by Chris G Moon
• “I just don’t love him anymore.”
• “There’s no spark left between us.”
• “It’s like living with my mother!”
• “We don’t do anything together. He reads all the time and I watch TV.”
• “I feel like I married my father.”
• “Our relationship is so claustrophobic—I can’t breathe.”
• “We don’t know how to talk to each other anymore.”
• “I’m just tired of always being the one that’s sacrificing!”
• “She’s not the same woman I married.”
• “Hey! Where’s the sex?”
• “The fire’s out—I guess it’s time to move on.”
• “What happened? Where did we go wrong?”
From the list above you can get a sense of the deep disappointment, frustration, and/or lethargy that permeates a relationship once it hits the wall. Regardless of how animated and alive each partner might seem in social situations such as parties, work, or at various get-togethers, it is their interactions in private that really determines how stuck the relationship is. Inertia, stagnation, deadness, disinterest, or burnout are the most common signals that the relationship has hit the wall, and a process of introspection—or “soul searching”—must begin in order to give it a chance to keep growing.
If you find yourself in this situation, please be careful how you respond. It may not seem like it, but the presence of this deadness is actually an indication that your life is about to take a drastic turn for the better. I spent a lot of years with my face pressed up against the wall—in relationships, work situations, friendships, and my personal development—and have become intimately acquainted with the bricks and mortar of this challenging human obstacle. I have discovered that there is always a choice to be made that determines the length of my stay in the shadow of the wall.
I always felt that I had a choice: stay and suffer, or get the hell out of the situation—run, boy! Run! Finally I learned that I did not have to keep leaving my relationship, quitting my job, or escaping the situation that I felt inhibited me from moving ahead. There was a way through, and that way was in the power of a choice that lay beyond the “either/or” dilemma I was caught in. To understand this choice better, it is of value to get a good look at what this wall really is. I have another name for it, which I call...
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THE VICTIM PRISON
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“Come, let’s away to prison. We two alone will sing like birds I’ th’ cage.”
—Shakespeare, King Lear
Personally, the word “victim” makes me uncomfortable. It conjures up images of weakness, helplessness and fear, none of which I enjoy admitting that I have inside me.55 However it is the most accurate word I can find to describe what keeps people locked into situations which, to an outside observer, might seem easy to resolve. When you are stuck in a problem, you are confined to only three positions from which to view your situation. Stephen Karpman designed a simple model called the Drama Triangle.56
When confronted with a problem, the first position you are likely to take—if even for only a few seconds—is that of the Victim. The Victim must struggle against a larger force than her/himself, with little or no chance of succeeding unless some bigger external force “miraculously” joins the Victim’s side. A Victim often feels overwhelmed by the problem, sometimes even incapacitated by it to the point of paralysis.
Other experiences that can indicate to you that you are feeling victimized are fear, self-pity, depression, frustration, indulgence in suffering, a tendency to complain, or a sense that you are being scapegoated—unfairly punished for a wrong you never committed. More aspects of the Victim are described on the chart.
Being a Victim is no fun at all. To stay in that position for any length of time would cause you to fear being further exposed to unfair treatment, punishment and other forms of victimization. After all, what else could a victim expect in life other than being victimized?
Thus the coping mechanism in the human ego drives you to find a better position from which to deal with your problem. The Persecutor is born out of this decision. Fuelled by blame, righteous superiority, and a compulsion for perfection, the Persecutor angrily seeks to escape suffering by making the problem someone else’s fault. If you can find someone else to blame, then you might get away with this approach—for a while, anyway. You see this happen a lot at sporting events. Whichever team is losing (Victim) usually becomes the angry team (Persecutor).57 You will see them blaming the referees for making bad calls, attacking whatever player on the other team is “cheating” in their eyes, or criticizing their own team members for their perceived mistakes. In the end however, each member of the losing team must look up at the scoreboard and carry the burden of defeat on his/her shoulders into the locker room. Once in there, the Persecutor turns its attention inside, and the player starts blaming him/herself for not being “good enough” to carry the team to victory.58
Now why would you want to persecute yourself? Simply because when you run out of other people to accuse and blame, persecuting yourself allows you to maintain a safe distance from the experience of misery that you would feel as a Victim. Have you ever smacked yourself in the face or head when you made a mistake? Ever call yourself stupid, or verbally chastise yourself for some slip-up? That is the Persecutor rising up to suppress the Victim experience, and forcing you to do better. The perfectionist inside the Persecutor figures that it is the Victim’s imperfection that is the cause of all the misery. Anger allows you to deny any painful feelings, forcing the Victim in you to get up and keep trying to do better. Persecutors use self-righteousness to pump themselves up in an attempt to distance themselves from the weakness of the Victim.
But still you are miserable, and although some people do not seem to mind living in a state of perpetual anger and critical perfectionism, most of us want to experience something a little nicer. That is where the Rescuer comes in. Image you had a sore shoulder; what is the first thing you do? Probably you try to reach the sore spot with your hand and start rubbing it. If it is really sore, you might try to find someone to massage it for you. You may also make an appointment with a professional masseuse, a chiropractor, a physiotherapist, or a doctor. Without knowing what actually caused the sore shoulder, you would try to fix it. While you are trying to fix it, of course, you might occasionally indulge in the odd complaint or two (Victim), and even get angry at possible causes such as the softness of the damn pillow or mattress (Persecutor). But your main goal will be to fix it (Rescuer), because you want the pain to go away—even if you never find out what caused it.
The Rescuer is that part of us that strives to place us in an ideal state where there is no pain, and where problems do not exist. At its most positive it tends to pity the Victim as well as the Persecutor, offering nurturing and helpful advice. Self-sacrificing in its benevolent superiority, the Rescuer is always “there for you,” and never seems to have problems of its own. Using analysis, careful planning, tolerance and an air of moral superiority, the Rescuer will pick the Victim up and carry it forward, certain in its optimism that the Victim will one day walk on its own two feet again! It will constantly seek to appease the Persecutor’s anger and dissatisfaction. Most people fail to see that it is the Rescuer’s very attitude that keeps the Victim weak and helpless, and acts as an enabler for the Persecutor’s temperamental indulgences, as well as the Victim’s stuckness. Their continued existence sustains the Rescuer’s purpose for being.
When a problem enters your life, you might find yourself jumping from position to position in the Victim Prison, while enlisting the help of other people in your life to occupy the vacant corners. Sometimes you will jump from one corner to the other, and have a second and maybe even a third person jumping about as well. However it manifests, you will typically experience th
is prison’s three aspects from within you, or else see it projected outside of you. For instance, one morning I woke up with a very sore shoulder (problem). I got out of bed and complained to myself about how much it hurt (Victim). On my way to the shower, I got mad at my body for letting me down like that (Persecutor), and started to viciously massage my shoulder (Persecutor/Rescuer). After the shower, during which I focused a lot of time on having the warm water soothe my back (Rescuer),59 I sat on the bed and complained (Victim) to my wife. Su Mei knelt behind me and massaged it (now, Su Mei is my Rescuer), and said the bed was too soft (Persecutor), and that we should get a new one (Rescuer). Afterwards, I phoned a couple of professional Rescuers—a masseuse and a chiropractor, and spent the next month being soothed and advised by them, allowing myself to stay in my Victim corner. But at least I was a sincere Victim! I was paying attention to my body and giving it the care I thought it needed, which included Tylenol and muscle relaxants (Rescuers), and more visits to the professionals. One herbal doctor gently criticized me (Rescuer/Persecutor) for exercising too hard, and not eating enough brown rice.60
Then one day I went to a physiotherapist who happened to have unusual intuitive abilities, and guess what she told me? She informed me that my problem was not with my shoulder—it was down in my gallbladder, which was affecting my shoulder by some weird connection of tissues and muscles. I visited this physiotherapist for two months while she worked on my gallbladder. After two months she informed me that she had done all she could, but as far as she could tell the source of the problem was emotional. She suggested that I see a counsellor. “Wait a minute,” I thought to myself, “I’m a counsellor!” After four months of this sore shoulder, I was brought back to myself. Here I was just wanting my body to be fixed, and all along my body was trying to get me to listen to it—it had something important to tell me and the pain was its way of getting my attention!61
It is at the Introspection stage of relationships that you have the opportunity to clearly see problems as indicators of something far greater than simple pain and suffering. You are given the chance to step out of the Victim Prison and experience the essential you. The problem is that by the time you reach the Introspection stage, you are often burned out and distracted by running from corner to corner of the Prison. By this time you have projected it fully onto your relationship; in other words, you see the relationship as the prison.
At this point your Rescuer is typically burnt out, reflected by you or your partner being too tired and disappointed to give any more in order to “make the relationship work.” As soon as you look at each other, one of you might become the Persecutor, not being able to stand the sight of the other. Possibly one of you will turn to silent or verbal complaints (Victim) about the other’s lack of caring, passion, communication, or concern for the health of the partnership. There are other instances as well, where one is in so much denial of the existence of any real problems (Rescuer) that the other partner feels like s/he is being patronized, unheard, made unimportant or abandoned emotionally (Victim). This is also a time when one, or both, of you turns to others for solace (Rescuer).
The elements of the Victim Prison were present in the Glamour Stage, but the denial, so prevalent in romanticism, would have you ignore its presence. In the Disillusionment Stage, the Victim/Persecutor/Rescuer tendencies become more apparent, but you might rely more on your powers of manipulation to change the other person rather than take responsibility for your Victim Prison reactions to your partner’s behaviour. If this is the case, it often seems too late when you reach the Introspection Stage. You may be too embedded in unproductive habits and patterns of relating to each other, comfortably entrenched (or comfortably numb) in your corners of the Prison, and well on your way to being convinced that there is no way out except through separation. But there is often another way.
I have experienced life beyond the walls of this Prison. I say this not as a Rescuer who has a formula. There is no formula for relationship because we are far too unique to follow one approach. There are, however, certain principles that can be adapted to each individual’s uniqueness. Some of these principles are:
a) A problem cannot be solved within the boundaries of the problem itself.
b) All problems are gifts and lessons in disguise.
c) Everything you perceive is a projection of your inner reality.
d) Every human being has the power to be 100% responsible for what he or she experiences in this life.
e) Freedom does not come from answers. It comes from questions.
f) There is no problem so great that love cannot resolve it.
If you look at each of these principles you may discover, as I did, some of the fundamental mistakes you are prone to making when presented with a problem in your life:
a) A problem cannot be solved within the boundaries of the problem itself. Carl Jung often said that problems are not solved, but one simply outgrows them. Einstein said the same thing from the viewpoint of physics—a problem cannot be resolved from within the boundaries of itself. In the Rescuer role, you may think you can figure out the answer to any problem—but the Rescuer is actually just a part of the problem. As such, you will believe there really are Victims in the world who are incapable of growing beyond their limitations without outside help. This denies the very important possibility that every human being has everything they need within themselves Secondly, the Rescuer is a mere creation of the Victim. It is created in an attempt to avoid pain, feel important, and feel “good.” The Rescuer is a compensator for the negative aspects of the Persecutor and the Victim. Therefore the Rescuer was created in reaction to a problem, and is thus locked inside the problem. It will run around looking for answers, but will rely on old “knowledge,” and therefore become dependent on the past rather than the direction that is being offered in the present moment.
An example comes from a time when I cut my thumb with a very sharp knife. Not knowing what to do, I relied on some old information I had received as a child: I stuck my thumb in my mouth and sucked the blood. Then I remembered that cold water would help, so I put my thumb under the tap and ran cold water over it. Both of these approaches are very bad for the kind of cut I had.62 The best response would have been to apply pressure to the thumb just below, almost on the cut, but my Rescuer was unaware of this knowledge. Instead it looked to old information to try to fix the problem. Suddenly something inside me said I’d better ask for help. I called a neighbour who had Red Cross training. She arrived just before I fainted (I had cut a nerve), and applied the proper treatment. I had to reach out to a source of knowledge beyond mine in order to learn the correct response. So it is with all problems that hold us back. They hold us back because we are trying to find answers to them from a limited source of information, rather than turning to our imagination and intuition to lead us beyond the boundaries of the problem. People never grow because of what they already know—they grow because of what they come to learn.
b) All problems are gifts and lessons in disguise. You may have noticed that every time you resolved a problem completely, you learned something of great value and your life was enriched in some significant way. Maybe you gained more confidence, learned to trust life more, became wiser, or discovered a significant gift or talent in yourself. When you did not receive (or appreciate) the gift, or learn the valuable lesson, it was probably because you did not let go of something the problem caused you to lose (this is often true of people who have lost loved ones).63
This experience of recognizing the gift or lesson at the resolution of a problem has led me to understand that a beautiful gift and lesson rising from the depths of my soul are the actual cause of any crisis in my life. Whenever the soul takes a step forward in its purpose, a crisis occurs. The intensity of the suffering this step causes is mostly dependent on the degree of my surrender—or lack of surrender. The more attached I am to what the situation is threatening to take away from me, the mor
e I fight the problem. The more I fight the problem, the more I delay the soul’s gift. When that happens all that is left for me is suffering.
There have been times, when confronted with a problem, I asked my soul what gift or lesson was being offered here. The answer soon came into my heart, and I chose to receive what I was being offered. That choice carried me beyond the problem to the gift in much less time than it would usually have taken me. The reason for that, I believe, is that I usually reacted to my problems with worry, anxiety, fear, panic, or outright terror. My fearful reaction brought the elements of struggle, doubt, procrastination, and resistance into the problem, thereby creating delays in the resolution. However, keeping my mind on the gift that lay beyond the problem brought hope and trust into my fears and allowed me to respond to the situation in a more effective way than either my Persecutor or Rescuer could offer.
c) Everything you perceive is a projection of your inner reality. If you think your partner is persecuting you through attack, criticism, blame, teasing, or some other kind of abuse, listen closely. Is s/he saying anything to you that your own inner critic has not already said? If your partner is the Rescuer, is she/he giving you any advice that you have not heard—and rejected—in your own mind over the years? And if your partner is acting like a Victim, is it familiar to you, even if you have to dig back into your long-buried childhood experiences to see the similarity? Is your partner reflecting a part of you that you buried a long time ago, but never really came to peaceful terms with?
In any challenging situation, the three aspects of the Victim Prison will manifest. People appear to enact the roles of your drama, which reflects the trap you have created through the power of your own mind. Sometimes you will be the Persecutor attacking your partner (the Victim) with righteous anger. At other times you will be the Rescuer and Persecutor attempting to lift your Victim partner out of his/her swamp with “tough love.” Or else you might choose to be the Rescuer, doing everything possible to help your partner, the Victim, lighten up. And sometimes you will be the Victim crying out for help to your Rescuer partner who suddenly loses patience with you and becomes your Persecutor. Still other times you may find yourself the Victim simultaneously asking for help, while at the same time rebelling against any helping hand that is offered.64
