rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_3e4bc9a5-702f-58a4-bc22-46f62ae4ee55">Acknowledgments
Our agent, Gareth Esersky, gets first mention. She saw what this book was—almost before we did—and guided us through the surprisingly complicated process of bringing our relatively simple and straightforward project to print and to the public eye. She never wavered in her encouragement and her belief in the work’s value.
Gareth turned us on to Ilene Segalove. Ilene, an artist and writer of considerable note, made no secret of how taken she was with our project. From her first reading, she knew how to shape the text to make it readable and usable. Her generosity of heart and mind warmed and encouraged us at points when warm and encouraged wasn’t necessarily how we were feeling. Ilene also gave us insight into subtleties of the book’s revolutionary “self-other help” model, which nudged the manuscript in a direction we had not anticipated and much to its improvement.
Working with Central Recovery Press has been a pleasure, and not just for the spirit of the individuals who coached, taught, and mentored us—Valerie Killeen, Janet Ottenweller, and Nancy Schenck—but also for the shared values vital to having this project realized without compromise of ideas and ideals.
Eve Golden’s expertise as a clinician as well as a writer and editor has been essential to our unpacking the psychoanalytic underpinnings of irrelationship. Her relationship with Mark Borg goes back many years, during which she has generously provided not only her talent but also her insightful, affectionate guidance through earlier projects that have culminated in this one.
Sue Kolod of Psychology Today’s blog, “Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Action,” saw to it that irrelationship got its first hearing in cyberspace, and Psychology Today editors Kaja Perina and Jessica Mooney gave us our own blogspace for Irrelationship, providing a much needed opportunity to test the waters with our ideas. Our friend and mentor Hara Estroff Marano, Editor-at-Large at Psychology Today, is a constant source of support and inspiration! We can’t express our thanks enough.
From Mark Borg
My first remembrance of love and gratitude goes to my grandmother, Charlotte Rolland, who, without fail, supported me through the most difficult periods of my life. Without her unconditional love, the outcome of some very difficult times would have been dramatically different from what has turned out. I remember her with love and thankfulness every day.
My mother and stepfather, Charlotte and Jon Rysanek, have been loving and supportive all my life—sometimes when I didn’t make it easy for them. My father, Mark, and his generous-hearted wife, Bonnie, and my in-laws, Osamu and Yoko Miyamoto, have always been ready and willing to offer support and love to me and to my beautiful wife and daughters.
Huge thanks to Erik and Sandy Borg—who, in a crucial moment, helped me find my way onto the road upon which I continue to trudge.
Much love to my earliest soul mates in All Nite Rave—that’s you, Jim DeLozier and your awesome parents Terry and Joan.
Massive gratitude to those whose professional support lives in me every day: Joerg Bose, Maggie Decker, Roger Mills, Joseph Solomita, Sandra Buechler, and Brian Sweeney.
And, wave upon wave of gratitude and love for those who continue to sustain my soul: Chris Borg, Mike Dalla, John (Purple) Turi, Kristy (La Sirena) Matthews, Bill Zunkel, Chris Mertz, Jeanne Henry, Byron Abel, Greg Hex, Jason Kaja, Tim Barnes, David Kopstein, Seal Beach Surf Crew (wearin’ “Dog Shoes”), 12th Street, and Ronda Hampton. Wouldn’t have made it without y’all!
It should go without saying—but I’m not going to allow it to—that my utmost gratitude goes to my partners, friends, and coauthors, Grant and Danny, without whom this project could never have gotten from Zero to One.
The basic premise of this book—that many people looking for love, or those who believe they have already found it, unwittingly create dysfunctional relationships as a way of keeping true intimacy at arm’s length—reflects a fact that marriage and family therapists see day after day in their offices and that many “civilians” just soldier through day after disappointing day. Rarely, however, does anyone ever articulate the phenomenon with such simplicity and clarity or label it so tellingly—irrelationship. So this book arrives as a needed blast of fresh air, to advance everyone’s understanding of how people can yearn for love, even make sacrifices for it, and still feel distant from a partner and deeply unsatisfied.
People construct irrelationships because intimacy can be tough work. It’s for grown-ups, definitely not for wimps. It is liberating, once attained, but getting there can be anxiety provoking. To achieve intimacy, to be open to it, takes courage. We have to be able to drop our defenses, often deeply ingrained, and stand naked to ourselves, exposing the primal fear that we are flawed and unlovable. Small wonder we often have strong psychological defenses against it. Yet there is no elixir as great as deeply connecting with another human being.
Just who is candidate for an irrelationship? There’s no way to judge by external markers. As the authors explain, much depends on the way each of us was exposed to love when young; the “rules” we inferred or explicitly learned long before we knew we were absorbing them, to say nothing of how they might shape our lives; and our tolerance for discomfort. Couples can be locked into patterns of mutual deception for years, living a so-called counterfeit connection. While our early understandings and adaptations may have served us very well in the situations in which we were raised, they can keep us from getting what, as adults in new circumstances, we most want. It is an axiom of psychology that the greatest obstacle in our way is often…ourselves.
The authors of this book bring together a great deal of information from many areas of psychology and psychiatry, along with years of practical experience, to help people understand how they get into irrelationships, how such relationships can take on a life of their own, and how it is possible to break free and create a real relationship. You, reader, are in good hands.
Hara Estroff Marano
Editor at Large, Psychology Today
All the Wrong Reasons All the Wrong Reasons
People love for different reasons, some of which work better than others. We all have ideas about what love and loving are, but where do those ideas come from, and how do they lead or mislead us in choosing a partner? If we ask ourselves what we look for in a mate, we probably answer that we seek passion, empathy, novelty, and security. It sounds sensible and mature and might even be true. But over time, deep down and hidden from ourselves, many of us internalize concepts about love, learned from early childhood, that actually work against finding and cultivating satisfying relationships. Like termites infesting a beautiful old home, these ideas may actually have infiltrated our ways of loving so thoroughly that without realizing it, they undermine our desire for closeness and our ability to accept intimacy. This leads to relationships that can repeatedly
