Anne didn’t know all the facts surrounding her brother’s poisoning, because this loss became the hot issue in her own family—a taboo subject that was never discussed. From what Anne was able to share with Cathy, it seemed that her mother’s own religious attitudes had intensified after Jeff’s death, as she struggled to survive the loss. On those rare occasions when Jeff’s name was mentioned, it was only in the most positive of religious terms: “God takes only the best for himself.” “It was God’s will.” “Jeff is happy with God.” “God wanted Jeff with him.” Both parents clung desperately to this one framing of the tragedy, in a manner that discouraged other questions and reactions from emerging openly among family members.
Cathy had long known that her mother had lost a brother in childhood. But this fact had not been real to Cathy, nor had she thought about its actual impact on her mother’s life. Now Cathy learned that Anne had never seen her way clear to question her own mother’s religious beliefs—in fact, after the tragedy, Anne “protected” her mother by suppressing differences of opinion on many issues. Anne believed that religion was her mother’s lifeline, that it quite literally kept her mother alive. To question her mother’s assumptions, or even to believe differently herself, was not an option for Anne. And now her own daughter, Cathy, was disavowing all religion, which only reactivated the old buried feelings surrounding a tragic death that had never been processed and emotionally put to rest.
This new information allowed Cathy to make connections between two generations of mothers and daughters. Anne’s “solution” to the difficult challenge of selfhood with her own mother was to inhibit and deny expressions of difference, not only in religious matters, but also concerning any number of important issues. Cathy’s “solution” was the opposite—which was really the same. Cathy was trying to define a separate self by being as unlike her mother as possible. If Anne said “apples,” Cathy was sure to say “bananas.” Having to be different from our mother expresses our real self no more than having to be the same.
The Pluses/or Cathy
How did it affect Cathy to learn more about this crucial event in her mother’s own family? For one thing, Cathy was able to feel somewhat more empathic and less reactive when the subject of religion reared its controversial head. In fact, reflecting on the impact of Jeff’s death allowed Cathy to put many of her mother’s “obnoxious behaviors” in a broader perspective. For example, Cathy felt extremely bugged by her mother’s anxiety about her brother and especially about Jason’s well-being after his parents’ divorce. Cathy was now able to see how her mother’s anxiety in these relationships was fueled by the intense, unresolved mourning process in her own family. Surely the issue of the survival and well-being of sons was an understandably loaded one for Anne.
As Cathy began to detoxify the hot issue of religion by getting it out on the table and broadening her perspective, she was also able to think through her own beliefs on this subject more clearly. Cathy’s position on religion (“I’d drop dead before I’d bring Jason into a church”) was a reactive one, and no more a statement of independent values than was her mother’s desperate clinging to religious clichés. As Cathy began to view the legacy of religious values in her family through a wide-angle lens, thus gaining a better sense of her mother’s own history, she was able to better formulate her own views on religion without mindlessly rebelling against the beliefs of two generations of women before her.
Perhaps most important of all, Cathy’s conversations with her mother allowed her to experience Anne as a “real person,” a separate and different “other” who had a personal history of her own. Gathering information about our parents’ lives, whether they are living or dead, is an important part of gaining a clear self, rooted in a factual history of our family’s development. And as Cathy discovered, information about each previous generation alters and enlarges the very meaning of behavior. For example, as Cathy learned more about her maternal grandparents’ traumatic immigration from Poland, including the massive losses and severed ties that each experienced at the time, she viewed their “extreme” personalities in a new light. Her earlier glib and critical response (“Those folks became religious fanatics after the kid died”) was replaced by a respectful appreciation of her grandparents’ multiple losses and their strength and courage in finding a way to continue their lives after losing their son.
A Postscript: So You Think You Know Your Family?
Like many of us, Cathy began therapy convinced that she knew her family. This meant that she had stories to tell about family members and a psychiatric diagnosis for just about everyone on her family tree. But the stories we tell about our family frequently reflect the polarities that characterize systems under stress (“My mother the Saint,” “Uncle Joe the Sinner”) and have little to do with the complexity of real people and actual history. When anxiety has been high, we know who the good guys are, we know who the bad guys are, and we know whose camp we are in.
If we can move toward gathering a more factual history of our family, and enlarge the context over several generations, we will gain a more objective perspective on family members. We can begin to see our parents, as well as other relatives, as real people in context who have both strengths and vulnerabilities—as all human beings do. And if we can learn to be more objective in our own family, other relationships will be a piece of cake.
The best way to begin this process is to work on your own genogram, or family diagram. Instructions on doing a genogram can be found in the appendix at the back of this book. On the face of it, this may seem like a simple and straightforward task, as a genogram is nothing more than a pictorial representation of family facts. The facts included on a genogram are dates of births, deaths, marriages, separations, divorces, and major illnesses, as well as the highest level of education and occupation for each family member.
If you approach the task seriously, you will find that your genogram is a springboard to thoughts about many of the ideas presented in this book—or you may simply notice things of interest. You may find, for example, that you have considerable information about one side of your family and almost none about the other. You may become clearer about the hot issues and cutoffs on your family tree as you are confronted with the facts that you don’t have and that you are uncomfortable asking about. (“How and when did Aunt Jess die?” “What is the exact date of my adoption?”) You may begin to notice certain patterned ways that anxiety is managed on a particular side of the family; for example, on your father’s side there may be considerable distance, including a good number of divorces, cutoffs, and people who don’t speak to each other. You may observe there are few people on your family tree that you have a real relationship with— and that those relationships you do have are pretty intense.
The genogram is also your source of important anniversary dates and provides a context for understanding why relationships intensified or fell apart at a particular time. The ages of those who suffered losses, deaths, divorces, or downhill slides in the previous generations will give clues as to what years (as well as what issues) were particularly anxious ones in your past, and what ages may be particularly loaded ones for you in the future. You may notice certain patterns and core triangles repeating over generations or you may make observations about sibling position, as when Adrienne (Chapter 5) identified an issue around second-born sons in her family. The more facts you gather, the more questions you will generate.
Over time, working on a genogram helps us to pay primary attention to the self in our most important and influential context—our first family. It helps us to view relationship problems from a much broader perspective, over generations, rather than focusing narrowly on a few family members who may be idealized or blamed. As we are able to think more objectively about our family legacy and connect with more people on our family tree, we become clearer about the self and better able to take a position in our family, as Cathy did with Anne. It is not that we can ever gather a complete family history or be enti
rely objective about our own family. Obviously we can’t. But we can work on it.
13
Reviewing Self-Focus: The Foundations of Intimacy
Compared to the Good Old Days (or the Bad Old Days, depending on how you look at it), prescriptions for intimacy are improving. We are now encouraged, at least in principle, to bring to our relationships nothing less than a strong, assertive, separate, independent, and authentic self. Yet these agreeable adjectives have become cultural clichés, their meanings trivialized or obscured. Popular notions of “selfhood” do not easily translate into clear guidelines for genuine intimacy and solid connectedness with others. In the name of either protecting or asserting the self, we may fail to take a position on something that matters or we may cut off from significant others, operate at their expense, or behave as if we have the truth of the universe.
I hope that this book has helped you appreciate the challenge of intimacy and all that it requires. Working toward intimacy is nothing short of a lifelong task. The goal is to be in relationships where the separate “I-ness” of both parties can be appreciated and enhanced, and where neither competence nor vulnerability is lost sight of in the self or the other. Intimacy requires a clear self, relentless self-focus, open communication, and a profound respect for differences. It requires the capacity to stay emotionally connected to significant others during anxious times, while taking a clear position for self, based on one’s values, beliefs, and principles.
Laying the groundwork for intimacy is such a difficult challenge because what we do “naturally” will naturally take us in the wrong direction. As we have seen, our normal and reflexive ways of managing anxiety inevitably lead us to participate in patterns, polarities, and triangles that keep us painfully stuck. The higher and more chronic the anxiety, the more entrenched the pattern—and the more courage and motivation we must summon to sustain even a small change.
How You Can Best Use This Book
Go slowly and thoughtfully, for starters. The book’s lessons are far too complex to translate into a list of how-to skills, although careful attention to each woman’s story will provide you with more than enough ideas about what you might work on for the next decade. My first book, The Dance of Anger, lays out clear and specific guidelines for changing stuck relationship patterns. If you are interested in learning more about triangles, reactivity, styles of managing anxiety (pursuing, distancing, overfunctioning, underfunctioning, and child-focus), and countermoves, I suggest that you read The Dance of Anger as well. Each book will help you appreciate and consolidate the lessons of the other. You may also decide to start a “Dance” group with other women, using these books as a springboard for discussion and for work on important relationships.
You will make the best use of this book if you are willing to struggle with theory rather than to focus narrowly on technique. When a relationship is going badly, or not going at all, we obviously want “techniques”—that is, we want to know what we can do to make things different. We may want a six-step program to fix things, a list of Do’s and Don’ts, and (if we’re honest) new maneuvers to change or shape up the other person. Even the best how-to advice, however, will at best yield short-lived results unless we struggle to understand the underlying theory or principles—in this case, a theory about how anxiety is managed and how relationship systems operate under stress.
The fact is, there are no techniques to “make intimacy happen,” although countless self-help books offer this promise. Intimacy can happen only after we work toward a more solid self, based on a clear understanding of our part in the relationship patterns that keep us stuck.
The principles in this book may sound clear and simple when they are illustrated through the lives of other women. But when you try to apply what you have learned to your own relationships, you will see how quickly complexities and ambiguities arise. In this final chapter, I will help you to review and consolidate some important concepts that provide a foundation for thinking about intimacy. The more solid your understanding, the more clearly you will make your own decisions about how, when, if, and with whom you want to experiment with change. Let’s look first at feelings and reactivity, and then at the complex principle of self-focus.
Thinking About Feelings
When I started writing this book, I asked eight people to define “an intimate relationship.” The majority responded with a variation of the same theme: “A relationship in which you can express your true feelings.” The word “feelings” was unanimously emphasized, their free and spontaneous expression highlighted. I would agree: A truly intimate relationship is one in which we can be who we are, which means being open about our selves. Obviously the sharing of feelings is an integral part of intimacy.
And yet if you go back through this book, you will notice little focus on “getting out feelings” and none on “letting it all hang out.” Rather, I have emphasized observing, thinking, planning, and learning to stay calm in the midst of intensity. Does this mean that feelings are wrong or bad, or that their full and spontaneous expression will always impede rather than facilitate the process of intimacy and change?
Certainly not. In flexible relationships, the emotional tone we use to take a position becomes relatively unimportant—a matter of personal style. With my husband, children, and certain friends, for example, I occasionally engage in impassioned arguments about “who’s right,” and if things don’t get too stuck, I enjoy these exchanges. At certain times, however, and in other relationships, I will proceed with as much thoughtfulness and calm as I can muster.
It is always important for us to be aware of feelings. Our feelings exist for good reason and so deserve our attention and respect. Even uncomfortable feelings that we might prefer to avoid, such as anger and depression, may serve to preserve the dignity and integrity of the self. They signal a problem, remind us that business cannot continue as usual, and ultimately speak to the necessity for change. But as I explained in The Dance of Anger, venting feelings does not necessarily solve the problem causing us pain.
Venting our feelings may clear (or muddy) the air, and may leave us feeling better (or worse). When we live in close quarters with someone, strong emotional exchanges are just a predictable part of the picture and it’s nice to know that our relationships can survive or even be enhanced by them. But venting feelings, in and of itself, will not change the relationship dances that block real intimacy and get us into trouble. In stuck relationships, venting feelings may only rigidify old patterns, ensuring that change will not occur.
In some instances, a passionate display of intensity is a turning point, even in a stuck relationship, because it indicates to ourselves and others that we “really mean it.” It is part of a process in which we move toward clarifying the limits of what is acceptable and what is not. But just as frequently the opposite is true: reactivity serves to “let off steam,” following which things will continue as usual. Reactivity and intensity often breed more of the same. When it becomes chronic, reactivity blocks self-focus, which is the only foundation on which an intimate relationship can be built.
Emotions are not bad or wrong, and women certainly are not “too emotional,” as we have often been told. The ability to recognize and express feelings is a strength, not a weakness. It does not help anyone, however, to be buffeted about by feelings or to drown in them. It does help to be able to think about our feelings. By “thinking,” I do not mean intellectualizing or distancing from emotional issues, which men tend to do especially well. I simply mean that we can reflect on our feelings and make conscious decisions about how, when, and with whom we want to express them.
Even as we strive for objectivity, it is not easy to distinguish between true emotionality and anxiety-driven reactivity. When Adrienne (Chapter 5) cried with her dad about his impending death, they were sharing an emotional experience. But when she avoided dealing with his cancer—and instead fought with or distanced from her husband—that was reactivity. When Linda told her sister, Claire,
how terrified she was of losing her, and later shared how scared she was that they would end up as distant as their mother and their aunt Sue, she was in touch with her real feelings. But when she angrily lectured her sister or mother about what they should do differently, that was reactivity. Reactivity is an anxiety-driven response that blocks a truly intimate exchange—one that encourages the open sharing of thoughts and feelings, as well as problem solving around difficult issues.
Because anxiety will always be hitting us from all quarters, reactivity is simply a fact of emotional life. As we have seen, the question is reactivity . . . and then what? To move toward a more gratifying togetherness and authentic emotional exchange, we may first need to deintensify the situation to lower the anxiety. When an important relationship is stuck, we become powerful and courageous agents of change by making a new move in a low-key way, by taking a new position with humor and a bit of teasing, by making our point in a paragraph or two rather than in a long treatise. Trying out new steps slowly and calmly is also what allows us to keep in check our own anxiety and guilt about change, so that we can stay on course and stay self-focused when the powerful countermoves start rolling in.
Understanding Self-Focus
When couples enter therapy for “intimacy problems,” they are invariably other-focused; that is, they see the other person as the problem and they believe the solution is for that person to change. I use the term “couple” here in the broadest sense, to mean any and all ongoing relationships between two persons.
The Dance of Intimacy Page 18
