What have I learned in twenty years of watching partners take back their relationships from this dance? My couples have taught me so many things.
First, they have taught me that you have to see it. The whole enchilada. You have to see the how of the dance between you and your partner and what it says about the relationship, not simply the content of the argument. You also have to see the whole dance. If you just focus on specific steps, especially the other person’s, as in “Hey, you just attacked me,” you will be lost. You have to step back and see the entire picture.
Second, both people have to grasp how the moves of each partner pull the other into the dance. Each person is trapped in the dance and unwittingly helps to trap the other. If I attack you, I pull you into defense and justification. I inadvertently make it hard for you to be open and responsive to me. If I stay aloof and apart, I leave you separate and alone and pull you into pursuing and pushing for connection.
Third, the polka is all about attachment distress. It cannot be stopped with logical problem solving or formal communication skill techniques. We have to know the nature of the dance if we are to change the key elements and return to safe connection. We have to learn to recognize calls for connection and how desperation turns into “I push, I poke, anything to get him to respond,” or “I just freeze, so as to stop hearing more and more about how flawed I am and how I have lost her already.” These patterns are universal because our needs and fears, and our responses to perceived loss and separation, are universal.
Fourth, we can know the nature of love, tune in to these moments of disconnection and the protest and distress that are the key part of the polka. We can then learn to see the polka as the enemy, not our partner.
Fifth, partners can begin to stand together and call the enemy by name, so they can slow the music down and learn how to step to the side and create enough safety to talk about attachment emotions and needs.
When Ken and Mia can do this, they begin to have hope for their relationship. As Ken says, “When we start to get into that thing, you know, the spiral we talk about here, we don’t get so sucked down into it. I said to Mia yesterday, ‘We are getting stuck here. I am getting more and more distant and frozen up, and you are getting all upset. These are the times when you feel shut out, right? We don’t have to do this. Let’s stop. Come over and just let’s have a hug.’ And she did. It felt great.” I asked Ken what it was that helped him most to defeat this polka. He replied that it helped him to realize that Mia wasn’t “the enemy” and that she was “fighting for the relationship” when the polka started, not trying to “do me in.”
Being able to recognize and accept protests about separation and exit the Protest Polka is crucial to a healthy relationship. If a safe, loving bond is to stay strong and grow, couples have to be able to repair moments of disconnection and step out of common dead-end ways of dealing with them, ways that actually exacerbate disconnection by destroying trust and safety.
PLAY AND PRACTICE
Does the story of Ken and Mia seem familiar to you? Do you recognize parts of this dance in your own relationship? Can you think of the last time this polka took over your relationship? Can you put on your attachment glasses and see past the argument about facts or problems to the struggle over the connection between the two of you? For example, was the argument really about whether to rebuild the cottage where one partner likes to go and paint, or was it about attachment security? Perhaps the partner who is left behind is just that — left behind. Maybe one of you was really talking about the lack of secure connection and closeness between the two of you or trying to get reassurance from the other, but the conversation stayed focused on pragmatic issues.
In your present relationship, what do you tend to do when you feel disconnected or unsafe? Try to think about which person you identified with in the stories of the couples given in this chapter. You can also think of the last argument or hurtful episode in your relationship. If you pretend you are a fly on the wall reporting on the incident to the Fly Gazette, what does the dance look like and what are your main moves? Do you protest or withdraw? Do you find yourself getting critical and trying to change your lover? Or maybe you shut down and tell yourself that any longing for reassurance is risky stuff and should not be listened to? All of us do all of these things at times.
Flexibility and being able to see your own moves and their impact on others is the key here. I am encouraging you to be courageous, look hard, and identify your usual response. It’s the one that pops out before you have taken a breath. This is the response that can trap you in a vicious cycle of disconnection with the person you love best. These responses can also be different in different relationships. But for now, just think of your most significant connection and how you respond to this person at times when attachment uncertainties and issues come up.
The distancing stance is sometimes the one that is hardest for us to really grasp, if we are the person doing the distancing. Perhaps your style is to retreat into yourself and try to calm yourself by shutting the world out? This can be very useful. Unless you start doing it automatically and find it harder and harder to stay open and responsive. Then this withdrawal sets you up to spin into the Protest Polka. Pretty soon, your partner will need you and feel shut out, abandoned, and excluded.
Can you think of a specific incident when withdrawing and not responding worked for you in a relationship? What happened after your withdrawal? We most often think of this strategy as preventing a fight that we fear will escalate and threaten the relationship. Now, can you think of times when moving away and shutting down does not seem to work? What happens after this withdrawal, to you and in your dance with your partner?
If you feel comfortable, see if you can share your responses to some of these questions with your partner. Are there times when the two of you get stuck in the polka? See if you can pin down each person’s moves. Can you see the whole feedback loop? Describe it very simply by filling in the blanks in the following sentence with one word.
The more I _________, the more you _________ and then the more I _________, and round and round we go.
Come up with your own name for this dance and see if you each can share how it erodes the sense of safe connection in your relationship. How does it change the emotional music between you?
For example, Todd talks about how his main way of connecting is through sex. He is much more sure of himself in bed than when he is discussing feelings with his wife. He spots his main move in the polka: “I chase you for sex. But it’s not just for an orgasm. It’s the way I know to be close. When you turn me down, I chase you more and ‘badger’ you for explanations. The more I do this, the more you move away and guard your space.”
His wife, Bella, replies, “Yes, and the more criticized and demanded from I feel, the more overwhelmed I get. So I turn away from you more and more. And you get more pushy and desperate, and this goes on and on. Is that it?” Todd agrees that this is the outline of the polka for them. They decide to call it the Vortex. For them the name expresses how obsessed Todd gets with his wife’s sexual availability and how obsessed she becomes with guarding her space. Todd is then able to share that he feels more and more rejected and frantic, and Bella states that she feels “frozen” and lonely in their marriage. What is it like for you and your lover to talk about your own moves in your Protest Polka?
Even if you get stuck in the Protest Polka, are there times when you can step out of it, shut it down, and move into another way of interacting? Are there times when you can risk openly asking for closeness and comfort or disclose your feelings and needs to your spouse rather than withdrawing? What is it that makes these times possible? What do you do to keep the polka at bay? See if you can figure this out together. Is there a way to help each other feel safer so that a sense of disconnection does not immediately lead into this dance? Often this comes down to recognizing the attachment signals hidden in the polka. For example, Juan found that just telling his wife, Anna, “I see tha
t you’re really upset and need something from me but I don’t know what to do here,” was enough.
DEMON DIALOGUE 3 — FREEZE AND FLEE
Sometimes, when a couple comes to see me, I do not hear the hostility of Find the Bad Guy or the frantic beat of the Protest Polka. I hear a deadly silence. If we think of a relationship as a dance, then here both partners are sitting out! It looks like there is nothing at stake; no one seems to be invested in the dance. Except that there is a palpable tension in the air, and pain is clear on the couple’s faces. Emotion theorists tell us that we can try to suppress our emotions but it just doesn’t work. As Freud noted, they seep out of every pore. What I see is that both partners are shut down into frozen defense and denial. Each is in self-protection mode, trying to act as if he or she does not feel and does not need.
This is the Freeze and Flee dance that frequently evolves from the Protest Polka. This is what happens when the pursuing, critical partner gives up trying to get the spouse’s attention and goes silent. If this cycle runs its course, the aggressive partner will grieve the relationship and then will detach and leave. At this point, partners typically are very polite to each other, even cooperative around pragmatic issues, but unless something is done, the love relationship is over. Sometimes the usually withdrawn partner finally tunes in to the fact that even though things look more peaceful, there is now no emotional connection of any kind, positive or negative. This partner frequently then agrees to seek out a counselor or to read books like this.
The extreme distancing of Freeze and Flee is a response to the loss of connection and the sense of helplessness concerning how to restore it. One partner will usually tell a story of pursuing the mate, protesting the lack of connection, and mourning alone. This partner describes himself or herself as now unable to feel, as frozen. The other partner is often trapped in the withdrawal that has become a default option and attempts to deny the unfolding detachment. No one is reaching for anyone here. No one will take any risks. So there is no dance at all. If the couple doesn’t get help and this continues, a point comes when there is then no way to renew trust or revive the dying relationship. Then this Freeze and Flee cycle will finish the partnership.
Terry and Carol, they admitted to me, had never been what’s called a “close couple.” But Carol, a subdued, intellectual woman, insisted that she had tried repeatedly to talk to her husband about his “depression.” This is the way she understood their emotional estrangement. Terry, a quiet, formal man, noted that his wife had been finding fault with him for years, especially around parenting issues. They had come in to see me because they had gotten into a fight, a very rare event for them. It started when Carol picked out a pair of pants to wear to a party that Terry disliked. Terry had declared that if she wore those particular pants it meant that she did not love him and they should divorce! Then on the way to the party, Terry had told her that he was on the verge of starting an affair with a work colleague, but he assumed that this did not matter to Carol as they never had sex anyway. Carol in turn had disclosed that she was infatuated with an old friend and pointed out that Terry never touched her for affection or sex.
In our session, they talked of lives so swamped with career duties and parenting responsibilities that finding time for personal closeness and lovemaking had become harder and harder. Carol claimed that once she had recognized that they were becoming “strangers,” she had tried to “shake Terry up” so he would talk to her more. When this didn’t work, she had become very angry. Terry noted that Carol had indeed been very “judgmental” for a number of years, especially about his parenting, but then, about a year ago, she had just become distant. Carol explained that she had finally decided to “swallow” her rage and to accept that this was the way marriage was. She concluded that her husband no longer found her attractive or interesting enough to capture his attention. In response to this, Terry spoke sadly of Carol’s deep connection to their two children and told me that he somehow seemed to have lost his spouse. She was a mother but not a wife. He wondered if it was because he was simply too serious and “in his head” to be with a woman.
The real problem with the Freeze and Flee cycle is the hopelessness that colors it. Both of these partners had decided that their difficulty lay in themselves, in their innate flaws. The natural response to this is to hide, to conceal one’s unlovable self. Remember that a key part of Bowlby’s attachment perspective is that we use the eyes of those we love to reflect back to us a sense of ourselves. What other information could possibly be as relevant in our daily framing of who we are? Those we love are our mirror.
As Carol and Terry felt increasingly disconnected and helpless, they had hidden from each other more and more. The basic attachment cues that we see in infants and parents and in lovers, such as prolonged gazing and physical caressing, had become first muted and then nonexistent. Terry and Carol never made eye contact during our session and noted that spontaneous touching had disappeared from their lives long ago. Being very intellectual had enabled them to rationalize their lack of sexual connection and deny, at least most of the time, the pain of not feeling desired by their spouse. Both talked about the symptoms of depression, and indeed, depression is a natural part of losing connection with a lover. Over time, the gap between them widened, and it seemed more and more risky to reach out to each other. Carol and Terry described the themes, moves, and feelings that withdrawers in the Protest Polka reveal, but they had deeper doubts about their lovability. This doubt paralyzed both of them and “froze” the protest that usually draws attention to this kind of destructive distance.
When we began to delve into their pasts, they both talked of growing up in cold, rational families where emotional distance was the norm. When each felt disconnected, they automatically withdrew and denied their needs for emotional closeness. Our past history with loved ones shapes our present relationships. In moments of disconnection when we cannot safely engage with our lover, we naturally turn to the way of coping that we adopted as a child, the way of coping that allowed us to hold on to our parent, at least in some minimal way. When we feel the “hot” emotions that warn us our connection is in trouble, we automatically try to shut them down and flee into reason and distracting activities. In this dance of distance, avoiding these emotions becomes an end in itself. As Terry explains, “If I stay cool, we never talk about feelings. I don’t want to open that Pandora’s box.”
These ways of coping with our emotions and needs become default options; they “happen” so fast that we have no sense of choosing them. But when we see how they lock us into self-defeating dances with our lovers, we can change them. They are not indelible parts of our personality, and we do not need years of therapy and insight to reshape them. Terry spoke of having an older, hostile father and a mother who was a famous politician. He looked blank when I asked him when he felt close to his mother. He said that all he remembered was watching her on the TV screen. He had no choice but to learn how to tolerate distance and numb his needs for comfort and closeness. He had learned his lesson well. But his childhood survival strategy was disastrous for his marriage. Carol, too, saw how she had begun to “wither inside” when she had “shut down” her need for touch and connection.
As with the other dances, once Terry and Carol understood the steps they were taking that isolated them from each other, they began to feel more hopeful and to reveal their feelings to each other. Carol was able to admit that she had “given up” and “built a wall” between herself and Terry to blunt her sense of rejection. She confessed that she had turned to the children to fulfill her longing for touch and connection. Terry divulged how shocked he was to hear this and how he still very much wanted his wife. They both began to uncover the impact each had on the other, and they realized that they were still important to each other. After a few new risks, and a few fights, Carol was able to tell me, “We both feel safer. Fights are hard, but they are so much better than the icy emptiness, the careful silence.” Terry observed, “This v
icious cycle we have been in, I think we can beat it. We both get hurt and scared and shut each other out. But we don’t have to do that.” New beginnings start with knowing how we create the trap that we are caught in, how we have deprived ourselves of the love we need. Strong bonds grow from resolving to halt the cycles of disconnection, the dances of distress.
PLAY AND PRACTICE
Does the Freeze and Flee pattern seem familiar to you? If so, where did you learn to ignore and discount your needs for emotional connection? Who taught you to do this? When do you feel most alone? Can you dare to share the answers to these questions with your partner? Learning how to take risks and initiate this kind of sharing is like taking an antidote to numbing or running away from your attachment needs. Is there any way your partner can help you with this?
Can you share with your partner one cue that sparks the distancing dance? It can be as simple as a turn of the head at a particular moment. Can you also identify exactly how you push your partner away from you or make it dangerous for him or her to come closer?
What do you tell yourself once you have emotionally withdrawn to justify separation and to discourage yourself from reaching out to your partner? Sometimes these are pronouncements about what love is and how we ought to act in love relationships that we have been taught by our parents or even our culture. Can you share these with your partner?
Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love Page 8
