What's so bad about unrequited love?

When I was a scruffy nine year old tomboy, a few friends and I had a crush on an older boy at school. He had wonderfully golden skin, which is just about all I can remember about him. We decided to send him a Valentine, which we would all put our names to; naively I signed and left the group early. Of course my treacherous so-called mates gave him the card......... with only my name on it. It took a few weeks for me to face down the humiliation of the ‘you fancy James Hammond’ taunts (apologies for outing you James; I’m sure you’ll never read this and it was all very long ago).

When we are young, saying that we fancy someone means we have exposed ourselves and weakened our hand irrevocably as a result. Children are routinely terrified of being seen to be weak compared to their peers, which threatens their acceptance by the group. Buried beneath this are beliefs that love is a finite resource, futile unless fully reciprocated, in which case we ‘get’ something back that replenishes our stock and makes the action of loving worthwhile. Thus it is only worth loving someone else if we are going to get something out of it – the returned ‘love’ of our loved one. Otherwise we carry the stigma of failure in the game of love – and who wants to be thought a failure?

But are matters any more evolved when we are adults? We still think of love as something that requires reciprocation in order for it to be worthwhile. A glance through so many great plays, novels and poems informs us that unrequited love is a quagmire of agony, shame and tragic death. But is this really anything to do with love?

If we are honest with ourselves, many of our motivations for wanting to be in relationships are less about our appreciation of another, and everything about needing validation for ourselves. We measure our relationships by how much validation they provide, only liking people if they reflect back to us the kind of person we want to be perceived as and avoiding those who make us feel stupid or weak. Alternatively, if we are masochists, we ‘love’ people who make us feel bad! When we become dependent on validation, our ‘love’ for someone is really neediness that is very little to do with that person. We become addicted to either the idea of the validation they could provide for us (in the case of unrequited love) or fearful of losing what is currently provided. Underneath all this, there is still the assumption that love is something that has no value in and of itself as a source of happiness for the person who loves, but only as a means of getting what we want – which is principally validation.

But love – real love - is a wonderful, life-fulfilling emotion that fills us with gentleness, tenderness and compassion. Put that way, why would we not want to experience more of it? Imagine the love you might feel for a child, a love that demands little or nothing back, but revels in the child’s vitality and spontaneity. This kind of love is entirely satisfying as it is and needs no response from another to be enjoyed. We are all capable of finding that kind of love within ourselves for adults as well as children – just by shifting our perspective away from expecting something from someone towards enjoying them for who they are. When we feel like that, that person doesn’t have to reciprocate and doesn’t even have to be in our lives – we can still love them for whom they are. This does not mean that we should carry on investing time and energy in something that is going nowhere, but it does mean we can let go without shame and other negative feelings.

I have been doing some work over the last year with a friend of mine, Pia, who describes how, in the past, love was something that she was afraid of, because it inevitably led to pain and grief if it wasn’t reciprocated in the right way. As many of us do, she responded to this fear by armouring herself up against love. It has only been in very recent weeks, at a time when she has met someone she likes and faced up to the possibility of not having her feelings returned, that she has realised that she can allow herself to be open to loving someone, and enjoying the special qualities of that feeling without desperately needing something back.

She says: ‘Love is not about whether it is reciprocated or not. It is enough in itself............I have a new companion today, which is love! It feels like a lovely little friend.’

Understood this way, unrequited love is only a problem if we make it one through our own neediness....and the programming we receive from our culture. Love – real love – is always a gift to be enjoyed. And if we are feeling urges to possess or control that person, or settling for situations or people that do not nurture us, it isn’t love at all – only our own fears that need addressing. This doesn’t mean the process of letting go of these urges is an easy one, but surely it is a journey worth undertaking if it means we can then enjoy love and life at a much deeper level?

Pia's testimony - unconditional love is the route to joy

Pia Sharma is a 38 year-old life coach living and working in London, specialising in cross cultural communication, particularly in the corporate sector. Pia and I started working together last year in order to resolve some basic issues that she had been aware of for many years. Her initial goal was to access certain childhood memories, which she knew still had a negative impact on her basic trust and self-esteem, and specific peak performance tasks such as public speaking. This interview was conducted in the last month, at a crucial point for Pia when old issues about vulnerability in love were rapidly shifting.

Pia – In the past my experience of love was tainted by my lack of love for myself, and therefore the men I chose reflected that negative self image. Initially they were very attracted to my image as a strong, confident, dynamic person – a little bit of a femme fatale at times! –and they wanted to control that person. And when they glimpsed the more vulnerable side they didn’t like it, which only reinforced my own tendency to reject that part of me. They were disappointed in that part of me because they were only interested in my ‘fake’ strength. That rejection felt terribly hurtful and I would go back into my shell and hide........I would think that this is a side of me that can never come out and that I will always be rejected if people know who I really am. A lot of people feel that way I think. So the real Pia never really came out. This meant that I relied heavily on fake validation from people around me, because the real person wasn’t getting any recognition. Most importantly, that real person wasn’t getting any recognition from ME! I was denying myself recognition. I was feeding off false praise and flattery, and superficial responses to my sexuality; a slightly aggressive, dominating and angry sexuality. It was as if I was punishing myself, repressing myself when I was doing this. This was going on for all of my adult life up until now!

Anna – I can certainly relate to that – that was definitely my story as well. I think it is very common for many women, particularly nowadays where there are some very destructive and confused ideas about what being a woman ‘in a man’s world’ means. This only reinforces the equally destructive paradigm of the femme fatale as the dominant archetype for female sexuality. The femme fatale is destructive because she uses her sexuality as a means to control others and cannot relate to people with humanity. She is a lone figure and therefore a tragic one because she cannot connect with others properly. Our culture is steeped in images and representations of the femme fatale and it is difficult for young girls not to emulate her as they begin to explore their sexuality, particularly as she exemplifies the rejection of vulnerability that is so ubiquitous in our culture.

Pia – Yes, it's so true. There were one or two relationships were there was genuine love and acceptance, but only to a very limited extent. I wasn’t really ready to let my inner, true self come out. The relationships I had were always dominated by my need for being loved – it was more about my own ego than about the person. It was about my need for that validation and ‘love’. So there were lots of failed expectations and rejections and then with each new failure increasing self hatred. I was also setting myself up for failure by choosing people who were quite unable to love me in any real sense, or really see who I was for that matter.

Deeply hurt, I stopped being in relationships for almost three years – I had a few affairs, but I just recently realised that I was keeping away from falling in love because I was afraid of it, I just wasn’t ready for it. But THEN!!!!!

This is the most amazing journey I have been on, ever. In the last fourteen months there has been a new journey of really and truly understanding and accepting myself. It hasn’t been easy and has involved a lot of work and a lot of thought and reading and reflecting on myself and my needs. Most of all, reflection. It opened up a new world for me where I have been able to integrate my subconscious and my dreams and for the first time have the courage to really feel what I feel, and really allow myself to live my feelings.

The real turning point for me has been to forgive my stepmother, truly forgive her, for hurting me very much as a child. When my parents divorced I lived with my father and his new wife and she bullied me mercilessly. She taunted me about my looks and personality and made fun of me in front of visitors to the house. That time laid the foundation for my self-hatred and fear, which poisoned my experience of myself and the world for many years. In the course of the last year I have been steadily able to begin to forgive her and thereby let go of the pain and bitterness I was carrying around for all this time. I was finally able to do this. Finally I had a dream about her and I felt so sorry for her and put my arms around her and hugged her. I realised I had completely let go of anger and hatred – it was all gone. That was huge for me. Everything before that was a build-up to that.

What has happened is that this allowed me to find a more gentle side of myself. That is still coming out and I am rediscovering my life and the world – I am seeing it through different lenses and those lenses are more receptive and open, more gentle. The new me wants to love and to give love. They are most of all grateful – waking up in the morning and actually feeling grateful for the tiniest thing.

Anna – One of the mistakes our culture makes is to think of love primarily as a feeling that needs an object, when really it is an attitude of mind. If you are a truly loving person, you can feel love all the time, for all phenomena and experiences. That’s what gratitude is, after all – love for the world around us and all that we receive from it. Feeling love at that level transforms our experience of life.

Pia - Even my dinner can inspire such feelings of love it is quite amazing!!! It is a journey, not a finished one, but finally I feel that I am actually today able to accept and embrace my complete vulnerability. The gentle, soft, open Pia who really wants genuine love, a gentle love. ....The thought of gentleness in the past was something that really disgusted me, but obviously it was myself I was rejecting. Within these last few days I am now practising feeling that vulnerability and accepting and realising that I am actually in love and I have no idea what will happen as a result. I am in love without knowing whether it is reciprocated or whether it will go anywhere! And seeing for the first time that it is OK! I am so grateful for that feeling because it is a beautiful, gentle feeling. I am not so scared of it now – which feels amazing. Last night I cried a lot because I really allowed myself to feel my vulnerability and accept that there was a chance that I would get rejected and therefore hurt, but it was OK. But now I see that being rejected doesn’t mean I have to stop loving.

Unfortunately in the past this is what I did – for a long time and of course that means I could never find love – for myself first. Until you really understand that truth you will not tap into your full capacity for love. Loving yourself is not about being self-obsessed it is about being accepting and it generates so much energy in you that you focus on others. The energy starts going outwards instead of coming in to fulfil your ‘needs’. It completely changes your energy in a much happier and more fulfilled way.

While I am talking to you now I feel this bubbly feeling of happiness in my throat which is amazing – and I have a new companion today, which is love! It feels like a lovely little friend.

Anna – Do you have a sense that the love you have for another is a gift to you, from you – that is, that it is a wonderful emotion to be embraced fully and enjoyed - and that actually therefore every time we feel love is a blessing regardless of whether that person reciprocates.....?

Pia – Love is not about whether it is reciprocated or not. It is enough in itself. I have only truly understood and FELT that for the first time today. There will be moments of doubt and it will be difficult at times – there are always steps back and forth – that is not the point. The point is the process and being aware. Now I realise that in the past, when I ‘loved’ someone it was really about losing myself in that person – giving someone else the responsibility of making me happy rather than taking responsibility for myself. Now I see how mistaken that was. When I love, I can still retain my independence of mind and spirit and see them and the love I feel as a gift to me, rather than something I require in order to be complete.

Anna – So love is a gift to us, regardless of what the other person feels. If only more of us understood that, that we don’t have to be fearful about loving, but welcome it whenever we feel it....how much happier we would be as a culture.

We are brought up to think that if we don’t get anything back from someone and we are giving them love or whatever, then somehow we will be losing out, we will be depleting a finite stock of emotional energy and happiness. When really the truth is that the more we allow ourselves to love in an unconditional way, the happier and more joyful we are and everything we give out we receive back many, many times over – if only through the agency of our own inner –generated gentleness and peacefulness.

Thank you Pia for having the courage to share today.

Pia – Thank you!

Some day your prince will come...

‘Someone will come along and sweep you off your feet!’ she said, with an arch smile.

I was having a quick coffee with someone I don’t know very well, who knows even less about me. I had been trying to explain to her that I didn’t believe that sexual relationships were the apogee of human existence.

My back stiffened; apart from the ghastly cliché there was something staggeringly presumptive and patronising about her words, although this was a very decent woman whom I know means well. I patiently tried to explain that the quality of the relationships I have with friends and family is so high that any man would have to equal them at least in his capacity for intimacy, and that I wasn’t prepared to settle for less than that. My words sounded hollow even to myself; the feeble warblings of someone in denial. And that bothered me, because I meant every word. It was because society has decreed that friends and family are somehow less important than ‘the One’ that I doubted my own sincerity.

Why do we continue as a society to peddle the idea that one kind of relationship is somehow superior to all others? Why is it that, as a therapist, nobody ever comes to see me because their friendships are lousy – although it often emerges, usually as an aside, that they are superficial, or unsatisfying, or fraught with subterranean tensions, or even non-existent. Even then it rarely occurs to people that working on their attitudes towards and capacity for friendship would be a fruitful way to tackle fundamental problems that emerge with their sexual partners.

Friendship is the most important element in any adult relationship. I’ll repeat that: friendship is the most important element in any adult relationship, whatever label that relationship glories in. As adults, we may be grateful to our parents for their care of us, we may have nostalgic memories of Sunday roasts and family jokes, but it is when we transcend the parent/child boundary and they become people to us, potential friends as well as gene donors, that the relationship can really take off. With our sexual relationships, if the friendship element is weak then there will be little to foster intimacy when the projections start to implode and we see our partner clearly with all their mucky little ways.

Aristotle argued that friendship had three main foundations. Inferior relationships were based either on utility (you are useful to me, therefore you are my friend) or pleasure (you make me laugh, or, we share a hatred of Chelsea FC). The true friendship was one which was founded on the goodness of each participant, so that ‘each loves the other for what he is, and not for any incidental quality’. Aristotle believed that these relationships were more disinterested and more stable, because they were based on an accurate assessment of the other’s finer qualities and not material self-interest or superficial desires.

Cicero agreed with Aristotle. He also went into detail about the kind of behaviour that could be expected from friends, stressing that true friendship was not always about harmony. ‘Let us have the courage to give advice with candour,’ he wrote, ‘and sometimes, if the case demands it, with sharpness.’

That’s a tough one for many; the idea that your friend could be your sternest critic. But how real is a relationship that does not leave space for disagreement and criticism? That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be discipline in the criticism – it should be motivated by love for our friend, not a desire to deplete their energy and confidence. My flatmate Pia is marvellously good at pulling me up when my tendency to be overly critical of others gets out of hand and I’m immensely grateful for that......although it may not feel too peachy to have my shortcomings exposed in all their monstrousness.

The quality of our friendships is an issue that receives scant attention compared to sexual relationships, but there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that, as incomes rise well above the poverty level, it is the quality of companionship (defined as family solidarity and friendship) that is the main contributing factor to subjective well-being. As people (men and women) work harder and longer hours, leaving less time to maintain emotional networks, reported levels of happiness have declined in market economies , as Robert E. Lane concluded in his study ‘The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies’. Men have always suffered most, in terms of mental health problems, when marriages break down, because in general they lack the alternative support networks that their wives are more likely to have.

Our attitudes to friendship are a function of the prevailing economic, social and technological trends. Attitudes to relationships continually fluctuate in response to these, although we tend to assume that what currently prevails is the norm. Aristotle’s focus on friendship was in the context of an era which devalued male/female relationships, where male participation in Roman civilisation included concourse with fellow citizens as equals and there was vigorous debate about what it meant to be a good citizen. Thankfully the degradation of male/female sexual relationships is something we have moved away from, but that doesn’t mean we cannot learn something from Aristotle and his like, to help redress the balance.

Aristotle argued that true friendships could only take place between ‘good’ men, meaning people who placed a high value on abstract qualities such as truth, moral courage and compassion for others. From this point of view, the capacity for true friendship is something we grow towards, but also something that cannot possibly be divorced from the rest of our lives.

For that reason, it is important that I point out to clients the occasions when they belittle their friendships, either overtly or by neglect. How can they possibly have a healthy sexual relationship when they haven’t yet learned to be a truly good friend, with all that that implies? There will be some fundamental imbalance that will show itself, one way or another.

So, back to my coffee quaffing acquaintance - do I want to be swept off my feet? Or in other words, do I want to be destabilised, ungrounded and out of touch with reality, which is really what the phrase implies? No, I do not....and I would also like to see a reorientation of society away from similar romantic delusions about the nature of healthy relationships, delusions which create so much misery and disappointment. Friendship first, every time....and so I am just grateful that I can share many hours of fun, intimacy and wonderful conversation with my darling family and friends.....and consider myself blessed. And I wouldn’t swap any of them for a bloke.

Dedicated to all the dear people in my life, but particularly Carole, Laura, Adam, Pia and Sabina - and of course my family.

Dissolving anger

When was the last time you were angry? Was it last week, a few days ago.....or, in common with so many of us, you’ve lost count because it happens all the time...? Remember to include here feelings of irritation, resentment, disapproval or frustration – all undoubtedly forms of anger.

Whether or not you are aware that it is really anger you are feeling, it is damaging both your body and your mind. ‘Hell is other people,’ Jean Paul Sartre is famous for saying. Despite the vast expanse of his intellect he really got it dead wrong: the hell exists in us as we allow ourselves to be overly swayed by the actions of others. It is our responsibility whether we allow that to happen, or whether, once it has happened, we decide to let it go - or not.

There are lots of ways of transforming our anger into peaceful acceptance; here is just one method to try.

The next time you are angry, think about what emotions and thoughts are beneath the rage. Do you feel humiliated, slighted, betrayed or stupid? What story are you telling yourself about the incident and your role in it? Your ego will be experiencing a sense of being damaged by what has happened. Step back from the situation as much as you can and analyse it, as if you were watching it unfold in a play.

For example, imagine someone has said something unpleasant about your work. Your immediate feelings might be anger, but if you delve a little deeper you might feel deeply hurt and devalued. You might realise that you are frightened about all sorts of things – the security of your job, your status amongst your peers, even your worth as an individual. It might trigger unpleasant memories of similar situations in the past. One small incident can therefore be loaded with significance in a way that is often quite irrational.

Write down all the different elements that are affecting your present feelings. This gives you the opportunity to separate out your feelings about the past and the present and is the first step in starting to feel more detached from what has happened.

In addition, you can use an easy method of self-hypnosis to help take the sting out of the emotions:

Close your eyes and spend some time making sure you are relaxed. You can use a simple progressive relaxation technique; paying attention to each part of the body and letting any tension in that area go, using your breath to do so.

When you are fully relaxed, imagine you are sitting watching a large TV or cinema screen, as the only member of the audience. The incident you are working on is being played out on the screen over and over again, as if on a loop. Imagine you are watching yourself on the screen, whilst you remain detached from the event in the audience. You can also try speeding up the ‘film’ of the event, so that you condense it to just a few seconds. NLP techniques like adding a soundtrack of silly music can also help; experiment to find what works for you.

Keep on watching again and again; at some point your brain will start to feel bored and you will naturally want to stop dwelling on the event. This may take several sessions to happen thoroughly, depending on the severity of the situation you are working on.

This is an effective way to facilitate a natural process. We are all used to hearing that ‘time is a great healer’; what this really means is that we naturally become desensitised to upsetting events as time goes on. What this method does is speed up the desensitising process, so we are in control of it.

End your session by giving yourself some encouraging, positive messages – whatever is appropriate to you.

Over time, as you practice, you will get better and better at getting over unpleasant events that trigger anger. Persistent practice will eventually result in a level of self-mastery that will stop you getting angry in the first place.

The secret sloth of the dancer

People who know me are well acquainted with my devotion to exercise. Not even curtains of rain and wind to bend trees horizontal is enough to put me off running along the Brixton pavements. In fact, the wetter, darker and colder the conditions, the more I love it. I’ve also been cultivating a rather expensive dance class habit for the last five years, frequently clocking up as many as eight classes a week. And yoga to boot. All in all, no-one would ever say that sloth is my deadly sin of choice. Excess, on the other hand......

But I now have something to confess: all these years, I’ve really been excessively lazy.

Like pretty much everything in life, exercise habits reflect the relationship with the self, which I thought I’d concentrate on for this post. I always thought my relationship with my body was pretty good, thanks – scrupulous in my dietary and exercise habits, I ran out of vices to give up years ago. Sure – there were frustrations; I have an underactive thyroid which makes all my body systems very slow, making it difficult to push past a certain level of fitness. It was my physical problems that got me exercising in the first place, as I strove to make the most of the energy I had. But I kidded myself that I was doing everything I could for that. I was also lazy about making the connection between the work I was doing on myself emotionally, and the physical side of things.

The watershed came at the beginning of 2008, when I injured my foot very badly dancing – freestyling in a locking class, I landed awkwardly from a jump and practically bent my foot double under my weight. Dancing and running were off the agenda for about four months, but the added difficulty was that, without the exercise to boost me, my thyroid slumped really badly. Even when my foot healed, I had lost a lot of energy and a lot of core strength. It was a difficult year when I really struggled to keep everything going in the face of the hormonal slump.

When things were picking up at the beginning of 2009, I started doing swaps with a wonderful dancer and friend of mine, Ryan Chappell - house dance for therapy sessions. However, it was a humbling experience, because house taught me about everything that was wrong with my body. My feet and ankles were too weak to cope with being constantly bouncing on my toes with my legs bent; my legs weren’t strong enough either to hold the centre of gravity very low, allowing the upper body to completely relax. Suddenly I realised that I had been kidding myself for years, basically because I had been too lazy and too proud to really take the time to work on my weak areas, or even notice that they were there. What was I saying about sloth earlier? Clearly this most insidious of the deadlies was there after all.

With Ryan’s encouragement, I recently started going to Bikram yoga classes. This is ninety minutes of yogic hell performed in a room heated up to around 40 degrees, so you sweat enough to fill a small cesspit whilst your heart bangs like a slammed door. Bikram himself calls it torture (he needs a new PR guy). It is seriously hard work. But like all yoga, you can fake it if you are prepared to live with the fact that you are only cheating yourself. It was here that I realised that I had never previously been mature enough for yoga. Before, I was too competitive and pushed myself to do things I was not ready for, rather than staying on the baby slopes of the posture. I spent too much time worrying about how well my neighbours were doing and feeling excessively smug if I did something well.....and let’s not forget the opportunity for eyeing up the nearby beefcake. I skimped on the things I wasn’t very good at. I got bored because there wasn’t a thumping dance track to distract me from myself. I couldn’t be bothered to put myself through the discipline of regular classes because I found dancing more exciting. I found it almost impossible to stay in the moment and not watch the clock. In short, I was a silly young human being with all the normal foibles.

I can’t say that I don’t ever do any of those things now either. But something profound has shifted; I am now prepared to make it my business to care rather than ignoring my immaturity. So much of what I have written about so far is about the relationship with the self and how happiness and growth lies in the ability to be honest with ourselves about our true state of mind, and cultivating the ability to let go of worrying about what others think about us, or needing them to validate us. I have discovered that I am finally ready to apply those principles to my exercise habits. It isn’t easy to do, but clearly the value lies as much in the emotional discipline as the physical one. Of course, I have known that intellectually for thirty odd years, but I wasn’t mature enough to really take it on board and accept the challenge until recently. Humbling, but true. But already I feel terrifically rewarded and my relationship with my body seems more in line with my relationship with myself overall.

(Incidentally, if you aren't sure what house dancing looks like, check out a short clip of Ryan from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=017O7js8xN8 )

Recovery

I’ve been having quite an extended break from writing this blog, not purely because I’ve been swamped with work (which I have been) and searching for miserable scraps of time (which I undoubtedly have been) but also because of the scary prospect of writing on recovering from a bad relationship. I would have gladly written about ANYTHING else. I’m not one to shirk blowing up sacred cows with bazookas, but there is nothing like love to bring out all our most toxic misconceptions about self and others. And when someone is in that post-breakup state of tenderness, the brutal truth seems, well, utterly brutal.

The fundamental misconception here is our culture’s determination to confuse love with dependency at every opportunity. They are not the same, but right from day dot we are force-fed the idea that they are. Here’s a selection of dangerous lies that you will have heard over and over:

‘I can’t live without him/her’
‘If I can’t have him/her I don’t want anyone else’
‘If I can’t have him/her, I don’t want anyone else to have them either’
‘Life seems so empty without him/her’

Anyone who has not felt one or all of those at some point is a) not from a Western culture or b) Eckhart Tolle. But none of the above has anything remotely to do with love.

Oddly enough I’ve just been emailing someone I met recently on the subject of love (what synchronicity). She asked me to define what I thought love was and I wrote the following:

‘......It is actually something that the vast majority of us can only really aspire to, rather than necessarily attain. As a culture, we are very good at attachment, or what the Greeks called 'cathexis'; that comes easily to us. However since attachment is all about fear - 'I am attached to you, because you give me something that I fear losing' - it is the antithesis of love. Therefore most of what we call love is really attachment. ‘That is just normal, as long as we do not kid ourselves that there is something elevated and unselfish about it. Attachment is totally selfish, and therefore totally normal. The problem comes when we talk up what we call 'love', which is really attachment, as something ethereal and spiritually evolved, when it sure ain't. Therefore I am not saying, don't form attachments, because you have to learn to be an ordinary human being, before you can evolve past that! However we shouldn't kid ourselves about the true nature of the relationships. We have to be aware that every single thing we do is completely self-centred, before we can even hope to let go of that self-centredness. We have to stop believing the lies we tell ourselves about love.‘The human ego is very dependent on what is going on around it to feel validated. You say something nice to me and I feel good - conversely, say something critical and I’ll be mulling it over for a good while. Thus I am totally dependent on outside validation; nothing has changed apart from the words coming at me, and I am allowing myself to be pulled about by mere words. I am overly dependent on what people think of me, what happens to me and also maintaining the image I have built up in my mind about how I want to project 'myself' . And none of it is real. Therefore we live in a constant state of needing to project something and needing others to respond to that projection. That is what I meant when I was talking about the ego - of course the ego isn't 'bad', but it is illusory, because I am none of my projections and as long as I identify too much with my projections, I am lying to myself and rendering myself weak and dependent. ‘How does that fit in with the love thing? If we are overly dependent on having our ego validated, we are totally unable to see another person clearly, because we are constantly seeing them through the prism of whether our ego is being validated or not. It clouds our vision. This is the essence of romantic love, which cannot exist without projections. In fact, it is TOTALLY about projections. ‘If we get to the point of not needing that validation, we have some hope of being able to respond to another person with real appreciation for who they truly are....not who we need them to be to make us feel good. That is closer to love than anything else, because at that point we have let go of fear that they won't give us what they want - and more importantly we don't have any illusions that they can really give us anything that we can't give ourselves. And actually when we get to that point, when you see people far more clearly, you have compassion for things you would not once have tolerated and understand the suffering of another at a deep level, and that compassion is another word for love. Maybe only the mystics have ever truly loved, in that sense.’

What has all the above waffle got to do with recovering from a bad relationship? Absolutely everything!

Firstly, it is critical to really understanding what is going on with the other person. If the relationship is a bad one, it usually has elements of fear, anger, resentment, manipulation and other nasties going on. Understanding what love really is....and isn’t....helps us to cut right through that garbage and detach ourselves from the lies the other person tells us. They do not love us, they do not even have the faintest idea of what love is. If they truly loved us, and we wanted to leave the relationship, they would just let us go rather than trying to coerce us into something that we plainly did not want. For them, it is all about fear and control. The best thing we can do is gently and gracefully detach ourselves and hope that at some point they will understand themselves better.

If that person has really hurt us in the past, it is natural to have an urge for them to be in some way ‘punished’ for the pain they have inflicted. But we need to understand that being driven by the kind of fear that leads to their painful actions is punishment in itself. Happy people are generous, loving people. Unhappy people are spiteful, angry, deceitful etc [replace with the appropriate misbehaviour]. The appropriate response is compassion for them, because they are not at peace with themselves.

Secondly, the realisation of what we have been really getting out of a relationship helps us to move on from it when it breaks down. If we can honestly confront ourselves and say why that person felt so essential to us, we will realise that in some sense a part of us felt empty and less than whole in that area. That is the time to focus on ourselves and our own growth, rather than desperately seeking another to take the place of the old beloved, as so many do. There is nothing another can give us unless we can first give to ourselves. The people in our lives should not be a source of nourishment we suck from as parasites – that is not love, because we do not see that person clearly; we are only seeing them as temporary plugs for our own profound emptiness.

The terrible pain, terror and emptiness that is felt when a familiar relationship breaks down are withdrawal symptoms from an addiction to that person. In that respect, it is important that we behave as if we are recovering from an addiction. Wherever possible, eradicate all reminders about that person from your life. Where this is not possible, do whatever you can to minimise contact with that person. If need be, do not be too proud to explain to that person that you are consciously trying to minimise contact with them and would be grateful if they cooperated. Compassionate, respectful, emotionally well balanced people will understand and cooperate with you; if they do not, that in itself is a sign that they do not care too much for your welfare and independent will, and therefore the relationship is better over. A common mistake people make is to try and be ‘friends’ with each other before they are fully over the end of the sexual relationship. This is confusing and painful and prolongs the process of recovery quite unnecessarily. Don’t be afraid to let go of the relationship in entirety for a little while; if it is genuinely right for you, it will come back in its own time. There is no point trying to be a saint until you have learned how to be a healthy human being.

Sit down and write down everything that was good and bad about the relationship – and be honest! It is always tempting to idealise the person who has gone, but that will do you no favours. When it comes to the good points, try and identify ways that you can bring those qualities and aspects into your own experience in other ways. There will always be these other ways, even if you are not presently focused on them. For example, if you liked the way your former partner supported you during stressful times, find another way of giving yourself support. This may involve others, but will preferably involve you supporting yourself. Any break-up is an opportunity to become more loving towards yourself, so you are less needy in the future. The paradox is that the more genuine love you give yourself (and I am not talking about arrogance or conceit here) the more real love you tend to attract in from the outside world. But that is a vast subject in itself!

Have a few ‘emergency’ techniques to use for times when you are feeling particularly grief-stricken. During one of my most painful break-ups, I had a little library of hypnosis CDs that I would listen to, sometimes for as much as several hours a day during the early, gut-wrenching stages. They really helped me to refocus onto my own life and how I could help myself – and they never failed to help transform my mood into a more positive one. I record personalised CDs for people, but there are plenty of good ones on the market on generic subjects such as ‘positivity’ and ‘relaxation’.

These simple techniques, done thoroughly, will really help you to start to move through those dreadful early stages towards a saner, more emotionally whole future.

Beware of the LBL - part 3

‘Only habit keeps a dog chained to his own vomit,’ my mother says, with the earthy bluntness typical of good Brummies.

I should know, having been addicted to my own personal puddles at various times (not to be outdone in the earthiness stakes). In my last few posts on the subject I’ve pointed the camera squarely at the narcissist themselves, but honestly demands that I look in the other direction too....at their partner. Because, as we all know, it does take two to allow a relationship to continue.

I don’t have the right to speak for anybody’s situation but my own, so I can only relate my own experience, knowing that I made sufficient mistakes in thought and deed to have probably covered all the possibilities!

Mistake No.1 – is to believe that you have the power to help someone, regardless of whether they want to be helped. This is such a dangerous myth that it should be debunked regularly in government advertisements on buses and billboards. In my own situation, I stayed in a relationship with an alcoholic far longer than was sensible, because I honestly believed I could help. Obviously helping people is a good thing, but for me it was part of a messianic instinct that was neurotic and arrogant. It was a way of bolstering my self-esteem, which was far from healthy at the time. It was also a misplacement of my sense of vocation; this was before I had established my private practice as a therapist, so my healthy desire to help was not being channelled in a constructive way. Frustrated, I put those energies into my private life, which was wholly inappropriate. Having relationships with people because we want to help them is always misplaced; and ultimately patronising to the object of our ‘help’. More importantly, no-one can help anyone unless they are striving to help themselves first.

Mistake No. 2 –where the NPD is the ‘evil-doer’ and you are ‘the wronged one’, it is all too easy for the self-image to become bound up with martyrdom and self-sacrifice. This is particularly prevalent where the childhood role models were also martyrs. This does not relate solely to women; there are plenty of male martyrs out there. Where the relationship is toxic to healthy self-esteem, it is common for the hurt partner to clutch at any straws that will provide comfort, however paltry, and having some claim to the moral high ground can become a seductive trap. I am at present working with a young person who is currently in an abusive relationship, and she freely admits that feeling morally superior to her partner is part of what makes the relationship so compulsive. Of course, part of the danger here is that the self-image becomes more and more bound up with passivity and suffering, making it harder for the person to ultimately break away. In my own case, for years after my abusive relationship had ended, I found it hard to admit to myself that I had got some kind of kick out of feeling superior to my partner – but I did. These darker feelings are subtle, but they are important.

Mistake No. 3 –is when we believe that what the partner offers us is love, just because we are told we are ‘loved’. Love is kind, gentle, loving, patient, tolerant, disciplined and supportive of our growth. Love does not include emotional, physical, sexual or financial abuse. When people are being controlling, sarcastic, spiteful, dishonest, selfish, manipulative, unsupportive, thoughtless or unfaithful, they are not loving us. They may call it love, they may even sincerely believe that it is, but that is a symptom of their own dysfunction (probably because the kind of love they received in early life was flawed in this way) and therefore deeply sad for them. Of course, people are never perfect, and every healthy relationship will contain incidents that are less than loving – but in the main, the good should far outweigh the bad. It is so easy to be manipulated into staying in a bad relationship because we are told we are loved, despite so much of the evidence being to the contrary. We can so much want to be loved by the person that we are prepared to put up with terrible unhappiness in order to hang on to the dream of love. The only antidote to this mistake it to continually remind oneself what love is, and what it isn’t, and systematically measure every incident against that benchmark. Most specifically – love should not be painful. This can be extremely difficult if the suffering partner has sufficiently poor self-esteem to have very low expectations of the kind of treatment they deserve. Everyone deserves to be treated with respect, kindness and honesty and anything less than that should not be tolerated.

Mistake No. 4 – if No. 3 was about having faith in what you deserve as a person, than No. 4 is about faith in your own instincts. It can be all too easy for outsiders to completely misunderstand the dynamics that exists in a toxic relationship. Abuse can be a very subtle phenomena and mental cruelty can be disguised so adroitly that people outside of the relationship can either miss it altogether or choose to ignore it. Incidents that to outsiders appear trivial can be hugely destructive to the self-esteem of the partner, particularly where there is manipulation involved. Many people now are familiar with the concept of passive aggression, where latent hostility is leaked not in overt aggression, but more subtle ways than can be even more damaging because they are so hard to confront. NPDs are often adept at charming outsiders, so they appear sweet, reasonable and desirable partners. Moreover, where there is very overt physical, sexual or emotional abuse, the recipient may feel a deep sense of shame that prohibits them from sharing their experience. It is very important that the recipient of abuse remembers that he or she is responsible for and answerable to only him or herself and therefore they need to put trust in their own feelings; if a situation does not feel right, then it is not right. Ultimately the opinion of others is of little moment compared to one’s own welfare. It can be very hard when friends or family do not understand, but it is always possible to seek out the support of outsiders, even in a professional capacity, who will be supportive – and over time, perhaps forge new bonds with people who do understand. Sadly although people are more psychologically aware than they were in former times, the level of understanding is still extremely low and people who are not particularly intuitive or aware will often fail to spot or appreciate the kind of abuse that does not involve overt violence. It takes insight to realise that a steady drip drip drip of small incidents that undermine self esteem can be far more damaging than a few angry words.

This subject is such a vast and enormously important one that this can only be a cursory outline – I could write reams more, but this is a blog not a thesis!
Next.....how to recover from an unhappy, abusive relationship.