The Happiness Blog:

An Unhappy Man Seeks Help - Part 7:

Is Fred too distressed to leave Dora, or is he hamming it up?

Copyright (c) Jim Byrne, 28^th May 2010

The mystery of Fred and Dora's relationship

Introduction

Over the past few weeks, I have looked at various aspects of Fred and Dora's relationship, and offered several forms of advice and support, including communications skills improvements.  Today I want to look at two possibilities that have remained out of focus: that Fred is too distressed to leave Dora; or that he is milking this story for sympathy.

Next week the Happiness blog update may be late, due to other pressing priorities; and in the two weeks that follow I hope to look at some of the philosophical foundations of our (western) view of love.  For example, to what extent are we all influenced by the Christian view of love: that God is love; that God is perfect; that therefore love is perfect; or what John Armstrong calls a superhuman vision of love[1].  The Buddhist view is more pragmatic and empirical, and takes the view that loving relationships often produce and attract the most positive and the most negative responses in couples.  Taro Gold mentions that "...the murkiest, unhappiest, least attractive aspects of our character inexplicably emerge through the course of our intimate relationships"[2].  In particular, he mentions the "three spiritual poisons of selfishness, anger and foolishness". (Page 20).  To what extent should we be influenced by Aristotle's view of love? Armstrong, (2003: pages 108-112).  And what about Freud and his followers, and the post-Freudians, most of whom see ambivalence as central to human emotion: love and hate as a dance of relationship? 

Now back to this week's agenda items:

Part One:

Here are the next three of my 18 principles of couples therapy:

10. The REBT position on couples relationships is this: Couples are either in a state of occasional dissatisfaction (or ‘reasonable upset); a state of disturbance (or over-upset); or are experiencing an emerging incompatibility.  Dissatisfaction is normal some but not all of the time: i.e. occasional sadness, disappointment, frustration, etc.  Disturbance is due to irrational beliefs interacting with noxious activating events: e.g. anger, rage, hostility, depression, intense jealousy, etc.  And emerging incompatibilities mean you no longer have an adequate basis for the continuation of your relationship.  What is the current state of your relationship?

11. The twin foundations of a successful relationship are comfort and passion.  People rarely stay in relationships which are not comfortable, even if there is passion; and the absence of passion cannot be compensated for by more comfort.  Comfort means being able to come home to a peaceful environment, where you do not have to be on the defence all the time.  Having passion means having strong physical contact, hugging and kissing, sexy talk (some of the time), and a frequency of sexual contact that suits both partners.  Embracing, cuddling and kissing are the common currency of day to day passion.  How much comfort and passion exists on a regular basis in your relationship?

12. Relationships are relatively effortless for the first couple of years.  Thereafter you have to invest effort to keep the relationship alive.  It seems as if nature gives us a couple or three years of effortless sex-love, in which we are drawn together, and cling together, joyfully and without much upset.  By that time, nature may 'conclude', you should have a child aged about two years, and thus able to survive without keeping the 'breadwinner' around.  At that point, nature 'drops you' and you now have to figure out how to make your sex-love relationship work from your Adult ego state, with minimal assistance from nature.  If you "go to sleep" in your relationship, it will almost certainly die. How good are you at managing your relationship from Adult ego state, in order to keep the passion alive, and in order to show affection and create comfort?

Part Two:

Why does Fred stay in a relationship which he depicts as being very oppressive, with Dora nagging him from dawn till dusk?  Some of us might feel that it would be effortless for him to walk away from this relationship if it is so oppressive.  But is that true?

According to three professors of psychiatry, Drs Lewis, Amini and Lannon (2001): "One person we know...was trapped in a dismal relationship simply because she could not get around the pain of loss (that would be involved in leaving).  No matter how much unhappiness her mate caused her, at every attempt to break with him a taller wave of wretchedness welled up inside her.  And so her inner scales regularly tipped in favour of staying with a man who could not satisfy her.  ‘I want to (finish) so badly with him', she said.  ‘Our relationship goes on and on, and I keep thinking, *This time, it's over*, but it's never going to be.  I feel like moving across the country just to get away from him because it's been going on for so long - I'm fighting with myself constantly over it.  I tell myself, *Just go away, don't ever contact him again*, and I can't.  I can't.'  Years of therapy clarified her misery but did not diminish it.  But when she took a serotonin agent, the balance of her sorrows shifted slightly.  Loss hurt a little less.  She did then what she had been unable to do: leave her lover without intolerable suffering".  (Pages 92-93)[3].

Of course, we are here dealing with the client's autobiographical narrative, which is a ‘felt story', and not the gospel according to Einstein.  And we are also dealing with the story of the authors, Lewis, Amini and Lannon, psychiatrists with licences to prescribe drugs.  I would like to think that the right kind of therapy could have produced the same effect as the serotonin drug (which is what the research reports often suggest), but that's my story.  Anyway, perhaps Fred has not had the right kind of help to cope with the intolerable (for him) pain of contemplating leaving Dora, despite her apparently oppressive behaviour towards him. 

Is that the case, Fred?  Is this little story relevant to your situation? 

If so, I would recommend that you go into therapy to sort out the source of that pain that stops you leaving an apparently destructive relationship; or you could follow Lewis and his partners, and go for a serotonin solution.  My advice would be to explore the therapy route first, and for as long as it takes.

~~~

Part Three:

In Part Two, above, I made the assumption, Fred, that you may be trapped in your marriage to Dora by an intolerable pain which is triggered by any contemplation of leaving her.  Now I want to look at an entirely different idea; the idea that your marriage is not as oppressive as you paint it.

This idea was triggered, during this week, when I visited one of the groups of psychologists to which I belong on Linked-In.  There I found a post by Dr Geoffrey Hamilton, Founder of Northwoods Consulting and the Institute For Rational Inquiry.  This is what he wrote:

"For a chapter in my first book (1997), I explored why many (counselling) clients had faked misery over the years in order to manipulate others.

(Here's a paraphrased extract):

"(Therapist). If you really and truly appear to suffer, what can you easily get from other people without having to work for it?

"(Client). Their attention; their compassion; their sympathy; their focus on me; their time; their advice; their money; their suggestions; their recommendations; their help; their support; their pity.

"(Therapist). Quite a list of strokes; and one would only have to maintain the misery in order to get every item free of charge, with virtually no work and without taking any responsibility for continuing the scam.

"Mentally healthy, functional people would have to work pretty hard to get any of this attention. They would actually have to earn it."[4]

~~~

So what are you up to Fred?  Are you too distressed by the idea of trying to leave Dora?  Is that what keeps you there?

Or are you really hamming it up to get sympathy from us, and others? 

Do get back to me and let me know.

Best wishes,

[1] Armstrong, J. (2003) Conditions of Love: The philosophy of intimacy.  London: Penguin Books. Page 130.

[2] Gold, T. (2003) What is Love? A simple Buddhist guide to romantic happiness.  Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing.

[3]Lewis, T., Amini, F. and Lannon, R. (2001) A General Theory of Love.  New York: Vintage Books.

[4] Source: http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?trk=EML_anet_qa_ttle-d7hOon0JumNFomgJt7dBpSBA&gid=53475&viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionID=20434211   Accessed: 25^th May 2010.

The Happiness Blog:

An Unhappy Man Seeks Help - Part 6:

Could Fred's unhappiness with his relationship with his wife be a compulsion to repeat his childhood relationship with his mother?

Copyright (c) Jim Byrne, 20^th May 2010

Why does Dora nag Fred, and why is Fred married to a woman who nags him?

Introduction

Hello Fred: Over the past few weeks, we have explored some elements of your unhappiness with your wife and daughter, and in particular, some ideas that might help you to improve your situation.  Many of those ideas assume that you have an active desire to improve your communication and connection with Dora, which could in turn fuel a commitment to work for change.  However, this is not necessarily the case.  You might not be looking for fundamental change!

Over the years I have worked with numerous couples who were locked into negative relationship patterns.

The ‘Top-dog / Under-dog' Pattern

One such pattern is where the couple operate a kind of flip-flop form of domination-submission called ‘Top-dog/Under-dog' turn-taking.  This is a pattern in which one of the partners is in a Top-dog position: feeling superior, looking down on the other partner, and telling themselves: ‘I'm OK - You're Not-OK'.  (These are patterns learned in early childhood).  After a while the partner in the Top-dog position slips up, and ‘falls from grace', and can no longer sustain their ‘superiority'; at which point the Under-dog partner jumps into the Top-dog position, and begins to give their former persecutor a hard time.  In a case of nagging in the flip-flop Top-dog/Under-dog pattern, each partner takes it in turns to be the nagger.  They might manage a few days, or a few weeks, before they ‘fall from grace', at which point they then become the victim of the nagging habit.  (The first couple in which I identified this pattern was an ordained religious leader and his wife - neither of whom would consciously oppress or exploit anybody!)  So you, Fred, need to be honest with yourself here?  Is Dora the exclusive nagger, or do you also get your turn from time to time?

The ‘Repetition Compulsion' Pattern

The other major pattern, in which the couple is suffering but not really seeking a solution, is the ‘repetition compulsion' scenario, in which the two individuals are driven non-consciously to repeat a negative relationship pattern from early childhood.  In his book on ‘conditions of love'[1], John Armstrong describes just such a scenario (Beginning on page 88):

"By an ordinary logic we can see that falling in love with someone who makes us unhappy - and who can be recognized by others as an unsuitable partner in life - is irrational.  It goes directly against our own chances of a happy life.  However, it may be the case that such an unfortunate ‘object choice' is in fact dictated by a powerful internal but unconscious process.  This view was brilliantly argued for in the late 1940s by an American psychoanalyst, Edmund Bergler, whose witty and incisive books about marriage and divorce have much to offer the modern reader". (Pages 88). 

"Bergler argued that people often fall in love with someone in order to be able to replay scenes from their childhood.  In Conflicts in Marriage, a book about ‘the unhappy undivorced', he describes the case of a woman pianist who came to him for consultation.  She had a successful performance career but her husband disapproved of her giving public concerts and became increasingly strident in his demands that she abandon her career.  She had been aware of this disapproval before she married him, so why did she fall in love with him rather than with a more supportive and appreciative man?  As a child she was something of a prodigy but her mother had been opposed to her giving public performances.  The woman put this down to her mother's ‘snobbery' - although, of course, she could have had quite good reasons for not wishing her daughter to be in the public eye at such a young age.  Nevertheless, from the child's point of view the mother was a tyrant, bent upon frustrating her daughter's dearest wishes.  Bergler is struck by the similar way the woman describes her mother and her husband.  Could it be, he asks, that it was precisely this similarity which led her to fall in love with and marry this man?  Not in spite of his opposition to her career, but precisely because he repeated her mother's early intransigence".  This scenario is what Sigmund Freud would have called ‘a repetition compulsion'; and Werner Erhard used to call it ‘marrying your mother'.  In modern post-Freudian psychoanalysis, it is widely accepted that mature relationships of a marital kind are reruns of our earliest relationship with our mother.  For example: "Even late in life, the finding of someone to love is also a re-finding, containing elements of that first and most fundamental love between baby and mother". (David Taylor, 1999, page 77)[2].

Werner Erhard's view was slightly more complex.  He argued that, symbolically or metaphorically, we might either marry (a ‘reincarnation' of) the parent of the same sex, the parent of the opposite sex, or NOT-the-parent of the same sex, or NOT-the-parent of the opposite sex: (where NOT = the opposite of...)..  And, he would argue, there is no freedom in any of these four types of marriage (or cohabitation arrangements).  It is only when we have ‘completed our relationship' with our parents that we become significantly free to marry somebody because of who they are in the here and now.  (See my Story of Relationship, here).

What drives the repetition compulsion?

"But the intriguing symmetry of the case (of the frustrated pianist, above) will remain baffling unless we can describe a mental process which explains the repetition.  Why on earth would someone seek to repeat an unhappy experience, and why would someone ensure the repetition of frustration?  Bergler thinks that this sort of thing happens too often to be a matter of bad luck - and he puts great stress on the fact that the woman knew, before she married, that this man would oppose her career.  Think of the man who falls for a woman he thinks is his intellectual inferior and who continually irritates him with what he regards as foolish remarks.  Or the woman who falls for a weak man who she continually upbraids and nags.  These familiar types are deeply exciting to Bergler because they encourage the thought that people often set things up so that they will be annoyed by their partner - annoyed in some specific way that is precious to them, even though it is also - obviously - painful". (Pages 89-90).

Does your wife accuse you of weakness, Fred?  And is this a re-run of something from your relationship with your mother or father?  Has this kind of nagging contempt arisen in previous relationships you have had with women?

Armstrong continues: "But why should [it] be [that people would repeat patterns like this]?  Bergler's suggested solution arises from considerations of childhood and from very general considerations of human nature.  By nature we seek pleasure and avoid pain.  But there are situations - some of them central to the experience of childhood - in which we cannot avoid suffering.  A child's desires for satisfaction are often such that they have to be thwarted by a loving parent.  The child cannot be taken to the toyshop every day, cannot always have the parent's full attention, has to be potty trained, has to go to bed even though it seems more interesting to stay up.  How can a pleasure seeking creature cope with this?  One way is in taking unconscious satisfaction in deprivation.  Righteous indignation is perhaps the simplest example of this kind of pleasure.  Feeling that one has been wronged may yield a satisfaction of being in the right; it allows one to indulge, with supreme justification, in aggressive feelings.  It would be outrageous to feel fury towards a loving mother - but if that mother has just shown herself to be cruel and tyrannical then the feelings do not provoke guilt.  The pain of being denied what one longs for becomes mixed with the pleasures of superiority and justified anger".  (Page 90).

Do you feel fury towards Dora, Fred?  When she is nagging you, do you, paradoxically, feel superiority and justified anger?  This would be a kind of inversion of the Top-dog/Under-dog pattern, in which the Under-dog feels bad while the Top-dog feels good.  In the repetition compulsion, it could be that the victim derives a good deal of satisfaction from their victim-hood!

Non-conscious addicts following automatic patterns from childhood

If you go to the Institute for CENT Studies page, and read some of my papers there, you will begin to build up a sense of just how non-conscious humans happen to be - about 95% non-conscious most of the time[3].

Armstrong continues: "Thus Bergler can suggest that his pianist was unconsciously seeking out these satisfactions in selecting as a partner a man whom she knew would thwart her.  Of course, these satisfactions are, in an important sense, irrational.  They come at the cost of multiple dissatisfactions and are entwined with the spoiling of her career.  The importance of Bergler's work lies in the way he draws attention to something we would probably rather not recognize: the process of falling in love may be governed not by the intelligent sense of what is good for us but by unconscious forces which cause us to get attached to someone with whom we can - like an addict - repeat a self-harming pleasure.  And the exciting thought that ‘this is the person for me' may be, ironically, true and yet true only in that we have identified a potential source of our preferred misery". (Pages 90-91).

How many years have you been nagged by Dora?  How many more are you willing to endure?  And why?  What's in this for you, Fred?

"It would, of course, we unusual to find a relationship in which two people clung to each other only on such a basis - each finding in the other a spur to their masochism.  It is more interesting to see this not as the central feature in a relationship but as one ingredient among others.  But if we allow the hypothesis any credibility at all it must surely provide yet another reminder of the way in which the suffering which love gives rise to is often connected with the roots of love itself".  (Page 91).

If you read my paper on the social roots of the individual - CENT Paper No.9: The "Individual" and its Social Relationships - The CENT Perspective - you will find that each of us is made up of several ‘internalized others' - positive and negative aspects of mum and dad, siblings and peers, teachers and relatives, etc.: ‘strange loops' of experience, stored in long-term memory, and permanently beyond the level of conscious awareness.  At different moments we may operate from different ‘ego-stages', different scripts, different habitual moods.  We are not the highly conscious, highly integrated entities we think we are.  That fantasy ‘self' is a product of ideology, and has little or no substance.

Falling in love with ‘mother/father' all over again

John Armstrong, a philosopher with a track record in studying intimacy, has a good sense of how human loving begins: "This [story of the pianist and her discouraging husband and mother] is an account of a strange kind of attraction.  But it belongs to a more general thesis about how and why we fall in love.  A relationship does not start the day two people meet; it starts in the childhood of each partner.  For it is long before they meet that the template of their relationship is established. We learn to love as children.  Or, more accurately, we learn a style of relating which governs our adult behaviour when it comes to love".  (Armstrong, 2001: Page 91).

There is  growing body of research on the development of different types of ‘attachment styles' - forms of connection between babies and, primarily, their mothers, in the first two or three years of life.  Because of variation in those relationships, some babies develop secure attachments towards their primary carer (normally mum); some develop insecure bonds, which can be ‘avoidant' or ‘ambivalent'.  Those kinds of attachment styles or patterns are part of what affects how we relate to others later in (adult) life.  See in particular Sue Gerhard's work[4], and the crucially important work of Lewis, Amini and Lannon[5].  And beyond the attachment style, the specifics of the relationships of childhood may also play a part in determining who ‘feels right' to us as a life partner.

"Central to this thesis is the disturbing contention that we are generally unaware of this underlying style of relating - it governs our adult behaviour without our noticing".  (Armstrong, 2001: Page 92).

So, now, Fred, you need to ask yourself:

1. Am I playing a game of Top-Dog/Under-dog with Dora?  And if so, is this how I want to use my life?  Or:

2. Am I engaged in a form of repetition compulsion?  Am I locked into this relationship with Dora because of some form of oppression by my mother or father which I am acting out in the here and now, in an effort to complete my relationships from childhood, with Dora as a mere surrogate?  If so, you'd better stop that.  You cannot complete a relationship with somebody else by using a surrogate[6].   You have to complete your relationship with the people from your childhood with whom you are still not complete, using other, more psychologically sound processes, as described in my Story of Relationship.

I hope you find this update helpful, Fred.  I hope it rings some bells for you.  I hope you figure out what is going on in your relationship with Dora, and why; and what to do about it!

*Three more Principles of Couples Therapy next week*

Best wishes,

[1] Armstrong, J. (2003) Conditions of Love: The philosophy of intimacy.  London: Penguin Books.

[2] Taylor, D. (ed) (1999) Talking Cure: Mind and method of the Tavistock Clinic.  London: Duckworth.

[3]Bargh, J.A. and Chartrand, T.L. (1999) The unbearable automaticity of being.  American Psychologist, 54(7): 462-479.

[4] Gerhardt, S. (2004) Why Love Matters: How affection shapes a baby's brain.  London: Routledge.

[5]Lewis, T., Amini, F. and Lannon, R. (2001) A General Theory of Love.  New York: Vintage Books.

[6]A relationship is ‘incomplete' when there is something left unsaid, something that is not accepted, or something that has not been mentally and emotionally ‘digested'.  A relationship is ‘complete' when both parties accept each other exactly the way they are, and both parties feel fully self-expressed.  Nothing important is left unsaid, un-admitted or undigested.

The Happiness Blog:

An Unhappy Man Seeks Help - Part 5:

Further exploration of Fred's unhappiness with his relationships with his wife and his daughter

Copyright (c) Jim Byrne, 14^th May 2010

CENT and REBT differ over Couples Therapy

Plus some ideas on the father-daughter relationship.

Introduction

Hello Fred, Here we are again, grappling with your problem with your wife, Dora; and your problem with your daughter, Suzy.

Part 1: REBT and CENT on Couples Therapy

Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) has a way of running couples therapy sessions which begins by teaching the client that you (Fred) are upsetting yourself about your wife's nagging tendencies.  If I was using a classical REBT approach with you, this is how I would proceed:

So, Fred, you say your wife nags you from morning till night.  How do you feel about that?

I am going to assume (for the sake of argument) that you respond by saying: Angry; I sulk a lot.  I don't want to speak to her.  I freeze her out.

I would then ask you, Fred: What do you think you're telling yourself to make yourself feel so angry?

You wouldn't have the slightest idea what I am talking about; and so then I would teach you the ABC Model.  (See sample handout here: http://www.abc-counselling.com/id210.html). Once you understood the ABC model, I would teach you to change your beliefs in such a way that instead of feeling angry towards Dora for nagging you, you would only feel irritated and annoyed, and in that changed emotional circumstance, you would be able to assert yourself with her, and ask her to change her attitudes and behaviours towards you. (If you read the sample handout mentioned in the link above, you can teach yourself how to do this).

Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT) sometimes uses the ABC model, but it also has its own models, as described here: What is CENT?   There are also some video clips describing the models used in CENT near the bottom of my homepage, here: http://www.abc-counselling.com/.  One of the biggest differences between REBT and CENT is this: REBT makes the working assumption that you are mainly conscious, and that your thoughts can normally, and reliably, control your emotions.  On the other hand, CENT makes the assumption that you are about 95% non-conscious, and that your are driven more by emotions than cognitions.  Therefore, in CENT, we teach you how to be emotionally intelligent; how to read your own emotions; how to read Dora's emotions; how to manage your own emotions; and how to manage your relationship with Dora even when you are both feeling emotionally aroused.

To manage your own emotions, you have to become aware of them.  Thus you need to check your guts and your chest for emotional arousal.  You need to ask yourself ‘What is this emotion I am feeling?'  If you feel hurtful or antagonistic towards Dora, then that is probably anger (even if you do not act angrily; sulking is silent, withdrawn anger).  If you feel like running away, then you are probably feeling some kind of fear or anxiety.  If you feel like hiding in bed, or drinking alcohol, or smoking pot, then that is probably an indication of depression. 

Once you know what you feel, you have a way to deal with the situation.  Next ask yourself this: Why am I feeling like this?  This is what we call trackdown.  Perhaps Dora said or did something that triggered this emotion in you.  Try to identify the moment that you began to feel bad, identify the emotion and what triggered it.

Next, you plan a communication to Dora, like this:

When you: (do X)

I feel (Y)

Substitute what she did for X and substitute your emotion for Y.  Then go and find Dora and say:

I need to share something with you.  Is this a good time?

If she says ‘Yes', then, with your knees knocking, your palms sweating, and your heart racing, you say:

"When you (did X) earlier, I felt (Y), and I am stuck with that feeling".

That's it, full stop (or period [USA]). Now you think, silently in your mind: "Over to you, Dora".  You are non-verbally inviting Dora to solve this problem for you.

She may react defensively, or angrily, or try to dismiss your concern.  No matter what she says, you just mirror it back to her. If she gets angry, tell her

"So you feel angry about what I said"; or "So you don't like what I said". 

When she responds to that, just mirror what she says, again and again, until she calms down.  Once she is calm again, you just repeat your message (which you should preferably have written on a piece of card, so you don't get blown off course):

"When you (did X) earlier, I felt (Y), and I am stuck with that feeling".

She may then go up the wall again, but just keep reflecting the emotions she displays, or the content of her response, until she calms down again; and then re-present your message from your card.

Keep going until she says something, and acts in some way, that shows you that she understands that she hurt your feelings, and she is sorry; or some such solution.  Then the pain in your guts will disappear, and the arousal in your chest will die down.  At that point, you should thank Dora for helping you to resolve this problem! (Do not blame her for having acted as she did in the first place.  That will only produce an upset in her, and you will be no further forward!)  You have now successfully managed an emotion!  Well done!

More next week!

~~~

Part 2: More Principles of Couples Counselling

So far I have presented six of my eighteen Principles of Couples Therapy.  Today I will present principles 7-9:

7. It's OK to want to be loved, admired, accepted and approved of.  But it is most sensible to want to be loved, accepted and so on for practical reasons, such as your companionship, sociability, loving nature, vocational advancement, your "mental accomplishments", and so on; rather than (like a child) for your "self", or for the sake of artificially raising your "self-esteem"! 

# Do you seek to be loved for practical reasons, or do you insist upon being loved for your "self"?  Only a mother-substitute is likely to love you for your "self", and who wants to be a mother-substitute for you?  Probably no one!  So it's better to grow up and not demand maternal/paternal adoration! 

# Are you willing to grow up in this area of your emotional life?

8. In a marriage, because it involves two individuals, it is not sensible to expect to be centre stage more than 50% of the time, since the other person also desires to be centre stage for their 50%!  How much of the time do you try to be centre stage? 

# How good are you at being "the audience" for your partner? 

# How could you improve your democratic functioning in this area of your life?  (This, of course includes the idea that you are entitled to be centre stage for your full 50% of the time, and it is your responsibility to work at getting that balance for yourself, but not exceeding it!)

9. Do you want to be ‘right', or do you want to be ‘happy'.  Choose!  In most cases you will have to choose. It is very rare that you will be able to be consistently ‘right' - in your disputes with your partner - and also experience long-term happiness.  Why is this so?  Because, when I say ‘I am right', I also imply (very often) that ‘You are wrong!'  And most people are not willing to be cast in the role of "being wrong".  (Doing a wrong thing is different from "being wrong"!)  If you make your partner "wrong", they will not want to "play with you"!  Sometimes you will want to hold out for being right, because there are good evidential reasons to support your view, and it may be important to you, or even both of you, to make your point.  But often it will not be worth the effort, and if it makes your partner feel wrong, do you really want to 'win' that battle?

~~~

Part 3: Father-daughter relationships

Mothers and fathers are crucially important to the life of their sons and daughters.  Parents are the emotional foundations of their children.  The parents and the children internalize a ‘strange loop' of their experiences of encountering each other, which they all carry in their minds to the ends of their lives.  (See CENT Paper No.9)

At a certain stage in the development of most young girls, their father serves as a kind of hero, a knight in shining armour.  This goes on for many years, and there may be an "oasis period" in which the father is the most important man in a girl's life - before she develops a serious love interest: a boyfriend who is important enough to cause her to come out of the oasis with her father, and leave her father behind, as she goes off with a serious romantic sex-love interest.

At that point, the nature of the bond from the father's side is revealed.  If the father has been operating from ‘compassionate love', or ‘higher love', he will let his daughter go, and wish her well in her new life.  But if he has been operating from ‘needy love', or ‘lower love', using her to fill holes in his own life, he will be less able to let her go.

Suzy may be trying to break your hold over her, Fred, by staying away long enough for you to get over your sense of loss of the ‘oasis period'.  You have to let her go.

Linda Schierse Leonard describes the case of (an entirely different) Susan: "Susan's father loved her very much.  The two revelled in their relationship, which was playful, teasing, and flirtatious. The father put more energy into the relationship with his daughter than into the relationship with his wife.  ...  Her father, who was dominated by his wife, did not actively oppose his wife's ambitious expectations for the daughter, and so Susan lived out her mother's unlived ambitions.  Caught by her mother's ambitious, controlling, perfectionistic attitude, Susan lost her relationship to her relaxed, easy-going, child-like side.  The resulting tension brought her neck and back strain ...  In a way, (the father) loved his daughter 'too much' and so kept her tied to him.  Susan needed to recognize this (in order) to break the tight (bond) to her father ..." (Pages 6 and 7, The Wounded Woman: Healing the father-daughter relationship, 1983/1991, Shambhala Publications Inc.).  This book is described as follows: "This book is a key to understanding the father-daughter relationship. Using examples from her own life and those of her clients, the author, a Jungian analyst, exposes the wound of the spirit that both men and women of our culture bear, a wound that is grounded in a poor relationship between the masculine and feminine principles. It shows that by understanding the father-daughter wound and working to transform it psychologically, it is possible to achieve a fruitful, caring relationship between men and women, between fathers and daughters."  Reading the relevant sections of this book, Fred, could help you to better understand your relationship with your daughter, and to let her go.  You can get this book from Amazon dot com.

When parents love their children too much, it can develop into what is now being called 'emotional incest'.  Emotional incest does not involve any sexual contact, but it does build inappropriate links of co-dependence between a parent and a child of the opposite sex, as in father-daughter bonds. Here is one critique of father-daughter fixations and obsessions:

"Emotional Incest: Parent-Child Co-dependence.

"When parents depend on their children for their sense of life, their children cannot be children. Carrying the baggage of their parents' obsessions, these children may delay growing up, and remain adult children for decades, or grow up prematurely with little sense of childhood.

"Parents who delay or sabotage their children's independence are often avoiding crisis. If they have no reason to stay together, the independence of the last child may expose a pointless partnership ... and trigger divorce. Some children give up their dreams of independence and become co-dependent."  (Source: http://www.soulwork.net/sw_articles_eng/daddy's_princess.htm; accessed on 6th May 2010).

You do not need to cling to Suzy, Fred.  You are perfectly capable of switching from needy love (which is a function of your Bad Wolf side) to compassionate love (which is a function of your Good Wolf side).  Once you start operating from higher or compassionate love, you will want to 'extend yourself in the service of Suzy', rather than trying to 'take something from her'.  Once you are operating from higher or compassionate love, you can never love too much.  You can only love too much when it's needy love!  Repairing your relationship with your wife, Dora, would be a part of this change also.  And leaning to have greater emotional intelligence in general would also help. Claude Steiner's book on emotional literacy could help with that challenge.[1]  Also, ask yourself this: "How can I become a ‘noble character'; a man of virtue?"  Find the answer to that question and you will no longer feel like a little boy clinging to the wreckage of a sinking ship.  You will feel like a cloud floating through a clear blue sky, on a sunny day!

PS: In order to feel happier now, while working on how to solve your problems with Dora and Suzy, try doing the gratitude exercise every night.  Just before you go to bed, write down three things you can be grateful for today, and then aim to dream of one of them.  This will move you from 'lack thoughts' to a sense of gratitude for the things you do have in your life that work well or are enjoyable.

More next week.

Best wishes,

[1] Steiner, C. (1997) Achieving Emotional Literacy: A personal program to increase your emotional intelligence.  London: Bloomsbury.

The Happiness Blog:

An Unhappy Man Seeks Help - Part 4:

Continuing to explore Fred's unhappiness with his relationships with his wife and his daughter

Copyright (c) Jim Byrne, 7^th May 2010

Introduction

This is the fourth week of exploring the relationship difficulties of a man (aged about fifty) who is nagged by his wife, and who misses his daughter, who went away to university when she was eighteen, nine years ago, and only comes back once or twice a year for one day at a time.  (All identities are concealed by changing names and disguising details of lives).

Levels of love

Hello Fred,

Let me begin with a little quotation that is relevant to your situation:

"To fall in love is easy, but it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes the person one desires to be".  Anna Louise Strong

Here we are again.  I don't know the details of how you and Dora got together as a couple, but I guess you were both drawn together by ‘needy love' rather than ‘compassionate love'.  Why do I say that?  Because neediness is the most common basis for couples getting together, based on what the Buddhists call ‘lower love', rather than ‘higher love'.  (Higher love is a mixture of compassion and friendship; based on giving and wanting to give, rather than on receiving and ‘needing to receive').

In the western world, we are all infected with fantasy about love - the Hollywood Dream - falling in love, and staying in love, effortlessly, forever.  At the same time, there is a great deal of confusion about what love is.  Poets and philosophers over the years have written of love as the greatest joy, and the greatest suffering.  Woody Allen wrote a wonderful parody of our culture's ‘thesis' about love, as follows:

"To love is to suffer.  To avoid suffering one must not love.  But then one suffers from not loving.  Therefore, to love is to suffer and not to love is to suffer.  To suffer is to suffer.  To be happy is to love.  To be happy, then is to suffer.  But suffering makes one unhappy.  Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness.  I hope you're getting this down".  (Quoted in Gold, 2003[1]).

The feelings of ‘falling in love' is an emotional recapitulation (or imaginary reinstatement) of our bond with our mothers, in the first months of life - a symbiotic union of bliss and joy.  That, however, is quite unrealistic for two grown adults, who have to share a lot of practicalities of life.  Two fallible, imperfect beings sharing the same physical space, and trying to live through each other.  After a couple of years, the ‘in-love' feeling wears out, and we then have to figure out how to keep our relationship going by our conscious intentions.  Most of us are not good at that phase, and about 60% of marriages end in divorce.

That seems to be where you and Dora are heading, Fred.  Why would I say that?  Unless you and Dora figure out between you how to improve your relationship, or one of you takes the lead in figuring this out, how could your relationship possibly survive.  What you need to achieve is to to create a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative moments in your relationship; otherwise your marriage will end in divorce, according to the extensive research conducted by Professor John Gottman[2].

So I would suggest that you and Dora, at some point, will have to sit down and review your situation, and recognize that you cannot, as a couple, continue in this situation of contempt and animosity.  You have to clean up that mess.  It is bad for your physical and emotional wellbeing to continue to live in such a mutually disrespectful relationship.

One way to proceed, when the time is right, is to dissolve your marriage, and create a new marriage contract along the following lines:

A viable marriage contract:

Here's another little quotation that captures the essence of a viable marriage contract:

"Just as a song is a partnership of music and lyrics, partners in love are equal individuals who, at the same time, perform a melody of life together".  Daisaku Ikeda

Here is my template for you to consider in writing your new marriage contract:

We, Fred and Dora; Dora and Fred; intend to establish an equal and caring relationship based on common decency first, and compassionate love second.  Romantic love may emerge, and may wax and wane.  But we will sustain our own compassionate love and respect for each other by an act of will: of intention.

We commit to love and respect each other out of the fullness of our hearts - just by choosing to be loving; and we recognize that Mother Nature will not fill us with an effortless romantic love.  In other words, we intend to ‘extend ourselves' in the service of creating for our partner a sense of being actively loved.  (We recognize that needy love does not work for adults in marriage like relationships).

We are committed to achieving and maintaining a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative moments in our relationship - no matter how often we need to bite our tongues, or pass up on sarcastic humour.  (We will outlaw all forms of sarcasm and contemptuous terms from our relationship).

We recognize that the twin foundations of a successful relationship are comfort and passion; and we are committed to making life comfortable for each other, and we believe we have sufficient passionate interest in each other to sustain a passionate union.

We will not fall asleep in this relationship, but will remain alert to what is happening, and how to fix any problems that emerge.

We will abandon ‘ontic dumping' (see last week's post) in our communication with each other; and will begin each day with a peaceful and quiet breakfast.

Exit clause: If either of us falls in love with somebody else, and/or can no longer commit to maintaining our monogamous, loving relationship; or we cannot reconcile major differences or emerging incompatibilities; we will take whatever time is needed (within reason) to dismantle our relationship with dignity and compassion, before we act on any new emotional interests.

...End of contract

Second 3 principles of couples therapy...

Last week I presented the first of my 18 principles of couples therapy.  Here are principles 4-6:

4.  Love is not a "nice feeling".  Love is a process of "extending yourself in the service of another".  In what ways could you extend yourself in the service of your partner which would increase the flow of love from you to them? (And, later, back again!  Cast thy bread upon the waters, for it shall return after many days!)

5.  It is important to distinguish between your partner on the one hand and their behaviour on the other!  Then you can more easily accept your partner unconditionally, while wishing, desiring and even requesting that they please change the specific behaviour that you have a problem with.  (You do not have an absolute right to demand that your partner change any of their behaviours, and if you proceed on the assumption that you have such a right, you will have a great deal of misery in your marital relationship).  Can you think of an incident recently where you condemned your partner for engaging in behaviour(s) that you did not like, instead of merely objecting to their behaviour?  Do you know what you could have done which would have been more effective?  (If you answer 'No' to this question, then you could benefit from discussing Unconditional Self- and Other-Acceptance with Jim!).

6.  It's OK to want to be loved by your partner.  It is not OK (not sensible, helpful or effective) to demand that you be loved by your partner, or anybody else!  Are you demanding that you be loved by your partner?  If so, you'd better stop that!  It is sensible to offer love, and see if they offer love back.  If you are not loved by your partner, the democratic, loving and personally-effective thing to do is to tell your partner that you cannot easily live on the thin gruel that they offer in the name of love, and that you intend to decamp to a warmer environment!  But don't play games about this!  If you say you are going to decamp, unless something changes, then you better do that if that thing does not change!  It is not OK to use separation/divorce as a stick to beat your partner with!  Are you straight with your partner about how well your relationship is working, and what you would prefer to do if the relationship does not work out?  Does your partner know precisely what it is you are asking for?  (And are you clear that it is your responsibility to initiate love, and not to sit like a baby waiting for your partner to 'get loving'?)

That is the end of this week's blog post.  I hope you find this interesting and helpful, Fred.  Next week I hope to outline some of the differences between REBT[3] and CENT[4] regarding sex, love and marriage.  I will also say some more on the subject of your relationship with your daughter, Suzy: especially the problem of ‘loving too much'.

Best wishes,

[1] Gold, T. (2003) What is Love?  A simple Buddhist guide to romantic happiness.  Kansas City: Andrews McMeel.

[2] Gottman, J. with Silver, N. (1995) Why Marriages Succeed or Fail: and how you can make yours last.  New York: Fireside.

[3] Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT).

[4] Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT)