De Vegh suggests we create abundant lives for ourselves, and subscribes to what she calls the salad theory. "Just as a salad needs some lettuce, a little tomato, cucumber, this and that, a full life involves friends, work, arts, and community. When I ask clients, 'What do you believe you can only get from him?' they say, 'He's so interested, he listens to me, he thinks I'm special, we do things together.' We can do things with zillions of people. Why is it that only he can get you doing things?
"There's no scarcity of love," she says. "We can find it with our coworkers, with our friends and families, in our dance class. We can love what the world offers us; we can love our own vitality. And without question, there can be passionate love between a man and a woman, where you open your heart and soul and you can be yourself—your 7-year-old self, your 30-year-old self, your 60-year-old self. And he can say, 'I get you, and here I am. Sometimes I act like a spoiled brat, and sometimes I'm a straight-up guy.'" But the relationship has to be an "emotional peership" between partners who are already working toward becoming fuller and fuller individuals.
Such a union requires both heart and mind, which is why de Vegh is wary of unexamined attraction. "Often what we call chemistry is a mix of familiarity and anxiety, and it can be an excuse for not having to think," she says. "Feelings are great, but we also have brains so we can decide what to do with those feelings. Now when someone comes into my office and says, 'Oh, we looked at each other, and I so knew this man,' I think that maybe what she recognized was, for instance, the withholding narcissism of her father. If we really had such good parents that we felt filled up with self-respect and the ability to engage in the world, we wouldn't be waiting to be bowled over by chemistry. We'd be saying, 'Oh, you look like a good and interesting person. Here's what I think about the world; what do you think?' We wouldn't be looking to get our needs met. Adults meet their own needs."
Having seen so many women devastated by the end of an affair—"They feel they've failed, and that the halo they were given is gone"—de Vegh is adamant that we not label ourselves as losers in love. "At the church I used to go to, they always said faith enters through a wound. I think wisdom comes through our wounds, that our wounds have to turn into our blessings," she says. "They make us soft and aware so we can say, 'Oh, yes, I learned that.' If it turns out that you and your partner have a different view of reality, that's good to know. You can honor that, and find someone who shares your view. If you're losing yourself in a relationship and he has all the power, it's important to take the self-respecting action of leaving and learning from the experience."
The best thing that can happen after a breakup is that you declare, I give up any hope of ever being parented the way I wish I'd been when I was a child. "You might have to grieve for that loss," she says. "And there will be moments in a healthy partnership when you can say, 'I'm brain-dead and hysterical. Draw me a bath and put in some rubber duckies.'" But that's temporary. We have to give up the longing to be the child in the relationship, she says. The good news is that once we do, we're free to find love that's genuinely pleasure based.
"We each have a potential song in us," de Vegh says—one that can find its unique expression after we drop the sour chord of scarcity, dependency, and fear.
http://www.oprah.com/relationships/How-Love-Works-Healthy-Relationships/2
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Radical Romance
"In fact," says Person, "all love has this internal dynamic between togetherness and oneness, and independence and separateness. I think that for a love affair to flourish, there have to be independent interests that can be shared, as well as interests that are the same. One person described it well in talking about his parents. He said they were looking out in the same direction instead of always staring into each other's eyes. Intense physical passion waxes and wanes. Once you've had it, it can always come back. But what sustains you in between is having something that interests you both enough that you can share it, talk about it, do it together."
A confession: My husband and I have had some of our biggest arguments about which video to watch. Mention the Three Stooges if you want to see my hackles rise.
"Well, you have to pick your fights," Person says, confessing that she herself is perfectly capable of fighting to the death over the color to paint a bedroom. "Look, in any good relationship there have to be bursts of anger and disagreement. And in those moments, if somebody asked, 'Are you in love?' you'd say, 'Are you kidding me?' But those become part and parcel of the journey. We have the capacity to repair relationships—it's like having a scratch that heals. In other words, our psychological makeup has built-in healing mechanisms the same way our body does. You have to have enough conviction in the strength of the bond that you can risk some disagreement. You have to be able to take a hit."
A tall order if you're already one of the walking wounded. Having grown up with parents whose fights were soul shattering, I thought relationship was a code word for pain. Giving up that preconception felt like a giant leap into the dark. It took years of dead-end love affairs (and a healthy dose of therapy) to push me over the edge. I not only had to find someone who could love me, I finally realized, I had to take the risk of loving him back.
That's the kind of risk Ethel Person fully approves of. "People are so different in their ability to let go. They need to know in the back of their minds that if it doesn't work, it's not the end of the world. If I sorrow for anyone, it's for someone who has never rolled the dice, rather than for someone who has rolled the dice and lost a hand or two."
Read more
A confession: My husband and I have had some of our biggest arguments about which video to watch. Mention the Three Stooges if you want to see my hackles rise.
"Well, you have to pick your fights," Person says, confessing that she herself is perfectly capable of fighting to the death over the color to paint a bedroom. "Look, in any good relationship there have to be bursts of anger and disagreement. And in those moments, if somebody asked, 'Are you in love?' you'd say, 'Are you kidding me?' But those become part and parcel of the journey. We have the capacity to repair relationships—it's like having a scratch that heals. In other words, our psychological makeup has built-in healing mechanisms the same way our body does. You have to have enough conviction in the strength of the bond that you can risk some disagreement. You have to be able to take a hit."
A tall order if you're already one of the walking wounded. Having grown up with parents whose fights were soul shattering, I thought relationship was a code word for pain. Giving up that preconception felt like a giant leap into the dark. It took years of dead-end love affairs (and a healthy dose of therapy) to push me over the edge. I not only had to find someone who could love me, I finally realized, I had to take the risk of loving him back.
That's the kind of risk Ethel Person fully approves of. "People are so different in their ability to let go. They need to know in the back of their minds that if it doesn't work, it's not the end of the world. If I sorrow for anyone, it's for someone who has never rolled the dice, rather than for someone who has rolled the dice and lost a hand or two."
Read more
Friday, September 17, 2010
When Love Gets Lonely
A patient I'll call Kyra spent her therapy sessions talking about how disappointed she was with her husband. "Sometimes he feels so far away," she complained. The couple did not seem to have sexual problems, and the time she spent with him still made her happy; there was just not enough of it. Sitting in my office, Kyra was confused. Loneliness was not what she expected from her three-year-old marriage. "If this was a good relationship," she said, "I wouldn't feel this way." But it was hard for me to see how the marriage could be much better without completely changing the personalities of the hard-working husband and sensitive wife.
"I just don't want to feel second," Kyra insisted, as she told me how upset she got when her husband interrupted dinner to take a phone call from his cousin. It reminded her of how she used to feel when she was a child and her mother and sister would talk animatedly with each other. She would tug on her mother's sleeve but be ignored. She thought those feelings of being neglected were behind her—she had found the man she loved, and he was her friend as well as her lover. But now she was filled with doubt.
The dawning of loneliness is a very strange time in a relationship. It can be a sign that something is wrong—but this is not always the case. One of the age-old truths about love is that while it offers unparalleled opportunities for union and the lifting of ego boundaries, it also washes us up on the shores of the loved one's otherness. Sooner or later, love makes us feel inescapably separate.
Read more
"I just don't want to feel second," Kyra insisted, as she told me how upset she got when her husband interrupted dinner to take a phone call from his cousin. It reminded her of how she used to feel when she was a child and her mother and sister would talk animatedly with each other. She would tug on her mother's sleeve but be ignored. She thought those feelings of being neglected were behind her—she had found the man she loved, and he was her friend as well as her lover. But now she was filled with doubt.
The dawning of loneliness is a very strange time in a relationship. It can be a sign that something is wrong—but this is not always the case. One of the age-old truths about love is that while it offers unparalleled opportunities for union and the lifting of ego boundaries, it also washes us up on the shores of the loved one's otherness. Sooner or later, love makes us feel inescapably separate.
Read more
The Two Simple Ways to Upgrade Your Relationship
After months of trying to analyze our way into a better marriage, Helen decided unilaterally to change the way she communicated with me. She flooded me with praise. It was as if she put on new glasses that magnified the good in our relationship and obscured the problems.
I began to believe her propaganda and found myself acting in a more caring manner. Ironically, we had taught this process, called positive flooding, to thousands of couples but had not used it consistently ourselves. After a month she told me what she'd been doing, and I agreed to do the same. Now a year later, we've noticed that many problems have receded. We see the areas that still need work as challenges to be tackled as partners rather than as adversaries.
We were guided by two principles that can help you transform your relationship. First principle: Energy follows attention. Every time you "invest" in the negative, you are honing your ability to detect faults. Your energy amplifies the annoying and the fragile, and you create the conditions that allow your problems to grow like weeds in an unkempt field.
Second principle: Problems cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness at which they were created. We form our ideas about relationships in our connection to our parents, and when our needs aren't met, we cry, sulk, or even rebel. If we still don't get what we want, we experience what could be called a wound, and we create a defense against being wounded again, such as withdrawing emotionally or escalating our demands.
When we are ready for adult commitment, more often than not, our unconscious mind selects someone who has positive and negative traits similar to those of our parents in order to have another chance to heal ourselves. All too often, though, we end up reliving the patterns that hurt us in the first place. And as we did when we were children, we let our frustrations be known—only this time, we express the pain with criticism. We use negative transactions to try to effect positive outcomes. It never works.
Although it's not possible to be everything for your partner, knowing the role your backgrounds play in the relationship helps you move from "What's your problem?" to "How can I help?"
Read More
I began to believe her propaganda and found myself acting in a more caring manner. Ironically, we had taught this process, called positive flooding, to thousands of couples but had not used it consistently ourselves. After a month she told me what she'd been doing, and I agreed to do the same. Now a year later, we've noticed that many problems have receded. We see the areas that still need work as challenges to be tackled as partners rather than as adversaries.
We were guided by two principles that can help you transform your relationship. First principle: Energy follows attention. Every time you "invest" in the negative, you are honing your ability to detect faults. Your energy amplifies the annoying and the fragile, and you create the conditions that allow your problems to grow like weeds in an unkempt field.
Second principle: Problems cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness at which they were created. We form our ideas about relationships in our connection to our parents, and when our needs aren't met, we cry, sulk, or even rebel. If we still don't get what we want, we experience what could be called a wound, and we create a defense against being wounded again, such as withdrawing emotionally or escalating our demands.
When we are ready for adult commitment, more often than not, our unconscious mind selects someone who has positive and negative traits similar to those of our parents in order to have another chance to heal ourselves. All too often, though, we end up reliving the patterns that hurt us in the first place. And as we did when we were children, we let our frustrations be known—only this time, we express the pain with criticism. We use negative transactions to try to effect positive outcomes. It never works.
Although it's not possible to be everything for your partner, knowing the role your backgrounds play in the relationship helps you move from "What's your problem?" to "How can I help?"
Read More
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