our actual experience in childhood meets the inevitable frustrations of those expectations; and it all gets fired up again in later-life’s intimate relationships. The very same patterns develop.

Both grown-up parties in a relationship have the same basic urge: how to be independent and free and, at the same time demanding care and love. How we get along together depends on how we both unconsciously negotiate this problem. I say ‘unconsciously’ because the dynamics of both ‘pasts’ are involved below awareness. Each person lives in the bubble of their past, limiting their perception of the other.

If a relationship is lucky it might survive long enough for the long process of adaptation. This is a process where states of muddle and clarity, conflict and resolution, alternate until there is a settling down where the old demands and conflicts of childhood begin to lessen.

There are some interesting aspects to this coalescing dynamic where couples adjust to each other. For example, one partner, lets say the woman, may be in therapy and the other, the man, is resistant to the idea. Eventually, the woman’s progress in therapy has a beneficial effect on him. He is forced to change, to begin to look at himself, without any direct attempt to change him.

 What changes him is who his partner is becoming.

He discovers that it is no longer possible to control her in the way he used to. He cannot secretly secure his need to be looked after by keeping her in the role of surrogate mother. The woman begins to experience the freedom to grow in the way she needs to. He goes through all his old rage and fear of abandonment, but eventually, when he breaks through, he too will have a similar sense of freedom.

Lucky are the couple who get thus far – but it takes persistent psychological work on someone’s part.

Why is it, I ask myself, that we seldom find the opposite situation: i.e. where it is the man who seeks change in the relationship and the woman who resists. Why is it so rare for a man to seek change by promoting communication as a solution?

Let me guess an answer: perhaps as a rule men are more afraid of self exposure.  A man might more easily take the plunge into another relationship as a way out, seeking freedom and love elsewhere. Perhaps a man is more likely to suddenly choose this route rather than talking things out and risk the exposure of his dependency that this might entail, an exposure that could fatally erode his ego-image. As John Kirwan said, ‘All Blacks Don’t Cry’ – a sad hint of what it means to be a man.

Self exposure is harder for a man who has spent his life rejecting the weakness and the dependency aspect of his personality. For it is true that deeper communication, such as person-centred work, exposes one’s weaknesses.

Fear of self-disclosure is not the prerogative of men. A woman can just as easily be stifled, uneasy about self disclosure because of early abuse or rigidity of upbringing, precipitating a protective shell around them.

Whatever the individual patterns, the process of self-disclosure and exposure is what is needed in both partners if the relationship is to work.

contact: stanrich@vodafone.co.nz