The Dance of Intimacy

by Harriet Lerner

  For example, when her dad slurred his words on the phone and called it “a bad cold,” Kristen said calmly, “Dad, you say you haven’t been drinking, but I’m not able to carry on a conversation with you now. I’m hanging up the phone. Good-bye.” When her dad was sober, Kristen worked hard to avoid the old guilt-inducing statements about him (“Why do you do this to us!”) or about some other party (“Do you realize how much you upset Mother last weekend?”). Instead Kristen tried to stick with “I” statements—nonblaming statements about the self.

  On one weekend visit, for example, Kristen canceled her plans to stay at her parents’ home. Instead, she took herself and her children to a nearby motel after dinner because her father was obviously under the influence of alcohol. In a low-keyed way, Kristen made clear to her own kids why she had decided not to stay at her parents’ home when her dad had been drinking. Later that week she communicated the following to her father:

  “When you’ve been drinking, Dad, I’m going to do my best to stick to my plan to leave. It’s not that I don’t care about you. It’s that I do care about you. I know that I can’t do a thing to help you, but it’s too painful for me to see that you’ve been drinking and especially to be reminded that I may not have you around for a very long time.”

  When her father became defensive, accusing her of exaggerating and making mountains out of molehills, Kristen heard him out and said, “Dad, I don’t agree. I obviously see the problem as far more serious than you do—and you certainly know my beliefs about the need for treatment. In any case, I just feel too tense inside to be around you when I even suspect you’ve been drinking. So even if I do overreact at times, I’m still going to pick up and go, like I did last Saturday night.”

  Getting Put to the Test

  In a chronically anxious emotional field such as this one, it is an extremely difficult challenge to think rather than react, especially when the “tests” and countermoves start rolling in. Late one night, Kristen’s father called her from a phone booth about twenty minutes from her home. He had been in town that day on business and obviously was in no shape to drive home. Kristen immediately phoned her mother, who became hysterical and instructed Kristen to get her father right away, before he killed himself or someone else. But Kristen (who had been in this situation before) had already told her dad that she wasn’t going to bail him out anymore when he drank, because it was too hard on her and not an acceptable way to have a relationship with him.

  At this point, Kristen became so anxious that she could not think clearly, if at all. She knew that the old pattern of rescuing her dad did not work. At the same time, she wanted to respond appropriately to a situation of imminent danger. Kristen made another call, this time to the leader of her group of Adult Children of Alcoholics, which enabled her to calm down and make a plan. The outcome was that she called the police and explained the situation. She then called her mother to tell her that she had called the police. The police picked up her dad. And Kristen began steeling herself for the volcanic reaction from her folks that would now come her way.

  “How Can You Do This to Dad??!!”

  And so it goes. Countermoves and “Change back!” reactions are par for the course when we change our part in an old pattern, but knowing this fact may not make the situation any easier to deal with. Both of Kristen’s parents acted enraged at her, if not ready to disown her. They attacked her on the phone in such a vitriolic manner that Kristen could barely refrain from hanging up. How dare she humiliate the family this way? Was she aware of the harm she had done to her father’s driving record and to his professional reputation? Did she care about the expensive fine that she had imposed on him? What kind of daughter calls the police on her own father?

  Kristen felt such a strong rise of anger on the phone that she knew she should wait to respond. She wanted to scream that she had not done this to her father, he had brought it on himself, and that his taking responsibility for the consequences of his actions was long overdue. But she resisted saying all this, because she knew from experience that it would only fuel the fire.

  Instead, Kristen listened for as long as she could tolerate it. Then she told her parents that she needed to get off the phone, but would think about what they had said and then get back to them. “Don’t bother!” were her father’s last angry words. He was obviously quite sober.

  Meeting intensity with more intensity—meeting reactivity with more reactivity—only escalates things further. Instead, Kristen wrote her parents a chatty, informative letter that began by sharing some news about her daughter’s recent performance on the soccer field.

  Then she addressed the hot issue in a brief paragraph, avoiding lengthy explanations and justifications that would only have added to the intensity. Kristen was direct and factual. She did not back down from her bottom line.

  First, Kristen apologized for whatever grief, fines, and humiliation that she had caused her dad by calling the police, explaining that certainly it wasn’t her intention to hurt him or cause trouble for the family: “I simply didn’t see any other alternative,” she wrote, “and I still don’t. I wasn’t going to come get you myself, because I’ve learned that I just can’t do that and still have a relationship with you that feels acceptable to me. And I sure wasn’t going to do nothing when I was feeling so scared that you might drive and be in danger. So I did the only thing I could think of, which was to call the police. Frankly, I’d do it again, because I wouldn’t know what else to do.” When Kristen’s older brother got in on the act (“How could you do such a thing to Dad!”), she provided him with the same brief explanation.

  “How Can You Do This to Dad??!!”

  And so it goes. Countermoves and “Change back!” reactions are par for the course when we change our part in an old pattern, but knowing this fact may not make the situation any easier to deal with. Both of Kristen’s parents acted enraged at her, if not ready to disown her. They attacked her on the phone in such a vitriolic manner that Kristen could barely refrain from hanging up. How dare she humiliate the family this way? Was she aware of the harm she had done to her father’s driving record and to his professional reputation? Did she care about the expensive fine that she had imposed on him? What kind of daughter calls the police on her own father?

  Kristen felt such a strong rise of anger on the phone that she knew she should wait to respond. She wanted to scream that she had not done this to her father, he had brought it on himself, and that his taking responsibility for the consequences of his actions was long overdue. But she resisted saying all this, because she knew from experience that it would only fuel the fire.

  Instead, Kristen listened for as long as she could tolerate it. Then she told her parents that she needed to get off the phone, but would think about what they had said and then get back to them. “Don’t bother!” were her father’s last angry words. He was obviously quite sober.

  Meeting intensity with more intensity—meeting reactivity with more reactivity—only escalates things further. Instead, Kristen wrote her parents a chatty, informative letter that began by sharing some news about her daughter’s recent performance on the soccer field.

  Then she addressed the hot issue in a brief paragraph, avoiding lengthy explanations and justifications that would only have added to the intensity. Kristen was direct and factual. She did not back down from her bottom line.

  First, Kristen apologized for whatever grief, fines, and humiliation that she had caused her dad by calling the police, explaining that certainly it wasn’t her intention to hurt him or cause trouble for the family: “I simply didn’t see any other alternative,” she wrote, “and I still don’t. I wasn’t going to come get you myself, because I’ve learned that I just can’t do that and still have a relationship with you that feels acceptable to me. And I sure wasn’t going to do nothing when I was feeling so scared that you might drive and be in danger. So I did the only thing I could think of, which was to call the police. Frankly, I’d do it again, because I woul
dn’t know what else to do.” When Kristen’s older brother got in on the act (“How could you do such a thing to Dad!”), she provided him with the same brief explanation.

  Mother’s Reaction

  To Kristen’s surprise, the family member who reacted most strongly to her changed behavior was her mother. Yet her mother’s reaction was normal and predictable. For one thing, all family members (including ourselves) react with anxiety when a family member challenges an old pattern by moving differently. Understandably, Kristen’s mother felt especially threatened because her daughter’s new behavior brought her face-to-face with her own position (or lack of position) vis-à-vis her husband’s drinking. It challenged her mother’s deeply held belief that she was doing all she could, that nothing else was possible.

  Over the long years of her marriage, Kristen’s mother had increasingly put more and more energy into focusing on her husband’s alcoholism and less and less energy into figuring out how she might live her own life as well as possible. She overfunctioned for her husband (bailing him out and pulling up slack for him) and she underfunctioned for herself (neglecting to clarify her own life goals and failing to set clear limits about what was and was not acceptable to her in regard to her husband’s drinking behavior and what she would and would not do). Learning that alcoholism was a disease, she then used this belief to take no position regarding her husband’s management of his disease. She had no bottom line, meaning that she engaged in endless cycles of fighting, complaining, and blaming, but she was unable to say, “These are the things that I cannot and will not tolerate in this relationship.” Because Kristen’s mother was truly convinced that she could not live without her marriage, she could not navigate clearly within it.

  Kristen’s mother did occasionally threaten divorce, but her ultimatums were reactive positions at times of high intensity (“Damn it! If you do this one more time, I’m leaving!”). Often they were expressions of desperation and last-ditch attempts to get her husband to shape up. In contrast, a bottom-line position evolves from a focus on the self, from a deeply felt awareness (which one cannot fake, pretend, or borrow) of one’s own needs and the limits of one’s tolerance. One clarifies a bottom line not primarily to change or control the other person (although the wish may certainly be there), but rather to preserve the dignity, integrity, and well-being of the self. There is no “right” bottom line for all individuals, but if we have no bottom line, a relationship (be it with a parent, child, co-worker, friend, lover, or spouse) can only become increasingly chaotic and impaired. This is so, whether we are convinced that the other person’s behavior has been caused by illness, poor environment, bad genes, slothfulness, or evil spirits.

  For almost four decades, Kristen’s mother had participated in a dance with her husband that had high costs for all involved, and she had convinced herself that she had “tried everything.” Kristen’s new ability to de-intensify her anxious focus on her father’s alcoholism, while clarifying a bottom line relative to his drinking behaviors and their relationship, struck at the heart of her mother’s core beliefs, assumptions, and behavior. It challenged her mother’s very reality of how things are and how they must be. It stirred her mother’s deepest feelings about her own growing up.

  Kristen’s maternal grandparents had virtually sacrificed their lives for a son who was diagnosed as chronically mentally ill, exhausting themselves to the bone by tolerating all sorts of outrageous and irresponsible behaviors without setting clear limits and boundaries. They, too, saw no options (“We can’t put our own son out on the street, can we?”) and they blamed him (or his bad genes) for trapping them in an unhappy life. Professional help and community support were unavailable and the advice they did receive (“Kick him out if it’s too hard for you”) was not useful to them.

  Kristen’s mother repeated the family pattern—this time with a spouse—and accepted the family “reality” (“One cannot have a clear bottom line with a sick family member”). By replicating this pattern, Kristen’s mother was able to deny the repressed rage she felt at the situation in her first family, which had been entirely organized and focused around her sick brother. By doing the same, Kristen’s mother was proving to herself that nothing different could have been done, that there was no other way. And needless to say, it is a very difficult challenge for any of us to be able to set limits, rules, and boundaries in a solid fashion if our own parents were not able to do this with each other, with us, and with other family members.

  The more we know about the broader multigenerational picture, the more we can begin to appreciate the enormity of the change Kristen was making. One does not challenge the legacy of generations without stirring up profound emotionality. It was predictable for Kristen’s mother to become anxious about her daughter’s new behavior and to express her anxiety by redirecting her anger and blame toward Kristen. It was Kristen’s job to manage her mother’s reactions without cutting her off or getting pulled back into the old pattern. Dealing with countermoves is what real change is all about.

  If only change could take place in one hit-and-run maneuver—but it just doesn’t work that way. It’s a process that requires us to hang in as best we can. Following Kristen’s call to the police, everyone’s anxiety was up—and it was understandable that Kristen had difficulty staying in touch with family members who were angrily attacking her or giving her the cold shoulder. If Kristen was serious about real, substantive change, however, she would need to be creative in finding some way to stay in reasonable contact with her father and mother, retreating into distance only temporarily, when necessary.

  If Kristen had cut off, a new, more functional relationship pattern would not have been established. And if her father’s countermove was particularly dramatic (such as injuring himself in a car accident), Kristen’s anxiety and guilt about her new position might have been unmanageable if she had failed to find some way to stay responsibly connected. Although the actual risk of serious injury or tragedy is far greater with the old pattern, this point is still an important one.

  Most important of all, the ability to stay responsibly connected to family members, and to define a solid self in this arena, helps us to bring a more solid self to other intimate relationships. When family relationships have been especially painful and when there are cutoffs in the previous generations, maintaining connectedness is not easy. But distance or cutoff from family members is always a trade-off. The plus is that we avoid the strong uncomfortable feelings that contact with certain family members inevitably evokes. The costs are less tangible but no less dear. Family connectedness, even when these relationships are anxious and difficult, is a necessary prerequisite to conducting one’s own intimate relationships free from serious symptoms over time and free from excessive anxiety and reactivity. The more we manage intensity by cutting off from members of our own kinship group (extended family included), the more we bring that intensity into other relationships, especially into those with children, if we have them. In some situations it can take years to figure out how to reconnect with a particular family member, but if we can slowly move in this direction rather than in the direction of more cutoff, there are benefits to the self and the generations to come.

  Kristen’s story had the kind of ending we all like to hear about. Her mother eventually sought help for her “codependency.” Her Dad did get a handle on his drinking problem, and all the family members began to conduct their relationships more functionally. Not infrequently, this happens. And not infrequently, it doesn’t. What is most relevant about this story is not that Kristen’s changes eventually evoked positive changes on her parents’ part. Rather, Kristen defined a responsible position in her family for her self—one that would put her on firmer footing for all her relationship ventures and one that would maximize other family members’ chances of making use of their own competence.

  Don’t Just Do Something—Stand There!

  The most useful thing you can do in response to Kristen’s story is only to think abou
t it. People commonly try to make changes they are not ready for or attempt to address a hot issue before they have competently addressed smaller problems. After you have read this book in its entirety, you will be better able to assess what, where, when, and if you wish to change. Surely we do not begin at the most difficult place.

  Kristen’s story illustrates the most difficult kind of change. Keep in mind, though, that between the “before” and “after” of her story, Kristen had the advantage of participating in both group therapy and in a group of Adult Children of Alcoholics. Clarifying a new position with her dad was not something she just decided to jump into one day. For all of us, such changes require careful preparation, planning, and practice, and in some cases, professional help.

  What you can do, though, is to use Kristen’s story as a springboard to thinking about your own pattern of responding to an underfunctioning person or to a significant other whose behavior is not acceptable to you. We will continue to learn more about the process of defining a self in relationships, and the implications of having or not having a bottom line. For now, keep in mind that patience is a priority; we can’t learn to swim by jumping off the high dive.

  Kristen’s story does give us much to think about that is not specific to having an alcoholic family member. The changes Kristen made illustrate her struggle to define a self within, the intense emotional field of family relationships. This struggle is relevant indeed central, to all of our lives. And since we cannot hold the clock still, we are always navigating relationships in the direction of greater or lesser degrees of self.