Extraordinary Relationships

by Roberta M. Gilbert

In the realm of the purely personal—after food, water, and shelter—the quality of relationships most often determines the quality of life.

He had an idea that the basic unit of emotional functioning might not be the individual, as previously thought, but the nuclear family.

Understanding the system and working for personal change within it produces a powerful effect, not only upon the individual but on the entire system.

The first and most important concept in understanding and changing relationships is differentiation of self, which will be described after individuality and togetherness forces. Understanding these forces is basic to understanding differentiation of self.

A second important principle for gaining an understanding of human connectedness is that of emotional systems.

The first concerns the self in relationships, and the second, the emotional relationship system in which the self lives.

Togetherness is sometimes called fusion. This refers to the taking on or giving up of self in a relationship.

The individuality and togetherness forces set up a tension that is a natural and inevitable fact of human life. Their basic, intense, and opposing qualities mean that constant and concerted effort is required in order to keep life in balance.

The more emotionally mature individual finds it easier to manage the individuality/togetherness forces. This person is a more emotionally complete self with less need for attachment to another person. Life is comfortable for this person, whether he or she is in a relationship or alone. The more emotionally mature, or more highly differentiated, person has a greater amount of self with which to negotiate the problems of life, including those of relationships.

At lower levels of emotional maturity, on the other hand, people tend to seek comfort in relationships. They look for someone else to complete the lack of self they find in themselves. They are trying to make a self out of two or more selfs.

Many people reach adulthood without ever developing an ample amount of basic self. This means that, to varying degrees, basic self was only partially formed in their original families.

They grew up with other family members always completing them, fused in relationships. Because they separated out less self from the original family emotional system, they act automatically and without being aware of it. In adulthood they tend to try to complete or compensate for the lack in relationships with others. This tendency toward attachment is automatic and outside conscious awareness.

Sometimes relationships are an attempt to complete the self the same way it was completed in the original family system.

Human beings will attempt to complete the self in relationships to the degree that it is incomplete by itself. At the same time, the others in their systems will also be aiming for self-completion. The effort to make a complete self out of two undifferentiated selfs results in a fusion of selves.

The two together comprise the guidance systems of the self. At higher levels of differentiation of basic self, people have more choice about whether to follow the guidance of the thinking self or the guidance of the emotional/feeling self. They are better able to separate these two functions. At lower levels of differentiation, the intellectual and emotional guidance systems are fused, allowing little or no choice between the two and making the intellect essentially emotionally driven.

Thinking, decision making, and behavior originating in the functional self is not optimal. A person with proportionately more functional self has fewer of the benefits of principled inner guidance and will tend to repeat patterns from the past and react to emotional environments more intensely. The better developed (or larger) the basic self, the smaller the functional or pseudo self, and the less permeable (or more intact) the boundaries. Conversely, the less developed (or smaller) the basic self, the larger the functional or pseudo self, and the more permeable (or negotiable) the boundaries

In summary, people at lower levels on the scale have difficulty with decision-making; because they have less choice between thinking and feeling, more of their choices are emotionally driven. If they appreciate this fact, they may freeze into indecision when a choice must be made. Their relationships are difficult.

Emotions are rarely contained within the individual. Rather, they flow endlessly from person to person within the family.

Clinically it seems that in order to change an emotional pattern, the thinking brain must work hard, sometimes for a long time. Also, strong emotion seems to override logical thought; processing information is logically difficult if not impossible during times of heightened emotion.

The human dyad is so unstable that when two people who are important to each other develop a problem, which they invariably do, they automatically look around for a third person to include in the anxious situation in some way. The third person is brought into participation in the anxiety of the original twosome, and thus anxiety flows around the triangle.

The better this system of interlocking triangles in any emotional system is understood, the better the emotional forces in it are understood. It is impossible to “think systems,” therefore, without at least a rudimentary understanding of triangles.

The more one can see the systems-of-triangles perspective, the less prone one will be to take sides, to take things personally, to take thoughtless positions, or to assign blame. When one is thinking systems, one is less prone to adopt the closed-minded position in which one claims to know all the answers, since systems thinking assumes a complexity in reality that is open-ended and always allows for the admission of new data.

People can become completely absorbed in an effort to find out how to resolve their differences or how to make someone else behave according to expectations.

If one can focus on and manage emotional process better, one is better able to resolve the issues.

For example, if every time anxiety rises one becomes critical, a tendency to criticize can be used as a marker of intensifying anxiety. This enhances the ability to watch for the process behind that anxiety so it can be managed better.

The ability to watch for process implies, and will promote, the development of an advancing degree of competence in the management of the emotional part of the self. This is because, in order to observe emotional process, it is necessary to stay emotionally calm. Watching emotional process requires the detached focus of a scientist; the moment one’s emotions intensify, one sees less clearly. Since emotional reactivity is infectious, it requires self-discipline to watch emotional process calmly and not become emotionally aroused. And like any new skill, the more one works at it, the more adept one becomes. In time, as the ability to see process as well as issues improves, the ability to manage one’s own emotions is strengthened.

Two people meet. They are attracted. They begin to see each other frequently. They talk a great deal, sharing reams of personal history. Their attraction grows into intensely positive feelings generated whenever they are together. After a while, the feelings are aroused just by the thought of each other. They fuse, emotionally, two selves into one. A symptom of that fusion is the ability of one person to stimulate, or trigger, the other emotionally. If one is happy, the other is happy. If one is sad, the other is sad. More specifically, if one is intense emotionally, the other becomes intense. Sometimes intense elation or sadness in one can trigger anger or frustration in the other.

Usually what people do in a relationship crisis is more of the same thing they have been doing, only more intensely and more anxiously.

One’s own part of the relationship pattern is the only part that one has the power to change. But just as it takes two to make a fight, it takes two (or more) to make any of the relationship patterns.

Thinking is required to understand the pattern, how family patterns enter into it, what one’s own contribution to the pattern is, and how to change that. Practice is required, too. One’s own part in relationship patterns, learned by watching objectively, can always be improved by patient trial and error.

Somewhat distinct from emotions are “feelings,” which are simply emotions that have come into awareness.

In fact, emotional intensity and feelings can wreak havoc in relationships, partly because so many hard-wired emotional patterns are counterproductive to relationships.

Anxiety, of course, is part and parcel of the human condition: There is no escaping it. Since anxiety is a powerful teacher, it is doubtful that anyone would want to live a totally anxiety-free life. Anxiety can be acute (short-term), as in a crisis, or it can be chronic, lasting many years or even generations.

Emotional reactivity passes like a hot potato between individuals. When one anxious individual succeeds in exciting a second, the first is often relieved. In humans, this phenomenon results in nothing ever getting resolved. The problem that triggered the emotions is never addressed; emotions are merely generated and then circuited and recircuited through the system.

Emotionally mature (highly differentiated) individuals seem able to absorb a large amount of stress or be around other excited individuals without themselves becoming emotionally excited or passing it on. This is part of what is meant by having more choice about being in emotions or in thinking.

Patterns may intensify over time. This is because when things are not going well, the human tends to redouble efforts rather than change the quality of the process.

If two partners in a relationship work on their own levels of differentiation, their relationship will automatically improve. If even one of the partners works to raise his or her level of differentiation, the relationship will do better over the long term. This is because, in time, the other partner will almost always raise his or her level also. A person cannot change his or her half of the relationship problem without changing the relationship fundamentally.

“If only one of the two could calm down!” And this is true: If one of two conflicted parties in a relationship could learn to remain calm and thoughtful in the face of the anxiety of the other, there would be no conflict. It actually does take two to make a fight.

Differentiation of self has everything to do with improving one’s own emotional functioning. It has nothing to do with changing the other, so Mr. C had to learn to stay on track with himself. He had to learn to suspend all criticism, censure, and challenge and attempt always only to manage himself better emotionally.

When a fight or argument is brewing, what can one do about it? What can be done or said outside of the usual pattern? Just watching the process is itself calming. Calm, thoughtful, careful watching can often teach one what is needed to make significant changes in one’s own part of the relationship pattern.

The goal of decreasing one’s reactivity to the other’s emotions is often perceived as distancing oneself from the other person. But distance is itself an emotionally patterned reaction. If one leaves the scene or stops one’s half of the conversation, that too is emotional intensity. The goal is not to react as emotionally intensely and to continue to stay in calm communication with the other person. This is not easy to attain, but simply having it in mind is useful.

A great deal of practice is required before any new behaviors become part of the working emotional repertoire. When they do, one has pushed one’s level of differentiation of self up to a higher level.

If a relationship is stuck in feeling intensity, disguised outwardly by superficiality, silence, and avoidance, it is important to get in touch with the emotional intensity that underlies the distant stance. If one does not, to some degree, differentiate self from the togetherness that generates that intensity, one will usually try another relationship posture in the interest of doing something different. The solution for a relationship posture is not another posture, however, nor is it intense closeness. Rather, intense closeness is one of the stances of relationship fusion from which distance may ultimately develop. When people can get to calm, thoughtful definition of self that comes from thought-out principles, they are on their way out of a pattern.

As she dumped less feeling intensity into the relationship, she perceived less distance from her partner. Less distance from him was calming to her, so a different, more productive kind of relationship interaction developed.

The range of possibilities for contact open to human beings is extremely large, ranging from conversations that can last hours to something as brief as a pull on a pigtail. However, just a small attempt to make contact with the other person on a regular basis can put a distant relationship back on track.

When people become familiar with their own patterns, they are in a position to recognize the anxiety that lies beneath the patterned behavior.

Any relationship may become overtaxed if the partners routinely bring their emotional reactions into it.

If overfunctioning is present, one might see: advice-giving doing things for others that they could do for themselves worrying about other people feeling responsible for others, knowing what is best for them talking more than listening having goals for others that they don’t have for themselves experiencing periodic, sudden “burnouts”

Often overfunctioners, though they may lead productive lives much of the time, may themselves be subject to sudden physical illness or “burnout” because of the stress involved in taking responsibility for two people.

When people who are ready to make changes are asked who they feel equal to in their systems, the answer is often “no one.” People mired in this stance will sometimes feel above or below everyone in their extended families and work places. Teaching oneself to feel equal in relationships can be a major task.