since it seems to have worked well in the past. Our song-and-dance routines so effectively distract us from our anxiety that we can’t imagine anything needs to change. We have no idea how afraid we are and how our unconscious fear disallows change of any kind. Or, equally destructive, our fear drives us to pursue change compulsively and unreflectively without allowing a new person or situation the chance of proving worthwhile. Unsettling as this may be on some level, and may appear to others, the price of shutting down oneself is willingly paid in order to anesthetize anxiety.
While we’re doing our song-and-dance routine, the brain continues to produce bonding chemicals. Oxytocin, for example, shifts us into a state of unconditional caring appropriate for a mother caring for a distressed child but lacks the erotic potential driven by testosterone and suppresses dopamine, the brain chemical that mediates many of the pleasurable sensations associated with passionate sexual interaction. In addition, studies of the experience of unconditional love demonstrate that while involved in an intense caretaking role, our brain’s capacity for experiencing pain, mediated in the periaqueductal gray matter, is muted.2 This can be seen in a mother caring for her highly vulnerable newborn or sick child. When administering such care, as Performer or Audience, the sensibility of one’s own needs and pain are temporarily suspended. Our mind becomes that of the soldier, dancer, yogi, or even the martyr whose single-minded concern is the completion of a task whose significance overrides all other considerations.
Irrelationship thus sidelines large quarters of our emotional life, placing balanced, real relationships out of our reach—whether in business, with friends, or, perhaps especially, with lovers, spouses, or partners. When acting as Performer or Audience, the long-term need to be in healthy, supportive relationships is sacrificed to the immediate imperative of smothering our deep-seated discomfort, thus putting us radically out of balance with others and ourselves. We can live like this for a while, but eventually we crash. At that point, we often become overtly sick and in need of care. The debt has come due and has to be paid back at a high rate of interest.3
Toward Positive Change
1. Looking back at your worst romantic relationship, what made it disappointing or a failure?
2. What role did your song-and-dance routine play in that failed relationship? What was your partner’s part in the routine? How did each of you prevent closeness from developing?
3. Think about your best relationships in the following areas: family, work, friendship, and romance. What similarities can you identify?
The Threat of Intimacy The Threat of Intimacy
Irrelationship is widespread and subversive. By its nature, it conceals itself, almost hypnotically, confusing and distracting those living within it. Ironically, it clothes itself with language and gestures resembling genuine love and care. We fool ourselves into believing our compulsive caretaking proves how generous and kind we are. This does not mean that, at heart, we are not genuinely inclined toward generosity and kindness. However, our anxiety has hijacked the vocabulary of love, using it instead to manufacture a risk-free space of irrelationship. One aspect of irrelationship is that crucial elements of one’s song-and-dance routine become nonnegotiable, such as a rigid need to always be right or an inability to see anything beyond one’s own point of view. This is the case with Betty and Hank.
Betty and Hanks’ Irrelationship Storyline
“I don’t care how bad arguing with me makes you feel, I’m going to win this argument no matter what, because I’m right,” said Betty the Performer to her Audience husband Hank.
If being right is part of one’s identity as a caregiver, it can easily become more important than the feelings of others, including loved ones. Betty’s parents trained her to think that being right was more important for gaining their regard than love and empathy. This type of regard was what they gave to Betty in place of actual love. Performers often fail to recognize this trait because they believe being right is essentially where their goodness or lovability lies—not realizing they learned this harsh attitude toward others in childhood.
“Remind me—what was the argument anyway?” Hank asked. By taking the Audience role, Hank was able to distance himself from accountability—or attack—for what was really going on between them.
At this point, Betty and Hank were so embroiled in arguing that Hank had lost track of the content of their disputes, and he had ceased to even care. This, of course, made Betty feel unappreciated. But Hank had lost the ability to think intelligently and reflectively about what had happened between them.
In terms of brain activity, comparatively automatic parts of Hank’s brain took over. He was “brainjacked,” so to speak, by areas called the ventral striatum and amygdala. The ventral striatum codes habit-based learning, or conditioned responses. The amygdala activates when strong emotions are present, stereotypically fear. This results in fight-or-flight reactions and fear-based conditioning. When emotions are well-regulated, two areas together balance out this fear-based conditioning: the frontal cortex, which allows for top-down inhibition of strong emotions, letting reason to intervene, and the hippocampus, which works in concert with its next door neighbor, the amygdala, to put fear in perspective so it doesn’t take over. In Hank’s case, caught in the throes of irrelationship, he was on autopilot.
The result was that Hank was the perfect passive Audience for Betty’s need to be right. Additionally, she was able to amass even more power through her ability to remember every detail about their arguments. From Betty’s perspective, “being right” was the purpose of their relationship. And her ability, as court stenographer, to track their disputes gave her an even greater feeling of superiority.
When Betty and Hank went into couples’ therapy, Betty, who had been a magazine editor in a management position, attempted to occupy the therapeutic process in the same way that she had occupied Hank—going so far as to advise the therapist on how to handle their case. Betty’s need to control was so stultifying that the therapist even sought supervision to assist her with managing it. Through a difficult process, all three participants had the opportunity to see the power of Betty’s need for control, Hank’s bewilderment as Audience, and how entrenched both were.
Over time Betty was able to see how their song-and-dance routine kept her from realizing how much she valued and relied on Hank. Hank came to see that he acted out his caring for Betty primarily in his choice to be of service to her by becoming incompetent and needing her help. Even when Betty hit bottom, attempting to fix Hank and going to therapy, her need to be right still protected her from her fear of intimacy with Hank, just as Hank’s persona of incompetence allowed him to keep his distance from Betty. Poisonous resentment permeated their irrelationship and over time bubbled inexorably to the surface.
One day in therapy, Betty asked some deeply honest questions that began to shatter the mold of their irrelationship. “What if I have not been right about anything—ever? What does that mean for us? Is the love I thought Hank had for me just some kind of dream? Did I become his wife and caregiver because I thought his loving me depended on it? Do I believe my being right is what holds us together?” Betty had uncovered a window of opportunity, a real place to begin to see their shared agreement and actually undo it.
Hank looked up suddenly and said, “Us? There hasn’t been an us for a long, long time, Betty.
