THE ARC OF A RELATIONSHIP

A typical dysfunctional romantic relationship tends to have distinct phases.

CAUTION
When two people meet and are romantically interested in each other, there tends to be a phase of initial caution in which they examine each other for potential compatibility.
We will call this man “Bruce,” and this woman “Sheila.” The more functional the individuals, the longer this phase lasts. If an insecure woman is looking for an insecure man, this phase tends to be
very short. When they first meet, she looks for “markers” indicating low levels of self-esteem. These can include a lack of eye contact, a nervous laugh, tattoos, drug use, compulsive joke-telling, underachievement, pomposity, or a kind of baseless arrogance.

Once Sheila establishes that Bruce’s self-esteem is either genuinely low or artificially “high,” she immediately feels more comfortable with him.


Sheila has low self-esteem because she believes things that are not true about herself and others. She remains insecure because she is actively preferring short-term gains to long-term gains. For instance, if she has an abusive father, but stays in touch with him, then she is choosing continued abuse (long-term pain) in order to avoid the anxiety of confrontation (short-term pain).

Since Sheila has developed an “avoidance mechanism” for dealing with her anxiety, inviting a man of true moral courage and integrity into her life would be a disaster for her illusions. Such a man would immediately see that she was being abused by her father and would care enough about her to encourage her to either improve her relationship with her father or get him out of her life. (A wiser and more experienced man would know that she cannot improve her “relationship” with her abusive
father, which would be even more anxiety provoking for her.) If Sheila chose to continue her relationship with her father, a moral man would realize that she is habitually sacrificing ethics, virtue, integrity and self-esteem for the sake of immediate anxiety avoidance. This means that throughout her life, abusive people will forever control her behaviour, and she will continually sacrifice the good people around her for the sake of appeasing the evil or corrupt people.

None of us can sustain any moral decision in the absence of at least the appearance of an ethical justification. If a man of self-esteem confronts a woman who enables abusers, she will be inevitably drawn to defend her appeasement on “moral” grounds. “Family is an innate value.” “I think it’s
important to be a good daughter.” “Forgiveness is a virtue.” In other words, the woman is not just amoral, but rather anti-moral, because she just makes up “moral” justifications for her cowardly
actions.

No man of genuine self-esteem could stay in a relationship with such a corrupt woman, since she uses virtuous definitions to enable her own subjugation to evil. In particular, no moral man would ever have children with such a woman, who would inevitably raise them as frightened and obedient or rebellious slaves. Since all of this is well-known unconsciously, a woman of low self-esteem
is inevitably bound to end up dating a man of low self-esteem.

We can think of this relationship as essentially a mutual covenant to maintain corrupt falsehoods. “Let me believe my lies, and I’ll let you believe yours.” Of course, like all corrupt falsehoods, it cannot last.

SEX

After the self-esteem issue has been established, the dating aspect of the relationship can begin. In the case of insecure individuals, sexuality always makes a premature entrance. Since a woman of low self-esteem does not have any genuine virtues to offer a man, such as courage, integrity, nobility and so on, she must create value in some other manner.

Typically, the “value” that this type of woman brings to the early part of a relationship is sexual availability.

THE LOVE BOMB
In many cults, such as Christianity, potential recruits are subjected to what is often called a “love bomb,” wherein massive amounts of artificial affection are injected into a mostly-empty soul. This tends to wash away any lingering sense of personal boundaries and judgment, triggering what psychologists call “fusion,” or the uncritical elevation of an individual to a status of near-deific perfection.

The introduction of a highly-sexualized interaction produces a biochemical form of euphoria, which typically lasts from three to six months. During this time, ego boundaries tends to dissolve, there are few if any difficult decisions to be made, there tends to be an isolation from both friends and family – and the cycle of sexual tension, desire and release tends to consume the mind and body.

THE PLATEAU
At the highest point of this interaction, the couple tends to make decisions about their long-term futures. This is akin to deciding whether or not you can fly while high on PCP. This is when couples decide to commit in some permanent manner, such as moving in together, or getting engaged, or simply planning a permanent future.

THE HICCUP
Shortly after the commitment is made, the couple begins to re-enter the world, and the sexual euphoria begins to wear off. At the same time, they begin to deal with the mundane practicalities of negotiating their living arrangements and/or potential nuptials, as well as entering as a couple into a more complex social world.

As they begin to re-enter the world, interactions with friends and family begin to influence the couple. Bruce begins to see what Sheila is really like around her mother. Sheila begins to notice that Bruce’s brother drinks to excess, and Bruce says nothing. He sees how shrill she becomes around her friends; she sees how susceptible he is to peer pressure.

THE DESCENT
As Sheila and Bruce begin to make decisions about their lives together, they notice that their lack of boundaries is beginning to cause real friction in their negotiations. Also, since they have spent so much time having sex instead of learning how to actually communicate with each other, they find that their level of commitment is far ahead of their ability to negotiate. They have bonded out of euphoria, neediness, relief and hyper-sexuality, rather than mutual respect and regard for one another.

At this point, the woman generally becomes less sexually available. The reason for this is the underlying low self-esteem that caused the hyper-sexuality in the first place.
Since she had little intrinsic value to offer Bruce initially, Sheila substituted sex for self-worth.
As their relationship progresses, however, and the sexual euphoria wears off, she begins to feel resentment towards sex.

One way to understand this transition is to picture a rich and insecure man who dazzles his dates with extravagant outings. He flies them to Paris, takes them out on his yacht, buys them jewellery, and drapes them in fur. Naturally, they respond with “devotion” and “ardour.” As the relationship develops, however, he begins to resent the need for constant extravagance. “Would she really love me if I didn’t buy her things?” he wonders. In order to find this out, he becomes increasingly irritable towards her desire for gifts. When she suggests a weekend away on the French Riviera, he rolls his eyes and snaps at her. The same insecurity about his own intrinsic value that caused him to lavish gifts on her now causes him to withdraw his “generosity.” The same insecurity that prevented him from offering himself to her without “extras” now causes him to withdraw those extras, in the mad hope that she will find him valuable without gifts.

In other words, after buying her, he hopes that she is not in it for the money. This is how it works with female sexuality after the initial phase of euphoria. Lots of sex in the beginning means a whole lot less sex later on.

LYING
As negotiations about mutual living arrangements, sexuality and social life become more and more difficult, it also becomes more and more difficult for Sheila and Bruce to retrace their steps and figure out where they went wrong at the beginning.

For instance, as Sheila’s resentment towards sex begins to rise, she will tend to make up excuses as to why she doesn’t want sex – and those excuses are not designed to fool Bruce, but rather to fool herself. She will claim that she is tired, or that she has to get up early. She will snap that he is only ever interested in “one thing,” or that she doesn’t feel “close enough” to have sex, or that he is doing a million and one things wrong, which is killing her sexual desire, and so on.

The truth of the matter is that she is making up stories – inventing “sinners” – in order to avoid the truth about her own growing repugnance towards sex.

If Sheila were to speak with total honesty, she would say something like this:
“Bruce, I had a lot of sex with you early on because I don’t feel like I’m worth much of anything. The fact that you were willing to have sex with me despite the fact that I was manipulating you tells me everything that I need to know about your level of integrity, and capacity to love. If you really loved me, you would not pressure me to have sex when I feel depressed. If I were really lovable, I would not have used sex to create artificial value.”

The end result of this kind of conversation, of course, is the termination of the relationship – which is why it is so studiously avoided, and a million distractions are invented in order to avoid that core reality.

ENTOMBMENT
As conflicts begin to rise, Bruce and Sheila enter the phase of “slow entombment.”
In this phase, conflicts which cannot be resolved generally start to be avoided. If Bruce does not like Sheila’s parents, and it upsets her when he talks about them, the “solution” becomes to simply not talk about her parents.

Similarly, if Sheila dislikes Bruce’s drinking, and it upsets him when she brings it up, they “solve” the problem either by her refraining from bringing it up, or for him to drink in secret.
This process continues unabated. Bit by bit, unresolved conflicts create localized minefields that prohibit free movement and spontaneity. “Don’t go there” becomes a near-constant mantra.
Since the solution to anxiety is to control the other person’s behaviour which “causes” the anxiety, the relationship turns into a kind of “soft tyranny.” Since it is considered “wrong” to cause the other person anxiety, any behaviour which results in anxiety must be banned as immoral.

Over the next few months or years a creeping paralysis enters into the relationship, as more and more topics become “off limits.” As spontaneity and authenticity become less and less possible and the
endless regulations of behaviour pile up, inevitable resentments begin to creep in. Both Sheila and Bruce feel over-controlled, and their interactions become more and more rigid and empty. The cowardice that lies at the root of controlling each other in order to manage their own anxiety becomes more and more evident as time goes on. Generally, there are two possibilities for this kind of endless increase in the bureaucratic hyper-regulation of the relationship. If neither party takes a “stand,” then the abusive “rules” continue to pile up until one or both parties wake up one day completely unable to breathe. An overwhelming rush of frustration – or perhaps a full-fledged panic attack – takes hold, and there is a sudden and savage breakup.

The second possibility is for the “fronts” in this subterranean war to harden. This is analogous to a guerrilla conflict turning into the frozen hell of First World War trench warfare.
In this second scenario, each party picks one or a few fixed positions and just continues to pound their partner on the basis of those. For Bruce, it might be the lack of sex. For Sheila, it might be the lack of emotional participation in the relationship, or help around the house, or some such topic.

Unconsciously, this represents a desperate attempt to stop the endless proliferation of petty rules, since both Sheila and Bruce instinctively understand the inevitable result of that process. Rather than moving on from each prior conflict, thus generating new conflicts which must be avoided by the creation of new “rules,” Sheila and Bruce start to repetitively attack each other on the grounds of just a few particular issues. This prevents the creation of new rules – thus staving off the end of the relationship – at the price of remaining trapped in endless circling conflicts.

In fact, Sheila and Bruce remain drawn to these few particular conflicts and cannot leave them alone. An unconscious “contract” is created, wherein any frustration about new problems is channeled into a replay of some agreed-upon existing conflict. This is just another way of avoiding the inevitable end of the relationship that would result from “dealing” with new problems.

This second scenario is the route most often taken by couples with children. Since the stakes of ending a relationship are far higher for parents, they tend to revert to this “broken record” form of problem avoidance rather than allow the escalation of new problems to destroy their relationship.

THE AFTERMATH
Earlier, we talked about how the religious approach to “truth” is to make predictions, and then invent “sinners” to take the blame when those predictions fail to come true.

After Bruce and Sheila break up, they will invariably begin the process of inventing scapegoats or “sinners” to take the blame for the failure of their relationship.

This failure was not primarily the relationship itself, but rather their own predictions about the relationship.

They entered into a relationship with each other based on the prediction that they would stay together and be happy. Early on, they openly praised each other to the skies, to themselves and their friends and family.

How, then, can they explain the dismal failure of the relationship and eventual distaste for each other? Well, there is really only one way to explain it – see if this seems familiar. Sheila will say: “He just ended up being a real bastard – and there was no way to predict that at the beginning.” Bruce will say: “She seemed like a really nice girl, at first – but as it turns out, she had some real issues that she wasn’t willing to address.” This is the “one-two” punch that is designed to bring down the truth. “I
was correct when I praised her early on, and I am now also correct when I condemn her at the end.”
This mythology provides relief from anxiety in the short-term (“How could I have been so careless with my heart?”) while creating far greater anxiety in the long-term.

If a group of villagers live at the base of a volcano, and they ascribe the eruption of the volcano to the anger of the fire god, they will inevitably end up performing various rituals to “appease” this anger. Since these rituals have in fact nothing to do with the eruptions, the villagers end up staying near the mountain, imagining that they are creating some form of safety or predictability.

Imaginary answers create perpetual danger. The moment that the villagers accept that they cannot predict or control the eruption of the volcano, they will move, thus creating real safety and predictability.

When our predictions fail to come true, we can either attempt to determine why we made such a mistake, or we can make up an imaginary answer – thus guaranteeing a repetition of the mistake.
When a relationship fails, we can either attempt to understand the dangerous clues that were embedded in our interactions from the very beginning – which doubtless existed – or we can just blame the other person for mysteriously “changing.”

If we take the route of blaming the other person, we certainly let ourselves off the hook – but we also guarantee that we will remain blind to cues that we really need to see in the future. By blaming the other person, all we do essentially is say that there is no way to predict the outcome of a relationship based on early interactions. In other words, when it comes to relationships, all we can do is cross our fingers and hope for the best.

This is why it keeps happening.


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