To reveal why we stay in painful relationships, Thomas Fiffer unmasks three unfair ‘trades’ that keep us bound.
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When we remain in an unhealthy relationship, we believe we are waiting for our partner to change.
In truth, we are waiting for ourselves to change, a process that often takes longer than we expect.
— Thomas G. Fiffer
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Fifteen years.
Twenty-three years.
Thirty-one years.
We weren’t making each other happy, enabling growth, or building a secure future together. But we were determined to stay the course.
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These are not jail sentences—though they surely felt like time served in a dark, lonely, and dangerous place. No, these are the durations of three dysfunctional marriages—mine, a friend’s, another friend’s—in which we suffered insult and injury. Our partners felt trapped in misery, too—at least that’s what they were always telling us—yet we clung with the ferocity of a wild animal tearing apart a piece of meat, held on with the life-sustaining grip of a rock climber, and refused to leave with the bull-like stubbornness of a child. We weren’t making our partners happy, enabling growth, or building a secure future together. But we were determined to stay the course, complete the journey, push through the pain, and arrive at a place of peace and contentment, even if it killed us.
Books well worth reading have been written about co-dependent relationships, and the Stockholm Syndrome has been thoroughly explored. Survivors of abusive relationships have also cataloged some of the reasons they stayed—among them financial security, feelings of unworthiness fueled by their partner’s disparagement, the savior complex, and the delusional state caused by wanting to believe their partners’ endless apologies and promises to change. But I like to simplify things. So to spare you from studying clinical psychology, gobbling up self-help books filled with anecdotes about Bob and Sarah and Sam and Julie, and becoming an expert on the personality disorders listed in the DSM-V, here are what I see as three trades we make when we choose to stay with a partner who hurts us.
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Need is primitive and elemental and immensely powerful. Need frequently overrules judgment.
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1. We trade need for love. Need is primitive and elemental and immensely powerful. Need frequently overrules judgment. Our body informs us of basic physical needs—hunger, thirst, sexual release—and of pressing emergencies, such as air if we’re suffocating or the need to evacuate our bowels. Emotional needs are more abstract—empathy, appreciation, fulfillment, human interaction—but manifest themselves in tangible presences such as an understanding partner, an appreciative boss, a rewarding job, and an active social life. The problem arises when we enter a relationship that meets one or more of our basic emotional needs but is not love-based. A partner can be empathic to our private pain, then turn and use our vulnerability against us. A boss can show appreciation for a job well done and publicly humiliate us when we fail. A friend can be a constant presence in our lives and a constant source of negativity. And a partner can be a phenomenal sexual match but a dreadful emotional companion. When we experience real love, we feel a sense of relaxation and peace that goes much deeper than the satisfaction of having our needs met. Love is a commitment that calls on us to meet a partner’s needs and to do the work—on ourselves as well as with our partners—to form a healthy, lasting, and elastic bond. Trading need for love is unfair, because while we may get some or many of our needs met, we are missing out on the immeasurable joy of a loving relationship.
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Attachment feels secure by its very nature, because being alone feels the opposite—lonely, insecure, and desperate.
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2. We trade attachment for love. Setting aside the tremendous social pressure we experience to partner up and the stigma still attached to remaining single (not to mention childless), attachment is also a basic human need. Many animals live in packs or herds for safety, and on the social level the human animal has its own versions of these in tribes, cliques, organizations, and other groups. The basic human unit is the family, and the core of the family is the two-person couple. Attachment feels secure by its very nature, because being alone feels the opposite—lonely, insecure, and desperate. If we transform loneliness into solitude, we can find strength in independence, self-reliance, and resilience, but most people crave the feelings of emotional and physical security that being with a partner generates. The problem arises when we choose an unsafe partner, a person with a desire or need to harm us for his or her own self-soothing, a person who puts his or her needs before our best interests, a person who relies on attachment to us to indulge in unhealthy behavior. Real love is mutually supportive, unselfish, and never, ever hurtful. Trading love attachment for love is unfair, because we inhabit the shell of a loving relationship and hide behind a mask of happiness, while inside, there is emptiness. And by appearing to the world as happily partnered, we preclude other, more rewarding opportunities.
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If we love another to the exclusion of self-love, we set ourselves up for a lifetime of disrespect.
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3. We trade self-love for love of another. Our love for another, or another’s love for us, no matter how powerful, cannot on its own sustain a healthy relationship. If we love another to the exclusion of self-love, we set ourselves up for a lifetime of disrespect. The statement that someone can only love you as much as you love yourself is true, because self-love sets the standard for what we will tolerate. Partners in dysfunctional relationships will often say, “I gave you everything” or “I sacrificed my life for you.” When we give in ways that are hurtful to ourselves, we grow resentful, and we erode the self that our partner may have loved to begin with. We also allow a double standard and open ourselves up to mistreatment. Loving a partner generously, unreservedly, and wholeheartedly feels great and helps us feel good about ourselves, unless that person takes advantage of our devotion to act selfishly and disrespectfully, knowing that we will suck it up. And no matter how much love someone pours into our well, or vice versa, without self-love it can never be filled. Trading self-love for the love of another is unfair, because it offers a false sense of wholeness and enables us to avoid the critical work of coming to terms with and accepting who we are, faults and all.
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Another reason people stay in hurtful relationships is our belief in what we call “unconditional love.” People often ask what unconditional love means, unsure whether we still have to love someone if they hurt us because we can’t attach conditions to love—such as refusing to tolerate abuse. Love is by definition an unconditional emotion, and love exists when love is mutual—when both partners treat each other in a truly loving fashion based on the core behaviors of kindness, respect, and generosity. When this happens, each partner gives without resentment, without keeping score, and without a second thought—unconditionally. It is when behavior in a relationship becomes conditional, when we start to hear, “If you loved me, you would … ” that the relationship is no longer based on love but on transactional exchange. Love is always unconditional. When it’s conditional, it is not love.
Now that you know how unfair these trades can be, you can think carefully before you make them.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Whenever I started or attempted doing something I really enjoyed, she would be right by my side, just to belittle me and shut me down whenever I got into the process of actually enjoying myself
I recently left an abusive relationship. I have been asked repeatedly, once others found out the truth, why I stayed. You gave me a far better answer than “I don’t know, I guess I was an idiot who took her wedding vows too seriously.” Thank you for this article. It very eloquently explains what goes on and the the tangled web of emotions that makes us feel trapped. I had to set aside the delusions of change, and decide that I deserved a better life than what I had been living.
Thank you again!
Tom, thank you for this. This helped me tremendously today. The hard truth is that there is always a “payoff”, the thing, or things, that keep us in even the most obviously unhealthy relationships. It’s shameful to acknowledge that we may be holding ourselves back, to ourselves, and that shame can further inhibit our making a change. I’m not talking about very abusive situations — I’m not victim blaming here. There is real threat and danger in leaving a physically abusive relationship. I’m talking about staying in an emotionally unhealthy marriage. For me, I had to come to understand that… Read more »
“the savior complex”…yes, that was definitely part of it…I never realized how emotionally unstable he was until he revealed it to me…behind the stoic mask was a very miserable and lonely person…I was shocked to find out how self-destructive he was…and I could see he would have destroyed me, too, if I stayed… I think I helped him more by just leaving him…he had no more excuses for his f–ked up life….he actually pulled himself together and achieved his lifelong career dream…I think he used me to medicate his hurt and abandoned feelings, as if I only existed to make… Read more »
Thanks, Leia. I have a friend in the process of divorce whose husband used her as medication. It’s so hard to stop enabling that way, but it sounds like you did your ex a service.