Tag Archives: Relationship help

It’s Not About The Sex

Posted in Communication, Communication Issues, Conflict, Happiness, Love, Marriage, Passion, Relationships, Sex by

holding-hands-1

I read a number of relationship blogs, and a while back I ran across something written by a woman commenting she didn’t want to just be a “receptacle for her partners sperm”. I have to admit, it made me laugh. It was kind of crude, but funny. And it got across the point of what she felt her role had been reduced to in the relationship.

I recently read another blog by someone talking about what she wants in a man. It was something along the lines of wanting a man who will love her for who she is. For her mind and her soul, being someone who would be willing to support her and grow with her, and not just want her for sex or her body.

I agree. Any man worth being with should want her for all of her, and want to be there for all of her. But guess what? He’ll still want her physically, and he’ll still want sex. And that should never be a bad thing. Actually, she would probably be upset if he didn’t want her.

Reading other blogs, this sentiment seems fairly common. There seem to be lots of women out there feeling some variation on the receptacle idea.

Somehow, somewhere along the way sex seems to go from being this special thing a couple shares that happens to feel good to almost being something bad. It seems to have become a chore or a duty for many women.

If that’s the case, it seems clear that there is some sort of a disconnect between how men and women are expressing our sexual needs as well as our understanding each of other.

Generally I don’t buy into gender differences. I think there are a lot of guys out there with “female” traits and vice versa. But maybe this is one area where we ARE fundamentally different. After all, if you think of the very act – we experience it in a completely different way. I know how it feels as a guy, but as a woman? I have no clue, and never will.

I’ve written in the past about the benefits sex has for a relationship, so I won’t rehash them here.

But here are a few facts:

  • Sex provides many benefits to a relationship
  • Sex drives between partners vary, and are not constant over time
  • Sexual problems can spill over into the rest of the relationship
  • Sexual issues are cited among the leading causes of divorce

How is it that something that should bring us together drives us apart? Some guys may be jerks, but I think most truly do care. So how can any guy make their partner feel like a receptacle for sperm?

Speaking Different Languages

My thought, maybe we just don’t understand each other. And maybe if we can understand each other better we can start to break down these walls of resentment that take what should be a special act and turn it into a cause of conflict. I don’t pretend to represent all guys here, but these my thoughts on the subject…

Sex is not about sex.

Huh? What?

Let me explain…

Who do you have sex with? Random strangers? Unlikely. Your parents? If so, first – too much information. Second, ewww. Your buddies? Some people have “friends with benefits”, but generally that’s because they are not in a relationship and are looking for a regular outlet. In that case, yeah, I guess it’s about the act. But it still has a tendency to run into complications.

No, generally it’s reserved for a couple in a relationship. Why? And why is it that having sex with someone else while in a relationship is often defined as an affair, instead of having dinner with someone else or going for coffee with them? (Incidentally, I think it’s a huge misconception when people draw the line for affairs at sex. The line for affairs should be drawn LONG before that, and could potentially be extended to something as “simple” as dinner. But that’s a topic for another day).

No, sex is clearly different. There’s something special about it. But what?

Being Naked

Years ago one of my buddies caught me off guard when he started talking about his girlfriend and how beautiful and sexy she was when he saw her naked. There are all sorts of stereotypes of guys talking in the locker room about their “conquests”, or constantly talking about women. Maybe it’s just my peer group but we REALLY don’t do that, so it was a bit disconcerting to me when he mentioned this.

First, there’s the unwritten bro-code. You don’t look at or think about a buddies girlfriend/wife/whatever in a sexual way. That’s just not cool. So having him talk about her naked was awkward, as of course it meant my mind instantly imagined her naked.

Ahh!!! Brain what are you doing? Noooooo!!!

As my traitorous brain was processing these unwanted images, I was also thinking “dude, ummm, your girlfriend’s really not that attractive” (I didn’t say that of course). Everyone has their preferences, but for me? Even trying to be objective she didn’t do much for me.

But here’s a secret about sex and desire. Being sexy and beautiful has very little to do with your physical appearance – it’s mostly mental. Is it only young attractive people who desire each other? No (at least, it shouldn’t be).

Being naked with someone you love isn’t about admiring their “naughty bits”. It’s about vulnerability. You are being open with each other. It’s about safety, closeness and trust.

For years I thought sex was about sex. But it’s not. It’s about that feeling, that sense of complete vulnerability and openness. That feeling is intoxicating, and arousing, and will likely lead to sex. But I don’t think it’s the sex that we want, it’s the sense of connection.

The physical act is just insert A into B. The emotional act is one of wanting to connect with and give pleasure to someone you love in a way that is only shared by the two of you.

Because of this I actually believe sex in a long term committed relationship can be better than any other sex. “New love” may have sex more frequently, but it’s more lust than love at that point.

love

Different Drives

Young guys may hope they will be having sex all the time. As you get a bit older, you realize that it doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be happy to be having sex more frequently, but sex is just part of the relationship and the relationship is more important.

Drives fluctuate. It may be frustrating at times, but we get that. What really matters is that we feel valued, and feel as though our needs in the relationship still matter. There has to be a middle ground where the lower drive person isn’t constantly being pressured, but the higher drive person isn’t left feeling unfulfilled.

If you say no one day, that’s fine. But when one person is consistently rejecting the other and shutting them down sexually then there is a problem.

For anyone who isn’t having sex with some regularity, I ask you this – what is the general level of non-sexual touching and affection like in the relationship. If sex isn’t happening, I’ll guess affection is at a shortage too. How about communication? How easy is it to talk to your partner? Can you tell them anything? Do you? When you are unhappy in parts of your relationship do you tell them? Or do you hold things in? Do you still tell them that you love them?

When there is limited to no sex, the affection and communication has also usually broken down. If affection and communication were still there, the lack of sex would probably be bearable. But then, if the affection and communication were there, chances are the sex would be too. They go together. Sex is simply the natural extension of that affection and communication.

As such, sex is about much more than the physical act. It is symbolic of all the closeness and affection that makes a couple a couple.

A Symbol of the Relationship

Guys see sex as symbolic of the relationship, and because of this a lack of sex can REALLY start to mess with them.

First, they start to question themselves:

  • Is there something wrong with me?
  • I desire my partner, what is wrong? Am I terrible at sex?
  • Does my partner no longer find me attractive?
  • Does my partner not desire me?

There’s a good chance that the lack of sex is at least partially because their partner isn’t feeling good about themselves. But this lack of sex results in both people feeling bad about themselves, and can start a downward spiral of negative momentum.

If the problem persists for any length of time, guys start to question the relationship itself:

  • The person I committed to won’t touch me, do they not care about me anymore?
  • Do they not love me?
  • Is our relationship failing?
  • My needs are being ignored here, what about me? Don’t my needs matter?

At this point, the sexual drought is spilling over and affecting the rest of the relationships. Chances are you got here due to poor communication. Unfortunately improved communication is what you need to get out, as over time this will do considerable damage threatening the relationship itself.

People say that they don’t want to be bothered for sex. But someone pestering you for sex isn’t a problem. It becomes a problem when they have stopped asking, because when that happens resentment has set in and they have given up hope.

All About Sex

I opened with the idea that guys seem to be making women feel like they are only wanted for their bodies, and that things are “all about sex”.

I’m pretty sure that’s not the intent. Making your partner feel that way is simply going to cause any sexual rift to deepen, and that’s not something anyone wants. So why in the world do guys do it?

Here’s my theory:

One of the biggest issues that couples face is they get to a point where they feel they have lost “the spark”. They feel like roommates, and maybe feel taken for granted. They no longer feel special when they are around their partner. And likely they ARE being taken for granted somewhat. It’s easy to get caught up in day to day life and let the relationship suffer, but it doesn’t mean someone loves their partner any less.

I think this is the stage where some people start to resent sex.

For guys, sex is symbolic of the relationship. They need it on a fairly regular basis (“regular” being different from person to person) in order to feel that things are alright. But without enough focus on each other, to the woman it starts to feel as though all they are wanted for is sex. After all, if you aren’t taking time to nurture the relationship (which is usually the fault of both members) but still want sex, then it does start to seem like you are roommates who happen to have sex sometime. No one wants that.

I’ve heard it said that women need connection for sex, and men need sex for connection. I don’t think that’s quite accurate. Instead, I think maybe for women sex goes along with connection while for men sex is symbolic of connection. But even for the guys it’s not actually about sex. It’s still about connection.

I think maybe men and women are both actually looking for the same thing. We both want connection, and to feel valued in the relationship. We are just speaking different languages, and becoming resentful as a result.

Keeping Love Alive

The worst feeling in a relationship is the sense that you have become just roommates, and the sense of being lovers is gone. When this happens, men often seem to think that sex is the way to rebuild the connection, while women want the connection before the sex.

Both approaches are probably wrong. Sex without connection will feel devaluing for both parties. But going long periods without sex while trying to rebuild connection will undermine your ability to rebuild connection. The relationship has to be the focus, but sex needs to be included as part of that.

For any ladies out there who are feeling like they are just wanted for sex, chances are your partner is not just looking for the act (alright, maybe sometimes but not usually). Instead he’s looking for everything it means to him. He’s looking for connection, and a feeling of closeness. He doesn’t want just anyone, and he’s not looking for a repository for his sperm. He wants YOU. He’s looking for feeling loved, and valued by you.

And he sees sex as a way of expressing all of that.

I don’t know if this makes any sense, or helps anything. But to any ladies out there who are feeling used solely for their bodies, please be open to the possibility that there is a lot more to us than just that.

You may drive us crazy sometimes (just as we do to you). But we do love you for who you are. We love your personality, your quirks. The way you can make us laugh and how just thinking about you sometimes can bring a smile to our faces. We want to be there for you emotionally as best we can (which admittedly isn’t always the way you want). And we do want to grow with you and have a life with you. We just need sex to be a part of it.

Losing the Spark

Posted in Communication, Conflict, couples, Depression, Family, Happiness, Hope, Life, Love, Marriage, Passion, Relationship Help, Relationships, Romance by

dimmingflame

I spend my days in the world of business, and increasingly I see parallels between what it takes to succeed in business and what it takes to succeed in long term relationships (and life in general actually).

Two of the central concepts in business are Operations and Projects. Any business has *something* that they do, and the operational side of a business is the day to day tasks that allow the business to function in the here and now. This is the stuff that keeps money coming in, and sometimes you’ll hear this referred to as the things a business needs to do to “keep the lights on”.

A business can’t only worry about today though. They also need to keep their eye on the future and plan where they want to be tomorrow. See, even if they have a great business, markets change. New products appear (potentially reducing interest in existing ones) and new competitors appear with fresh ideas and approaches.

In addition to worrying about today, businesses have at least part of their energy and resources dedicated to ensuring there is a tomorrow. At the very least, they need to monitor the ongoing health of the business. This side of business where there is long term visioning is referred to as projects.

Operations may keep a business running and alive today, but the future still matters. A business needs to grow, or at least ensure that they aren’t becoming obsolete. It can be tough balancing both of these things, but it’s necessary to stay alive.

Those who don’t balance the present and the future tend to fail.

The Operations of Relationships

Think of the progression of a relationship.

The early days of relationships are all about building. You meet, and spend time together learning each other. It’s exciting, and it’s new. When you get together it’s an event. Even if all you do is rent a movie or watch some TV, you still made plans to get together. Think of this as your “business start-up”.

Then the relationship gets to another level, and you move in together or get married (and then move in together). What happens? We are no longer building the relationship, we have already built it. We know each other, and although there is still more to learn the pace at which this happens slows considerably.

We now start worrying about day to day life. Our “planned” time together gets taken up with things like grocery shopping, laundry and dishes. Then maybe we have kids, and for a number of years they become the priority. Life becomes all about feeing and changing the baby. It’s about teaching them, raising them. Helping with homework, and shipping the kids off to various events.

These things are all important, and we have to do them. And hey, maybe we even enjoy doing them. But all the while the energy we were once expending on our partner and our relationship is slowly diminishing.

If you talk to couples who are having problems, one of the biggest issues they face is they get to a point where they feel they have lost “the spark”. When this happens, couples will often say things like “they feel like roommates”, or “they feel taken for granted”.

I think this is the biggest killer of relationship, but what exactly is it that has happened here?

The couple has gotten caught up in “operations”. They have lost sight of the future (the fact that they need to have one). They aren’t monitoring the health of the relationship.

Instead, they are simply living life day to day, doing the things to keep the lights on. They haven’t focused on each other enough and spent enough time growing the relationships – or even just ensuring that they aren’t falling apart.

Part of it is “comfort”. Life gets busy, and when you *know* that the other person will be there it’s easy to let them slide. After all, when all the chores are done and the kids have been put to bed both of you are often tired. But over time this takes a considerable toll.

Some couples wake up one day and realize they no longer know the person sleeping next to them. And chances are both of them have a bit of resentment and a sense of loss for where they once were, and what they have become.

Look at your interactions with your partner. Look at the hours you spend together. How much of it is actually focused on them? How much time are you investing in being a couple? Now look at how much of it is time where you simply happen to be occupying the same space, but you are really focused on the kids, the chores, whatever.

Yes, all the “stuff” of day to day life has to happen. But you need to nurture the relationship too.

Signs of Distress

In long term relationships, I think all couples go through some sort of variation on “losing the spark”. Eventually we realize we have got caught up in running a household and raising a family (the world of operations), and we have lost sight of each other as a couple.

What matters is how far things are gone before we really notice, and what we do about it.

People talk about how communication forms the foundation for any relationship, and that becomes especially true when we recognize problems. People are different, so often one person will be the first to really notice “a problem”.

When this happens the biggest mistake people can make is to do nothing.

From reading books and other blogs, often women are the first to get the sense that something has gone wrong (us guys tend to be oblivious). It’s not always women noticing first, and the relationship may not even be a woman and a man – but let’s assume it is for this example.

She notices *something* has gone wrong by realizing that she isn’t really happy.

Maybe she says something to her partner, but he doesn’t get it. He hears her, but doesn’t understand. He thinks, “I love you, I’m providing for my family and I’m a good parent, I don’t understand what the problem is. I’m being a good partner here.”

He is stuck in the world of operations. Those things are important for keeping the relationship going, but not for keeping it ALIVE.

When she says something another response is to get defensive. Having his partner say “I’m not happy here” become misinterpreted, and in his head it becomes “you aren’t a good partner” causing him to start to withdraw (hey, we are emotional creatures and can be a bit sensitive sometimes).

A worse situation is when she doesn’t say anything at all. Rather, she pretends she’s happy and tries figuring out what is wrong on her own. All the while resentment towards her partner is growing, and he doesn’t even know anything is wrong.

Actually guys may be dumb, but we’re not stupid (mostly). So he has picked up on the fact that something is wrong, but he thinks it’s just a phase that will pass, or he completely misreads the severity of things. After all, they’re a couple and they’re committed to a life together, right?

Hah. Unfortunately life isn’t that simple.

Accepting a Problem

When it comes to relationships people REALLY don’t like to accept the existence of problems, so they deny it for as long as they possibly can. People are stubborn, and our natural response to things is to look for things to blame reasons, and we really don’t like change.

Eventually though, we accept that there’s some kind of problem.

I once read that most couples get to a counselor about 2 years later than they should have, and I believe it.

For the person who “caught on” late, they’re hurt and a little scared, so they do what they can to try and make things better. But by now the relationship is caught up in the resentment that comes with negative momentum, so there is a risk that the partner who noticed things first has withdrawn from the relationship, and ignores the efforts to improve things. They think it feels forced, and not genuine.

The couple is now in a downward spiral that does not have a happy ending unless they can both buy in that they want things to improve. And if they do, they need to realize that yeah, things will seem a bit forced at first – but that doesn’t make it any less real.

Digging Out

A LOT of relationships fail at this point. And a lot more stay together, accepting the “truth” that this is normal and long term relationships are simply doomed to a loss of love. Some are fine with a somewhat happy existence, and others stay together in name only – basically living separate lives.

I think there’s more to life than that. I think your relationship should be a source of joy. You should WANT to spent time with your partner whenever you can. After a long day at work, you should look forward to getting home and seeing their face. You should want to share experiences with them. And no matter how long you have been together, nothing should feel as good as being with your partner, holding each other and knowing you’ll never let each other go.

To get back to that spot, you need to focus on the relationship. Day to day life will always be there, but that can’t be your only interactions. You can’t use that as an excuse to not nurture the relationship.

Like a business that monitors it’s day to day health while having a plan for the future, the relationship HAS to become a priority. You need time focused on each other. You need to not only maintain the relationship, but build it.

Do things together.

I don’t think couples intentionally take each other for granted. Most couples will SAY “of course the relationship is a priority. Of course my partner is a priority”.

But actions speak louder than words.

Think back to my earlier question:

Look at your interactions with your partner. Look at the hours you spend together. How much of it is actually focused on them? How much time are you investing in being a couple?

Now ask yourself how much time you think you should be spending on being a couple. Everything needs some sort of sustenance and maintenance to survive, and relationships are no different in this regard.

If you feel the spark has been lost, rest assured that you aren’t alone. Many, many couples go through the same thing. But as long as there is still a flicker, no matter how faint, you can rebuild a flame.

But it’s up to you to do it. If your relationship is a priority, don’t let that only be in words. Back your words with action, and focus on it again. And this time, don’t let it go.

Momentum Shifts

Posted in Affairs, Blaming, Communication, Conflict, couples, Happiness, Hope, Love, Marriage, Relationship Help, Relationships by

Momentum

Momentum is defined as:

“the strength or force that something has when it’s moving”

Looked at this way momentum is often thought of in terms of a physical object, but physical objects aren’t the only things that can have momentum.

Momentum is also found in the world of sports. Take basketball (since that’s what I know best):

Maybe a player hits a few shots, then makes a great defensive play. Next thing you know the game is coming easily and the player (or team) is “in a zone”, confidence builds and everything seems to be working. In this case momentum is more like a feeling or an energy; and this energy can be seen through body language. When things are going well players are loose, carefree, and seem to be having fun. It can’t really be quantified, but anyone who has felt it or even just witnessed it knows it real.

One thing about momentum though, you can’t always control it and it’s not always positive. Just as positive momentum can build, players or teams can go cold and the momentum can shift. Sometimes a team appears to have a game well in hand, and then something happens. Maybe they start missing a few shots, or have some defensive lapses. At first it’s not a big deal as they still have the lead. But as the game becomes closer the energy starts to shift, and instead of playing freely players start to tighten up. Doubt starts to creep in and they start to rush. The opponent senses the shift, as do the fans.

When this happens a coach will often call a timeout to give the team a bit of a pep talk and try to prevent the negative momentum from building any further. See, momentum in this sense comes down a lot to confidence and belief. It is a form of energy visible largely through body language.

Momentum in Relationships

Relationships also have momentum. The early days of a relationship are often generally marked by a sense of positive momentum. The couple may just be getting to know each other, but they are relaxed, comfortable with each other and having fun.

Unfortunately just as there is positive momentum, there can also be negative momentum. And when you find yourself getting caught in negative momentum you can feel powerless to stop it.

The problem with negative momentum in relationships is that there is no coach to call a timeout and try to get things under control. Instead, this negative momentum can feed off itself and build, potentially spiraling out of control.

The Downward Spiral

I recently read an article by couples therapists Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt talking about how negative energy impacts relationships.

The therapists were a couple themselves, and as their own marriage was struggling they made an interesting discovery. Their discovery was that this negative momentum makes it very difficult to get out because people start to guard themselves, misinterpret things and look for offense even where none is intended.

As a result, even when partners are making attempts to improve the relationship and “make things better”, it often doesn’t work. People can become unable to recognize genuine love.

Harville ticks off the ways we deflect what we secretly crave: by devaluing praise; by assuming the other person is insincere; by criticizing the sender of a positive message for not getting it right, not doing it on time, or not doing it often enough; by not listening; or by feeling embarrassed.

For instance, there was the wife who told her husband she needed him to express more affection—then resisted his kisses and kind words because, she said, they didn’t feel genuine. Another husband admitted that when his wife offered verbal support, he shut down and didn’t respond. And when a new father took time off from work to help his exhausted wife with their twins, she refused to let him do his share.

“The common wisdom,” they write, “is that romantic relationships would stay happy if people did a better job of giving to each other. But that’s not what we’ve discovered. We’ve found that many people need to do a better job of receiving the gifts their partners are already offering. It’s surprising how often the compliments, appreciation and encouragement of a well-intentioned partner make no dent in the armor of an unhappy partner.

Ulterior Motives

When we are unhappy, we start to put up barriers, perpetuating our unhappiness and making it difficult for things to improve. One of the big problems is when we start looking for ulterior motives. If you are looking for hidden meanings and slights, you will always be able to find them.

This causes people to discount genuine attempts at improving and strengthening the relationship. People take the approach of “oh, he/she is only doing this because they want something”.

Yeah, they probably do want something. They want to make the relationship better. They want to see their partner smile again. They want to experience a loving relationship the way they once had. They want to be happy again as a couple. “Wanting something” doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

So they do their best to try to make things better, but they don’t know how. And when all their attempts at improving things are ignored or looked at suspiciously eventually they will give up.

That is when relationships die.

Loss of Hope

I’ve said before that I don’t think it’s ever too late. Sure, there are some cases where it’s best for everyone if a relationship ends. Often when relationships end I think that both people do still love each other. But that love is buried under layers of hurt and resentment, and it has gotten to the point where they don’t believe they will ever be happy again.

Consider the following:

suicide

It’s kind of a morbid thought, but I think the same thing happens in relationships. I don’t think anyone “wants” a divorce (alright, maybe some do but those are probably exceptions). They just want to be happy again, and they have lost hope that they will be able to.

Frequently when long term relationships fail, one or both members wish they could have made it work. And often long after the relationship has ended, people hold out hope that they will somehow be able to reconcile.

A buddy of mine ended up divorced after his wife walked out on him, and even after the divorce he wore his ring for 6 months hoping that somehow they could figure things out. Eventually he gave up and moved on with his life (only to have her come back wanting to patch things up after it was too late). Reading other blogs and comments sections, for the person who was dumped/scorned/left there is often a wish that things could be different, and they could be back together.

The failure of a long term relationship is not an easy thing, and the only people who seem to be unfazed by it are people who have already started a new relationship prior to ending the old one. Incidentally, those affair relationships are almost always doomed to failure. Stats say that 40-50% of first marriages fail (pretty depressing), but when you look at numbers on the affair relationships that cause marriages to end, the stats jump to around 80%.

Changing Perspective

I think people give up on their relationships too easily. Long term love isn’t always easy – you need to build it, and keep building it every day of your life.

Negative momentum can threaten to tear things down, so we need to find ways to recognize when it is happening, stop it and turn it around when it occurs.

We need to start opening ourselves up to genuine gestures of love, and stop looking for problems and issues. You will always be able to find things to be unhappy about if you are looking for them.

You get out of life what you put into it. It can be hard when you are unhappy, but you need to start focusing on the positive, and appreciating the things that are good. I’m sure there is a lot of good, but it can be hard to see when you are caught in negative momentum.

No matter what state your relationship is in, things can always get better. Things can always improve. But you need to open yourself up and allow love back in.

For any readers out there who have “been through the fires”, I would love to hear from you. What are some things that you have used to hold on and maintain your love when times were tough? Feel free to comment below or email me at thezombieshuffle@outlook.com

Learning to Love yourself

Posted in Anxiety, Avoidance, Depression, Happiness, Hope, Identity, Individuality, Life, Love, Relationship Help, Self-Improvement, Self-Love by

meditation-leaf

Of all the things you can do, loving yourself is perhaps the most important. It is probably THE key to happiness, affecting both personal happiness and happiness in a relationship. Unfortunately we don’t all love ourselves.

Over the last few posts I have been examining a lack of self-love, anxiety and depression with the help of my buddy Gandalf who has been down the rabbit hole of anxiety, depression and self-loathing. He struggled for years with self-love, and found that anxiety was central to his problem (as anxiety disorders break down the very fabric of what is needed for loving both yourself and those around you).

One important note about my buddy’s situation is that at the time he didn’t know he had a problem. For him, this was just how he was, how he behaved and how he viewed the world. It was horribly broken and unhealthy, but it wasn’t until he hit rock bottom and was able to get better that he was able to look back and see how much damage he was doing to both himself and those around him.

Over the last few posts I have talked about where my buddy’s lack of self love came from, and then how it affected him in day to day life. He was in a bad place emotionally and mentally, and had a number of negative and self-defeating mindsets.
Hopefully other people in a similar boat can learn from his situation and learn to love themselves either again or for the first time.

Facing the Mirror

One of the hardest parts of learning to love yourself is taking ownership of your issues. It’s very easy to blame other people or situations, and it’s easy to rationalize behavior. And when someone doesn’t love themselves, self-defeating mindsets are frequently the norm. It can be very difficult to turn things around, so I asked my buddy what his secret was.

That is an easy answer in theory, but DAMN difficult to put into practice. Simply put, I had to realize:

  1. there was a problem, and more importantly
  2. *I* was the problem.

Once you realize *you* are the problem, you now have nobody to blame but yourself. All the excuses, all the lies, all the daydreams and fantasies you comfort yourself with, the avoidance and coping mechanisms, all of it no longer works. And that is when you start on the path to recovery.

Hmmm, so no real shortcuts then?

No.

I want to clarify one item, and that is why I didn’t realize *I* was the problem. For me, I have always felt the hyper-active arousal and the anxiety that comes with it, so I thought that this is how I should normally feel and this is how other people feel too. After all, I’ve never felt anything else other than this, so I didn’t have a different state to compare it to. I didn’t know how I should really feel and I didn’t know what normal was, except that this was normal for me. So the connection between my behaviors and my anxiety never occurred to me until I was forced to confront these destructive behaviors and solve the root cause instead of using my coping mechanisms.

Sounds a lot like my buddy with sleep apnea, who is always exhausted but insists he is fine and that he isn’t tired (even while he’s nodding off when he’s supposed to be navigating). His point of reference is so messed up that he doesn’t know what it’s like to not be tired.

Yeah, it’s exactly like that. Being anxious had become my norm, so I didn’t realize how much damage I was doing to myself and the people around me that I cared about.

So your “secret” to getting better was to have all of your coping mechanisms fail? You’re saying you had to hit rock bottom before you would accept that you were your own problem, and it’s not until then that you stopped blaming your issues on others? You know, as secrets go, that kind of sucks.

Originally, I thought that I had lost everything when I got to this point, but that is not correct. That was the effect of what happened, not the cause. Being forced to abandon your comfort zone and forced to deal with reality on your own with no possibility of retreat caused me to confront the problem head on. I could no longer deny the problem; pretend it did not exist, or lie to myself thinking that it was somebody else’s fault. In essence, the coping mechanisms failed and I had to deal with the root cause.

Until this point, I had thought that it was everybody else’s problem rather than mine. This was a very logical conclusion because:

  1. hyper-arousal was normal for me
  2. I was scared of anything new
  3. I was self-centered (Narcissistic)
  4. I had a negative viewpoint of life

To me, I expected others to conform to my wishes and desires without having to conform to theirs. Yes, this is where entitlement came for me. I don’t know exactly where it came in, but eventually, I just had this mindset that others should conform to me instead of the other way around.

Because I was so scared of the real world, I ended up in my own fantasy world which I built up to be a comfort zone from reality. I won’t go into the details, as that’s irrelevant to the topic, but the point that I want to make is that this retreat into a fantasy world is normal for anxiety sufferers. The inability to deal with reality causes this retreat. For me, my retreat was into videogames.

I don’t advocate the use of coping mechanisms as I think they hurt more than help. This includes not only games and fantasies, but smoking and alcohol as well. Both have been shown to reduce anxiety temporarily, but the underlying root issues are still there, and the person hasn’t learned how to deal and confront them. It just prolongs the suffering, as games did for me.

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Changing Mindsets

Once you accept that change is needed, and that it is in fact “you” that needs to change, the question becomes WHAT? What is it that needs to change?

Alright, remember how I said that there’s no secret to getting better? Well that’s not entirely true. Here’s the real secret:

Loving yourself is not about your weight, clothes, fitness level, job, relationship, or anything like that.

Sure, making improvements in all of those areas may help, but at their core those are all external items.

It’s like the saying about putting lipstick on a pig – changing those things may make someone feel better temporarily, but it doesn’t change the underlying issue. The temporary high will fade, and you won’t be any happier.

Real change needs to begin within.

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A lack of self-love if normally accompanied by a number of negative mindsets, and it is those that need to change. Some of the most common are avoidance, all or nothing thinking and rumination (dwelling on the past):

For my buddy Gandalf, learning to love himself was all about changing mindsets.

Once I started seeing a psychologist we worked on three items simultaneously – self-esteem, anxiety, and negativity. Working on all three simultaneously really helped as each one is interlinked and I couldn’t just work on one and not the others.

When I worked on my self-esteem, I had to look at myself with my view, and then from other people’s view. After several sessions, it started to dawn on me that my negativity led to a distorted view of who I was. It also lead to the discovery of “The Critic”, or the little voice in my head that was always telling me that I was no good, or bad, or awful in everything that I tried to do. Once you discover that, you can now start to silence that voice and eventually, eliminate it.

I worked on negativity by writing down the first thought that came into my head about a situation and then examining why I thought like that. These are the automatic thoughts an anxiety suffer has. For example, when I sent an email, I’d expect to receive a reply within 15 minutes, and if I didn’t, I’d get anxious. I found out I had an automatic thought that if I didn’t get an email within 15 minutes, then the other person didn’t like me. What I didn’t realize at first is that this is only the first automatic thought in a series of thoughts that cascade down. I would then think that if that other person didn’t like me, then nobody likes me and that I will never be liked by anybody. This is the “All or nothing” cognitive distortion that anxiety suffers have.

There are others as well, and getting to the heart of them is like peeling the layer off of an onion. To deal with these cognitive distortions, I had to analyze each one and logically determine why it was not true. Once I did this, the automatic thoughts became less frequent and eventually stopped altogether. This also helped with silencing “The Critic” and with my anxiety.

Anxiety was the easiest and most difficult, to deal with. The cure is simple, I just had to face my fears. The problem was *everything* was scary. My psychologist had me expose myself to something I found scary, but not *that* scary. We made a list and evaluated items from 1 to 10 as to how scary it was to me and we started off at the low end of the scale (1 and 2) and then work my way up to the 9s and 10s. Every week I had to go and do at least one of them. The next week, we would talk about why I was scared and if my fears matched reality. It was this talking that helped reduce and eliminate the anxiety, because it lead to the method of logically analyzing and assessing how scared I should be in situations, and the same process used for negativity was used here too as the same automatic thoughts came up again.

There are situations I should still be scared of (like a bear chasing me), but most situations I shouldn’t be (like thinking about being chased by a bear in an upcoming camping trip). The realization that anxiety is all about future items that usually won’t come to pass significant diminished the power anxiety had over me.

One item needed for this is dedication. Without that, I wouldn’t have been able to see this through and continuously try to improve every week. I needed to put lots of effort into getting better, which is where hitting rock bottom helped. I knew the problem was me, and only I could make myself better.

I learned strategies to combat my anxiety instead of just coping with it. I needed to get to the root of my anxiety and fight it instead of cope with it by avoiding or controlling it.

Everything else fell into place after learning these simple strategies, like dominoes. The rest became easy, but still took effort. Things like exercising, eating healthy, sleeping for 7 to 8 hours a night, being more assertive, outgoing, and empathic to others was easier to accomplish once the foundation was built.

One last item is that mindfulness really helped quite the thoughts in my head, and it was the last piece of the puzzle. With that, I can now quiet the thoughts in my mind and relax almost on demand, which I thought was impossible just a short time ago.

So there you have it. The “secret” to love yourself you have to start to learn which behaviors and thinking patterns are toxic to you, so that you can recognize them and start to fight back against them. But secret doesn’t mean shortcut, and none of these things are easy. But they ARE worth it. No matter who you are, YOU are worth it.

self love

Life Without Self-Love – Part 2

Posted in Anger, Anxiety, Avoidance, Blaming, Depression, Happiness, Hope, Identity, Learned Helplessness, Love, Narcissism, Relationship Help, Relationships, Self-Improvement, Self-Love by

inner-peace

Of all the things you can do, loving yourself is perhaps the most important. It is probably THE key to happiness, affecting both personal happiness and happiness in a relationship. Unfortunately we don’t all love ourselves.

Over the next few posts I will be examining a lack of self-love, anxiety and depression with the help of my buddy Gandalf who has been down the rabbit hole of anxiety, depression and self-loathing. He struggled for years with self-love, and found that anxiety was central to his problem (as anxiety disorders break down the very fabric of what is needed for loving both yourself and those around you).

One important note about my buddy’s situation is that at the time he didn’t know he had a problem. For him, this was just how he was, how he behaved and how he viewed the world. It was horribly broken and unhealthy, but it wasn’t until he hit rock bottom and was able to get better that he was able to look back and see how much damage he was doing to both himself and those around him.

In my last post I talked about how the breakdown of self-love impacts day to day life. In this post, I want to focus on how it impacts relationships (like my last post, Gandalf’s thoughts and comments are in blue).

Selfish Love

In relationships, we all start out with a selfish approach. There is always something (or multiple things) we are hoping to get out of the relationship, and when looking for a prospective partner we are interested in finding someone who will meet our needs.

Over time though, for the relationship to succeed and/or flourish, it has to stop being about our own needs and wants. Although our partners are separate and distinct from us, their needs and wants have to be just as important as our own. We need to shift from thinking in terms of “me”, to “we”.

When someone doesn’t love themself this mental shift becomes a challenge, and often love continues to be all about you.

It was early in my therapy and my psychologist had me list out what I thought was the perfect partner. After going through that list with him he said one word that I’ll never forget. It was “selfish”.

My mindset at the time was that I wanted and needed loving, but I didn’t think that I needed to give any love back. It never even occurred to me that I should even give any love back. To me, my thinking was that it was their duty to give me love and that I didn’t have to return anything back because just the act of loving me should be enough for them.

There was no empathy for anybody else. My mind only focused on me. It is known as the Narcissus Paradox, where it appears that I would be thinking of others, but really, my mindset was only focused on me and my needs. I was nice only to the point of where I could get other people to show me affection. My thinking was only on how to get other people to show me love, and not on how to love other people.

This leads to passive aggressive behavior and giving people the silent treatment because I didn’t understand how to deal with conflict or how to get what I wanted from other people.

This focus on “me” is described by Daniel Smith (Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety) as follows:

An anxiety sufferer can feel as if he too is imprisoned in his own mind, but with the demonic twist that his mind can think of nothing but itself. Anxious thoughts are radically personal thoughts. Their central concern is what affects you, what threatens you, what you need, you regret, you dread, you fear.

Anxiety is a condition of near-total self-absorption, made only worse by the fact that the sufferer typically realizes that he is being self-absorbed and grieves over his sad inability to see past himself.

Relationship Impacts

For my buddy Gandalf, anxiety and a lack of self-love prevented him from being in any romantic relationships for a long time. He’s now in a much better place now, and is in the first real serious relationship of his life. While talking about relationships I asked if he knew “why” he had never been able to be in a relationship. I think his response speaks volumes on how anxiety and a lack of self-love can damage relationships.

For me, there were several factors that prevented me from getting into a romantic relationship:

  1. Fantasies. I didn’t know what being normal was, and that goes for relationships too. My expectations and reality were very far apart. There was no way that reality could match my fantasy, so I would always be disappointed
  2. Avoidance. I avoided anything that was scary, so I’d avoid talking to people. I couldn’t talk to others, unless it was about my interests, in which you just couldn’t shut me up. This all or nothing type of talking really turns people off of talking to you. I would never ask how the other person is doing. Basically I had no empathy for another person
  3. Expectations. I expected that I had to do nothing in a relationship, so I’d do no work in the relationship. Even if there was a woman that I was interested in, I expected her to do all the work, like introducing herself to me and, well, everything else in the relationship. I expected that she do all the work and that I had to do nothing. This came from the avoidance and learned helplessness behaviors, plus my sense of entitlement
  4. Negativity. Not much to say about this except that a negative perspective is not conducive to building a long term and lasting relationship. Also, the constant doubt and insecurity from the negativity didn’t help either
  5. Empathy. When trying to engage a woman in conversation, there was no emotional connection, or empathy, between myself and the woman. It would be just a complete and total physical attraction and the arousal response would take over.
  6. I was also always scanning the other person for emotional displays, but I would only focus on the ones that affected me and I’d usually place negative meanings to it (e.g. “She just yawned, therefore I must be boring her.”)

The end result is the lady would need to do all the work to start the relationship and keep it going. This is not only unrealistic, but the real question is why (would she)? Why would any lady put the time and effort into a guy who didn’t show affection back? This is where I was and why I never had success in relationships.

Even for friends and family relationships, some of the above played into those relationships too. Except I didn’t have the sexual fantasy, and without that, the other items became bearable enough to suppress my anxiety and actually form a friendship. Even then, it was hard.

I would never show who I really was because I hated, or loathed, myself. So I always changed and became what my friends wanted. It was not so much as showing facets of a diamond but burying the diamond in the ground and showing an amethyst instead.

I so desperately wanted to be accepted, receive affection, and be with others that I would suppress who I truly was. The real fear that I had was that if they saw the real me, they would reject me and I’d lose them. So, yeah, it was mostly fear of rejection and loss, and I felt this all the time.

I recently read that people who suffer from anxiety disorders cannot engage the pre-frontal cortex part of their brain, which is where the higher processing functions are (empathy, emotional regulation, etc.) This makes complete sense to me as this is what I felt.

Being with a friend or lover must feel comfortable, safe, secure, welcoming, and relaxed. When I was suffering from anxiety, I felt threatened, insecure, rejected, and stressed when I was with another person. This was all in my mind, as I was the one who made being with another person like this.

Once I changed my perception of being with people to be non-threatening and reduce my anxiety, then I was able to relax, feel comfortable around people and enjoy their presence.

I’m now thinking that anxiety and the related disorders are the number one killer of relationships. I have no proof, but anxiety is completely counter to the personality qualities needed for a long term stable relationship.

Reduction of Intimacy

One of the ways anxiety damages relationships is through the erosion of intimacy.

I found a great article describing how anxiety damages a person’s sex drive. The article states:

when you have anxiety, it’s not uncommon to also have a low libido. Your sex drive is directly affected by the way you feel, and anxiety is the type of condition that can make it hard to find your partner or the idea of lovemaking to be arousing.

Intimacy is one of the things that defines a relationship, so when sexual issues arise they tend to cause tension in other areas of the relationship. When you combine this with avoidance, you have an issue that can quickly grow out of hand, resulting in a growing dissatisfaction with the relationship.

If the anxious person doesn’t recognize that the sexual issues are a direct result of the anxiety, the anxious mind can read meaning into this that can lead to doubts about the relationship itself.

“I don’t feel attractive or attracted to my partner, what does that mean? Does that mean I don’t love him/her? Does that mean there is something wrong with the relationship?”

The Four Step Dance

My buddy Gandalf didn’t have experience with relationships until after he learned to address his anxiety and love himself, so instead of him I will turn to Daniel Smith to describes this pattern of how anxious thought damages relationships.

He describes this as follows:

  1. Mounting Uncertainty. Anxiety leads someone to question the feelings they have for their partner. Maybe it’s not actually love. Maybe it was just infatuation, desperation or loneliness. Maybe this relationships is not what they really want
  2. Withdrawl. Due to doubts about the relationship, you withdraw from the relationship emotionally, and stop putting any effort in. Or worse, you may become outright neglectful or hostile in a passive aggressive way of expressing unhappiness in the relationship.
  3. Blowback. The behavior displayed while withdrawing causes the relationship to start to break down. Arguments start, and the environment starts to become toxic for both partners
  4. Retreat. Realizing the damage that is being done, the anxious partner starts trying to repair the damage.

This process repeats, as the anxiety leads the relationship to continually go through cycles that do more and more damage to the relationships each time.

Healthy Love

My buddy Gandalf had it right when he said:

Being with a friend or lover must feel comfortable, safe, secure, welcoming, and relaxed.

Your relationship should be a safe haven. Sure, you will have your squabbles and your issues – nothing is ever perfect. But if you are in a committed relationship you should know that you will always be there for each other. You should know that your needs and wants in life are important to your partner (as theirs are to you), and that you will always work to get through things together. There is a level of peace and comfort that comes with knowing those things.

Anxiety and a lack of self-love breaks that down. Life becomes living with stress and doubting yourself constantly. Even the strongest of relationships will be challenged by anxiety and a lack of self-love. After all, how can you ever truly let go and love someone else when you don’t even love yourself?

Next up, how my buddy turned his life around and was able to move forward with a healthy sense of self (and in turn be able to build a healthy relationship).

Do You Love Yourself?

Posted in Anger, Avoidance, Happiness, Hope, Identity, Individuality, Life, Love, Narcissism, Relationship Help, Self-Improvement, Self-Love, Sex by

i-heart-me

Do you love yourself?

As I’ve learned more about interpersonal dynamics and relationships, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are three things which significantly impact a persons ability to have a happy relationship.

  1. Your mindset. This is whether you believe your base traits and characteristics are largely fixed, or whether you believe they can change over time. I’ve touched on this in the past (and will deal with it in more depth in the future), but essentially EVERYTHING can change and everything can improve over time. When you don’t believe it can, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
  2. Your ability to let your partner in. I recently wrote on this in a post on Emotional Walls. When we wall ourselves off from our partners, we create barriers to the intimacy or closeness we can have. Without closeness relationships suffer.
  3. How much you love yourself. This is about self-acceptance, and a sense of self-worth.

Of these, the ability to love ourselves is THE most important. And I suspect it’s related to the other two. If you don’t love yourself, you are less inclined to let your partner in. After all, if you don’t like you, and your partner were to see you as you see yourself, then perhaps they wouldn’t accept you or love you either. So why would you let them in? Instead people build facades and present the version of themself they believe their partner wants.

The problem is, when they do this they aren’t being authentic or true to themselves, and over time this will invariably lead to unhappiness (and potentially resentment).

Loving Yourself

What exactly does it mean to say you “love yourself”? At it’s core, I think self-love is about acceptance. You accept yourself for who you are. That doesn’t mean you can’t change, and can’t improve. You definitely can. It simply means that you don’t believe you have to as you are fine the way you are. Self-love means you believe in yourself and the person you are. You have self-confidence, and a positive self-image.

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This is not to be mistaken with arrogance, of being cocky. It also is not “self-love” in a narcissistic way. Loving yourself is healthy. Being in love with yourself of being full of yourself is not healthy.

Allow me to let you in on a little secret. The people who seem to love themselves most are often the ones who love themselves the least. When someone seems to love them-self it is because they are adept at self-promotion. They draw attention to themselves because they need external validation.

Self-love doesn’t require external validation, as it comes from within.

A Point of Reference

So I’ll ask again, do you love yourself? This can be a difficult question to answer.

A few years ago I went on a trip with a buddy and we shared a hotel room. Going in I knew he snored, but I had no idea how bad it was. His snoring kept me up at night, but worse than the snoring was the fact that it was broken up by long stretches where it seemed like he stopped breathing. After seconds (that felt like minutes) there were large gasps for air, and he would start snoring again.

I’m no doctor, but it was pretty alarming. I told my buddy that he should get it checked out and he insisted he was fine. I asked him if he always found himself tired or rundown, and he said no (even though he fell asleep when he was supposed to be navigating for me on the trip. Very helpful). To him, he was perfectly fine.

A while later I related this story to a co-worker who has sleep apnea, and he told me that it sounded familiar. When I mentioned that the guy insisted he was fine, my co-worker laughed and said that’s because it’s his normal state. He’s always tired, he’s always exhausted. And because of that he doesn’t understand how it feels to be rested.

He believes he’s not tired because he has no point of reference to compare himself to.

I see self-love as being similar. It’s not something you “know”. Sometimes people believe that they love themselves when they really don’t. We can’t get into other people’s heads, so if you have negative thoughts about yourself then you might think it’s normal. After all, it’s what you know.

Incidentally it’s been almost two years since that trip, and my buddy STILL hasn’t seen a doctor (and of course insists he’s fine). He’s not. Sadly the people who need the most help are often the last ones to see it as to them it’s just “the way they are”.

Signs You Don’t Love Yourself

To help understand self-love, let’s start with a looks at some signs and characteristics of people who don’t love themselves.

  • You are critical of yourself. This is one of the big ones. You second guess your decisions (or believe you made the wrong ones), your behavior, and you are unhappy with your body.
  • You spend a lot of time in the past thinking “what if…”. What if I had done this differently, or what if I had done that differently.
  • You become angry at yourself when you make mistakes
  • You don’t have dreams, or your dreams feel out of reach and you don’t see a way to make them happen.
  • You commonly operate out of guilt, or shame.
  • You worry about how you are perceived, or “what others will think”.
  • You believe things would be better or you would be happier if “X” were to happen. Maybe if you lost 10 lbs, got a better job, found a different relationship, etc…
  • You procrastinate.

It’s normal to feel all of these things occasionally. But when they are a pattern of thinking for you, then they are signs that you may not love yourself.

Signs You Do Love Yourself

So what do people who DO love themselves look like? The easy answer is, the opposite of the above characteristics. But as I mentioned earlier, if someone truly loves themselves (and has self acceptance) then it’s not easy to see.

One characteristic is that they tend to have a sense of calm. They are comfortable with who they are, and in their own skin.

They aren’t perfect, and they both know and accept that. They are also able to handle criticism fairly well, as they realize it’s not a reflection on them.

People who loves themselves tend to have a sense of personal accountability and a belief that they have control over their own lives.

They also can look at themselves naked in the mirror without thinking *too many* negative thoughts (regardless of body type).

Filling a Hole

One of the big problems with self-love is that it has to come from within. However, for people who don’t love themselves they often don’t see that. They know there is something wrong, but they can’t identify what it is. Because they don’t understand (or won’t accept) that the issues comes from within they start looking outside of themselves.

When acceptance and self-worth doesn’t come from within, they start looking for external validation. The problem is, validation from outside will never be enough.

self_acceptance_quotes

Everyone enjoys being complimented – it feels good to know that someone finds you attractive, or thinks you are good at something. But for people who stuggle with self love, often compliments are needed. But all the compliments in the world won’t help. If someone doesn’t believe it themselves that self-doubt shows through, and there is a continuous need for external validation.

This can result in all sorts of messed up behavior.

The Explanatory Gap

I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t understand what it’s like to not love yourself. I’ve tried, but I can’t. Loving myself is just part of who I am. See, I like me. I don’t think I’m cocky or arrogant, but I am confident in myself. Most importantly, I know I’m in control of my own life. Things don’t always work out, but they often do. And when things don’t I can always adjust accordingly and find a new path. I make decisions, and they may not always be the right ones. But that’s fine, because they seemed right at the time. When I screw up I try to use it as a learning experience, and a way to do better “next time”.

Understanding what it’s like to not love yourself is as foreign to me as it is to understand what it’s like to be a woman on her period. As a guy, it’s impossible for me to understand that. Yeah, I know the biology – the lining of the uterine wall has thickened in preparation of a fertilized egg, it doesn’t happen so the extra stuff (pretty sure that’s the scientific term) breaks down and is released. It’s accompanied by hormonal changes that can impact mood and how someone feels. Intellectually I get it (kind of). But I don’t understand, and I never will.

This lack of understanding is often referred to as an explanatory gap. Understanding the mechanics of something doesn’t mean I can understand how it feels. In the case of a menstrual cycle, I’m fairly confident I will never understand that. Likewise for self-love.

So to help me understand this a bit better and start to close that explanatory gap I turned to a buddy who has lived this. Someone who has been through the fires, and come out a stronger person for it. We’ll call him Gandalf (as his experiences have made him quite wise).

Because I believe self-love is an important component of happy relationships I had the idea that he could help me understand the mindset a bit better.

When I first approached him on the idea the exchange went something like this:

Me: I’m thinking about writing on self-love, and thought you might be able to help me with a post.
Gandalf: Errr, me? Self-love? Umm, how do you know… (starts blushing and looking at his feet)
Me: Huh? Oooohhh. Dude, I’m talking about self-love, as in “do you love yourself”. Not self-pleasuring!!!
*Awkward silence *
Gandalf: So, how about that ball game last night…

Alright, that never happened. Well in my head it did, and it make me laugh. And since it’s a fairly serious topic I figured it would be good to start with at least a smile.

My buddy Gandalf was unhappy for a longtime and he spent years blaming his unhappiness on everything around him, pushing away the people who loved him the most in the process. He eventually had a breakdown that led to him being diagnosed with an anxiety disorder that led to him falling into clinical depression.

Anxiety disorders are the most common form of mental disorder, and there is a strong correlation between anxiety and a lack of self-love. In the grips of anxiety, my buddy hated himself and it almost destroyed his life. But instead of accepting that this was just “the way he was” and allowing his anxiety to control him, my buddy decided to educate himself, learn as much as he could about it and try to regain control of his life.

Over the next few posts I will be doing something a little different. He will be my co-author, sharing his story. I think his story is at once fascinating and inspiring. Whether you love yourself or not, his experiences are ones that I believe we can all learn from.

If Only Things Were Perfect

Posted in Avoidance, Communication, Happiness, Hope, Life, Love, Marriage, Perfectionism, Relationship Help, Relationships, Self-Improvement by

Cinderella-and-Prince-Charming-disney-couples

In a previous post I talked about a broken thinking pattern that is common in depression and anxiety known as “all or nothing” thinking (to learn more on broken thinking patterns found in depression and anxiety check this summary from Wikipedia).

All or nothing thinking is a mindset where someone tends to see things as black and white. Someone can be a wonderful person and do a bunch of great things, but as soon as they do something wrong or make a mistake, that mistake becomes magnified and somehow undoes all the good.

This thinking causes all sorts of problems in relationships, as all people have strengths and weaknesses, good sides and bad sides. In all relationships mistakes will invariably be made. But for someone with all or nothing thinking, any mistakes or flaws by their partner become magnified, and become “proof” that there is something wrong with the relationship or that their partner is not “the one”. A persons own mistakes and flaws also become magnified, leading to issues with self-love (but that’s a story for another day).

Perfectionism

An extension of this line of thinking is perfectionism. At first glance perfectionism doesn’t seem like such a bad thing. Doesn’t perfectionism just mean that someone has high standards and that they only want the best for themselves? If they do have high standards, isn’t that a positive?

All the literature you will find on perfectionism will lead to a resounding no. Rather than being a positive, perfectionism is actually very, very destructive to the person who holds these beliefs.

Perfection is an ideal, it doesn’t exist. Even perfectionists will acknowledge that. The difference is, in a perfectionist mindset the value of something is understood to be dependent on its inherent traits. It is a negative viewpoint that focuses and magnifies the bad points while ignoring the good points. Something is either good or it’s not. And any flaws that do exist in something are often magnified.

Interestingly, in a perfectionist mindset there is a concern not only with how much something appears to you, but there is also tendency to be very concerned with how things are perceived by others. Presentation is very important. Even when times are tough, maintaining the illusion of perfection is important.

Not surprisingly, this mindset is commonly found with people who suffer from chronic unhappiness.

Personal Responsibility

One of the issues with perfectionism and all or nothing thinking is that it absolves someone of personal responsibility. After all, your main contribution to your happiness in life becomes finding the right situation, the right job, or the right partner. When things aren’t working out or you find you aren’t as happy as you could be then there is a convenient reason. Sure, maybe you could have put in a bit more effort. But for the most part the problem was the situation. It’s simply not the right job. Or you are not with the right person.

“You” aren’t responsible. And there is no push to improve from within, because in order to find happiness you simply need to find the right situation.

A major problem with this approach is that someone will never be satisfied with what they have. Everything has flaws that will eventually reveal themselves. So the “perfect” match is always just out of reach. In relationships this results in someone either constantly jumping from relationship to relationship, or deciding to settle for their current situation.

A problem with “settling” is that it means they believe something better is always out there, they simply haven’t found it yet. And if you are settling, then your heart is never fully in your relationship. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because if your heart isn’t in your relationship you won’t put in the level of effort needed to sustain it. As a result, you won’t be as happy as you can be. This unhappiness in turn becomes proof that the relationship is not the right one.

Perfection vs. Continuous Improvement

A different, healthier and more realistic approach to the world is one of continuous improvement. I’ve written about continuous improvement before, and I think it’s a very important approach to not only relationships but life in general (it also happens to be one of my least viewed posts, though I think it’s a good one. So follow the link, come on, you know you want to 🙂 ).

One thing differentiating perfectionism from a continuous improvement mindset is the approach to mistakes or flaws. In perfectionism, mistakes and flaws are signs of a problem. They are signs that something isn’t right, or it’s not good enough. Perfectionists may accept that things could potentially be improved, but they often believe it’s “not worth the effort”. After all, you end up with a relationships that is flawed, and not perfect.

In a continuous improvement mindset, mistakes and flaws are almost seen as a positive thing. Identifying problems shows you areas that can be improved, and ways to make something better. Flaws are a natural part of anything, and they provide motivation to do better or work harder.

In the continuous improvement approach to the world, we are not finished products. Everything has good sides and bad sides. All relationships have their strengths and weaknesses. What is important is to focus on what is good. Appreciate the good in what you have, and enjoy those things.

Where perfectionism focuses on and magnifies the bad points while ignoring the good points, continuous improvement does the opposite. In this mindset what you have is “enough”, because you allows the focus to be on the good. It doesn’t mean the bad doesn’t exist, or that you won’t strive to improve. But the bad is simply part of something.

Continuous improvement still sees perfection as an ideal, but it is simply a goal to strive towards. The important part is the process. The journey of taking what you have and making it better. You may never get there and that’s alright, because at every stage of your journey what you have is enough.

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The Worst Word in the English Language

One problem with the difference in these mindsets is that people often don’t even realize which mindset they possess. If you find you often think about “perfect” or use the word commonly, there’s a good chance you are operating from a perfectionist mindset.

Likewise, if you find yourself focusing on what is missing from your life instead of what you do have, there is a very good chance that you have a perfectionist mindset.

Personally, I can’t stand the word “perfect”. Perfect is an ideal. It doesn’t exist.

perfect isnt real

Life provides us with opportunities, and it’s up to us to determine what we want to do with them. In a perfectionist mindset, many opportunities are passed up because they aren’t good enough.

The reality is life takes effort. There is no such thing as a perfect job. There is no perfect partner. What you get out of anything in life is up to what you put into it.

If you feel that your relationship is missing something, take a long look in the mirror and be honest with yourself about what you are putting into it. Are you putting your best into it, or are you imagining that maybe there’s something better out there somewhere?

If you want a great relationship, it takes work. It takes a willingness to communicate and to prioritize each other. It will never be “perfect”, but it can be as good as you let it. Settling does not mean staying in a situation that’s not perfect. Nothing is perfect, but everything can be better. If you have something that’s pretty good but you can make it better, then why wouldn’t you? In a continuous improvement mindset “settling” is when you have something that’s good and you refuse to put in the effort to make it better.

So put in the effort. And make your relationship the best it can possibly be.

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Unconditional Love

Posted in Avoidance, Conflict, couples, Happiness, Love, Marriage, Narcissism, Relationship Help, Relationships by

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When talking about love, one of the things you commonly hear of is someone saying that they are looking for unconditional love. What exactly does unconditional love mean though?

Does it mean you love all of them? Does it mean you love every aspect of that person? And conversely, if you find you don’t love “everything” about someone does that mean you don’t love them unconditionally? Does that perhaps mean that you don’t TRULY love them?

All or Nothing

The idea that if you love something you must love all of it, and conversely if a relationship has a problem then it means it is not “true love” is surprisingly common. It often goes hand in hand with the idea that if you find “the one” you should never have to work at things, and you will be able to live happily ever after.

This mindset is often referred to as all or nothing thinking. When this happens at a young age, you can chalk it up to idealism and a lack of experience. But when it persists over time, this is a broken thinking pattern (sometimes referred to as a cognitive distortion) and a sign of emotional immaturity.

Incidentally, this particular thinking pattern is often found in people who have avoidant personality types, are chronically unhappy, or are dealing with depression or some form of mood disorder.

It can cause significant issues in relationships, as it sets an unrealistic bar for people to measure up to. If your partner has to be perfect, they will always disappoint.

It’s Still Poo

All or nothing thinking is a broken approach to looking at relationships, and world in general. A lot of things come down to belief and opinion, but the idea that loving something means you have to love all of it is simply incorrect.

Of all the things in the world, most would agree that a parent will always love their children. There are exceptions I suppose, but even when spousal relationships break apart parents will usually try to do the best for their children. So to see how broken the all or nothing approach to life is, let’s take a look at being a parent.

I love my children and would do almost anything for them. I love being active in their lives, and I try to take enjoyment out of the time I spend with them. Does that mean I love everything about them?

I’m past the diaper days, but thinking back to those days does loving my children mean I had to love changing their diapers? Not a chance. Yes, these were my child’s diapers I was changing. And I’m happy that I changed them as it was one of the many experiences that came with being a father.

I changed diapers because they needed to be changed and I don’t think I complained about it much (though that could be denial on my part). Thinking back to my discussion on responsibility, I wasn’t changing diapers out of shame or obligation. I never resented doing it, I simply saw it as something that had to be done.

Did that mean I loved it? Nope. It may have been my children and an important part of the experience of being a new dad. But at the end of the day, it’s still poo.

Acceptance

So what does this have to do with unconditional love? It seems easy to say that you don’t have to love poo, no matter how cute the posterior that it comes from. But the same can be said for personality traits or behaviors. My kids are little and they aren’t finished products. They still have tantrums, and are still learning to understand and control their emotions. As any parent can attest, those times aren’t always fun. In fact, being a parent can be difficult and frustrating at times. I love my children. Does that mean I need to love all their behaviors? No.

Actually, because I love them it means I should recognize when their behavior is problematic and I should work with them to try and improve that. I want them to be the best people they can and give them the best opportunity for a happy future. Giving into tantrums and allowing them to get away with unacceptable behavior won’t do that, and will actually do harm to them in the long run.

My children are dependent on me, but that’s not why I want the best for them. I want the best for them because I love them, unconditionally. The same rules apply for family, friends, and also our chosen partners.

Loving them unconditionally doesn’t mean you need to love everything about them. There can be things about our partners that we wish were different, and that’s alright. Unconditional love simply means that you accept them as they are, accepting both the good and the bad.

unconditional

I will argue that the “all or nothing” view of love is actually a selfish form of love. If loving someone means you have to love all of them, and any problems means it isn’t true love then you are actually saying you will only love someone when it works for you. You will only love someone when times are good (because if times aren’t good there is a problem, and therefore it was never true love).

Unconditional love involves loving someone even when times are difficult. It means being supportive of the other person, but at the same time being honest with them, even when the truth might not be what they want to hear.

Love vs. Relationships

I believe in love, and I believe love should be unconditional. But what about our romantic relationships? Are they solely based on unconditional love?

Let’s say you meet someone and fall in love with them, but they don’t feel the same way. Is that a relationship? No. You may love them and accept them for who they are. You may think of them all the time and have pictures of them in your house, wallet, at work whatever. But if they don’t feel the same way about you, then that’s just creepy (and probably puts you at risk of a restraining order).

If you believe you are in a relationship but the other person sees you as one of the many people they are dating, sorry, again it’s not a relationships.

It doesn’t become a relationship until they return the love, and there is an acknowledgement that the two of you share something together and you are committed to each other. So although love may be unconditional, relationships aren’t. Relationships do have expectations, and some degree of reciprocity is required.

Lets take this idea one step further….

Let’s say you are in a relationship, and the other person checks out emotionally. They stop doing the little things, they stop showing you that they care. You become two people, effectively living individual lives. If that happens, are you in a relationship? It doesn’t matter if there’s a piece of paper saying you are married, or you are living together. Even if one person still loves the other with all their heart, the relationship has effectively ended. Relationships require reciprocity. They are about intent, and effort.

One Sided Love

Now if unconditional love means you will always love the other person, does it mean you will always be there for them?

I believe very strongly in love and in relationships. I believe many relationships fail unnecessarily, and that with a bit of effort most relationships can be saved. So this is difficult for me to say, but I believe the answer is no. Unconditional love does not always mean you will be there.

I have heard countless stories of people who treat their partners poorly (either through active abuse or simply checking out on them emotionally), and then are surprised when their partner eventually decides to leave the relationship. Often this shock is accompanied by a sense of outrage. How could this person leave me? I thought that they loved me?

Some people think that someone “loving them” gives them a green light to do what they want. They feel safe that the other person is committed to them and they will always be there no matter what.

People-Say-You-Dont-Know-What-Youve-Got-Till-Its-Gone

Loving someone doesn’t mean you will put up with anything. Love has to go both ways. If someone says they love you, but don’t back up that claim with their actions then what do you really have? At that point you have nothing.

It doesn’t matter how strongly you feel about someone, if it’s not reciprocated you don’t have a relationship. People have bad days, and people make mistakes; so I’m not saying that the relationship has ended the first time someone gets angry. People run into issues, and you need to be willing to work on them together.

But if someone is consistently treating you poorly, or the relationship becomes very one sided where your love is not reciprocated, then staying with them is not love. It’s enabling them. It’s telling them that the way they are treating you is alright.

No. Sometimes unconditional love means knowing when to walk away. It doesn’t mean you love them any less, but that’s different from always being there.

Meant to Be

All or nothing thinking is broken, and destructive to relationships. There is no such thing as perfect. There is no such thing as loving all of someone. Everyone has bad days. Everyone has their flaws.

There is no “meant to be”. Life gives us opportunities, and it is up to us to decide what we want to do with them. Some embrace the opportunities life gives them, and others squander them.

meantToBe

If you want a strong relationship, you need to build that strength into it. You build that strength with kindness, caring, affection, and effort. And you need to build it together.

Emotional Walls

Posted in Anger, Avoidance, Communication, Communication Issues, Conflict, couples, Happiness, Identity, Love, Marriage, Passion, Relationships, Self-Improvement by

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Over my last few posts I have been exploring attachment and emotional intimacy. Emotional intimacy is what brings couples together. We all want to feel loved and valued. We all want to be accepted for who we are, quirks and all.

In Building Closeness and Intimacy I looked at how emotional intimacy, or closeness is initially created. There really is no secret science to building closeness. It requires mutual self-disclosure (that’s a fancy term for sharing information about each other). It requires opening up and letting the other person in. That’s a simple fact, and at least on some level anyone who has been in a relationship know this.

I’m not sure if anyone ever lets the other person “fully in” to their world, but the degree to which we do determines the degree of satisfaction we can have in our relationships. So why is it so hard sometimes to let other people in? Why do we build walls, and hold back in a relationship?

When we are talking about dating, it’s understandable that we don’t let other people in. Trust takes time to build, and as the relationship develops the walls we build around ourselves should come down.

But what about marriages or other long term relationships? If you are able to commit to life with someone, should that mean you are able to let them in?

Impacts of “Holding Back”

Unfortunately that’s not always the case. Even in marriages and long term relationships, we don’t always let our partners in. We all have our secrets; moments in our lives that we aren’t proud of or moments that we wish we could forget. In some cases there are parts of our past that we have actually been able to block out, and convince ourselves never happened.
Allowing other people into access to our hearts and souls doesn’t require us to reveal every secret, but we do need to let our chosen partners in. As individuals we choose how close we are willing to let other people get to us, and how much of us we are willing to let them know.

Here’s the problem with holding back though. It limits the depth of emotional connection we are able to achieve and limits our ability to experience satisfaction in our relationships.
This is summed up in a great quote from this article:

Keeping your guard up in a relationship is guaranteed to keep the love out too.

This reminds me of Brene Browns thoughts on numbing behaviors (from “The Gifts of Imperfection”). She said that we can’t numb selectively. If we are numbing ourselves from negative emotions, we end up numbing ourselves to positive emotions as well. So if you are holding back in a relationship, you are effectively limiting your ability to love.

This makes absolutely no sense to me. If you love someone and want a life with them, why hold back? Why have a fraction of the happiness and joy in a relationship that you could potentially have? Holding back definitely limits the satisfaction we can have, so why do people do it?

Protection against Being hurt

The most common and obvious reason people hold back in relationships is to protect themselves from being hurt.

We’ve all been hurt, and the people we love are the ones who have the ability to hurt us the most. It’s a terrible feeling, and when hurt it’s understandable to want to protect ourselves from being hurt again.

One way to do this is not allowing yourself to get too attached. After all, if you never fully let go then you don’t allow yourself to be vulnerable enough to be hurt. It’s a form of self-protection. But it’s flawed, because it results in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You aren’t letting people in because you are protecting yourself. But doing this means you are never able to develop strong emotional attachment. As a result your relationship ends up feeling lacking, as if something is missing. The distance that has been built in ends up acting as a barrier to love.

There are two main flavors of this:

  • Broken trust in the existing relationship. Trust is a very fragile thing. Some of us find it easier to trust than other, but once trust is lost it is very hard to rebuild. It takes time, and while it is being rebuilt it is easy to become hyper-sensitive, seeing shadows in every corner. Here’s the thing though, if you are looking for reasons to not trust someone, you will always find them. It’s easy to read too much into things and misinterpret simple (positive) words and actions in a negative way.
  • Baggage from prior relationship. To me this is a really unfortunate situation. I commonly hear stories where someone has been badly hurt in a prior relationship, and because of that they decide (normally at a subconscious level) to never let that happen again. They protect themselves by walling themselves off emotionally, never giving the next person a fair chance.

Issues with Identity

Holding back due to prior hurts makes sense. It’s unproductive and does more damage than good, but it’s understandable. As I looked into reasons why people hold back in relationships, one thing that surprised me is it can happen due to issues with identity.

If someone doesn’t have a strong sense of identity, they may hold back out of a belief that if they allow someone else to get too close they will become dependent, or they will “lose control”. They fear losing their own identity in the other person, so they hold back from the relationship in order to preserve their sense of self.

Another variation on this is a fear of acceptance for who you are. In discussing this, a buddy of mine related the following story:

I feared the other person wouldn’t accept me for who I am, so I suppressed myself and conformed to what the other person wanted. The phrase “everything to everybody” sums it up. The problem is that you don’t feel accepted for who you are, so you never feel comfortable around the other person. You never relax and just be yourself as you are always vigilant for signs of rejection. I never asserted myself with others in fear of offending them with who I am. I never was accepted for who I was, and therefore, I never accepted who I was either, which led to self-loathing.

It is similar to the fear of losing yourself in the other person, as both have the fear of acceptance and rejection at the heart of the issue. They just manifest differently.

The “all or nothing” thinking came from my negative view of reality. It is a cognitive distortion and it was part of my depression. My fear was that if a person didn’t like one part of me, they would hate all of me. There was no in between. It’s not a realistic view and my cognitive behavioral therapy deals with this all or nothing thinking and changed my perspective to that which is realistic. A person may not like a part of me, but still like the other parts.

In one case someone holds back because they are afraid of losing themselves. In the other case someone holds back because they are afraid of not being accepted. There is a belief that if someone got to know the “real you” they wouldn’t love you.

Interestingly both scenarios are symptomatic of people who do not have a strong sense of identity. When you are comfortable with yourself, then you can see that another person is able to enhance your identity. You don’t fear losing your identity, and instead see a relationship as being beneficial to both parties.

Fear

In my last post where I talked about attachment styles I mentioned that anxiety and avoidance levels are the two primary characteristics leading to unhealthy attachment. People with high levels of either tend to have more issues in relationships, and it is very common for people with avoidant personality types to hold back in intimate relationships.

When you look at the reasons for holding back, at their root they all come down to fear. It may be fear of getting hurt, fear of rejection, fear of losing their identity, fear of dependency, fear of losing control, or even fear of your own feelings.

All of these lead to holding back due to a fear of intimacy itself, and this is seen most clearly in anxious or avoidant personality types. They both want and fear intimacy, and as a result they hold back. Or when too much closeness occurs, they push their partner away. It creates an emotional distance that results in them either being alone, or living largely as two people leading separate lives.

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People have talked about love being like a drug, and the early stages of love can definitely feel that way. But if love is a drug, then anxiety and avoidance is the antidote.

In his book “Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety”, Danial Smith talks about how for him falling in love was the magical cure for his anxiety. But it is a cure that never lasts.

Unfortunately, what an anxiety disorder does to love is far more consequential than what love can do to the disorder. Anxiety is a wily, reactive affliction; it often recedes in response to positive life events. But it seldom recedes for long. Like acne or arthritis, anxiety is always lying in wait, ready to flare back up. My anxiety came back shortly after Joanna moved in with me and when it did it quickly consumed our relationship.

In his story, Danial Smith tells how his anxiety made him hold back, and question everything. He ended up losing the love of his life, because he wasn’t sure if he even loved her. His story has a happy ending (spoiler alert!!!). He conquers his anxiety, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that he learns how to deal with in in such a way that it no longer controls his life. And in the process he was able to win back the girl he had lost.

Learning to Let go

We all want to be loved, accepted, valued and cared for. And I think that all of us hope to find someone to be with “happily ever after, till death do us part”. But when we hold back in relationships, we are not only sabotaging our relationships, but also our happiness and our future.

At it’s root, holding back is about fear. So ask yourself, what are you really afraid of? Losing yourself? Are you afraid of rejection? Are you afraid of being hurt?

My buddy was afraid he wouldn’t be accepted for who he was, so he tried to be what he thought everyone else wanted. He was afraid of rejection. When he finally learned to let go, he found that the people who loved him loved “him”. They cared about the person he was, not just the one he portrayed.

If you are in a relationship and you are holding back or hiding yourself, you need to ask yourself if you are holding back from the people you love, or from yourself? If your loved ones accept the bits of you they have seen, why would you not believe they would love you as you are? No one is perfect. We all have our quirks. Part of love is accepting the other person and loving them for who they are.

Some people who hold back blame their partner. They convince themselves that maybe it’s their partner. Maybe they would be able to let go with someone else, if they could just find the right person. Your partner may contribute, but usually it’s something inside the person themselves.

There’s a saying, garbage in, garbage out. You only get out of life what you put into it. When you hold back, you limit your potential happiness and your future.

If you have built up walls, you are the only one who can decide if you will ever let them come down.

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If you have someone who loves you even with those walls, imagine how much stronger it could be if you would let them in. When you hold back, you may believe you are protecting yourself. But consider the cost.

So make the choice to let someone in. Allow yourself to be vulnerable and allow yourself to be hurt. And guess what, you probably will be. We often hurt those that we love. But better to have a strong, pure love where you accept that there will be issues, and know that you will get through them together.

What’s in it for Me?

Posted in Communication, Conflict, couples, Happiness, Love, Marriage, Narcissism, Relationship Help, Relationships by

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Humans are naturally social creatures, both craving and needing relationships of all types. Our relationships are a fundamental part of who we are, yet we get no formal training on them. Instead we learn about them through a combination of observation and trial and error. Unfortunately, there is often a great emphasis on error.

Some of us are able to form healthy attachments and go on to have largely happy romantic relationships. Others form relationship that are toxic to one or both parties, and others end up largely alone. However I think the vast majority of us have relationships that are good, containing a reasonable degree of happiness – but they could be better. So how do we improve them?

People talk about chemistry, and incompatibilities between personalities. But increasingly I am convinced that the success of someone’s personal relationships is more a reflection on them, and how they have learned to form emotional attachments.

In a recent post I talked about how emotional intimacy is built and emotional attachments are formed. Emotional attachment is a funny thing though. Although it is hard wired into our DNA it’s safe to say we don’t all form healthy emotional attachments.

How it Starts

According to Attachment Theory, your ability to form emotional attachments is significantly impacted by your first emotional attachments when you were a baby. From Wikipedia:

The most important tenet of attachment theory is that an infant needs to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for the child’s successful social and emotional development, and in particular for learning how to effectively regulate their feelings.

Let’s take a look at two diagrams:

unhealthy 1

healthy 2

Attachment starts with need. As infants we have needs that our primary caregiver tries to meet. When they are met we are content. When they are consistently met we start to form trust and attachment. But our needs aren’t always met, and when they aren’t it results in fear, anxiety and stress.

With healthy attachment we learn that our needs not being met doesn’t indicate a lack of care or love. Further, we learn that not all needs will be met, and that’s alright. In unhealthy attachment however, not having our needs met continues to results in stress, anxiety and fear.

Neglecting your child is the fastest path to damaging their ability to make healthy attachments. If their needs are never met, they will not be able to develop trust and care. But attachment theory says it is boundaries that allow a child to develop attachment in a healthy way.

At the other end of the spectrum is spoiling them. If they are used to having their needs always met (or met at an unrealistic level) it can create a sense of expectation and entitlement, also harming their ability to form healthy attachments.

As parents we often want to provide everything for our children. But as this illustrates, when we do too much we risk doing more harm than good. We need to set boundaries, and allow our children to develop independence in order for them to develop in a healthy fashion.

Healthy Attachment

In attachment theory, the two most damaging traits for forming healthy attachments are anxiety and avoidance.

attachment-diagram1

Anxiety is often seen as the fear of the unknown. It is a fear of what “could” happen, and is largely an overreaction of the fear instinct. Anxious people are often expecting the worst case scenario to happen in any situation. Avoidance is keeping away or withdrawing from something, often due to a fear of a perceived negative result.

Both traits are very damaging to relationships. Relationships are based on trust and security, which requires communication. Avoidance leads to poor communication and an inability to address the regular issues that a relationship will face. Anxiety is also very destructive to relationships. For a great summary on how it can impact love check this article. But at a high level anxiety can erode empathy and damage trust.

Attachment Styles

Attachment Theory has identified a number of attachment styles related to people’s levels of anxiety and avoidance. I’ve seen different versions of the styles, but the following chart outlines a few with some of their characteristics:

attachment-types

Looking at this chart, it’s obvious that secure attachment is the “healthy” form of attachment. As noted however, we don’t all develop in a healthy fashion.

Avoidant Attachment is the most common unhealthy attachment. People with high levels of avoidance tend to have issues with intimacy in close relationships, and do not invest themselves emotionally. Interestingly, they often crave closeness and intimacy, but they need to be in control. Once people start to get too close they start to shut them out.

This often leads to a feeling of instability in relationships. The avoidant person wants closeness, but it makes them feel overwhelmed leading them to withdraw. When they feel more secure they will look for closeness again, but they look for it on their terms.

Ambivalent Attachment is less common. Here people are reluctant to get close to others due to fear that their partner doesn’t feel the same way about them.

It’s important to note that these styles and their tendencies are not absolutes. We all have some level of avoidance and anxiety, and your levels determines where you fall on these spectrums. For example, I would like to think that I have a fairly secure attachment style (wishful thinking perhaps). But while I generally have low anxiety levels, I know I lean slightly towards avoidance when it comes to dealing with conflict.

You may be a certain way, and behavioral psychologists believe that your “go to” style is largely a result of your early years. So if you think you’re a bit messed up and you want to blame your parents? Yeah, it probably is actually their fault.

But one important thing is it is possible to change the mindsets that lead to unhealthy attachment and move more towards secure forms of attachment. Your attachment style CAN change. So even if you do want to blame mommy and daddy for who you are today, it’s up to you who you want to be tomorrow.

Building Empathy

When you look at attachment one of the things that stands out to me is in both healthy and unhealthy emotional attachment, it’s all about you and your needs. What about other people?

Somewhere along the way we have to learn that we aren’t the only ones who matter. We need to learn that the world doesn’t revolve around us. In order to have successful relationships, the needs of the other person also need to matter to us. A world of “me” needs to become a world of “we”. Learning to value the needs of others and place them at a level at or near our own is one of the characteristics of empathy.

When we aren’t being empathetic or we are focusing primarily on ourselves and our needs, we are exhibiting narcissistic behavior.

Lack of empathy is the most notable characteristic of narcissism. Additional characteristics include a sense of entitlement, a focus on how things appear to other people (things need to be perfect) and a need for admiration or external validation.

For narcissists, relationships are vehicles for them and their needs. They will put effort into the relationship as long as their own needs are met, but it is never an equal exchange, and it is never done out of genuine care and concern for the other person.

Noted researcher (and sufferer) on Narcissism Sam Vaknin writes:

I am aware of the fact that others have emotions, needs, preferences, and priorities – but I simply can’t seem to “get it into my mind.” There is an invisible partition behind which I watch the rest of Mankind and through which nothing that is human can permeate.

To me, all people are cardboard cut-outs, sophisticated motor contraptions, ersatz and robotic. I know how I should feel because I am well-read–but I cannot seem to bring myself to emote and to sympathize.

Over the years, I have deciphered the code. I have learned to imitate and emulate expertly the more common affect and expressions of one’s inner landscape. But this veneer is easily breached when I am frustrated or humiliated: the mask slips and the real Me is out: a predator on the prowl.

This is an extreme example. The true narcissistic personality type is rare (occurring in approx 6% of the population). In reality we all have some elements of narcissism within us, and when times are tough it’s common for people to just “look out for themselves”. In periods of stress or personal problems our ability to be empathetic often decreases. But the ability to be empathetic towards our partners on a consistent basis (even when times are tough) is the key characteristic that determines the quality of our interpersonal relationships.

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Empathy is the most important characteristic of any close relationship, and particularly in our romantic relationships. Unfortunately we don’t all learn this, or perhaps it’s better to say we learn it to varying degrees. But no matter what your level of empathy is, it can be improved.

Focusing on Others

In relationships, we all want to be valued. We all want to be loved, desired, and appreciated for who we are. If we want that, it’s safe to assume our partner wants and needs that too.

Is thinking about yourself being selfish? No, not at all. We need to think about ourselves and take care of ourselves. However thinking of yourself to the exclusion of others is a problem.

For our relationships to survive we need to value our partners, and their needs must be important to us. For our relationships to thrive, we need to place our partners needs at the same level as ours (or at least very close). We need to understand that love means compromise. Things won’t always be the way we want, and they won’t always be the way our spouse wants. We need to be willing to work together towards a common good that benefits both.

In nature, when two organisms work together for common benefit it is referred to as a symbiotic relationship. When the benefits are very one sided, it is referred to as a parasitic relationship.

If you are unhappy in your relationship, ask yourself why. Does your relationship add value to your life? Are your needs being met? Now ask yourself if you are adding value to your partners life. Are their needs being met?

All relationships go through ups and downs. But overall your relationship should be something that adds value to both your life and that of your partner.

If it isn’t, take a look at how you approach the relationship. Empathy can be worked on and developed. Remember, it’s not about your needs. It’s about finding the way to best meet the needs of the couple, so that both are feeling valued and fulfilled. Working on improving and sustaining empathy is one of the best ways to improve your relationship and have a happier future.