Learner therapist (20)……Interpersonal politics of coupling, intimate or otherwise!

Learner therapist (20)……Interpersonal politics of coupling, intimate or otherwise!
Torrey Orton
January 27 , 2013

The blame and responsibility challenge – creating truth in shared facts

NB – this is a first go at addressing these issues. I expect it may not be the last because they are so difficult for me.

Michael and I have been having this discussion since we met 20 months ago. It keeps coming up so it must matter, at least to us. I'll call it the truth in relationship discussion. Mike might call it the responsibility in relationship discussion. I start from the question: how can we be jointly responsible for anything? He starts with the belief that we have to be responsible for ourselves first. The struggle between individual and group perspectives is the mental history of modernity, one prefigured in the outstanding lives of ancient individuals in all domains of human endeavour rising above terrain of their socio-historical contexts, without which they, too, could never have risen!! Some say, me among them, that the historical balance is out of whack now. Too much me, too little us.


Both are important perspectives and practices, but neither can stand alone. 'How do we get to be responsible?' is one question on the pathway of upbringing. It emerges from the WEness of family, community, and society in their various overlapping institutional forms. No surprise there.


Along the path of upbringing we may have experiences which compromise our capacity for being and feeling responsible for ourselves. Our social systems are as imperfect as our personal ones. Around this fact roils the search of many wounded individuals to parcel the responsibility (blame!) for 'bad outcomes' which they are subject to, and which they fear reproducing themselves in the next generation. This struggle can only be avoided by self-numbing – a long-term strategy bound for failure.


The compromised self develops distortions (I mean that, not disorders) in its capacities to relate to others and itself. Distortion is a normal occurrence because others' responsibility for us can never be perfect, or even close! As some poet roughly says, parents eff us up. We can only learn responsibility from responsibility; our parents learned theirs from their parents, ad infinitum. As well, the generally accepted contents of adult responsibility have changed measurably in the last century or so, and continue to do so now.


Unintentional offense and responsibility


M and I had been stuck in this discord for months, and amicably so, until one day:

M commented on his distress at my dismissive celebration ("Uh yeah…" w/self-satisfied tone) of him seeing something I clearly thought he should have seen before. (This is an often repeated verbal punctuation in the course of our acquaintance and a behaviour I was aware of; I had not yet gotten to the point of being able to interrupt it, only acknowledge it to myself as it irrupted once again.) I asked what feeling he was having after I said it and with some reflection he came up with "offended" or similar, to which I suggested "disrespected" and he accepted that, too.

 

I agreed he should feel "offended" because it was an inappropriate expression on my part…though I expressed it then, still do at times and not just between us. It is not my intent to hurt and wasn't then. But, I was to blame, he agreed, for his bad feeling about himself at that moment. His feeling included some anger….unsurprisingly. As part of our professional self-development, we have built a relationship of shared responsibility which contained the insult and the complaint about it and so opening another level of discussion between us. This experience lifted us up to the level of our relationship as the subject of conversation in a new way.

This article is a step towards formalising the difference in our understanding of responsibility so as to reduce the distance it provokes between us. Recently, I rediscovered on a back shelf Dr Harriet G. Lerner's book The Dance of Anger (1985) which includes a chapter titled "Who's responsible for what?" It brings together two of my favourite subjects – anger and responsibility in the context of intimate relationships. Here she notes:

It is tempting to view human transactions in simple cause-and-effect terms. If we are angry, someone else caused it. Or, if we are the target of someone else's anger, we must be to blame; or, alternately – if we are convinced of our innocence – we may conclude that the other person has no right to feel angry……

…We begin to use our anger as a vehicle for change when we are able to share our reactions without holding the other person responsible for causing our feelings, and without blaming ourselves for the reactions that other people have in response to our choices and actions. We are responsible for our own behaviour. But we are not responsible for other people's reactions; nor are they responsible for ours ...

I think this is Mike's view, too, though not his exact words… and the view of not a small proportion of my patients who've been exposed to modern no-fault processes which are under-pinned by attitudes / principles like those Lerner proposes above.



Therapy, for those who choose it, is one pathway to undoing distortions of the self. Some undoing takes a few sessions; some takes years. The principal means of effecting recovery is the therapeutic relationship – the most reliable, "evidence-based" characteristic of therapeutic effectiveness, regardless of 'school' of therapy! The relationship stands or falls on the ability of the therapist to be present for patients in ways their histories have not made available to them. In doing so, the therapist is taking responsibility for the patient's recovery…while recognising they cannot be responsible in the end!! This paradox will reappear later in fractured couples' relationships.


Offenses to the self


We had a minor offense to M's self by me. The vignette of its occurrence and our recovery through "shared responsibility" is exemplary of the relationship challenge, while barely noteworthy in the greater picture. A bigger offense might elicit feelings like this:

What is it that is so unacceptable, that I react with such a survival instinct style reflex? What is so horrific about my reaction to these words that has me revert to this primal state? or if not primal, infantile or juvenile, and has me cry ...

"Now look what you made me do!"

I'm particularly interested in childhood experiences which underlie chronic depression and anxiety. Pretty consistently these experiences are major abuses of trust by parental, or broader familial, violations of personal space and self-control – often co-occurring sexual, physical and psycho-social violences. These can be usefully considered offenses to the self, are classified as such in legal systems and labelled traumas in western cultures.


They are chronic for two reasons: one, the offenses are sustained into the present by the social system(s) (families, churches, schools, clubs, workplaces…) in which they were first committed and/or reproduced, and two, optimal recovery often requires some change to those present sustaining systems. Children are not responsible for these behaviours, though almost every adult with an abused childhood attempts to take responsibility for others' abuse of them. Efforts to recover must pass through the blame grinder.


'my pain is your fault'

One couple I have worked with off and on for 2 years found the perspective from which to rise above and hold the pains of their struggles: a place which they shared with equal interest and need. They are a couple both deeply injured in ways which when touched by the other regresses them to catastrophic positions – 'my pain is your fault.' Whichever gets there first on any given occasion, their catastrophic feelings incite the other. They have developed a number of effective workarounds and pre-emptions for many recurring circumstances they share, but not even these can stand up against the most conducive conditions for regression – co-occurring overtiredness, professional stress, excess drink, demanding kids and unbalanced, living parents .

 

The new perspective came into view as they were sinking for the N^th time into the fires of their respective recriminations about each other, dragged down or blown up by the catastrophic certainty of repeated disappointments, each with the other. I interrupted the rising tide of exasperation and suggested they stay with the very specific topic they were on…a matter of how physically close they needed to be when both were highly stressed by various things in their joint and separate lives at that moment. This is, of course, a quite sophisticated exploration already.

One, I don't remember which, verbally stepped back and noted that I had proposed on another occasion that their respective needs for closeness were almost exactly opposed when crisis struck: one withdraws and the other approaches, generating a massive reciprocating tension powered by catastrophic thinking. He/she checked that the other was experiencing it now, which she/he was, and the tension dropped. This was the first time they had created a respite from their struggle without leaving it in a heated rage or quiet despair. That creation remains as a shared platform for their struggle for a workable togetherness at their times of greatest vulnerability. Both acknowledged the achievement.

They had created a shared fact about their relationship which undergirds the potential for getting to new places in it instead of replaying the past, deprived places. This fact expresses and symbolises what the relationship is for, its purpose(s) rather than its product(s). Sometimes it's a revisiting of purposes still in play but lost from view which liberates deep motivation – in fact, the most important things about the relationship: its aspirations.


The blame and responsibility challenge


Now back to Lerner. She says our anger can become a source of useful change,

"…when we are able to share our reactions without holding the other person responsible for causing our feelings, and without blaming ourselves for the reactions that other people have in response to our choices and actions."

The blame and responsibility challenge – people show up for couples work because they are stuck in patterns of repeating failure to meet each other's needs, especially those which make being a couple worth the effort. It is impossible to progress as a couple without transgressing in the view of one or the other, or both, at some times!! There are three domains of likely transgression: (1) style (intellectual, expressive, etc. - preferences of congenital origin), (2) cultural role determined behaviours (responsibilities, tasks, authorities, etc.) and (3) personal needs/wants arising from particular normal developmental transitions. The manner of transgression often includes violences of aggressive (hitting, yelling, betrayal) and passive- aggressive (withdrawal, sniping, silence…) sorts. Often a number of manners and domains are involved together.


Complicating the effort to connect is the fact that injured parties carry loads of self-blame which inclines them to expect they will fail the needs of the other (I'm not good enough, don't care enough….), and they expect the other to blame them for the failure – a self-sealing circle of partner-assisted, covert self-accusation. Someone has to break through that circle to change the relationship disconnect cycle. To do so requires confronting their own sense of failure and their sadness /rage about it and doing so in a way that minimally elicits the partner's version of the same system. This is what the couple above achieved.


It's all a perception…not.
It cannot be achieved from a perspective which says everything in relationships is just a perception, and nobody's perception has a better claim to attention than anyone else's. That perspective is the driver of irreconcilable differences in which the members of a couple stand on their "right" to their perception, and giving any of it up to have a joint perception is not on offer. It only takes one person with such a stance for the relationship to be doomed all the way to the courts and beyond. This is a small part of the broken relationship population, at least judging from the fact that 90+% of broken marriages do NOT end up in court. They create some kind(s) of shared truth out of their "shared facts".


And this is the area of personal development into interdependence – partnership as the playground for skill building in joint ownership, authorship construction and so on. There are no free kicks in couples development, unless the couple are already developed enough to provide them freely?!! There have to be stumbles along the way and some way to do better than build up personal grievance banks loaded with material to prove the justice of ones disappointments with the other, and vice-versa. A combustible collection.


And so couples therapy has one task above others, which is helping the couple to see their existing and near horizon emerging successes in interdependent functioning, a joint ownership where the boundaries of who owns what are dropped, melt, disappear…which is what the romantics dream of in the merger/ melding of self in love, etc. but can't be dreamed, must be achieved…and all the more difficult in our times because the jointness historically was given by roles, which have for some time now been corroded by modernity. They have to blindly take responsibility for each other. An act of faith, repeated.









 

Learning to act right (18)… Gay promiscuous paranoids?

Learning to act right (18)… Gay promiscuous paranoids?
Torrey Orton
December 6, 2010


Another surprise - from a request for a comment on the article Promiscuous Paranoids comes a learning experience for me and the writer. This response, like that of "sounding a bit stupid", gives me hope that the task of capturing ethical learnings may be more engaging for people than I have imagined. If engaged, the writing comes fluently and persuasively. I hope you enjoy this contribution.


I am aware that it may arouse a flurry or storm of discussion about some of the reported facts. The author is clear this is his experience. The 'facts' we may have in hand at any moment of decision-making might have been improved by a wide review of the available evidence for most of us. That we seldom can make such a review in the conduct of everyday life is not grounds for disregarding our decision processes, or others'.

Regarding the "Promiscuous Paranoids" post, you asked me for my comments, particularly as to how your post relates, if at all, to the "gay world".  Clearly I can only comment from my own experiences and so I'm not sure how representative of the general gay public this contribution will be.  From my understanding of your article/post (and I could be way off), your experience with (straight) men who would be considered to engage in binge sex and then fall into a committed relationship is that they may become highly paranoid and jealous that their girlfriends are getting it on with every other straight guy who shows the slightest bit of physical attraction toward her - his perception is based on him transferring his own previous binge sex behaviour onto his girlfriend and on to other men.  Further, this paranoia adds a high degree of uncertainty to the relationship as the male is constantly thinking that his female partner is cheating. 

From my own experience and my experience with my gay friends, binge sex is the norm amongst gay males, especially those in their late teens to late twenties.  It is accepted as a "rite of passage" to sleep with as many other males as possible and it is not abnormal for a gay male in his mid twenties to have had sexual encounters with over 150 different men (be they gay, bi, "straight", and/or married).  I myself have had sex/fooled around with approximately 175-200 different men.  Such a number would seem obscenely high to straight males and females, particularly of the older generation, and indeed I see it as quite high myself, although I do not see it as "abnormally high", at least for a gay male in his mid to late twenties. 


The acceptance of binge sex amongst the gay male population is evident even in gay male relationships which are "open relationships" - i.e. the male partners have agreed that having sex with other males outside of the relationship and/or and bringing in a third or fourth male partner for threesomes or group sex is fine.  The reasons for the partners agreeing to an open relationship are often varied however two of the main reasons are as follows:  Firstly, as sex is viewed quite casually amongst the gay male community, little importance is attached to having sex outside of the relationship, and secondly, because gay males are so sexually charged, one of the main reasons for a committed couple breaking up is due to the infidelity of one of the partners - an open relationship therefore eliminates that potential break up cause. 

Often partners in an open relationship attach rules to when it is permissible to have sex with a person outside of the relationship - for example, if one of the partners is away for work it may be permitted for one or both to seek a sexual partner.  Another example is where one of the partners in the relationship is HIV+ and does not want to transfer the virus on to the other partner.  I know of one such couple.  The partner with HIV is so fearful of passing the virus on to his partner that the pair do not have any sexual contact whatsoever and he allows his partner to have sex with other men.  Of course this raises a range of issues, including low-self esteem on the part of the HIV+ partner and whether or not the couple can truly be happy without any form of sexual contact with each other, but those issues are not within the scope of my comment now.  Rather it serves to highlight the range of circumstances and rules which a couple may attach to a gay couples "open" relationship.

Now, how does this high level of binge sex amongst gay males relate, if at all, to your post regarding binge sex in straight males?  In the times that I have been in a relationship, and I really only consider myself to have had two relationships, the issue of binge sex was one which had to be addressed at one time or another in each relationship.  During my first relationship I myself cheated on my partner with another male (and another female).  It was during my "coming out" phase and I was still scoping to see whether I was or was not gay. However I accept that that is not an excuse for my infidelity and needless to say that despite much effort, the relationship did not succeed.  


During my second relationship, my partner was aware of my previous infidelity and was constantly suspicious of whether I had remained faithful to him.  Despite my assurances to him, he always remained somewhat insecure and to this day, even though the relationship ended over two years ago and he has a new partner, he still questions me.  I know that I was always faithful to him - having cheated once before I am aware of the damage that can be done by infidelity and have vowed never to do it again.  However as a result of the binge sex mentality, and my actions in my previous relationship, my former partner still has doubts.  On a side note, my former partner is now in an "open" relationship - he lives interstate from his boyfriend (for now anyway) and they two have various rules as to when sex outside the relationship is and is not permitted.

Accordingly, while I myself never had doubts about my partners and their fidelity to me in my previous relationships, they were constantly questioning me about my fidelity toward them.  The effect of that on me was that I felt that they did not trust me and it led to intense feelings of frustration on my part, especially in my second relationship as I knew I had remained faithful. 

However, that is not to suggest that I have never experienced the "promiscuous paranoia" explained in your article - indeed I have.  However, rather than occurring in the context of a committed relationship, my "promiscuous paranoia" has occurred, time and time again, in the context of dating - i.e the initial stage of a potential relationship in which neither of the men have committed solely to each other.  As in the straight context, I transfer my own binge-sex behaviour onto all other men, including the guy I am dating.  Consequently, I automatically think he is having sex with every male he comes across who shows the slightest of interest toward him. Not only am I therefore paranoid that he is having sex with a number of other men, but it makes the "courtship" process even more complicated - I feel that I have to work extra hard to retain the interest of the guy and to have him settle on me as a partner, and discard all the other potential partners he is "clearly" having sex with. 


Even if the guy I am dating is not having sex with anyone (and I believe him), I usually still feel incredibly jealous at his previous sexual encounters, even though the number of my own previous sexual encounters towers way above his (his actual or stated number). The jealousy is usually so intense and unbearable that I either sabotage the developing relationship or simply stop seeing the guy altogether.  The sense of insecurity created by the "promiscuous paranoia" is extreme, making it very difficult to form positive and lasting relationships.

My point is this: the scenario of the "promiscuous paranoid" which you describe in relation to the "straight" community is also directly applicable to the "gay" male community. However it is even more heightened. The practice of binge sex is readily accepted amongst the gay male community and therefore the level of binge sex is higher. Levels of paranoia amongst gay males who are in committed relationships are also higher and to that extent more destructive.  Gay males (including myself) sabotage their own relationships to prevent the inevitable "cheating" which will occur (or in the mind of the paranoid individual, has already occurred). Their ability to remain in a committed long-term relationship is damaged, and in my case, highly under-developed. Self-esteem and self-worth issues therefore ensue.  It is my belief that it is at least in part because of this "promiscuous paranoia", that gay males have "mastered" the "open relationship", as discussed above, developing an extensive range of rules and principles in which sex with a person outside the relationship is permissible.

Having recently become aware of my under-developed relationship skills and the negative impact that binge sex has been having on me, I am actively working to develop normal, positive relationships, not (entirely) based on sex.  I am challenging my impulsive thought processes that would have normally led to me becoming highly jealous and even vindictive upon hearing of potential relationship partners and their previous sexual partners and am seeking to understand why it is that I am having such impulsive thoughts, rather than focusing on the thoughts themselves.  Inevitably the issues surround my own personal insecurities and my perception that I am, in some way, "un-lovable". 


Further, I have embarked upon a self-imposed "sex free" period - if only for a few weeks or months.  Taking sex out of the equation is forcing me to meet new people and begin to develop relationships the old fashioned way - simply by meeting up for coffee and talking.  Even if there is no spark and nothing develops with the person I'm meeting, it's still forcing me to go out and meet new people. Given my personal insecurities, that can only be a positive thing.

In essence, I have become acutely aware of the negative effects which promiscuous paranoia has had on me and my ability to form relationships and I am now seeking to rectify that.  It will no doubt be a difficult process and I'm sure I will have re-lapses into binge sex, if only due to the culture of binge sex within the gay community to which I belong. However, I realise that it is an incredibly important and necessary exercise if I am to ever have positive and long-lasting relationships.

See Trusting Judgment for a related learning experience.