2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
One of the worst characteristics of an emotionally dependent relationship is that it ends very badly. And the point is not even that these relations come to their end with some very unpleasant results (this topic is worthy of a separate presentation), but that they cannot end for a long time even when they have completely exhausted themselves. Most often it looks like this: for one member of the couple, the relationship is over, but for the other they still last, and moreover, it is during this period that they become most important. It is as if the value of a relationship is recognized at the moment when their continuity is threatened. And in order to survive in this crisis, the one who is “abandoned” is forced to split his reality into two parts: the one in which the object of attachment is no longer present and the one where he is still present and the relationship with him enters the phase of intensive development.
The word “throw” is not taken in quotes by accident, since its etymology reflects the nature of the relationship in an emotionally dependent couple, in which one partner does not just provide support, but in fact, holds the life of the other in his hands. If I am thrown, then I myself cannot provide stability and resist gravity; therefore, I need someone to provide that which precedes the relationship itself - security and stability. An equal relationship is possible between two autonomous individuals. In the case of emotional dependence, the opportunity to be in a relationship is not within the person who enters into a relationship, but outside, in the object of his attachment. In such a situation, a relationship is always a relationship plus something else; what tends to affect the deepest layers of identity. Emotionally dependent relationships are hyper-symbolized when, for example, it seems that the partner is unique, inimitable and “we were created for each other,” or in these relationships the last chance is realized, and the clock is ticking, or when only in these relationships it is possible to receive recognition, etc. etc.
This phenomenon - when you get something else with the help of relationships besides symbolic exchange, when relationships guarantee survival and without them the world around turns into psychotic chaos - is key to understanding the dynamics of an emotionally dependent personality. Freud described this conjuncture in the classic work "Grief and Melancholy," which examines the various options for experiencing loss. From his point of view, the grieving person understands what he has lost, while the melancholic does not fully realize what exactly has disappeared from his life. Due to the fact that his additional investment in the lost object of affection is unconscious, the confusion and panic that arise when parting turns out to be excessive and inadequate to the situation. The feeling of reassurance that the missing partner guaranteed disappears with him. It seems that life itself ends with the relationship. The seams parted and the ship leaked. The partner not only left, but, without suspecting anything, took with him that part of me that I had invested in him and now there is less of me for myself. This is what, in the case of melancholy, Freud called the impoverishment of the narcissistic libido.
Let us consider the assumption that emotionally dependent people do not build attachment, but adherence and a kind of interpenetration, when the border of contact between them passes not along the edge of the personality, but somewhere inside it. Why is this happening? Consider this issue from several angles. We can say that emotionally dependent people cannot appropriate the experience of a relationship. It is easy to observe how their anxiety increases at the slightest sign of misunderstanding or quarrel. It is as if the entire history of the relationship is being crossed out by the current conflict and the possibility of the future is at stake in the present moment. One gets the impression that the partner exists for exactly the same amount of time as I look at him, and when he shifts from the trajectory of his gaze, I don't even have a memory of the time we spent together. It turns out that an emotionally dependent person has difficulty forming internal objects, that is, ideas about a partner, on which she can rely in his absence. If I am unable to regulate my anxiety on my own (through prior good experience), I will need the presence of someone to do it for me.
The emotionally dependent person does not do some of the important work that needs to be done in a relationship. It forms attachment through identification, that is, it connects with its object “directly”, without any intermediate symbolic zone. This corresponds to a situation where the projections are not checked, because if reality is different from ideas about it, then this is a problem of reality itself. Therefore, in emotionally dependent couples, there is often a demand for a partner who does not “fit” well into the projection. The partner ceases to be an autonomous object, he is captured by obligations and instead of gratitude for what is, he often hears reproaches for what is not happening. Capture implies violation of boundaries and we already talked about this phenomenon when we noted where the dividing line of contact passes. The addict tries to appropriate for himself what belongs to the other and therefore needs his constant presence nearby.
This presence is not appropriated because not everything that happens outside becomes part of the inner experience. Symbolization, which is a necessary condition for the formation of an internal object, requires that two parts are connected in a symbol - the one that contains the question and the one that contains the answer. It is important that the answer is always, to a greater or lesser extent, somewhat different from the question and does not correspond to it entirely. Actually, the symbol is precisely the compensation for this discrepancy, since with the complete identity of the request and the response, we observe identification in the merge. The symbol contains a lack that points to another object (or this one, but in a different time) and this offers an opportunity for development. It can be said that symbolization repeats the oedipal situation in which the appearance of the father figure prevents the mother from absorbing the child and turns him towards the search for new and new answers. At the relationship level, what was said above is expressed in the inevitability of disappointment with a partner and the ability to make this disappointment an element of their experience. In other words, I either get discouraged and keep living, or hope and keep chasing.
Symbolization is carried out on two levels. The first, basic, leads to the appearance in the psyche of the representation of things, this is the level when I understand and feel something, but I cannot (did not try) to explain. The second level - the representation of words - occurs when an attempt is made to express these feelings to another. We can say that in an emotionally dependent couple, communication occurs to a greater extent at the level of representation of things, that is, personal unconscious expectations, than with reliance on a shared reality created with the help of language, that is, secondarily symbolized. Symbolization indirectly draws personal boundaries that are blurred in dependent relationships, as it constitutes reality rather than condoning premature dwelling on the illusion of understanding the other.
An emotionally dependent person does not transform a partner into an internal representation, but seeks to appropriate him for himself through retention and control. An emotionally dependent person cannot give up fantasies about their partner, since they carry a deep existential meaning. He symbolizes not a partner, but a relationship that saves him from collision with his under-filled inner world. Therefore, parting with the object of dependence plunges the personality into a long melancholic process, which ends due to symbolization, that is, filling oneself with representations of the other and the quality of relations with him.
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