Almost finished reading "Women Who Love Too Much"

Still reading “Women Who Love Too Much”, by psychologist Robin Norwood, and finding it fascinating.

This is my take on the book, right now. I’ve tried to be clear as to when I’m discussing the writer’s own points and when I’m adding my own thoughts.

Robin Norwood’s point of departure is that girls who grow up in families that are dysfunctional in any way end up being adults who make poor choices of partners, with seriously unhappy consequences, and that there’s a direct causal link between the childhood experiences and the adult choices.

She expands on what she means by “dysfunctional”, saying it includes things as obvious as any form of abuse (substance, physical, emotional, sexual), divorce, to things as seemingly innocuous as perfectionism, religious fundamentalism or any kind of excessive behaviour by one of the parents, including workaholism. (She purports that the male equivalent of ‘women who love too much’ is workaholism.)

Another of her theories is that we unconsciously revert to forms of behaviour, as adults, that we engaged in as children, simply because they’re familiar. She likens it to a dance, saying we do a form of dance with the parent of the opposite sex, and that whatever that dance (relationship) was like, regardless of whether it made us happy or not, we generally resort to that same set of ‘moves’ in our adult relationships with the opposite sex. Which means that, when we meet someone and the “fit” feels completely right, or the feeling of being with the person is so “comfortable” or familiar, that’s because it’s reminiscent of our childhood experiences. Scary already? Imagine how the whole book makes you feel! Especially if you started reading it because, like me, you see a pattern in your adult relationships with men that does not lead to fulfillment or happiness, but rather to disappointment and disillusionment.

So here’s an even more scary fact: you can actually go from one man to another, each seemingly different, and yet, because you’re carrying your same unresolved issues around inside, you’ll keep reaching the same unhappy conclusion!

She deals with the fact that in many families, children end up taking on adult responsibilities way too young, and that this tends to surface in situations where one parent is absent, either temporarily, sporadically or permanently. The child in the house starts to “take care” of the adult in the house, as a way of demonstrating love and gratitude, perceiving and trying to compensate for the lack of those things in that parent’s life. Sometimes this relationship becomes so complex, that it gets in the way of healthy adult relationships later on. The potential for the parent to engage in emotional blackmail in order to maintain the status quo, could also present problems. (This is where the stereotype of the jealous, manipulative mother-in-law finds its roots, I’d imagine.)

One of the most fascinating theories in the book is on the topics of denial and control, which she says are typically experienced by people in dysfunctional families. She says that children in unhappy homes often resort to denial, as a way of coping with what’s happening. This is usually accompanied by a strong need to control whatever can be controlled, since everything else feels so out of control. The issues of denial and control follow these children into adulthood, as they become the main way of coping and getting along in life. What’s particularly fascinating is how the denial and control manifest, which is usually in forms of behaviour that at face value come across as nurturing, caring, helping. The more extreme the need is to control (the environment, hence the people), the more extreme the “helping” ends up being. And so people get accolades for their humanitarian work, etc. or their successful careers in the helping professions, but what they’re actually doing is acting out old coping mechanisms that became a way of life.

In daily interactions, there is a point at which these offers of help become excessive and annoying, since the complexity of the issues at hand means lots of little games are being played all of the time: reject my offer of help and you’re obviously rejecting me as a person. Then I’ll sulk until you feel so bad, you’ll do anything I ask you to, in order to make me feel better. Some people live by these games – they actually don’t know how to engage in healthy daily encounters, free of the guilt and manipulative strategies. When they eventually do encounter people with healthier ways of communicating, who confidently articulate their boundaries, it’s easier to gang up against that person than to look at their own patterns and see the shortcomings that lie therein.

She talks about how children in troubled families typically resort to one of three forms of behaviour: being good, being bad (to distract the family from its real problems, and to provide a scapegoat for what’s going wrong), or being invisible, not drawing any attention to themselves.

The more I read the book and think about the people in my life, starting with myself, I can see how spot-on she is with her theories. Denial is such a strong coping mechanism – it can shape the way we use language, in our unconscious attempts to avoid dealing with the ugliness of the reality of our lives. When someone is passed out in a drunken stupor every single time his guests leave after a party, the sentence used to articulate the alcoholism is, “Tommy likes to take a drink now and then.” I don’t think so. Undiagnosed he may be, but Tommy is an alcoholic. His children learn the patterns modeled by the mom, and they go on, in turn, to hide ugly realities with euphemisms, denying the sadness in their own lives, years later, because that’s what nice girls do. Nice girls don’t make a fuss. “Never let yourself be called a nagging wife.” Why the hell not? The unspoken threat is, “He’ll leave you.” And you know how terrible it felt when your original family broke up; in fact you probably felt guilty in part, although you never quite knew why, but you silently make a mental note to yourself, that you’ll never cause a man to leave you. Whether that ends up making you choose someone you feel you can dominate, or turns you into the one who always has to do the breaking up, the scars remain.

And one doesn’t become wiser with age, with this kind of thing. I know people a generation older than me who are still living their lives trying to be invisible, trying not to draw attention to themselves, putting themselves at risk because they don’t want to ask anyone for help. So afraid to put a step wrong in the eyes of the world, in case people think they’re bad in any way. So scared to disappoint anyone, because “what will the people think/say”? Denial. Denial.

Flipside of the coin = control.
A: “I’ll do X or Y for you, so that you can take a break.”
B: “But I’m happy to do it myself; I really don’t mind.”
A: “I said I’d do it for you ok? Can’t you see I’m trying to help? Don’t you appreciate my offer to help? One day I won’t be around, and you’ll regret it.”
B: “Seriously, I really don’t mind doing it myself.”
A: “No, you’ve had a busy day, and I WANT to do it for you! I’m just trying to make life a little easier for you.”

After years of the same battle, person B has to decide if in this instance it’s worth anyone’s while to tackle the controlling attempts of person A, or not.

And then you have whole families of people caught up after years of doing the same dance in the unhealthy patterns of I’ll-manipulate-you-and-you’ll-do-what-I-say. Enter the outsider, the person marrying into that family, and then the sparks potentially fly. Unless you’re wary (or cowardly?) enough and you conveniently marry someone who fits right in.

Another very interesting dynamic she refers to is the way families react when someone from within the ranks calls the dysfunctionalism for what it is, and declares that he/she is no longer going along with the game. Families close ranks, and the member who dares to go against the established order becomes the outcast. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes overt. In extreme cases that reach the media, you hear of one person alleging publicly that she was a victim of incest as a child. Because this revelation threatens the carefully guarded family secret, and the implications for others in the family are huge, families often shun the one who went public, refusing to corroborate her claims.

One of the most fascinating things she points out in the book, which has opened my eyes yet again to the messages given to us by the media – movies, advertisements, talk shows, soap operas, magazines, etc. – is how the perceptions that love has to hurt and being in love is dramatic, even painful, are perpetuated. Women wonder why they’re attracted to “bad boys”, but it’s taught to us from an early age: love hurts! When we meet a nice, loving man, who appreciates us and is prepared to accept us as we are, we feel deprived of the angst, the heartache, the swooning, yearning, the pain that we read about in all those romantic novels as teenagers! And we reject said “normal” man in favour of the one with the dark brooding looks, the one who makes our pulses race, the emotionally unavailable one. Hell, he’s the one we want to marry! In fact, most of us do, and then we do the other thing that the media perpetuates as recommendable (and possible) – we go about trying to CHANGE the man! I read a one-liner that said: “Never try to change a man unless he’s wearing diapers.” I think it was Oprah Winfrey who said those wise words!

A powerful message that comes through in the book is that, just like people can be addicted to substances (alcohol, drugs, food) and practices (sex, gambling), there are many women who are addicted to relationships, and instead of healing first and then moving on in a healthy way, they go from one bad relationship to another, sometimes with disastrous (even tragic) effects. A scary reality is that, as these unhappy relationships start to take their toll on women’s self-esteem, other addictions often set in as a form of coping with the unhappiness; in many women, the excessive intake of food or alcohol is a form of refuge. By the time these women go for help, there’s often more than one destructive pattern at work.

I’m at the part of the book that talks about how to break the patterns and move on to life a healthy life, making healthy relationship - and other – choices. The most important thing is that you can’t do it alone, so you need some kind of support structure. A list is provided of some of the most important steps to recovery, and the writer expands on each item on the list.

2010 is going to be a very significant year in my life.