Linda was 38-years-old, when I first started treating her. She was in the off mode of a six-year, rocky romantic relationship with a man who she describes as being intolerant of her needs and desires. When she agreed with him and selflessly met his needs with no complaints, they got along well.
Two years into the relationship, Linda tired of catering to his desires and needs. She hated that he verbally mistreated his mother, disliked his politics, stinginess, and was angry with him for emotionally degrading her with his sadomasochistic sex games. That’s when the trouble began. He accused her of lying to him to win him over. He thought she enjoyed their sexual games and was hurt that she disparaged his beliefs and ways. She was “no longer the right mate for him” he said.
Linda never liked his sexual preferences and was appalled the first time she heard him boss his mother around. But, she held her feelings and thoughts back because she didn’t want to lose him. And, she sensed that he couldn’t tolerate differences very well. So Linda became what he emotionally needed to be happy in relationship.
Linda is like many men and women at the start of a romantic relationship. They manage their new lover’s impression of themselves by holding back viewpoints that might lead to disagreement. To some degree, this is understandable. Most of us dip our toes into the social water, so to speak, before we jump in with both feet. We are testing out if it is safe to be authentic.
But, there are people, like Linda who are characteristically agreeable, to avoid social rejection or abandonment. They become very good at identifying people’s needs to insure acceptance and safety. This is a defense called projective identification). When it is used as part of the empathy process, it is a healthy defense. But, it becomes pathological when people use it to satisfy other people’s desires at the expense of their own. This is what happens to children who have narcissistic parents. They learn early on that to get love and approval they need to hold their true selves back and instead mirror the thoughts, feelings and needs of other people (Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child).
This is exactly what happened to Linda. She knew what her lover wanted and gave it to him, until her true self could no longer be silenced, which was always the stimulus for conflict in her romantic relationship.
What Do We Need To Be Happy in Love?
We need to put our true selves forward from the get go, to have a healthy love relationship. If we want a romantic relationship so badly that we sacrifice our true selves to get it, we don’t love ourselves enough. One day, like Linda, your true self will break loose and cause a lot of relationship conflict.
The benefit of presenting our true selves from the start is that we shoo away people who are really wrong for us. If you find yourself holding back true feelings to meet the fantasies of a lover, you are most likely subconsciously recreating the narcissistic relationship between you and your parent. Like Linda, it won’t take long before you see him or her as selfish, controlling and insensitive to your needs.
Intimacy requires that we bring our whole selves to a relationship. If my patient Linda had understood this better, she could have chosen better and avoided six years of relationship conflict. By Linda’s description of the relationship, I’m fairly certain that Linda’s boyfriend would have rejected her from the get go, if she had made her true preferences known.
But, every experience is a potential source of emotional and spiritual growth. We cannot redo the past. But, we can learn and grow so that our learning curve gets shorter.
Don’t wrap up what you think, feel and need in an attractive, pleasing package that hides the greatest gift that you can give to another person—the real you. Let the following Whole Self Affirmations remind you to stay mindful to your authentic self, in relationship.
- I vow to bring my whole self into a romantic relationship from the start.
- I welcome opportunities to show my true values, thoughts, and feelings.
- I honor authenticity rather than perfection.
- I honor an expression of differences as a normal part of healthy relating.
- The right person for me is the person who accepts the real me.
- Being true to myself is more important to my happiness than keeping up a relationship in which I have to inauthentic.
- The extent to which I can bring my real self into an intimate relationship equals the amount of intimacy that I will get from it.
- Verbalizing differences is a normal part of intimate relating; it is neither aggressive nor confrontational.
- The relationship challenge is to be whole rather than perfect.
- I have faith and courage in the future to wait for a romantic partner who will accept the real me.
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