Why Loved Ones Become Strangers

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

One of the most prominent systemic family psychotherapists of the twentieth century - Murray Bowen, like most other family (and not only) psychologists, believed that a person's life directly depends on the conditions in which he grew up. In other words, parent-child relationships are the foundation of the entire subsequent life of a person …

It so happens in life that yesterday a person close to us, today becomes completely distant and cold.

And we cannot always understand the reasons for such sharp turns, especially if we have not done anything that could provoke such a reaction.

Naturally, each person has his own characteristics, but when one of them is to break off relations once and for all, it brings pain to others. And surely many do not understand why it is so necessary for someone to remove from the field of vision everything that in one way or another can remind of the "expelled" from his life. It is not clear why to break the chains of contacts connecting with the "exiled". And it is very difficult to understand what is the meaning of the sacrifice of people whose statements express something like this: "For your sake, I do not communicate with anyone from my past life, I have deleted everyone from my memory." Probably few people want to get into the same list of "deleted from memory". And once in it, many begin to look for reasons in themselves and blame themselves for badness.

Familiarity with Bowen theory allows you to get answers to questions why this is how it happens. Namely:

“The child tries to make an emotional breakup by distance - geographic and / or psychological - with the illusion of 'freedom' from family ties. He tries to become a 'cut off chunk.' life is still filled with them, and it is natural that the child will reproduce them in new close relationships. Therefore, anxiety can be associated with intimacy, and then the person will build his life in such a way as to avoid intimacy. Thus, emotional breakup is not a solution to the problem, but a sign of its presence.

… The most common cause of emotional breakdown is the inability to meet the expectations of the other. This happens to children who, having idealized ideas about their parents, feel guilty about not being "worthy" son / daughter."

Thus, when we meet people "burning bridges" when the conflict and the level of stress increase, it can be assumed that most of them, for some reason, were unable to separate from their parental figures in time. Could not build relationships with parents, interacting with them through their true self.

But if you go even deeper, you can see that this pattern of behavior is often passed down from generation to generation. If in the above you recognize yourself or someone from your acquaintances, try to remember, perhaps in this family system there are relatives who have completely stopped communicating with each other due to some (explicit or latent) conflict. Or there is an unspoken agreement not to mention a specific person, as if he does not exist, or even to consider him dead. It can also be family members living in the same territory, but not connected (as it may seem to them) by anything other than everyday life. Or systematically quarreling, family members ignoring each other for a long time.

Bowen believed that "Striving to be someone who you really are not in order to avoid stress in relationships leads to an emotional breakup." Therefore, it is very important for close relationships that people present themselves to the other as they are. But it is important not only to be yourself, it is also important to be able to accept the other as he is, without trying to fix and not hoping that he will change.