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 Relationships are seldom as simple
as we would like. They bring out
our needs, anxieties, and conflicts
with people from our past - parents,
friends and former partners.
Our relationships with our partners are colored by our own personal legacies. We often react to our
partners as if they were someone else - and most of the
time this causes conflict in the relationship. After all,
when we entered into a primary relationship we expected
love, nurturance, and validation just for being who we
are. A relationship, we usually imagine, should provide
a safe zone where our partners cherish us for expressing
our own unique qualities. This is a simple expectation.
Why, then, does it seem so hard to achieve?
How we perceive our partners is influenced by
how we learned to deal with other people in the
past. This process can go back into early childhood, even
to infancy. Indeed, our earliest primary attachment to a
caretaker - a mother, a father, or another adult - can have
an effect on how we deal with other people for the rest of
our lives. For example, if our earliest experiences taught
us to trust in the world, then we are likely, barring any
other event that leads to distrust, to take a trusting attitude toward people throughout our lives. Conversely,
if a child is never shown love during the earliest stages
of life, it may be a challenge during adulthood to learn
how to experience love. Early experiences from childhood can have a powerful effect later on. (This is a strong
argument for treating children well.)
The first reaction to the loss of a loved
one, even when the loss is expected, is
usually a sense of disbelief, shock, numbness, and bewilderment. The survivor may
experience a period of denial in which the reality of
the loss is put out of mind. This reaction provides
the person some time to prepare to deal with the
inevitable pain.
Children experience both good and bad in the
world. Plenty of good experiences, like love and
trust, feel comfortable, and produce a positive self-image in children - a positive way of defining themselves. The bad experiences, though, create feelings of
conflict and frustration. These negative experiences also
go into the self-definition that the child is developing.
But they don't feel compatible with the more positive
feelings, so, according to one theory, the child projects
them onto somebody else. (Projection means finding in
someone else the qualities that you don't want to accept
within yourself - like blaming your partner for being
controlling when you are the one who has the tendency
to want to control.)
Projections
It is not only early childhood experiences that
cause us to project our unacceptable feelings onto
someone else. Friends can have the same effect, as can
partners from our previous relationships. This is a
process that happens throughout our lives. How many
times have we heard someone say, "Treat me for who
I am - I am not your former partner"?
The major point to keep in mind is that we project
our own problematic feelings onto another person.
If, for example, we have an issue with the feeling of
jealousy, we will project our own jealousy onto someone else, and perceive them as being the jealous one!
This is because we can't tolerate seeing ourselves as
having a problem with jealousy - and it's easier to
attribute it to someone else. In other words, we feel
unable to correct the problem in ourselves, so we focus
on this issue in the other person. The way out of this,
of course, is to become aware of this projection and
understand how it affects us.
When couples experience conflict in their relationship, projections are often at the root of the
problem. If we are living with our own conflicts and
are unable to make any headway in understanding them,
it's as if we look for the problem in the other person.
In fact, at a certain level, we may actually seek out
partners who have the qualities that we find problematic
within ourselves. If we have difficulty in asserting
ourselves, for example, and we get frustrated and angry
with other people for running over us, we may seek out
partners who do just that - people who dominate us.
Just as often, though, our partners may not see themselves as domineering, but because we need to work out
our own problems with the issues of dominance and submission, we will search for these qualities in the other
person. We take any cue we can from our partner and
magnify it. Then we're able to project our own problem
onto the other person, saying it is their fault. By blaming the other person, we protect ourselves from having
to come to terms with our own issues. We can safely
continue our submissive pattern and blame the other person for having the problem.
The healthier option, when projections are causing
relationship conflicts, is to increase our awareness
of our own internal conflicts and how we project these
conflicts onto our partners. We can look for examples of
our projections in other life situations until we see a pattern. When we have awareness of the problem, we can
understand the many ways it influences our behavior -
and this can give us some control over the problem. We
can then try out new ways of dealing with people. For
example, when a person experiences frustration time
and again from feeling dominated by others, learning
some assertiveness techniques can alleviate the problem.
It is important to understand...
...that projections are not at the
root of every problem that couples experience. Sometimes the
other person does indeed have a
real problem that can lead to an
abusive situation. In this case, it
is not advisable to try to understand it as a projection, but to
see it for what it truly is and to
take appropriate measures to
change the situation.
THE OTHER PARTNER COLLUDES
An interesting phenomenon happens when a partner
is the recipient of a projection - the one being projected upon. Because this person is trying to smooth out
the conflicts, he or she may identify with the projection.
So, the couple now begins to define their problem in this way. The person receiving the projection starts to say,
"Yes, I have a problem with being too dominant, and
I need to work on it." In fact, this person may start to
behave in a way that confirms the projection. It may
never have occurred to this person that dominance was
a personal issue in the past, but because it is brought
up frequently through the first partner's projections, the
second person may create a self-definition that conforms
to the projection. The recipient of the projection can
either take in the projection - believing that it is true
and behaving accordingly - or, in the more mature case,
can modify it, insisting that the projection is not a true
representation. In this case, the recipient can actually
help the partner come to terms with his or her own
issues and restore some health to the relationship.
The person doing the projecting may define the
whole of the other partner as having the problem,
and the recipient of the projection may do the same - to
define the problem not just as a part of the self, but the
whole self. When this happens, the couple may forget
about the positive parts of each of the partners and concentrate instead on only the problematic areas. The mistake here is this: when we work on our relationship conflicts, we need to draw on the positive parts of the relationship rather than focusing entirely on the problems.
When a couple first gets together, they focus on
their similarities - those parts of themselves that
are compatible. This is when the intimacy and trust of
the relationship are formed. It isn't until the relationship
has matured that the negative projections begin to take
shape. This helps to explain why some couples who
were so perfect for each other in the beginning start to
have conflicts as time goes by. When the negative projections begin, the partner doing the projecting tends to
withdraw from the intimacy of the relationship and to
focus more on seeking some independence from the
relationship. And the second partner may then withdraw
as well. This is when the couple may start to experience
relationship difficulties.
IT TAKES TWO
The process of projection in a relationship is not
always one-sided. Things can get complicated
when both partners are mutually engaged in this
process, which is a common occurrence. It becomes
difficult for the partners to see where the problem lies.
Take a look at the following example.
AN EXAMPLE - CHRIS AND PAT
Chris grew up in a household where the parents
were emotionally withholding. Affection was
seldom expressed toward Chris and the other siblings,
although material needs were always provided. Chris
always searched for nurturance, love and support, the
things that were never provided in the household - and
harbored some anger that the kids were never given
these things. Of course, this anger was never expressed,
for fear that it would lead toward even more emotional
deprivation.
Pat, on the other hand, had two very controlling parents. It was hard to experience independence during
childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, and this led
to hidden resentment that could never be expressed.
When Pat and Chris first got together, they both
felt liberated, as if all of their dreams and hopes
for a relationship could be met in the other person.
Chris saw in Pat a person who appreciated freedom and
was genuine, affectionate, and willing to give love and
emotional support. Similarly, Pat saw in Chris someone
who valued love, trust, and respect for personal integrity.
Their first year or two together were the happy times.
Over time, however, Chris's resentment, harbored
since childhood and never resolved, became
attached to Pat. Rather than seeing all the positive qualities in Pat that formed the basis of the initial attraction,
Chris focused negatively on Pat's need for independence
and not being at home enough. Pat is accused of always
being out with friends and finding the job more important than the relationship.
Pat, on the other hand, sees Chris's demands to be at home more often as control, the same thing that
caused such resentment during Pat's childhood. Rather
than focus on Chris's more positive qualities of love
and trust. Pat accuses Chris of acting like a parent
who would not allow independence.
The couple is at an impasse. Chris
accuses Pat of emotional withdrawal.
Pat blames Chris for being controlling.
They aren't able to see their way out of
their dilemma until they start to work
with a therapist who is able to clarify the
patterns. And for this couple - with some
exploration, courage, and insight, there
is hope.
ASSESS YOUR RELATIONSHIP
Understanding the sources of conflict in your
relationship is one step towards resolving
the differences between you. When we can
get the problems out in the open and talk about
them objectively, we can often find the solutions.
Use the list below as a starting point for shedding
some light on your relationship conflicts, which
may now be hidden but which, with some thought,
can become known and talked about constructively.
- Look for themes in your relationship conflicts,
problems that keep reappearing time and time
again. Focus on identifying the underlying theme in
most of your arguments. Arguments usually focus
on the surface aspects of the underlying conflict.
Your goal here is to define the underlying conflict.
- Have these themes appeared in your relationships
with other people - both friends and perhaps other
partners in the past?
- Can you identify your part in contributing to
these themes? Every relationship takes two people
and both contribute to the difficulties. What is your
part? (This may be a hard question to answer since
we tend to see the problems as lying within our
partner rather than within ourselves.)
- What are the positive qualities in your partner
that you may have forgotten about as time has gone
by? Can you begin to define your partner in those
terms again?
- What are the negative qualities in your partner
that cause conflicts between you? Does your partner agree that these qualities are true? Has your
partner changed over time, gradually starting to
agree that the negative qualities may be true? Or,
conversely, does your partner insist that these negative qualities are not true?
- Do you focus mostly on these negative qualities
when you think about your partner?
- Is there anything from your past - from childhood on through adulthood - which reminds you of
the conflicts between you and your partner? (This
may be a clue regarding your unresolved conflicts
that are the source of projections.)
- Does your partner project unresolved conflicts
onto you? (These are probably easier to see than your projections onto your partner.)
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