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Breaking Up is Hard to Do by Jay Ray People
who come to a therapist are very rarely happy. It stands to reason, that if they
were they would be spending their money on whatever it is that is contributing
to that. One thing that is common among those that do come is that they want
change. Oddly enough, most hope that can occur with no disruption to whatever it
is that has caused them to be uncomfortable in the first place. Therapy has come
to be the last ditch stand that hopefully will solve it all because this trained
person has all the solutions to whatever ails the situation. When the client
discovers that this is not the case, and if the therapist is honest about this,
one of two things can occur: either the client stops coming, or the client gets
better. I didn’t say the situation gets better although that is the end
result. I said the ‘client’ gets better. Actually, there was never anything
wrong with the client. It was the decisions he or she was making and why. Its
true to say that there are a few major reasons people are unhappy: their work,
including relationships with the people with whom they work, and their home
life, which is about the people that they live with.
The main problem for all of us is getting on with the people in our
lives. It should be so simple. We have been lead to believe from everything that
we have been told, that families are the salt of the earth, and that work is a
satisfying way to make our families and ourselves happy. So
much so, that our whole economic and social model is geared for it totally. We
are clearly expected to mate as soon as is practically possible, and stay that
way until we die. Dutifully we start looking in our pubescent years wherever
prospective partners are to be found and we keep it up until we are successful.
This usually requires seeking out possible partners in contrived social
situations. We go to parties, pubs and dinners with the express purpose of
meeting someone. As this situation is indeed contrived, alcohol lubricates the
social interactions of strangers. If there is a bit of sexual attraction there,
we make the eyes, talk the talk and often end up in bed with them by the end of
the night. The
next weeks are about setting the pattern that this relationship (for such it
became usually from the first night). Cohabitation begins as soon as possible
and we have fulfilled our social and moral obligation. And we are still
strangers. Now we do the best we can to mold ourselves, and our partners into
something that works on a day-to-day basis, attempting to wiggle around and make
the mix fit. Sometimes it does and that’s great. No more is heard from this
lucky couple. Most of the time though, the more we find out about who we are
sleeping with, the more desperate we become to get them to become someone who we
can happily live with. And they are doing the same! Needs are not getting met
and anger is being suppressed for the purpose of keeping the relationship and
our social acceptability. If only they would see the error of their ways
and change. But that is not as easy as it sounds. People are as they are for
lots of reasons and they have taken all their lives to get that way. It’s not
something we can turn on and off to suit, try as we may. And we do try. We turn
ourselves inside out to stop the problems only to have ourselves resurface when
we least want us to. We give up and begin coping mechanisms. For women that will
often be nagging and covert angry resentment. My mum used to pick food up from
the floor, where she had dropped it, and chant “another nail in his coffin”
as she dropped it on his plate. Not a strategy I would recommend. Sexual
withdrawal is often a woman’s way. It’s hard to be turned on by someone who
you are perpetually angry at. Women traditionally are in the home with their
anger so there is not much to distract them from it. Men usually withdraw
bodily. They work late, and leave early. They go to the pub a lot after work,
play golf and go fishing on the weekends. At some stage, depression sets in for
both of them, even though it will look different on each. If all else fails in
the attempts to change the partner’s behavior, sometimes people come to me.
With them they bring the hope and expectation that I will be able to wave a
magic wand here and there and change everything for the better without either of
them having to do a thing. Again,
if they were happy they would be elsewhere. They are sitting in front of me
because the relationship isn’t working. Now at this point, I am about to walk
down a roadway strewn with pitfalls. If I just listen and commiserate, the
client will feel better for a while until they come face to face with the
offending partner’s behavior again (probably that night at tea). Nothing will
change. I could suggest behavioral changing strategies such as rephrasing
communications to be less blaming (“when you said that I felt……….” as
opposed to “You arsehole, how dare you………….”). Maybe this will have
a calming affect on the situation and de-escalate it somewhat. It could initiate
some more constructive communication and may even elicit promises of change,
which are heartfelt and honestly attempted. As I said earlier though, it has
taken all our life to shape us into who we are today. Promises are hard
things to use as a basis for such far-reaching personality transplants. This
is about as far as most counselors are willing to go. To step any further down
the road to real change is to begin to fly in the face of societies taboo. Real
change requires real honesty. The type of honesty that looks at who these two
people realistically are. What they want out of life. What their hopes and
dreams of the past were that were interrupted to fulfill societies prescription.
It requires soul searching. The therapist that sails those waters with their
client is a brave being. Most times when this happens, the client will, over
time, come to find that the person they have attached themselves to in their
haste, is not actually an ideal partner for the person that they themselves want
to be. Once they see that it is not only impossible to change them, it’s
actually unethical to try (they have the right to be who they are at their core
anyway), there is only one choice that will work. Start again! Sometimes, when
we have made a muddle that is not unravelable we have to scrap the project and
start again. If the other partner hasn’t come to the same conclusions, the
therapist has a problem on her hands: they will inevitably blame her. So many
disgruntled partners, and family members of clients who come to their senses and
decide to move on, have accused me of advocating relationship break ups that if
I had a dollar for every one of them I would be a rich woman. This is as true
for male spouses as it is for female ones. Whoever it is that was unwilling to
look at the issue, or was able to distract themselves sufficiently with work or
the children, will be the one that wants to place the blame for the situation
outside of themselves. This is not only a therapist’s occupational hazard.
Dear friends that have assisted in helping a caught person see the way out and
free themselves from a destructive relationship cop it also. Parents that
encourage moving on come in for it. For them however it happens maybe once in a
lifetime. For a therapist, who is always the end of the road for damaged
relationships, it becomes a statistic. I,
for some reason, decided to look at the phenomena itself to see if I could get
to the bottom of what causes this unhappiness for my clients. Sometimes I think
it would have been better to stay at home on that one. But what must be said
must be said. It’s societies insistence that we perform miracles with the
impossible that sits at the seat of my unhappy clients problem. It was not
always a requirement that we mate and stay mated for life. It was not always an
economic necessity that we move two-by-two. In tribal cultures, we moved
together as a group, or we wandered as individuals. We could sometimes chose our
way of walking more than we can today, although it’s changed a great deal
since our parents day. We cannot tie ourselves to each other and hope to be able
to move creatively through our lives feeling out what is best for us. We will
either listen to our partner and do that resentfully, or we will fight about it.
Either way, there has to be a better way, and I think we might find it yet, if
we do what each successful client has to do: ·
Look
deeply into our past to discover ourselves. ·
Move
on from anything or anyone that is getting in the way of our honest expression
of ourselves through our way of being in the world. ·
Make
honest choices to be around those that are like-minded and take time to find out
who they are and where they can be found. ·
Allow
enough space between each other to allow for different ways of being. That
requires dropping requirements on other people to change who they are for us.
And removing the expectation on ourselves to be anything other than what we are
for them. ·
Continue
to look for ways that this can be possible by using continued negotiation in our
relationships with others, whilst not compromising our rights. There is always a
new creative way through if we are patient and willing to look beyond where we
have been before. It’s
not something that can be imposed or enforced. It’s a dance. We are looking
for harmony to arrive as it does when a piece of music finds its rhythm and
dancers find their stride. It’s a natural flow, so “if it don’t fit,
don’t force it. Relax and let it go!! ” |