Learning to
act right (51)… Obligation and relationships – invisible bonds which bind
Torrey Orton*
Sept 28, 2015
Attachment by obligation – an implicit
reciprocity
A commitment may often be expressed
in and through an obligation. An obligation reflects or expresses a reliable
attachment, though this may not be what attachment theory means at first glance**.
Add some culture to the mix and the meaning gets perhaps even more attenuated
because experienced with less insight. For instance,
30 years ago my
wife and I did a favour for someone which transformed their life, and not just
putting on a new shirt or haircut as the word is used today. Our favour opened
the door to a future they could not have ventured, though they certainly could
imagine it and had done so. We have been paying for it ever since in the form
of the others’ absolutely persistent thankfulness every time we see them (every
few years 1/2 a world away). Here’s the rub: sustaining our enthusiasm for
their over the top gifts is difficult for two reasons - time withers the
intensity as the imbalance in the equation of our favour’s worth vis-à-vis the receiver’s
benefit reduces our sense of that value to them. And the counter rub is this:
our failure to receive with the energy of their thankful giving may demean the
value of the gift and the giver!
This could be the dynamic of any
gift relationship, until it is extended over 30 years with the expectation that
it will never cease! That’s the cultural additive to the mix. Such devoted
thankfulness is understandable in cultures where personal control over one’s
fate, to say nothing of one’s opportunities and pursuit of them, is radically
conditional. Such is the case described.
Ignorance of cultural
obligations
The cultural effect at the
individual, family and work group levels is a set of bonds with great temporal
reach, with the consequence that social and personal bonds are almost an
inescapable condition of living. These bonds provide a roughly guaranteed
system of support extending to the outer reaches of ‘family’ to include village
neighbours (the source of financial support for many Chinese students in
Australia 20 years ago; those students who failed in the relevant terms were
failing a whole village of stakeholders; the shame could be terminal). In this
sense and in our own case, an obligation may often be attached with anchors at
both ends. Under-acknowledgement of a benefit I provide may constitute another entangling
bond both for me and my beneficiaries.
However, our western preparation
for life included the implicit assumption that we could and should control our
destinies in almost every regard. Where not possible, it became the responsibility
of higher authorities to pitch in with ever more powerful health cares, safety
nets and so on. Assume these conflicting assumptions in me and I came up short
in receivership: I did not sustain the appropriate levels of concern for the
honour they were bestowing. For me even 10 years later I emitted low grade
resistance – the kinds expressed through slight withholdings of feelings…By 35
years later I had to mask a sense of irritation with the formalities. Of course
lack of formality is ever so western, not eastern, too.
Binding bonds
The thing is, this bond (bind) by obligation
can sustain any contents, from the merest reciprocities of food and drink to
the entangling compromises of corruption and crime!! It can make anything
personal and invest everyone touched by it with an ownership of the results of
its exercise. So, we can track the resistance of institutions of many kinds to
the acknowledgment of their various ethical, moral and legal calumnies to the need
to hold the bonded together. Institution members hug their misdemeaning
associates with warm embraces of approval or, under pressure, the cool handling
of denial without betraying or exiling them. Those two ejecting responses are
retained for punishing whistle-blowers of all kinds.
*I am a 72 year old, AHPRA
registered male psychotherapist with a large caseload out of family violences. There
the question of what is ‘live’ in real life is the central existential
challenge and how to live better the central developmental one.
** I became aware by stepping into
this simple task that whole chapters of Shaver and Mikulincer’s 577 pg. Attachment
in Adulthood (2007) opened with it. A few hours perusal of it in turn
reminded me of the abstract complexities of ‘attachment’ which cannot be
processed in the act of engaging without disengaging to do the processing. I
invite you to a small view here of that wide frame. There’s a modest (34 pg.)
chapter on “Interpersonal Regulation” concerned mainly with the dynamic structures
of interdependent attachment and not obviously with any contents, personal or
socio-systemic, of those attachments.
