The Wisdom of Anxiety

by Sheryl Paul

  What Is Healthy Love?

  In order to leave where we are, we need to know where we’re going, and since our culture leaves us bereft of the principles, definitions, and actions that define healthy love, we must start here. As we’ve learned, anxiety is fueled by unrealistic expectations and faulty beliefs, and nowhere does that show up more than in the area of romantic love. It’s time to update our cultural operating system and download new principles of healthy love so that we can attend to the realm of thoughts by replacing faulty beliefs with the truth.

  The best place to start our updating process is, once again, with Jungian analyst Robert Johnson, who says, quite simply, that good love is like a bowl of oatmeal. A bowl of oatmeal? How unromantic, you may say. How prosaic, you think. Love should be an ice-cream sundae with cherries and sprinkles on top. Love should be a decadent Italian dessert. Oatmeal? How depressing.

  In our romance-addicted culture, this concept rubs many people the wrong way and often elicits questions like: “Where’s the passion, the drama, the excitement? Isn’t love supposed to make me feel alive? Isn’t it supposed to fulfill my every need, even needs I didn’t know I had?”

  What Johnson means is that love is not the cure-all that we set people up to believe it is. When love is true and real, it feels warm and sweet in your soul, the way oatmeal feels warm and nourishing in your belly. It feels good. It’s not over-the-top, heart-stopping romance — the stuff Hollywood is made of. It just works. It’s nice. It’s comforting. And it might not work all the time, but for the most part, the two of you connect and click in a special way. And, because this doesn’t happen every day, this is something to appreciate and celebrate.

  Many people encounter problems in their relationships because the reality falls terribly short of their expectations. Because of a culturally induced brainwashing that creates a set of unrealistic and fantasy-based expectations, many people expect love to look and feel a certain way and are painfully plagued by a mental list of shoulds: “I should feel in love all the time. I should want sex all the time (or at least two to three times a week). I should look as happy as all my friends look on Facebook. I should always want to see my partner. I should always feel attracted. I should never feel irritated. I should feel sparkly like the sprinkles on top of my ice-cream sundae.” But ask any couple married over twenty years, and they’ll tell you that the sprinkles are not what you base a marriage on. They may shimmer in your daily life as a result of a sweet kiss or a satisfying conversation, but they’re not the foundation of a marriage. These couples know what love is, and they know what it isn’t. They know that love is not . . .

  •infatuation. A relationship may begin as a feeling in a burst of excitement and passion, butterflies and fireworks, but this isn’t real love — and it may not start this way, which doesn’t render the relationship any less worthy or viable. Eventually the flames die down, and the process of learning about real loving begins.

  •an answer to your problems or the missing piece of your puzzle. The only person who can rescue you from your challenges is you. The only person who can create your sense of aliveness and wholeness is you.

  •fitting into an image from romantic comedy or People magazine.

  •unwavering certainty that you’ve met “the one.”

  •scintillating conversation every time you see each other.

  •feeling attracted to your partner every moment of every day.

  •effortless.

  •liking each other all the time. Your partner will irritate you to no end. That’s normal.

  Now let’s explore what love is.

  Love is . . .

  •action. When you truly love someone, you learn what their love language is and make efforts as often as possible to express your love in the language that your partner can receive. For example, if your partner’s love language is physical touch, you can say “I love you” all day long, but nothing will communicate your love as effectively as giving your partner a hug, a shoulder massage, or a kiss.

  •a choice. We choose to take the risk of loving. We choose to practice opening our whole heart to our committed partner. We choose to break down the fear-barriers that try to convince us to run. We choose to challenge the false beliefs and unrealistic expectations propagated by popular culture, which says that you must be 100 percent certain that you’re with the “right” person, “the one,” your soulmate. We choose to commit and, through the commitment, allow ourselves to unfold into a lifetime of learning about love.

  •effort. Real love will ask you to extend yourself for your partner in ways that stretch you beyond your comfort zone.

  •an opportunity to grow and learn about yourself. Love asks you to extend yourself for the sake of the other. Love invites you to open your heart even when your habitual response is to shut down or withdraw in fear. Love pushes you to your edge, and on the projection screen of your partner’s face, where every fear, insecurity, and old wound will be reflected, you will be asked to take full responsibility for your pain. Through the willingness to feel this pain, your heart will open to the joy of loving.

  •a risk. Love says, “Risk everything that you are. Risk everything that you’ve known. Risk the safety and familiarity of your safe life.” Because when you choose to say yes to love, you render your heart vulnerable to the risk of being hurt. Most of us construct elaborate defenses as a way to avoid taking this risk, even going so far as convincing ourselves that we must walk away from a loving, wonderful, honest relationship when the truth is that we’re too scared to take the risk of loving.

  •more complicated than our culture dares to acknowledge, as evidenced by the fact that we only have one word for love.

  In The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden, Johnson writes:

  Sanskrit has ninety-six words for love; ancient Persian has eighty, Greek three, and English only one. This is indicative of the poverty of awareness or emphasis that we give to that tremendously important realm of feeling. Eskimos have thirty words for snow, because it is a life-and-death matter to them to have exact information about the element they live with so intimately. If we had a vocabulary of thirty words for love . . . we would immediately be richer and more intelligent in this human element so close to our heart. An Eskimo probably would die of clumsiness if he had only one word for snow; we are close to dying of loneliness because we have only one word for love. Of all the Western languages, English may be the most lacking when it comes to feeling.

  There are so many ways to experience love. Yet when it comes to our intimate partners, we expect to feel one kind of love in one measurement: namely, “madly in love” without a hint of doubt or uncertainty clouding the pure, ecstatic experience. We exert immense and unrealistic levels of pressure on ourselves — especially during the early stages — to feel an exact amount and sentiment of love for our intimate partners. We believe that we can measure love, that there’s a right way to love or an adequate quantity of love that signals that you’ve met the “right” partner and now you’re legitimized to marry.

  In order to widen our perspective on romantic love, it’s helpful to break down the phrase “I love you” so that we start to see its variance and the multiplicity of ways to love your partner.

  There’s the appreciation you feel when he does something thoughtful and kind, like brush the snow off your car in twenty-degree weather or buy your favorite kind of bread.

  There’s the comfort you feel when you come home at the end of a hard day at work, and she’s there, waiting for you with a plate of hot food and your favorite TV show cued up.

  There’s the gratitude you feel when she attends the twelfth family gathering of the year.

  There’s the warmth you feel when you see him across the room and know that he’s your guy.

  There are the tingles you feel when she kisses you, maybe not every time, but enough to know that a spark still burns between you.

  There’s the trust you feel when you walk through a difficult confl
ict together and emerge stronger than ever on the other side.

  There’s the awe you feel when you remember how rare it is to find someone who “gets” you and whom you “get.”

  There’s the softness you feel when you focus on one physical quality in your partner that melts your heart and brings a smile to your face.

  There’s the joy you feel when you listen to your favorite song together or have a blast on the dance floor.

  There’s the contentment you feel when you read together yet separately, before going to bed.

  There’s the feeling of stability that grows when you nurture the garden of your relationship year after year, enduring challenges and celebrating joys, and always knowing that you support your own and each other’s growth and happiness.

  When we attune our awareness and widen our consciousness to include these variations in our narrow cultural definition, we know that romantic love is multicolored and multidimensional. It’s infinitely richer than the images presented on the big screen, infinitely more nuanced and alive than the one-dimensional feeling of butterflies that sometimes initiates a relationship. It’s real and honest, and when we commit to loving one person with whom we can learn, it becomes one of the most fulfilling and meaningful paths we can embark upon.

  Fear Eyes or Clear Eyes: Love Is Not the Absence of Fear

  As we continue to both widen and fine-tune our definition of love, we must recognize how deeply love and fear are intertwined. The failure to include fear in our understanding and expectations around love is one of our culture’s biggest oversights and leads people toward untold amounts of anxiety. Just as grief and joy live in the same chamber of the heart, so love and fear are polarities designed to help us grow our capacity for loving. Fear is not our enemy, but if we don’t know how to work with it when it arises in relationships, it can quickly fester and cause people to walk away from loving, available, well-matched partners. We must understand and respect fear’s role so that it doesn’t take over and morph into anxiety.

  When we love another deeply, fear will rear its head. Designed to protect the vulnerable heart, fear is the sentry that guards the sacred entrances. The way past fear is not to engage in battle; that’s a war you’ll never win. The way to enter into love’s passageways is to call fear by name. As we learned earlier in this book, we all need to be seen and heard, and fear is no exception.

  When we call fear by name, we befriend it. And when we befriend it, it’s no longer the enemy, something to be avoided or conquered. Befriending fear means making room for all of fear’s manifestations: doubt, disconnection, uncertainty, lack of attraction, irritation, lack of the feeling of love, fantasizing about the perfect partner or an ex. These are the ways we know our heart is closed. When we buy into the belief that real love doesn’t include these manifestations of fear, we believe that something is wrong when these feelings arise. Nothing is wrong. These states of being are all part of love. When we widen our definition of love — literally expanding it out like a giant balloon to include these more uncomfortable and certainly less glamorous feelings (not what we culturally associate with romantic love) — we feel our heart expanding as well.

  Befriending how fear shows up in love means getting to know it, just like you would get to know a friend. When you befriend fear, you learn that sometimes fear is a wall; other times it’s a curtain; still other times it’s a layer of silt across the soul. From the mindset of curious exploration, you learn that your inner world is not a stark and defined place, as the ego would like to believe. It does not comprise sharp lines and definite answers that, once established, exist across time and space. The inner world is a mercurial, watercolor landscape where fear and love blend and collide and ultimately stand face-to-face so love can embrace fear in her soft wings.

  When we deny fear, we perceive our partner and the world around us through fear eyes. Fear distorts perception. Or, rather, the denial of fear distorts perception. When we deny fear and banish it from our table, we see through eyes of lack: not enough love, not enough attraction, not enough humor, not enough conversation. There is no loveliness, no softness, no quality of allowing. It’s the ego’s world of harsh lines and its need for unilateral certainty. But when the wall or curtain rises up and you can say, “I’m feeling on edge. It’s not you,” the naming and the owning allow the barrier to melt.

  And then a rush of essence. You see through clear eyes again. Your own essence appears like the river reeds in spring, and you see your lover as beauty on the banks. You see the intrinsic, unchangeable qualities of essence. You see his warmth and kindness flowing like a clear river. You see her honesty and humor unfold and bloom before your eyes, as if for the first time. It’s first love all over again, or perhaps for the first time.

  It would be so nice to remain in this open-eyed, open-hearted state always; but then we wouldn’t be human. Being human includes closing up and shutting down. It includes retreat and withdrawal. Being human is almost defined by our separateness, as opposed to the oneness that apparently defines another realm. As separate human beings, we will disconnect; and as deeply thinking people prone to anxiety, doubt will invariably sidle onto the scene.

  The culture has a very clear message about doubt: doubt means don’t. If you experience any doubt about your partner, you’re with the wrong partner. Any valid questioning and expression of healthy fears about your relationship are immediately interpreted as signs of a mistake.

  For the anxious mind, doubt is inevitable. For the mind that examines every decision under the highest-resolution microscope possible, that asks important questions like, “How do I know that I love him? What is real love anyway? How do I know that we’re not going to end up like my parents or as part of the 50 percent divorce statistic?” doubt is not only responsible, but is also another word for fear. And since fear’s entire mission in life is to keep you protected from the possibility of getting hurt, it will naturally make a strong case in your most intimate relationship where the risk of pain is at its greatest. That’s when fear — or doubt — shows up and tries to get you to run for the hills.

  Should you listen? The answer lies in the wise words of one of my clients speaking about every area of her life (not just her relationship): “If I listened to doubt, I would never get out of bed in the morning.” In other words, doubt is a normal part of the terrain of the anxious mind. When you learn to deal with anxiety effectively, you hear fear’s lines, but you don’t heed its advice; it will always shoot its darts into your mind, but you learn not to take the poison. To buy into the cultural lie that “doubt means don’t” is like laying yourself prostrate at fear’s feet and saying, “You win. You rule my life.” And, as my client said, you would never get out of bed. You would live without risk in the safety of a carefully controlled box. You would be alive, but you wouldn’t really be living. Working with anxiety means consciously stepping outside of that safe box, and romantic relationships offer us one of the most potent — and scary — places to practice this wholehearted risk taking.

  Key Concepts for Understanding Relationship Anxiety: Projection and the Pursuer-Distancer Syndrome

  In order to call fear to the mat, you need to be able to name fear’s tricky ways of trying to convince you that you’re with the wrong person and your anxiety is your intuition telling you to run. Our rate of relationship satisfaction would undoubtedly increase if everyone in an intimate relationship understood a couple of key concepts.

  The first is projection. Projection is a defense mechanism where a person denies their own negative qualities or feelings and instead assigns them to someone else. In the context of intimate relationships, projection can occur in a variety of ways. If your husband had a very controlling mother, for example, he might feel controlled by your request that he drive more slowly, even if you’re not being controlling. We would say then that he’s projecting his mother onto you. Likewise, your wife might experience your need for sex as smothering because she hasn’t attended to her invasion
issues from a past relationship. We would say that she’s projecting her ex onto you. This is when unconscious material that hasn’t been fully processed creeps up into the relationship. If you’ve oriented your compass toward learning, you would trust that your partner isn’t in fact being controlling or invasive, and would see it as an opportunity to heal an inner wound that needs attention.

  Projection can also arise in the form of relationship anxiety when thoughts like, “I don’t love him” or “I’m not in love with her” creep up. If you have a healthy relationship, and there’s a core of connection — when anxiety isn’t in the way — this is likely your fear projected onto your partner. The work then — and it can be very tough work because that voice sounds so convincing — is to pull the projection off your partner and address the core feelings inside you that need attention.