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November
You can Live Without It
When we were little children, we were completely
dependent upon our parents for the details of our
survival. Our "relationship" with our parents,
although not full person-to-person, still brought
us all we needed to keep us alive and functioning.
Instinctively, at a very early age, we knew that
without the relationship we could not survive. As
we got a little older, the rational part of our
minds confirmed this intuitive reasoning. Without
our relationship with our parents we would survive
extremely poorly or for a limited period of time.
The possibility that some relative, friend of the
family or government agency would take over in
their stead would enter the minds of only the
rarest of children.
The equation is elegant in its simplicity:
mother and father equals survival. Later in life,
for most of us, it becomes: “Relationships
equal survival.” It is this that becomes a
lifetime trap for many of us. To arrive at true
maturity as adults, we must, all of us, come to
both the intuitive and the logical conclusion that
upon becoming an adult, the old equation no longer
applies in its original basic sense. Now, as an
adult, we can provide for ourselves the basic
necessities that were given to us as a child.
For many people, however, this new reality only
seems logical to their thinking, reasoning mind.
There remains some part of them that still insists:
“Relationships equal survival.” These
people enter each relationship from a position of
fear, a weakness that flaws the relationship and
dooms it to failure from its inception. It will
fail to become a real person-to-person interaction
while it exists, and will usually fail to exist at
all after a few years. One or both people finally
reach the point where they can no longer tolerate
what the fear is doing to them. Oddly enough, the
one with the greatest fear of losing the
relationship will often do all of the things that
would guarantee its loss, all the while
proclaiming, "Don't leave me, I can't live without
you!"
The reality is that they are sick of living with
the pain of fear and want to get out of the
situation that they feel is causing that pain, but
the child- like part of them believes that they
can't survive outside of the relationship. When we
enter into a relationship from a position of
weakness caused by fear of loss, it is impossible
from the beginning to establish ourselves as adults
dealing with other adults. We invite the other
person to treat us as a child and become our
pseudo-parent. Often, if they themselves are not
fully mature, they will fill this role
automatically, some reluctantly and with great
anger and some taking to it like the proverbial
duck to water. We thus create in our lives a
variety of pseudo-parents, some benign and some
tyrannical according to their own liking for the
role. None of this does anything for our own
dignity, and if we dare think about it at all, we
realize that we are miserable beyond all
description with what we have done with our
lives.
Many of these sad child-adults begin to do all
of the things that would seem calculated to wreck
any relationship. The unconscious desire is that if
they are inept enough, unlovable enough, the other
person will take the initiative and one day walk
out, thereby releasing them from a misery that they
don't have the courage to get out of themselves. So
they burn the roast, over-salt the stew, stay out
late and come home drunk, leave dirty underwear
strewn about, flirt with other people, leave beer
cans on the good furniture and on and on and on.
Usually, there are innumerable small explosions
from the offended "parent", and it's then that the
“child” cries, "I'll change, please don't
leave me, I won't do it again." But they do, until
one day it all ends in a split, often a divorce,
sometimes a shooting and too often just living
together as complete strangers for the sake of the
children.
If you are in such a situation now, you know
that it feels as though there can be no solution.
For all of the years of childhood the equation
"relationship equals survival" was a part of us
all. For many of us, the adult years have been a
striving to keep that equation intact. To the
extent that we succeed, we remain children.
©2010, Irv Engel
* * *
One's life has value so long as one attributes
values to the life of others, by means of love,
friendship, indignation and compassion., - Simone
de Beauvoir
Irv Engel is a
successful salesman, builder, husband, father,
grandfather and friend. He loves to sing, dance and
is currently taking an art class to learn water
color painting. He is the creator and coordinator
of the Relationship Training Course for Men. This
book, The
Real Deal: A Guide to Achieving Successful and Real
Relationships,
is the result of hundreds of hours spent writing
down the lessons learned in a lifetime of marriage,
divorce, re-marriage and raising four kids. He
hosts free telephone conference coaching sessions
in the evening or on weekends.The conference is a
good way to find out about relationship coaching
and to ask any personal questions around your own
relationships without risk to your money or your
privacy. E-mail
him for phone number, access
code and schedule. Irv and Monica live in Lake
Forest, Calif. They have eleven grandchildren. They
have celebrated their thirty-fifth wedding
anniversary. www.committedrelationships.com
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