From the first session, Sam came on larger-than-life as the Performer. He ranted and raved, rarely sitting down. He expected Claire to play the role of adoring Audience, watching him strut on stage, which was their silently-agreed upon script. Sam bragged about how much he did at home and at work—paying the bills, organizing activities and, generally, catering to Claire’s every need. In therapy, he made it obvious that he believed all the heavy lifting was necessary to keep their relationship on track.
Claire seemed to be an unappreciative and even disrespectful Audience. She mutely, but ostentatiously, knitted during session while Sam congratulated himself. When Claire remained quiet during Sam’s pauses for breath, he’d shout accusingly, “You just don’t get it, Claire!” and redoubled his performance, finally shouting, “What about me?” Claire, still knitting, would admit that Sam took care of her and thanked him for it, but she remained withholding and passive.
What was going on? Clearly, Sam was driven, but, just as clearly, Claire never affirmed that Sam’s actions contributed anything of value to their shared life. This continued for some months, until one day their therapist told Sam, “You need to stop being so selfish.”
Sam was aghast—speechless. The therapist continued, “Yes, it’s true—you give and give and give until it hurts you and everyone around you. You give with a vengeance without allowing anyone else to contribute—to do anything that has an impact on you. And the message is simple: No one is allowed to believe that anything he or she has to offer is worthwhile—especially Claire. And it’s all because down deep you believe that if you don’t hold things together, the whole world will fall apart. Living this way has put you in an isolation that neither Claire nor anyone else can penetrate.”
Sam was caught red-handed in his song-and-dance routine. Fortunately for both him and Claire, the road to recovery began that moment. Sam was so burned out that he was ready to accept what he was told. He could see and admit to both controlling and suppressing all Claire’s attempts to care for him. This enabled him to take the first steps in the frightening but rewarding process of creating a relationship in which he and Claire could trade places, take risks, and learn to care for each other.
Performers are always on the lookout for a work-in-progress to focus on—preferably indefinitely. For Sam, Claire’s behavior and passivity was like job security. Claire’s non-stellar theater career was full of frustration and disappointment that Sam could fix without having to examine what was going on between them. Sam’s enthusiasm for caretaking blocked his self-awareness, giving Claire opportunity to enjoy the passive-aggressive pleasure of playing victim while denying Sam the gratification of successfully fixing her. This careful arrangement satisfied their need to ignore how emotionally distanced they had become from one another.
At first, all Claire had to do was passively act as if her partner’s routines were helping her. Although their song-and-dance routines were strikingly dissimilar, they shared a major trait: both were highly invested in fixing, saving, or rescuing someone important to them.
Sam first learned his routine as a child when he devised a series of performances for his depressed mother to make her feel better. Conversely, Claire’s routine was to act as if her detached mother and father gave good performances as parents. Both performances were designed to relieve household anxiety. Unfortunately, neither of their caregiving compulsions ended when they left home. Instead, they took their unconscious need to be helpers with them, chronically repeating the pattern, unaware of being driven by a need to keep the world from falling apart.
Once Sam and Claire shared their storylines with one another, they felt as if they had shared intimacy for the first time in years. They began to see how they administered the same treatment to one another that they had used on their parents.
Although the story of Sam and Claire may seem extreme, partnerships like this are common. With some couples, when conflict develops, one partner becomes increasingly convinced he or she is the injured party while the other feigns passive innocence. Angry but unopposed, the active partner begins to make a noose for the passive partner but at the last minute hangs him- or herself after being rejected by the other as a failed caregiver. The Audience’s investment is so deep that he or she practically kicks the chair from under the gallows and sits back to enjoy the spectacle.
Claire maintained her safety by letting Sam be her hero-rescuer who would take responsibility for everything in their relationship. That way, no matter how messy things got, fingers could be pointed only in his direction.
But Claire’s posture was no less isolating than Sam’s fix-it routine. When at length she became unwilling to pretend that Sam’s performing did her any good, the show devolved into dreary melodrama. Claire wasn’t aggressive: she merely refused to invest herself or to validate Sam. Consequently, the anxiety their song-and-dance routine was designed to circumvent surfaced with a vengeance. By the time they started therapy, Sam saw himself as an almost abusively unappreciated caregiver, while Claire had completely lost interest.
As their therapy went forward, Sam and Claire unfolded the backstory of their fear of intimacy. As they did so, they were surprised to find themselves recovering the excitement of their early relationship. Piece by piece, they disassembled the anxiety that caused them to invest in irrelationship and began building a life of genuine intimacy.
Where Have You Been All My Life?
Irrelationship brings people together in interlocking, scripted roles for all the wrong reasons. Primed by histories created by irrelationship, they learn to identify one another by unconscious pattern recognition and set themselves up to fall almost instantly into a song-and-dance routine. Instead of a measured but exciting courtship, the two partners meet, fall for one another, and “mate for life” in the space of a few days. Early sexual contact elevates bonding hormones for both parties—either driving them apart, resulting in a series of one-night stands, or abandoning or cementing the relationship prematurely. Before either can stop, consider, and perhaps, separate, they jump in with both feet almost instantly. This causes the couple to miss red flags seen by others—or perhaps by themselves. What they’re attracted to in each other—commitment to the song-and-dance routine—ultimately becomes their undoing. Burdened with unrecognized or unnamed dissatisfactions, resentment builds. Esteem is undermined by refusal to allow mutual contribution. Intimacy is thwarted, making the entire construct liable to collapse under the right stressors.
Irrelationship becomes effective between persons who, even before they meet, agree to be “exactly who you need me to be” provided “you will do the same for me.” But how do they find one another in the first place? Many people complain that they experience the same relationship disappointments repeatedly, finding a partner who will act out the sought-after role-play until it burns out. This addictive pattern continues to rule their choices until they become able to identify it and the part they play in it.
Across a Crowded Room
As you read this scenario, look for anything that might look or sound like your own experience.
I see you across the room. I sense, I feel, in my heart some special unfathomable, for-my-eyes-only, X-factor that distinguishes you from all others. Chemistry. I’m already forgetting myself. I’ve promised myself I would not meet someone this way again after what happened the last twelve times. But I want you. I don’t know why, but I am driven toward you. I need to know who you are and find out if you, at last, are who I’ve been looking for.
In irrelationship terms, this scenario means, “I am drawn to you because you have that secret neediness that I was born to fix, just as I have the type of neediness that draws you to me. Somehow, on an intuitive level, my brain knows. That small child’s habit learned long ago has hijacked my will, leading me eagerly to my doom like the Siren’s song, enticing sailors toward the rocks.”
