Intimacy and Desire

Thanks for helping me do a better job of explaining these really important issues.

First off, you’re sizing up your situation in a conventional way, consistent with attachment-based therapy. In both situations, you’re thinking strong differences of opinion create “emotional distance,” meaning partners are “out of connection” and the solution is to get “closer together.” In actually, you and your partner are emotionally fused, locked into each other, feeling controlled by each other.

In both cases you’re describing what I call “emotional gridlock,” a natural and inevitable development in committed relationships: The position your partner takes blocks what you want to do, and vice versa. Gridlock most often occurs in areas of relationships which require forced-choice decisions. The four main areas of emotional gridlock are sex, money, parenting, and in-laws, because you can’t “agree to disagree.” That’s why it’s not surprising your questions involve two of them.

Now, you can’t have emotional gridlock and “emotional distance” at the same time. Yes, you and your partner feel emotionally alienated, angry at each other, rejected, unappreciated, and disrespected among other things. These are not signs of emotional distance, there signs of emotional FUSION—you and your partner’s feelings are interlocked. How you feel about yourselves strongly hinges on how you think your partner (and your son) sees you. Being right, not being one-down, and not giving in have become all important. When one of you feels like you’re getting what you want, the other feels unhappy. That wouldn’t happen if you and your partner were miles apart. These are signs you’ve become one fused emotional unit.

The Facebook issue has stopped being about what’s appropriate for your son. It’s really about who’s going to defer to who, who has final authority when you disagree, saving face in front of your son, etc. These issues involve both partners being dependent on getting a positive reflected sense of self from each other. You won’t productively decide about Facebook until you deal with these underlying issues directly.

Attachment-based therapy says the solution is you and your partner should soothe each other and make each other feel valued (“co-regulation”). In other words, if you make nice everything will be fine. This overlooks that fact that you and your partner are angry at each other, these are forced-choice decisions, and you feel like your self-worth and integrity are on the line.

Differentiation-based therapy says you need to become more emotionally autonomous. You need to soothe your ruffled feathers, get hold of your irritation, calm yourself down, and stop taking your partner’s behavior personally. This is an opportunity to get over your dependence on other people’s approval and acceptance. You need to validate yourself as a parent. This doesn’t mean you’re automatically right, or things should be done your way. It means if you know you’re a good parent and your points about Facebook are cogent, then you don’t have to be outraged when your partner won’t listen to you or says outrageous things. If the Facebook issue is ostensibly about you both being concerned parents, then be concerned about what your son sees at the dinner table: This is about the two of you and he’s getting lost in the shuffle.

Once you digest this, you’re more likely to stay focused on what’s really important, and stop over-reacting to your partner’s over-reactions. It would be nice if your partner did this too, but you can’t count on it. You have to do this unilaterally; otherwise you’re stuck (emotionally fused). If you do unhook from your partner and get yourself under control, you’ll feel better, your partner is more likely to come around, and there’s more room take each other’s perspective into account. Even though a Facebook page is a “yes-no” decision, you can put conditions on the use of it that take each other’s concerns into account.

This will allow you to feel closer together and warmer towards each other. If this happens, it will come about because you are less emotionally fused and more emotionally autonomous, getting control of your own feelings instead of needing your partner to “regulate” you by deferring to you (or vice versa). Parenting is a classic example of interdependence, and when the first order of business is parents getting the validation they need, parenting is ALWAYS a mess. When parents can regulate their own emotions, feelings, and sense of self, then parenting decisions can be based on what their kids need.

Sexual desire disparity conflicts fit all the above points. What you’ve described isn’t “sexual incompatibility” or “irreconcilable differences,” it’s a natural, normal, and potentially productive development that occurs in virtually all relationships. This isn’t about differences in “libido,” it’s caused by battles of differentiation: You want to be with the other, and you want to be your own person too. The issues are similar to Facebook, but far more intricate and require more sophisticated discussion than is possible here. This is what my book “Intimacy and Desire” is all about. It offers the first explanation why normal healthy people have sexual desire problems. It goes into great detail about sexual desire and differentiation, and offers an in-depth case example in each chapter. Part of what makes “Intimacy and Desire” so popular is what you’ll learn there about solving sexual desire problems will help you with parenting and virtually every aspect of your life.

You can read more about Intimacy and Desire here (http://www.amazon.com/Intimacy-Desire-Awaken-Passion-Relationship/dp/082...).

Another helpful article, “Normal Healthy Couples Have Sexual Desire Problems” is posted here (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/intimacy-and-desire/201105/normal-he...).

Also, consider the Passionate Marriage Couples Enrichment Weekend, July 22-24, 2011 in Denver Colorado, which focuses on the kinds of issues you’re raising here. More details are available here (http://crucible4points.com/couples-enrichment-weekends-0).

Here’s my advice, offered in a gentle voice with respect:

Stop selling yourself short every day. Your response indicates you’re not so blind you believe your own B.S. The problem isn’t that you can’t get it out of your heart and mind, it’s that you allow yourself to act like you don’t have much of either one.

You obviously have some depth with the potential for much more. Your response starts with you confronting yourself about what you’re doing, so you already have the ability. You know right from wrong. You know you depend on a reflected sense of self and accommodation/regulation from others. You understand “people who can’t control themselves control the people around them.” What’s standing in your way now is self-indulgence or self-deprivation, depending on how you look at it.

Why not be nice to yourself, believe in yourself, and hold yourself accountable to be the person you could be. It would be a gift to everyone else. Not only would you remove a pain in the ass from their lives, all of us would be grateful to have a person like that around us.

Good luck!

These are good questions.

If you insist on having your way, sometimes phrased as “don’t try to change me,” then it’s true that finding a person who complements you requires less emotional manipulation. There’s always the option of developing more ability to hold onto yourself so you can make room in your relationship for your partner. That’s what emotional autonomy offers.

We definitely should tell people they shouldn’t expect to change a partner—but it won’t change the partner-changers. People don’t change their partner because of an idea, they tamper with their partner out of necessity. The first chapter of my book, Passionate Marriage, is entitled “No one’s ready for marriage, marriage makes you ready for marriage.” Some lesions we can’t learn in advance, in part, because we don’t want to. Committed relationships push us to grow up, because everyone’s happiness is on the line.

Knowing when to follow your feelings, when to contain them, what to fight for, when to let go—these are critical parts of self-regulation and emotional autonomy. The only way you learn this is by confronting yourself—keeping an eye on yourself—about whether the best in you or the worst in you is running the show and making decisions. You could do any one of these four options from the worst in you, or from the best in you, and when it’s done from the worst in you, all four options are the wrong choice.

If you were familiar with my work, you wouldn't be interpreting this as anecdotal story-telling or a pleasant model. You have me confused with attachment-based therapy, which offers a pleasant heuristic model. Crucible Therapy is among the most hard-hitting adult, realistic, no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is approaches available today. This is not just a model, it is tied to a faced-paced therapy based on collaborative confrontation that walks clients into the difficult issues they've been avoiding. It is based on the natural ecology of love relationships (i.e., how relationship REALLY work), whereas anyone can make up a story they want to illustrate their idealistic picture of how relationships SHOULD work (which is what attachment-based therapy does.)

There is at least thirty years of work in differentiation theory. Development was based on experimental evidence, and research continues to date. Therapists and researches have been using one particular differentiation scale for over a decade, and we are about to publish what we feel is a superior instrument (Crucible Differentiation Scale) in the professional Journal of Marriage & Family Therapy. This was pilot-tested on over 4000 people.

The Passionate Marriage Couples Enrichment Weekend (Denver Colorado, July 22, 23, 24, 2011), based on precepts in this post, has been proven affective when independently evaluated by two major universities. ((http://crucible4points.com/couples-enrichment-weekends-0). Moreover, two pilot intervention programs with domestic violence batterers and poverty-level parents have shown promising empirical results.

Underlying brain processes as well as anthropological/ethnographic evidence are covered in my latest book, “Intimacy & Desire.” Although it is written for the general public and easy to understand, it was designed from the outset to be a ‘crossover book’ like my previous one, “Passionate Marriage.” “Intimacy & Desire” is used by therapists around the world (who recommend it to clients) and in university courses. Technical discussions occur in the end notes for those who want this, including 150+ references to original scientific studies and a textbook-type index for ease of access. None of this clutters the easy read the average reader wants.

If you are interested in physical behavior and not just talk, this approach is for you. Thirty years of sex therapy experience is woven into “Intimacy & Desire” and you can’t get more physical or practical than that. The trouble with attachment-based therapy is its forte is talking about feelings, but it doesn’t line up with how sex operates in committed relationships. For what it’s worth I’m about to give an invited plenary address at the World Congress of Sexology describing this approach. That doesn’t happen for anecdotal storytelling.

If you want additional discussion about the topics raised in your post, check out my professional-level exchanges with attachment-based therapists at http://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/blog-communities/p004/viewpost/129....

I’m very happy to answer both your questions.

You’re absolutely right about parents helping their children get ahead or pursue their talents by controlling the things they do, and some children being grateful in later life for the imposed structure and discipline. The controversy about “Tiger Moms” is one recent example. Clearly there are cultural differences about how much control is too much, as this is apparently more common in Chinese homes. And within any given culture, parents differ in this issue as well.

But I wasn’t really pointing to how much parents push children to achieve, but rather, why or for whom the pushing occurs. Parents can try to sell their child the idea it’s for the child’s benefit, but when it’s really because the parent needs their child to be valedictorian, varsity athlete, violin prodigy, or junior chess master, children map their parent’s mind and see right through this. In the same way many socially powerful men need “arm candy” (young beautify women), or a Ferrari, or a home in a gated community, some parents need the positive reflected sense of self they get from their kid standing out.

Here's the real point: When parents can’t control themselves, they STEAL their children’s success. Parents can say they’re just being proud of their child, but kids can see when parents are basking in the spotlight, instead of holding the spotlight on the child. Believe me, this doesn’t help children become better people. It actually leads many talented children to STOP playing or practicing. It’s easier to say “I don’t want to play any more,” than tell your parent “I’m not your championship dog to show off!” The parent may be proud of the child, but the child is disappointed in the parent.

Your second question contains a sad picture I’ve encountered numerous times. Many people wouldn’t realize, although you rightly did, this illustrates “parents who can’t control their sexual impulses towards their children.” That’s because people only envision this as parents engaging in inappropriate comments, touch, or sexual intercourse with children. But inappropriately sexualizing children, dressing them in age-inappropriate seductive clothes, or including them as bystanders during adult sexual behavior, or bartering them as sex objects, is clearly about parents not controlling their sexual impulses with their children. The parent doesn’t have to indicate desire to have sex with the child per se. All these things tell the child that the parent is relating to the child sexually. When the child maps out the parent’s mind, this itself creates emotional trauma.

For example, one woman told me about her father meeting her high school boyfriend for the first time. In her presence, her father asked the boy if she was any good in bed. It’s not hard to understand how she was traumatized when she asked herself, “HOW COULD MY FATHER DO THAT?!”

I hope these clarifications speed you on your journey. Thank you for your questions, which will surely help many readers.

You are absolutely right (rightly so) about the parallels between parents who inappropriately punish their children and those who inappropriately push their children to succeed., But you seem hesitant to pursue your perception as far as it may go.

To make this issue clear let’s make a distinction for purposes of discussion between punishment and discipline. There are times when you may have needed discipline. The purpose of parental discipline is to help the child learn self-discipline. Punishment is meant to make the child feel bad, hurt, deprived, etc., with the goal of making the child apologetic and regretful to the parent.

It is common for parents to lose their grip on themselves when they are angry or embarrassed, and the PUNISH the child, meaning punitively take out their feelings on the child. When this happens, even if you needed discipline, whatever positive benefit there might have been in your parent's actions is lost. When parents can’t control themselves, they can’t help their children develop self-control no matter how harsh the punishment, because it’s not meant to help the child. The parent wants the child to hurt, suffer, or “pay” for what the parent feels the child has done TO HIM OR HER. You seem to feel your parents were right to punish you when you made terrible grades in school. You were there, I wasn’t, and you have to decide for yourself. But it sounds like you feel this was not being done for you, it was being done for them—you embarrassed them—and not because they were trying to help you do better. Once this line is crossed, discussing whether the punishment was too harsh becomes immaterial, because it’s punishment (in the way I’m defining here).

It’s not from the best in the parent, and it’s not designed to bring out the best in the child. The parent’s feelings and needs become primary, and the child’s needs get lost, even if the child is told this is for her or his benefit. The real mind-screw is if and when the parent says, “This hurts me more than it does you.”

You have the additional data that your parents made no attempt to help you directly or indirectly (with a tutor), and they did things most parents know interfere with children doing better (calling you lazy). The realization you’re struggling with is very painful, many people struggle with this, and there’s the strong urge to not look at it with both eyes. If you get clear that looking at this is not punishment, but it does require discipline, and that self-discipline leads to freedom, then maybe you can discipline yourself to see what you need to see.
Good wishes!

You’re mostly right about the assumption you recognized in the article. Guilty as charged. One place where I and attachment-based therapists agree is that children are born dependent on a reflected sense of self. It’s a given because of the way our species has evolved: our consciousness emerges very early in childhood, long before we’re able to support that self-awareness on our own. We look to parents and others to help us understand who we are.

I differ with attachment therapists in that they believe this is suppose to continue into adulthood, and your partner is suppose to take over and do a better job than your parents did. I think you’re supposed to get over this and become more emotionally autonomous. Now, narcissists do form relationships to get validation and admiration. But so do normal healthy people who simply haven’t grown up yet (meaning lots of us).

You may be a new exception, but in my clinical experience it’s extremely rare for people to be well-differentiated when they first enter a long-term relationship. It’s the relationship that makes them grow up. The main exception I’ve seen is when a widow and a widower marry late in life after each having successful prior marriages.

One minor part is wrong: people enter relationships seeking OTHER-validation. Getting self-validation from other people is an oxymoron.

You have your understanding of what's apparently happening well-lined up. But, working off your description, there's a critical piece that you're missing. This is not as simple as your mother and grandmother purloining your accomplishment for their own reflected sense of self. While this is sounds true, you are describing them deliberately trying to hasten your failure by telling you to your face that your feelings have no importance to them and they will say and do whatever they please.

Taking and misusing a child's paintings is a good way to get that child to stop painting in defiance. Lots of teenagers get hooked into this, I'm glad to hear this didn't happen to you.

The people you describe are not friends of your success. When you add in that this is exactly what they want to use for their own reflected sense of self, and berate you for not working harder (which lessens your functioning), you now have a crazy-making system.

Starting to appreciate how they impact you is a good thing. You're describing "sledgehammer" psychological blows. Of course you're going to have reactions to their actions. The goal is not to become impervious to destructive people. It's to handle yourself with them, rather than just take whatever they dish out so you can maintain a relationship with them.

You sound like a very bright and gifted person who's afraid to see the whole picture of what's going on, because it's going to be "dark." I'll bet if you pay closer attention, and be more willing to see the unthinkable, you will figure out what to do. I've seen countless people at your stage of development. Think of it like a butterfly emerging from the cocoon. A butterfly with resilience for the next phase in her life.

Good luck!