D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
June 2008
Four's a Crowd
How many extra people are in your relationship?
By Bina Breitner
We usually think of a love relationship as two-of-us, but it's actually three-of-us: There's you, there's me, and there's "the relationship" we build together. Depending on how we treat it over time, the relationship becomes more (or less) vital, trusting, and intimate. If it grows, I marvel at how it's evolving. If it deteriorates, I miss the connection we used to have. I might even miss the relationship more than I miss you. That miraculous entity called "us" is gone.
But what if there are four-of-us? Or even five? For example, if Ralph was badly hurt in his childhood — his father was passive and his mother was violent, so he lived in a cocoon of tense worry — then he brings leftovers from those unhappy years into his relationship with Sarah. Their relationship includes Ralph, Sarah, what they build together — and Ralph's mother.
Why? Because Ralph is still carrying the history in his body, his cells, his memories, his feelings, his emotional habits. Anywhere he goes, the tense worry goes with him (like Pigpen's cloud of dust in the old comic "Peanuts"). It's so familiar he may not even notice it. But Sarah does. And she tries to reassure him. She wants him to relax, to be happier. In the first blush of their attraction, growing into love, he forgets the worry. He's free! He adores Sarah, because she's healed him. She's nothing like his mother. She doesn't scream at him or go after him with a frying pan. She thinks he's wonderful. Ralph feels great, and Sarah is so happy to be recognized and loved, and to have fended off Ralph's worries.
When the excitement of new love calms down, however, Ralph's hurt creeps back in. He wants Sarah to reassure him, make him feel better again. Sarah tries. They both try. But they can't pull it off consistently. Ralph gets depressed and frustrated with Sarah. Why can't she be more loving, the way she used to be? Sarah starts feeling irritated with Ralph, because she hasn't changed, but he has. It's confusing and unfair that he's angry at her when she hasn't done anything wrong! Ralph feels her irritation and gets angrier with her: She's starting to resemble his mother! Another critical woman! Sarah feels betrayed and increasingly distant from Ralph. She wonders if she should leave him. . . .
If Ralph hadn't (unwittingly) brought his mother with him into his relationship with Sarah, it wouldn't have unraveled. OK, that's easy to say, but a "diagnosis" never fixed a relationship. What can Ralph and Sarah do about it?
The point of leverage — the place where a change will have the greatest benefit — is in Ralph's old relationship to his mother. The temptation is to blame his mother: If she hadn't been or done such and such, Ralph and Sarah could be all right. Sarah starts to hate Ralph's mother, because she sees what his mother has done to the person she loves, and because now she has to clean up the mess Ralph's mother created.
That accomplishes nothing. Even if they could punish Ralph's mother, or if Sarah could compensate by being "the perfect mother" to Ralph (which she is absolutely not inclined to try for), it couldn't heal Ralph. Because by now the problem isn't Ralph's mother and her failings; it's the opinion Ralph developed about himself in relation to his mother.
Punishing Ralph's mother wouldn't change that. Neither would Sarah's hypothetically infinite love, which would still leave Ralph saying to himself, "Well, Sarah adores me, but she just doesn't know. . . . I'm no good. If I'd been good enough, my mother would have loved me." Anyway, Ralph doesn't need that kind of mother-love today, from his mother or from Sarah. What he needs is to re-evaluate his relationship with his mother, so he can be separate enough from her to be available for Sarah.
How does he alter his relationship with his mother? It actually doesn't matter if she's alive or dead. He has to face his residual feelings: his tension, his fear of his mother's violent temper, his anger at his father's passivity (lack of protection of Ralph), and the opinion he developed about himself as a youngster.
What Ralph can't let go of is that judgmental, negative opinion of himself. Of course he can't let it go: What little boy (or adult) wants to accept that he's not worth loving or cherishing? It's intolerable. He has to prove it's not true. (Ralph knows intellectually that it's not true, but his feelings are stuck.) His mother knew him best, she was the powerful all-knowing grown-up and he the ignorant little kid, and she didn't think he was worth treating nicely. She's the only one who can change that verdict. Ralph has to stay emotionally engaged with her until he can feel he is an OK person.
When Ralph admits how lousy he feels inside, he begins paying attention to that "no-good" part of himself he's always tried to ignore. He stops blaming himself and tries to understand. For the first time, he can feel sorry for that tense, unhappy kid. He can release the old feelings of humiliation and failure. And that release is like the lifting of an ancient fog. He can see that he was a normal boy, just as lovable as anyone else. He can see that the problem lay with his mother, who, for whatever sad reasons, was already angry long before Ralph was born.
He can grieve over the years he had to spend in that un-nurturing, scary home, and over the years spent since then, during which he always felt like a second-class person. He can even grieve for his mother, because she must have been really unhappy to be so angry, and she missed the joy of loving and connecting with her son.
By now, his mother has become a person in Ralph's understanding, not just his mother. And Ralph is finally just himself, only secondarily his mother's son. He's "broken up with" his mother and is available. Now he can be with Sarah — just the two (well, the three) of them.