A truly excellent article about being in a long-term relationship. It talks about taking responsibility for our personal growth in soothing your own discomfort, regulating our own emotions, and pursuing our own goals. This may be in contrast to having an all encompassing attachment to our partner — where our wellbeing is based on the love and comfort from our partner. In other words, this is neither neither dependence nor independence, but a balanced state of interdependence.This in turn places less pressure on the other person to be who they are, and enables us to be who we are allowing the relationship the space to nourish and thrive.
Becoming an authentic adult means going against the whole drift of the culture. It specifically means, among other things, soothing your own bad feelings without the help of another, pursuing your own goals, and standing on your own two feet. Most people associate such skills with singlehood. But Schnarch finds that marriage can’t succeed unless we claim our sense of self in the presence of another. The resulting growth turns right around and fuels the marriage, enabling passionate sex. And it pays wide-ranging dividends in domains from friendship to creativity to work.
Schnarch contends that marital attachment [ie: attachment theory]doesn’t leave enough space for partners to speak their own mind, think their own thoughts, or attain their ambitions and dreams. Attachment [theory] not only reduces adults to infants, it also reduces marriage to a quest for safety, security, and compensation for childhood disappointments. “It becomes a trap that actually prevents us from growing up.”
The path to this goal is differentiation — the dynamic process through which you can live in close proximity to a partner and still maintain a separate sense of self. “By differentiation, I mean not caving in to pressure to conform from a partner who has tremendous emotional significance in your life.” The best marital brew is neither dependence nor independence, but a balanced state of interdependence, Schnarch contends.
Interdependence allows partners who are each capable of handling their own emotional lives to focus on meeting their own and each other’s ever-evolving goals and agendas in response to shifting circumstances, rather than on keeping one another from falling apart. It is marked by flexibility and focuses on strengths. Dependent partners, by contrast, spend their lives compensating for each other’s limitations and needs.
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Eyes-open sex drills right to the heart of differentiation and drives the process of growing up. Closed-eye partners can get close enough to copulate, but not so close that they have to confront the differences between them or delve into who they are. The discomfort of eyes-open sex, on the other hand, heightens connectivity. Physical sensation and emotional connection become integrated rather than remaining separate dimensions that can interfere with each other. At the same time, the sense of individual selves is enhanced.
Bowen argued that it didn’t necessarily follow that more love and attention would make them whole — in fact, they had become overdependent on love. They needed to break the dependency while maintaining the closeness
And they typically felt obligated to seek approval from a partner instead of feeling confident about their own thoughts and actions, the imprimatur of the adult.
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The more the husband withdrew, the needier the wife became, until divorce loomed. Demanding his empathy and getting none at all, the wife felt rejected and unloved. With her self-worth dependent on the view through her husband’s eyes, her confidence withered and her sense of self-worth tanked.
Schnarch couldn’t help but note the irony: The couple’s style of relating had rendered the wife a child, so fused to her partner she could not stand alone. Yet empathy was being hailed by other professionals as a marriage-saver. To him, demanding empathy just encouraged partners to seek approval, or validation, from one another, what he dubs “other-validated intimacy.”
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After disclosing their innermost feelings only to find rejection, partners begin to select what to reveal more carefully. “When we start shading what we say to keep our relationship calm, we destroy intimacy and desire and diminish our sense of security and self-worth,” Schnarch observes.
Instead of depending on a partner to help you manage your own feelings and maintain your equilibrium, you are free to choose to be with your partner. “You can offer your partner a hand instead of just your needs,” says Schnarch. The ideal dynamic for marriage is what Schnarch calls “interdependence,” somewhat like the cells of an organism. Each cell functions individually, but they thrive best by relating to other cells in the context of the whole.
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Gridlock in marriage is guaranteed.
And there’s just one road out of gridlock if you want to keep your marriage intact. You can’t communicate your way out of it. You can’t empathize your way out of it. You have to learn to soothe your own discomfort, regulate your own emotions, and pursue your own goals. To stop being a drain on your partner and to handle problems on your own. That way, says Schnarch, we “open enough space” to get closer and provide room for passionate love to return.
Gridlock creates anxiety, anger, feelings of rejection, and emotional pressure, Schnarch observes. When the negative feelings become unbearable, the relationship must either change or break apart. Those who stay together must look within themselves for insight, confronting their role in maintaining the conflict. “The only solution is for one person to differentiate, moving forward and making room for the partner to grow as well.”
The couple thought they were just taking a break from each other, but the distance allowed them to reconnect, to be flexible in meeting each other’s needs, and to have something to talk about beyond kids and bills.
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Sure, differentiation is a complex feat, but Schnarch is creating an operational road map.
The elements of maturity, he has found, cluster into four distinct if interrelated groups he calls the Four Points of Balance. One involves operating according to deeply held personal values and goals even when pressured to abandon them. A second revolves around handling one’s own inner emotional life and dealing with anxiety and emotional bruises without needing to turn to a partner for help. A third focuses on not overreacting to — but still facing — difficult people and situations. The fourth involves forbearance and perseverance in the face of failure and disappointment to accomplish one’s goals. The four groups emphasize resilience, because they also involve the ability to adapt and change direction when need be without losing track of one’s overall goals, agendas, or sense of self.
Differentiation is necessary to salvage a marriage, but it isn’t quite enough because, Schnarch has found, people play mind games with each other that keep the relationship going but destroy intimacy. It is essential to confront one’s partner and oneself over the games and drop the pretense that neither one knows what’s going on.
“We take it as an article of faith that bad behavior in troubled relationships stems primarily from good intentions gone wrong.” Schnarch calls this “the big lie.” People usually know the harm they’re doing and do it intentionally.
Not only are most people aware of the mind games they perpetrate, they’re aware that their partner is aware that they’re aware
