Above the navel

What's so bad about unrequited love?

2010-01-04T07:56:00.000-08:00

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

2009-09-08T18:04:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-07-30T05:50:00.000-07:00

‘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

2009-07-15T08:14:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-26T10:22:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-05T06:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-02-25T09:23:00.001-08:00

‘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.

Beware of the LBL - part two

2009-02-15T07:05:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons why I did not immediately return to this subject last year (see former blog, June 2008) was because I was slightly uncomfortable with my own posting. After all, this is a vitally important subject involving much human misery. I was concerned that what I had written was too glib, too superficial – and therefore, I was perhaps being disrespectful to all the many thousands of people who are struggling with relationships with narcissists. Somehow it didn’t feel quite right to carry on.
But I have come to see that information, even imperfectly packaged, is always valuable – and there is no doubt that there is a collective silence in the media about this problem and indeed about mental health problems in general. Any attempt to break this silence is therefore valid.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Disorders defines narcissistic personality disorder as ‘a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy', as indicated by five or more of the following:

a grandiose sense of self-importance
preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
believing that he or she is "special" and unique
requiring excessive admiration
a sense of entitlement
interpersonally exploitative
lacking empathy
often envious of others or believing others are envious of him or her
showing arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

Looking at that rather unsavoury list it can be difficult to understand how compulsive relationships with NPDs are. But former partners frequently report huge difficulties in tearing themselves away, even after they have long identified that the relationship is toxic for them. Why should that be the case?

The first possible reason for that is inherent in the assumptions a relatively normal person makes about the world and how to be happy in it. For those of us fortunate enough to have sufficient love and support in our early lives, we early on develop the ability to empathise with others. Research shows that children as young as 18-24 months are capable of understanding that another person is in pain and can try to comfort that person. Pure altruism can be understood as a desire to help another without any gain for ourselves; it is associated with a realisation that our own happiness is intimately bound up with creating a safe, supportive social environment where everyone cares for each other.

If we grow up with this mindset, it is difficult to understand the inner world of the NPD, who sees other people as there to be exploited in order to achieve their own short term aims. Partners of NPDs commonly make the mistake of failing to understand this different inner world and are frequently wrong footed and amazed by the NPD’s actions. To a healthy person, the endless rounds of lies, abusive outbursts and manipulations seem counter-intuitive and wantonly destructive.....which of course they are, although they make sense to the NPD. The NPD will commonly exploit their partner’s confusion by professing fake remorse, which seduces the partner into believing that they do actually share the same values. This is quite untrue, but it can be incredibly difficult for the partner to accept this.

The NPD, moreover, is expert at manipulating the guilt of the people around them. Whether or not it is consciously articulated, the partner is usually aware at some level that the NPD is a very damaged individual indeed. There is usually a lot of pity and compassion that can be readily exploited to ensure that the partner is circumspect about standing up for themselves or returning the unpleasant behaviour that has been directed at them. This misplaced pity can lead to the partner constantly ‘editing’ what they do and say in order to avoid hurting the NPD further. This editing can also be a natural method of self-defence, when the partner is keen to avoid yet another emotional scene. Whatever the motivation, the partner becomes smaller and smaller in the relationship, which necessarily corrodes their courage and self-esteem.

This is usually compounded by the frequent occurrence of the NPD accusing their partner of the behaviour that they themselves are guilty of. Classic examples of this include the philanderer who accuses the faithful spouse of infidelity or the liar who believes that everyone around them is also lying. This is both a form of projection and the inevitable corollary of their soured worldview. Unfortunately for the partner, it can further undermine their sense of reality and their own sanity. The faithful spouse may develop an irrational fear of being friendly to others in case their actions are misconstrued, and may even believe that they are somehow responsible for anyone making overtures towards them. The truthful person, confronted with emphatic denials of dishonesty from their NPD spouse, may wonder if they imagined the whole thing. Life can become more and more surreal.

In addition, the NPD often has a natural gift for superficial charm, which can be lavished on the chosen person with enough energy to power a small conurbation. Quite why this is so is probably related to the manic and impulsive aspects of the condition; everything can be carried to excess, including the ability to ‘love’. Of course, this bears as much relationship to real love as Angel Delight does to Tiramisu. The NPD is often in love with the concept of love, the pursuit of which becomes part of the drive for self-aggrandisement. All the passion and compliments are therefore really just a projection and not to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, most partners of NPDs have taken them seriously at some stage or another, and this can become a potent trap as they frantically try to recapture the approval and ‘love’ that was so liberally bestowed at times. The NPDs can use this as a tool to control their partner, withholding and bestowing to suit themselves.

Of course what I have outlined may sound extreme. The phenomenon of NPD is one of those conditions that exist on a continuum; some may display some symptoms, but not others. But it is important to recognise the core characteristics.

Ultimately the partner of the NPD becomes more and more disconnected with their own power. All the factors that determine a healthy relationship – mutual respect, honesty, tolerance, empathy, kindness and cooperation – are trampled to suit the agenda of the NPD. This brings me back to my first point – it can be hard to understand the ‘how’, because the ‘why’ seems so crazy. Why would anyone willfully destroy relationships that start off as positive and full of hope, not just once, but over and over? The only answer lies in the NPD’s pathology, compelled as they are to destroy not just themselves, but also others. This is their tragedy and why, for all their unpleasant antics, they are ultimately pathetic figures.

But pity was never a good reason to stay in a destructive situation.

Rubber Ducks

2009-02-14T12:27:00.001-08:00

In 1992 a load of rubber ducks fell off a container ship near the Alaskan coast. Two-thirds of the ducks floated south and landed three months later on the shores of Indonesia, Australia, and South America. The remaining 10,000 ducks headed north to Alaska and then completed a full circle back near Japan and in 2000 some were sighted in the North Atlantic.
So what on earth do rubber ducks have to do with therapy?
Last year I really lost my faith in blogging, both in general and mine in particular. Being endlessly self-critical I even worried if it indicated some kind of latent exhibitionism on my part to believe I had a right to impose my witterings on the world. (I have to be self-critical; no-one who puts themselves forward to help people can afford to be otherwise.)
But yesterday I was so touched to receive an email from a lady who told me how much it had helped her to read a posting of mine from last year, about the phenomenon of the Little Boy Lost – well, really, about narcissistic personality disorder.
So she has really inspired me to carry on. Thank you, Jenny (name changed).
Of course this illustrates a wider principle, which I’ve always believed in. That is, the unfathomable power we all have to touch each other’s lives in unpredictable ways. This example was unique in that I actually got to hear about it – but how often have you have heard someone refer to the positive influence that someone has had on their life, when they have probably never told that person?
For all you know, right now, this moment, someone somewhere could be feeling grateful for something you said or did. What a fantastic thought - rubber ducks of kindness and generosity washing up in unexpected places.
How powerful we all are indeed.

on Fish and Fishing

2009-02-14T11:57:00.000-08:00

Many people go and see a therapist because they secretly – or not so secretly! – hope that that person will act the role of magician in their lives. Some therapists actively encourage this idea with their marketing and the kind of work that they do.
I’m going to stick my neck right out here – and say that they are not in the long run doing their clients any favours. We’ve all heard the saying - give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, but teach him to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.
Apply that to therapy and what do you get? If you take away someone’s presenting symptom, you’ve not really empowered them in any way. If you help them to take responsibility and become more knowledgeable about their underlying dynamics as well, they begin to transform their lives themselves.
And if you teach them some tools so they can help themselves in the future, and possibly others as well, you’ve created a wonderfully positive ripple effect.
Why so? Because we all have the potential to be therapists in each others lives, to empower each other. Simple tools like EFT are easy to learn and use and pass on to others. It isn’t always necessary to spend money seeing a therapist – you can help yourself too.
In fact I would actively encourage my clients to explore other avenues before they resort to a therapist – for example, there are some extremely good self-help books on the market which can help give you insight.
That means that often people may need only one or a few sessions to experience a real lasting transformation. Not merely a relief of a symptom that will most likely transform itself into another symptom.

in rehab

2008-06-28T11:05:00.000-07:00

so, you're not a junkie and you gave up smoking years ago and you can easily put that bottle of wine back in the fridge without chugging the whole lot, so that means you aren't an addict, right?

guess again. without wanting to sound like a real doommonger, being alive in our culture means you almost certainly manifest some irrational compulsion to perpetuate some situation or pattern of behaviour that isn't really, truly, wholeheartedly in your best interests.

now, that may be the job you loathe but are too apathetic &/or scared to leave. it may be a toxic friendship you just can't bring yourself to end. it could be your habit of blowing all your wages in the first week of the month, leaving you skint and repentent. it could be the credit card debt you keep feeding with holidays you can't really afford. it may be the unrequited longing for a person you know in your heart of hearts is really not good for you.

in my last post i wrote about narcissists and the difficulties inherent in having relationships with them. so why don't people leave them sooner, even when those relationships are painful, humiliating and debilitating? for one thing, because they get addicted to them.

what underlies this addiction is what underlies every other addiction - whether socially sanctioned or not. yep, it all boils down to humble old self-esteem - or the lack of it. if we truly, truly cared for ourselves and respected ourselves - if we really understood what potential we have for happiness and love - if we really understood our own value - why would we do anything that is essentially self-destructive? that includes staying in relationships that hurt us.

building up a true sense of one's own worth is one of the hardest and also the most worthwhile of life tasks; it would not be an over-estimation to say that it may be the most important thing we can achieve. this is because it is the foundation of everything else. when we truly care for ourselves, problems magically melt away. we stop behaving in ways that sabotage us. we are attracted to the right people - and they are attracted to us. we have the confidence to pursue the things that make us happy and passionate about life. we are more motivated to care for our bodies as well; our body, after all, is the only thing we ever truly possess in life.

conversely, the more we do the things that hurt us, the more our self-esteem is corroded. knowing deep down we are letting ourselves down, we pile layers of guilt and self-recrimination on to the pain we suffer. everything about the personality functions at less than optimal efficiency.

most of the seemingly intransigent problems in our lives stem from our lack of true self-esteem. self-esteem gives us the discipline and determination to solve problems. with good self-esteem, we have clarity about what is love and what is not. when we know what is loving, true and healthy, we are revolted by what is shallow, false and unhealthy. it no longer has attraction for us. we are no longer seduced by the superficial charmer, the philandering bad boy, the manipulative princess. we see them for what they are: sad people who try to exploit others in order to boost their own paltry self-worth. paper tigers.

so how to boost one's self-esteem?
knowing when to stop writing and have an evening off is a good start....more later.

beware of the LBL

2008-06-22T10:03:00.000-07:00

way, way back in time, when Cosmopolitan had some credibility as the thinking woman's glossy (how long ago that seems, we are talking the late 70's) they carried an article about the phenomenon of the 'little boy lost'. these are men who are full of self-pity and anger at the world and are pathologically unable to take responsibility for themselves. consequently they are impossible to have satisfactory relationships with because their brains are hostage to rampant insecurity.

it is not uncommon for LBL's to be attracted to successful and confident women that epitomise the qualities they secretly know they lack. as a result they inevitably feel threatened and envious of their partner and systematically attempt to undermine their parter's confidence and gain the upper hand by manipulative and passive aggressive behaviour. they hook woman in because they spew out veritable Niagaras of charm when they want to (and are particularly good at appealing to women's nurturing instincts) but it doesn't take long before the LBL's latent hostility starts poisoning the gushing font.

often a cycle develops. the poor female gets to a point of having enough and, battered and bruised, calls time on the relationship. the LBL then goes into a frenzy of promising change, anything, anything to get the person back. all is sweetness and light for a period of time (days, weeks, sometimes even months) but then the subtle and then not so subtle abuse starts again. some couples spend years, even a whole lifetime trapped in this cycle, with the victim developing a kind of emotional anaemia, neck covered in punctures, all the lifeblood (and fight) sucked out of them....

at their most destructive LBL's can ruin their partner's confidence and break their spirit; people can take years to recover from them. talk to any LBL about their love life and they will regale you with a litany of relationship disasters, none of which are, of course, their fault. make no mistake, these people are definitely to be avoided. they are Bad News. if you think you have spotted one, consider making a citizen's arrest. never approach one without the aid of a good bullshit detector.

LBL's are of course a subset of a certain psychological type; we are talking about clinical narcissism here, the family name for a host of other dysfunctional characters, including Ms Bunny Boiler, Mr Savage Alcoholic, Mr Wife Beater, Ms Femme Fatale......i'm sure you've encountered a few of your own. yes, there are plenty of women like this too. reread the above and change the pronouns appropriately.

so what is clinical narcissism? in Greek mythology Narcissus was the stunningly beautiful young man who couldn't give a toss for anyone else, but fell in love with his own reflection and pined away from unfulfilled longing. he has been immortalised by psychoanalysts as a symbol of a self-absorbed person whose libido, or life force, is invested in the ego itself, rather than in other people. the term narcissistic personality disorder, also taken from the myth, describes a self-loving character who is incapable of recognising the needs and independent existence of others; other people are simply tools for their own gratification.

psycholoanalysts disagree over the minutiae of how it arises, but all concur that it usually develops early in life. poor parenting can fail to provide a strong and protective presence for the child to identify with, that reinforces the child's growing sense of self by mirroring his feelings and good qualities. without this mirroring, the child grows up with a brittle and flawed sense of self and poor self esteem. the individual becomes an emotional black hole, constantly greedy for attention and validation to plug the gulf inside. narcissists overreact to criticism, becoming easily angered. they often use others to reach goals and lack empathy, frequently exploiting people.
they usually have unreasonable expectations of favorable treatment and seek constant attention and positive reinforcement from the people around them. they are usually quick to become jealous and often display arrogant behaviour. all in all, they are sick characters prettied up with a veneer of superficial charm.

without conducting a straw poll i would hazard a guess that virtually every female i know has had a male specimen in their lives at some point, and probably a good number of the men as well. narcissists are ubiquitous, like dog poo; the only way to combat them is through knowledge and experience. print off this article and carry it around like a donor card. do not make the mistake of thinking you can cure them or even 'help' them. you, like Canute, cannot hold back the tide of toxic lava.

coming soon....how to recover from an LBL (or one of his dysfunctional cousins).

agenda

2008-06-18T02:50:00.000-07:00

the first blog should be a momentous affair, definitely more bang than whimper.

unfortunately this morning the snail of creativity has been crushed by the big boot of insomnia. four hours sleep has left me flailing around for words, let alone ideas.

still, the subject of this blog was always going to be an easy one - relationships, for which i have to thank a 'friend' of mine, Mr X. i say 'friend' as the friendship always splurged over into more lascivious territory, but that's a topic, in a general sense, for a later post.

so why 'above the navel'? because relationships are made or broken there. man is unique in having a tripartite brain structure; we retain all our reptilian and mammalian urges whilst having a more sophisticated piece of kit, the neocortex, superimposed on top. so whilst our first urge to relate to another starts below the navel, we have to coordinate the differentiated product of millions of years to evolution to achieve any lasting satisfaction. ay, there's the rub.

so this blog will be an attempt to trip gingerly through the relationship minefield, hopefully illuminating the more obvious hot spots as i go. i feel i should declare my hand here - i am actually in a relationship myself. but i've had enough experience on either side of the fence to
not be fooled by the colour of the grass. i've been happy and unhappy in relationships - happy and unhappy as a singleton. if there is one thing i have learned it is this: ultimately any relationships in our lives are a reflection of our relationship with ourselves. so if you want to have better relationships, the first place to start with is you.

of which more later.