Something You Never Thought I'd Say: Give Up Hope (On a Bad Relationship)

As a therapist, in some ways my business is hope.  I see the potential in situations and people, potential for change, potential for solutions.  I realize it is not only a large part of the work I do, but it is possibly part of my wiring, so in that way, it might one of the drivers that brought me to this work in the first place.  I am a hopeful person and I am a champion of hope.   It's fun too, when someone comes into my office and doesn't feel particularly hopeful, but something clicks when we are talking and they can see the potential for what their life might look like and maybe the feeling that getting where they want to be, personally, while it might be somewhat painful,  we can sometimes have a lighter touch and even a little fun too while we get there.

So perhaps for someone like me in particular, a tough life lesson has been that sometimes we must give up hope.  Not on ourselves, but in certain relationships in our lives.  I had an old boyfriend for whom this kind of thing was easy - "Fool me once, shame on you" he often said (not to me, but about folks in general).  "Fool me twice, shame on me."  It wasn't hard for him to know his rule and limit with other people.  It wasn't fuzzy for him.

So many others of us find it excruciatingly painful to 'give up on' or walk away from a relationship - even if it's proven hurtful or even abusive over years and years of time.  I see this with adult children and parents who have been cruel and ignorant.  I see this with marriages and partnerships that are abusive.  I see this with 'friendships' that are backstabbing or undermining and I see this with sibling relationships that can be sneaky and mean.  Or some permutation of all of those things.

A question I've asked myself is, "why?"  Why can some people know their own limits and walk away and why is it so difficult for others?  What are the personality traits or beliefs that keep us stuck with people (who might say differently, if asked) but who would probably push us under the water if the boat capsized, simply to stay afloat themselves?

To paint it in very broad strokes, I think people who stay 'hopeful' in hopeless relationships struggle with two main issues:  

1) Not enough self-esteem, OR
2) TOO much confidence

And despite this difference, they have one big thing in common

An Overdeveloped Sense of Responsibility

People who don't have enough self-esteem take on responsibility in this way:  "It's probably my fault that this relationship is bad.  If only I were more perfect, more understanding, didn't lose my temper, were more supportive, etc, etc, this relationship would be feel the way it's supposed to.  Maybe I deserve this kind of relationship.  Maybe this is how all relationships are.  Maybe this is the best I can do."  This person also may believe that their mother or spouse or brother could have an adverse effect on others and uses their sense of responsibility to 'protect' other people.  For example, "If Mom berates me, at least she's not berating my younger brother."  Or, if Wife is going to be so unpredictable, at least I'm here for the kids and can manage it from the inside."  People who don't have enough self esteem are hopeful in their own way, but hopeful mostly that they themselves will make some change and be 'better' or 'more worthy' in ways that will automatically make the other person kind, attentive, listening, and cooperative.

In psychology, there is an idea called 'repetition compulsion.'  It basically says that our primary caregivers may have messed up in some ways that wounded us.  Our psyche carries a compulsion to repeat the pattern of 'hurt' in order to fix it, heal it, make it better, but what we so often do is just repeat the hurtful parts without the healing.  This is something I  think about with 'hopeful' clients in hurtful relationships - particularly when I see that in their core they do not feel worthy.

People with too much confidence have the underlying belief, "I can change this situation, because I am just that caring, tenacious, strong or clever."  For example, if I am seeing the Overly Confident spouse, I hear this person saying every other time I see them, "I think it's better this week." There is always some solution or 'new' way they've tried communicating, asking, or interacting with their spouse and they are hopeful they have finally been heard and understood and their spouse is finally on board with kindness and partnership.  Often after this hopeful week, they come back in discouraged the next time - the new solution they tried worked for a little while, but the same old mistreatment crept back in again.

OR, the Overly Confident Person tells me, "I have a new approach.  I am just going to focus on my self care and my well being and less on theirs.  Things feel better this week."

Now, these are both resilient characteristics and healthy things to try.  Working on varied ways to communicate.  Figuring out your partner's Love Language and trying that.  Trying softer approaches or more direct approaches.  All of that is great!  The first 50 times.  But Overly Confident people in bad relationships can think of thousands of permutations and try all of them.  Also, great to focus on self care.  But if your partner is truly selfish or your friend is generally mean or your dad is most often blaming and cruel, self-care while in the relationship will be a mechanism for coping, but perhaps not a step toward thriving.

If you find yourself falling into one of these categories (low self-esteem/overly developed self-confidence) and find yourself in long term unhealthy and hurtful relationships, you may also find you have core beliefs that make you overly responsible.  In fact, as I was writing this, I remembered advice I was given at a young age that profoundly impacted me in a mostly negative way - "Never burn any bridges, because once you do, it's too hard to build them again."  On the outside, that would seem like sage advice, but for me, the way that hooked into my personality, I felt that holding people accountable was burning a bridge.  That creating boundaries was burning a bridge.  That confronting someone I loved who was hurtful could burn a bridge.   I internalized that as "The health of relationships is my responsibility and I should protect relationships from conflict."

Some other deep beliefs that might influence people to take on more than their share of responsibility in relationships are:
1) This person is in my family and you never turn your back on family
2) If I don't keep helping or being there for this person, they might die
3) Men just don't understand these things
4) Women are too emotional, so I have to be the strong, logical one
5) The other person is really too weak or wounded or addicted or in pain in some way, so it's right that this feels imbalanced.
6) I made the commitment, I have to stick to it

If you find yourself having any of these core beliefs when you think about a relationship, you might benefit from looking up information about co-dependence.  Taking on the full responsibility for the health of a relationship is co-dependent.

So, to go back to the beginning, here is what I am proposing.  If you find yourself resonating with what I wrote above,  I think it's time to give up hope.  Yep.  I said it.  Give up that hope, put it down and walk away.

Ok, I know it's not that easy and what I really mean is this:

How would it feel to really internalize and accept the information that you have in front of you:  Nothing that you do or don't do is going to make this relationship any different.  This IS the relationship.

Now that you've accepted reality, what would it mean to let there be space in that relationship with your mom or your friend or your boyfriend?  Could you imagine not working so hard to make things better or peaceful or satisfying for you in the context of that other person?   Maybe you don't have to cut them off, maybe you just need to not call and check in on that person so much.  Maybe you need to say 'no' to some of that person's unreasonable demands.  Maybe you could spend that energy on relationships where there is a healthy balance of give and take.  And if you need to cut that person off and it feels really scary, maybe you remind yourself that life doesn't need to be dramatic with grand statements like, "I'm never speaking with you again!"  You can make these changes and shifts in any way that feels like you are being true to you.

I heard an interview on Krista Tippett's excellent podcast, OnBeing recently.  She interviewed the poet, Nikki Giovanni, who spoke about having a dad who wasn't so great.  She said (to paraphrase), "I learned from him that the quality of the love depends on the quality of the love-er."  This seems like an important thing to remember.

When I say, "Give up hope,"  of course, I am being tongue in cheek.  Keep hope in and for yourself, your wisdom and choices.  Stop listening to your brain and heart and instead, listen to the deep gut instinct, the intuition,  I believe each of us has.  There is more friendship, love, and connection for you out there - relationships where you don't carry all the responsibility and you don't need hope, because the love is present and alive and in action.

saying what you mean, listening to what's said

How many of us have ever found ourselves being on one end or another of this conversation:

Person 1:  "What's wrong?"

Person 2: "Nothing."

Person 1:  "Oh, it just seems like something's wrong."

Person 2:  "Well, there's not."

How many Person 1's have walked away from that conversation not believing Person 2?  How many Person 1's start looking for ways that Person 2 is actually mad, but just not saying it.

What is this all about?  Why is this so common?  In how many ways is this unhealthy for all of us? 

I'm going to posit a theory that I notice from both my own life and from my experience in my work.  Person 1 has usually had a formative experience with an original Person 2 who was an indirect communicator.

Let's make this more concrete...if, for example, my first serious boyfriend who I was 'with' for four years from ages 16 to 20 was an indirect communicator, I may have asked, "what's wrong?" sometime when we were driving to a party.  "Nothing," he might have said, but then at the party he gave me the silent treatment or flirted with other girls. 

Or, for example, if I asked my mother, "what's wrong?" and when I was 9 years old, and she said, "Nothing," but then stomped around the house and slammed kitchen cabinets and was very short-tempered, and this was part of a longstanding pattern, I might have learned to not trust her verbal information and try to read very carefully her non-verbal information. 

Some people might say the Person 2 in these examples is 'passive aggressive," and I agree that might be a convenient label.  More generously, we might also say that these particular Person 2's are not in touch with their feelings or how their feelings might impact their actions.  Or, they might simply be very, very afraid of conflict and unable to directly address whatever is wrong.

So now we have sussed out a little of a common pattern in relationships - the WHY of this situation.

Here is what I'd like to consider to improve the emotional health of Person 1s and some Person 2's everywhere. 

Person 1 - listen to me, now.  Don't generalize whatever you picked up from your 'passive aggressive' relationship onto other relationships!  Live in the present, not the past!  You may actually be dealing with a Person 2 who is being honest when they say 'nothing is wrong.'  If nothing is wrong (and it probably isn't), you must relax.  Stop paying attention to every nuance of Person 2's behavior, voice inflection, breathing.  Take them at their word.   It's their responsibility to let you know if something is wrong.

Now, if you are a Person 2 who finds that you actually, well, yeah, sometimes take things out on someone you care about without explaining why you're mad, or punish them just a little, or kind of enjoy that they come to you and kind of have to kiss up to you...stop it.  Speaking honestly is one of the most important components of self-respect.  If someone asks you if something's wrong, you might simply want to answer, ' I don't know.  Let me think about it and I'll tell you when I have a clear idea about what's going on.'  We don't always have to have an immediate answer to every interpersonal interaction.

If you're a Person 2 who really means nothing is wrong...what can I say...try to have patience with your Person 1.  Understand you have a great opportunity to help heal something that is painful. 

I must confess that in my life, I have tended to be more of a Person 1 - a caregiver, a reader of non-verbal cues.  I don't think I am as much this way now - certainly not in the same ways I was when I was younger and struggling more with interpersonal relationships.  Now, I tend to use my skills of intuition, reading non-verbal cues, tone of voice, understanding of human nature, in my work and writing.  This is part of my healing.  And in the end, much of what I think we all can imagine and hope for, is to really live in the PRESENT and not the past.  To understand the moment, our relationships, our loves and ourselves as we are NOW,  and not in the shadows of past pains.

allowing other people to change

I've always said my son is hot-tempered.  He has red hair and since he was a toddler has known how to tantrum with the best of them.  As he's gotten older, of course this looks different than throwing himself on the grocery store floor and screaming, but still.  I've worried for him that he wouldn't find a way to control and focus his anger/aggression or even just loosen up on it.  So, I was amazed and my heart filled this week when I got to see him spar for one of the first times in karate.  He was awesome.  He was focused, unafraid, but controlled.  He kept his sense of humor, even when he got hurt.  With the guidance of their teacher, he and his sparring partner helped one another become better.  One of the reasons it was so cool for me is that I saw how my definition of my child, this "hot head" might not be so accurate anymore.  He is changing and as a mom I can see that the qualities of focus and sense of humor together will help him in his whole life. 

It reminded me, in a way, of a time when my sister was about 19 and I was 23.  She was in college and I lived in DC.  I had always been a pretty 'mature' older sister...rather parental toward her.  One day we were talking on the phone and she got irritated with me (I still remember where I was sitting - at my office desk for "Special Events of Union Station") and she yelled, "I'm not a child anymore!  It's time you stopped treating me like one."  It was a total lightbulb.  She had changed and I wasn't seeing it and I was treating her in old ways that didn't work anymore.

We do this all the time with people.  Our parents, our spouses, our friends.  We define them in certain ways - some unflattering - "she's the friend who never calls back"  "she's the wife who is critical."  Sometimes people change and we're so stuck in the past that we don't see what's right in front of us.

I remember telling someone a few years ago that a man I'd known for a long time was an  'a**hole.'  Then I thought what a damning thing that is to say.  Maybe he's not an a**hole anymore, I thought.  I checked it out.  Guess what?  He wasn't an a**hole.  Maybe he never had been and it was my lens of looking at the world that made him seem such.  Well, live and learn.

I recommend observing.  For a little bit, listen and watch people you are in relationship with as if you were just getting to know them.  Maybe they've changed and you haven't noticed.  Just like we all want to be seen and known for who we are, so do they.