Some Interesting Statistics

• There are about 850,000 divorces in the United States every year (Tejada-Vera & Sutton, 2010).

• The marital distress preceding divorce has substantial negative effects on partners and their children (e.g., Amato, 2000; D’Onofrio et al., 2007).

• Partners in marriages often report significant chronic dissatisfaction (Amato & Booth, 1997; Grych & Fincham, 1990;

Waite & Gallagher, 2000), even after deciding not to divorce.

Some Interesting Statistics

• While some partners work at improving their marriages, a significant portion of couples are unable to resolve the problematic factors in their relationships (such as poor communication and ability to manage conflict)

• Prevalence rates of infidelity are high: approx.

22-25% of men and 11-15% of women admitted to engaging in extramarital sex at some point (Balderrama-Durbin, Allen, & Rhoades, 2012).

Relational Crisis

• I view the relational crisis we are in as a “silent epidemic,” not only affecting the lives of the partners involved but also the lives of our children.

• Technology may be playing a role in all of this (the “window-shopping” that Match, E-Harmony and more dubious sites such as Ashley Madison promote is almost unavoidable, particularly in the face of increasing economic stress and daily life stress).

Nevertheless, We Are a “Relational” Species

• We seek to bond; we organize ourselves in dyads and groups to accomplish most tasks.

• From birth (and perhaps pre-birth), the infant seeks to survive by optimizing how to get his/her needs met from the primary caregiver (usually, the mother).

The Psychology of Attachment

• The study of attachment (between child and parent) has been a major research topic in psychology for the last 5 decades.

• What we have learned is that the

infant/child has evolved highly advanced skills for detecting how to get from mother what he/she need and wants.

The Psychology of Attachment

The Attachment Dance

• Attachment becomes a dance consisting of the infant seeking what he/she wants, mother giving it/not giving it, and an ongoing tug of war that escalates until ultimately the dyad reaches some form of stability, a status-quo.

• The mother, for the most part, wins! The infant adapts to the mother vs. the mother adapting to the child.

Personality is Adaptation

• The young child’s personality becomes organized around all of the nuanced behaviors and emotions required to participate successfully in the attachment dance with mother.

Personality is Adaptation • For example, a depressed

mother may not be very responsive to a child, but she gets more responsive when the child acts cute or is funny; the child learns this quickly and efficiently; the dance that ensues between them involves the child “warming up” the mother (by making her laugh or feel better) so that the mother moves out of a depressive state and enters a more optimal position to respond to the child.

Personality is Adaptation

• This relational sequence, across thousands of repeated interactions, becomes well-patterned and essentially solidifies in a specific style of personality the child takes on.

Our Personality as Adults

• At the core of our personality as adults is a highly adaptive child (if the adaptation worked early on, we repeat it again and again across our life span).

Summary• #1) Early in life, each of us adapted to an imperfect caregiver

to order to survive.

• #2) The adaptation helped us survive but left a wound (usually the wound is not conscious/we can’t remember it).

• #3) Depending on the degree of adaptation required, the authentic/true part of our identities was compromised.

• #4) In adult life, we usually continue living out our adaptations and, to a greater or lesser degree, avoid seeking to engage our authentic/true self (because we are not really aware of the fact that we are not living it).

Rethinking the So-Called “Mid-Life Crisis”

Implications for Romantic Love• As adults, we are destined to continue our adaptive

patterns with our next significant attachment figure (our lover/partner).

• That is, we seek to find a lover who resembles our caregiver (psychologically, emotionally) so that we can continue with our usual adaptive style to maintain the attachment.

• This implies something very paradoxical: we are destined to seek a romantic partner (and a “relational structure”) that wounds us in familiar ways!

The More Frustration/Disappointment/Rejection,The Better!!

• Actual or potential partners who treat us with kindness, love, respect, and good boundaries are BORING (because we don’t have to adapt to them!).

• My clinical practice is filled with men and women who cannot resist “bad” partners when many potential “good” partners are all around them.

•We are programmed to find partners we need to adapt to (because they frustrate, disappoint, or reject us in ways that are quite familiar, though often unconscious).

Why Are We on the Lookout for Bad Partners We Are Wounded By and Must Adapt To?

• Science does not yet know the answer to this question.

• Some evolutionary theorists suggest we are programmed to seek what is familiar (even though it may be traumatizing).

• Other theories argue that since we usually cannot resolve the wounds we suffered in our relationships with our parents as children, we seek to create a parental-surrogate in contemporary life to get revenge/to “master” the relational dilemma that was never resolved.

Models of Love & The Notion of “False Intimacy”

• Our “models of love” actually have little or nothing to do with love! They have to do with attachment and adaptation.

• Most contemporary adult romantic relationships consist of elements of “false intimacy” – each partner is not loving/bonding/creating, but attaching/adapting/accommodating.

• To a greater or lesser degree, each partner cannot be true or authentic, to oneself or in relation to one’s partner.

The Dissolution of Relationships

• When the parental-surrogate is embodied in our partner, conflict/distress occurs and is often (1) tolerated/lived with for many years,. and/or (2) causes break-up/divorce.

• Our (unconscious) hope to resolve the wounds from our past in our contemporary partner usually fails! (AND, we remain unknown to ourselves and in relation to another).

How This Happens

• What I’ve just told you captures the process of how we meet someone new, become attracted to them, start dating them, form a relationship with them, ... with ultimately (more often than not) the relationship blowing up and dissolving.

• There are 6 stages to this process:

What makes the guy pick girl #2 ?

1 2 3

Stage 1: Attraction

Our guy thinks the selection of #2 is the dominating attraction commonly

called “chemistry.”

1 2 3

Our guy thinks the selection of #2 is the dominating attraction commonly called “chemistry.”

It is NOT!!!NEVER!!!

1 2 3

What he mistakes as “chemistry” are cognitive cues, what is

“familiar!”

1 2 3

Unconsciously, he wants to repeat a previous “relational structure”

from his past.

1 2 3

Stage 2: The Honeymoon Period• Things seem to be going well: they start doing more

and more together, they find they have things in common, etc.

• There is the sense that it is easy/that they seem to “know” each other better than what would be expected given the amount of time they have spent together.

• Sex often occurs in this stage and is “very passionate.”

• The unconscious relational structure that each holds lays dormant/is hibernating and not yet apparent.

Stage 3: Induction

• In our example, the man unconsciously “induces” the woman to act more and more like his wounding parent (or his mental construction of his wounding parent).

• The woman is already primed to act this way (contains qualities consistent with the man’s wounding parent), but his inductions activate the similarities in her even more so they become more dramatic and clear.

Stage 4: Injury and Repair • Each partner starts injuring the other (in ways that are familiar,

i.e., in the ways that caregivers injured them during childhood).

• During this phase, the bond between the two actually gets stronger as each tries to “calm down” and “make up”; the other feels so important and familiar that the underlying dysfunction of the relationship is denied by one or both partners.

• Co-habitation and/or marriage often occur during this stage, particularly during or right after “repair” periods in which there is a profound sense of relief and euphoria (there is often the internal fantasy of having finally found one’s “soul mate” or finally having moved past what went “wrong” in prior relationships).

Stage 5: Parasitic Take-Over

• Through ongoing inductions and the accumulation of repeated injuries, repair becomes less and less frequent and merely partial.

• The partner becomes the parental-surrogate (AND THEN SOME!!).

• The partner is overtaken by mysterious forces (parasitic psychological communications) of which he/she is no longer in control of; he or she actually becomes “alien” to himself/herself; the partner becomes something else/ “not themselves” the more the relationship goes on.

Stage 6: Break-up • Due to repeated

inductions and the parasitic take-over process, one partner eventually decides to end the relationship (due to guilt/shame at injuring their partner over and over again or due to no longer feeling like himself/herself – “alien” – with their partner).

Repeating the Pattern• Most people repeat the same, or a similar pattern,

over and over again in consecutive relationships (this is the phenomenon of serial monogamy or multiple divorces).

• Avoiding the pattern is a psychological alternative to repeating the pattern.

• This alternative has been described in research as the “avoidant” attachment type and can take many forms:

(a) men (or women) who just want superficial relationships/sex

(b) the self-sabotager (addiction, infidelity) (c) business/financial success (workaholics) (d) or the indecisive/obsessive personality

What is the Antidote? • Understanding early relational wounds.

• Actually seeking to resolves these wounds realistically with one’s actual parents, if they are still living.

• Accepting the fact that in any serious relationship, after the stages of Attraction and the Honeymoon Period, Stage #3 (Induction) inevitably will begin and injuries will occur (the entire process cannot be avoided!).

• Parasitic take-over (Stage #5) can be prevented if inductions are identified early, are resisted, and are openly talked about (THIS IS THE TRANSITION FROM AN ATTACHMENT RELATIONSHIP/FALSE INTIMACY TO A REAL RELATIONSHIP/AUTHENTIC INTIMACY).

• The capacity to move out of an attachment position (and negotiate for one’s true self/true needs without adaptation) takes incredible work (often only attainable in individual psychotherapy), self-knowledge, and mourning the loss of prior failed relationships.