so, I feel this desire as I come toward you. I reach out and introduce myself. And, while I feel that I want you, that I must have you, I also sense an unbridgeable gap between us.
Research into gambling behavior has shown that near misses increase the drive behind a gambler’s compulsive, reward-seeking behavior.2 This happens via brain mechanisms that measure external situations and produce activation in the ventral tegmental areas of the brain and other areas related to pleasure and decision-making.3 For example, when playing slot machines, four out of five cherries makes a person more likely to continue playing than hitting only three out of five cherries, thinking, Damn it. I almost got it that time! Just one more round! Just one!
Psychologically, almost getting it makes people think—incorrectly—that they have a better chance of getting what they want if they keep trying because, after all, last time they “almost got it.” In the emotional and reward-based reactions, they lose touch with the ability to see that the chance of winning has nothing to do with the previous outcome. Similarly, connections driven by irrelationship delude us into believing that a near miss improves the likelihood that “next time will be different.”
I reach for you—and you slip through my fingers (even though you may be playing out a similar scenario in your head). My heart aches for you. I ask you for a date. Even if you say yes, our union is impossible—it has to be. I reach and I reach for you. My desire is unbearable—and the game itself, while killing me, is also thrilling me. But if I get what I think I want, if I succeed, my desire will drain away. I must have you. I must fix you or you must fix me—and, no matter how much you try to convince me that you are mine, I somehow don’t catch you. And anyway, what would be the fun in actually catching you? No, I want this cat-and-mouse game to go on indefinitely. 4
The entire dynamic for this scenario is fueled by the notion of drive rather than mere desire. Something drives the irrelationship process: the need for security, the need to believe that we live in a safe world, a world that is not falling apart. Deep within the anxiety driving irrelationship is the terror that we will not be able to maintain safety unless we keep the world stable. And this drive will continue indefinitely.
I’m drawn to you—driven to repeat the irrelationship pattern with you. Both of us are possessed by the same need that took shape when we were children. We’re conspirators dancing a routine that will protect us from the dangers of the world—especially the threat of intimacy and unbridled feelings that each represents to the other. So instead of risking reality, let’s dance—all night if we have to.
Rocking the Boat
Do you find contact with loved ones and others to be enriching, flowing, and vital? Or, are you troubled by a vague feeling that something isn’t right about your connection with others—perhaps even that true connection is completely missing?
Are you in a relationship in which you are either a Performer like Sam or an Audience like Claire? Maybe you’re vaguely aware of using a song-and-dance routine like theirs to meet unspoken needs, remaining detached as you go about your business, afraid to rock the boat and risk disturbing the balance between you. No matter who you are in the song-and-dance routine, both parties are trapped by a need to exclude give-and-take, ignore ups and downs, and, above all, hide vulnerability.
The detached “non-feeling” of irrelationship is usually experienced as depression. But the depression is actually a cover for a psychological defense known as dissociation—a state in which all experience is whitewashed so everything feels much like everything else.5 This is another aspect of the protective function of irrelationship that keeps us safe from exposing our hearts to the risk of losing someone we perceive as valuable. The depression-like dissociative state short-circuits any anxiety connected with the risk of loss. Many of us have begun relationships that looked like they worked until they disintegrated, sometimes in terrible ways. And yet we do it again and again, seduced by romantic stories and images from movies, television, literature, songs, and opera, all promising that just the right fit is out there. But once again we find out that Mr. Right wasn’t so right, and Ms. Perfect wasn’t so perfect after all.
Toward Positive Change
Open your journal and let’s get started.
1. List ways in which you have acted as a caregiver for your parents, both as a child and an adult. Write brief descriptions and details from specific episodes.
2. What did you believe you accomplished by helping your parents as a child? How did success feel at the time? Did success last or did you have to step in repeatedly?
3. Think about ways in which you have acted as a caregiver for other significant people in your life—other family members, coworkers, friends, and past lovers. Describe each briefly, including what the person needed and what you did to help.
4. Do you have a connection in your life—romantic or otherwise—that seems to have the characteristics of irrelationship? Looking back on your acquaintanceship with that person, explain what initially drew you to that person. Then describe what didn’t work out as you had hoped.
Performer or Audience? Performer or Audience?
Both the Performer and the Audience share the fear that the world is going to fall apart if he or she doesn’t do something to fix or save the caretaker. Although the methods are different, both Performer and Audience are motivated by fear and anxiety.
Performers tend to use intrusive, self-centered maneuvers in their caretaking—planned actions whose real purpose is self-protection. Aggression, of course, can show itself in passive as well as active forms. The Audience may operate in a passive-aggressive manner at the expense of the Performer, who is generally determined to stand out as the active member of the relationship but is usually unwilling be cast as the bad guy by the Audience—at least not explicitly.1 The Performer actively pursues fix-it activities that allow the Audience to hide in the role of non-participant or even victim. From that position, the Audience can passively punish the Performer by not responding to treatment, namely by not feeling better. In reality, however, few cases are this black-and-white.
A more typical pattern emerges when two people are caught up in conflict, and the Performer, seeing him- or herself as the injured party, acts out by criticizing and blaming the Audience. In this type of scenario, the Audience provides space for the Performer by deliberately assuming a passive posture. After their relationship collapses, the Audience consoles him- or herself by believing this is the natural consequence of getting involved with a personality so aggressive that it can’t be controlled.
Ready, Aim, Backfire!
What does the dialogue between a Performer and an Audience sound like when they are brainlocked in a blame-game? Let’s take a closer look at an exchange between Performer Laurie and her Audience husband Lou.
Laurie: Your secrets are killing me, Lou; they’re killing us. I cannot believe after all I’ve done for you and all I keep doing for this family,
