Choice Theory (5 page)

Our ability to start to satisfy our needs before we know what we are doing or why we are doing it is one of nature’s strokes of genius. Evolution has provided humans and higher-order animals with genes that grant us the ability
to feel.
On the basis of this ability, the first thing we know and more than anything we will ever know is
how we feel.
Because we have the most diverse and complex needs of all living creatures, we have the widest range of feelings. But no matter how complex our feelings are, whether we feel good or bad, we also remember what we were doing when we felt very good or very bad. On the basis of these memories, we struggle to feel as good as we can and, as much as we are able, try to avoid feeling bad. Therefore, the tangible motivation for all our behaviors is to feel as good as possible as often as possible.

But as we grow from infancy to childhood and then to adulthood, we discover that feeling good becomes more and more difficult because our relationships with people grow much more complex. To the toddler on the airplane, things were simple: If it hurts, scream and try to get mother to solve the problem. To the twelve-year-old, things were more complicated: Bear the pain and don’t try to get mother to do what she can’t do; if I scream, I may endanger my relationship with her. So as much as we want to feel good and avoid pain, our relationships with the people we learn we need have a significant effect on what we choose to do.

To achieve a good relationship, most of us are willing to suffer pain, even a lot of pain, because the relationship is more important to us than the suffering. To gain, keep, and improve relationships, we are willing to engage in long-term unpleasant activities because we believe that in the end, we will feel better and get closer to the people we need. Even without the promise of a better relationship, most of us are willing to delay pleasure or suffer pain in the hope that we will feel better or suffer less later.

But even when we are unhappy, our genes do not limit our ability to feel good to a pleasurable relationship. To expand on what I began at the end of the last chapter, there are things we can do for pleasure that don’t depend on anyone except ourselves. Beginning early in life, most people masturbate for pleasure. We may fantasize others while we do so, but the pleasure does not depend on them. We also get pleasure from hurting people—putting them down is a frequent way we do so—which may satisfy our need for power even though it frustrates our need for love and belonging in the process. We can satisfy our survival genes by engaging in nonloving sex, just using another person’s body for pleasure. We can fool our brains with addictive drugs that provide feelings that are similar to how we feel when any need is satisfied.

Our society functions as well as it does because most of us never give up the search for happiness, never give up on the idea that even though people may not be easy to get along with, we need them. We struggle together to survive. It is easier, more efficient,
and usually feels better than if we struggle by ourselves. Of course, we need others to satisfy our need for love and belonging. We discover that it feels good to use some of our power to help others and that we may gain more power in the process. When we seek freedom, we do so with the hope that someone will always welcome us back when we want to come back. We prefer learning and having fun with others. This is the ideal way to satisfy our basic needs—trying to get close and stay close to each other.

People who have no close relationships are almost always lonely and feel bad. They have no confidence that they will feel good tomorrow because tomorrow will be as lonely as today. Unlike happy people, they concentrate on short-term pleasure. The alcoholic lives for the immediate feeling provided by alcohol; that he may wrap his car around a tree does not cross his mind. Where pleasure is concerned, unhappy people may be totally irrational when they are seeking instant gratification.

Although the actual feelings that accompany pleasure without relationships may be similar to how we feel when we are enjoying relationships, the activities that lead to these similar feelings are different. Beware of getting involved with people who seem to be able to feel good but have no close friends. They may be witty and fun to be around, but their humor is all put-downs and hostility. If you marry such a person, you will soon be the recipient of that hostile humor and may regret it for the rest of your marriage. Look for someone who has good friends whom he or she treats well and whom you enjoy being with, too. Someone who does not have good friends does not know how to love.

Assuming that we feel good much of the time and keep close to others who feel the same,
how
we feel tells us with great accuracy how well we are satisfying our need for love and belonging (and how well the other needs are satisfied if we satisfy them with people we care about). Each of us has a unique level of need satisfaction that tells us that this or that need is satisfied and additional effort is not worthwhile. I explain this idea further in chapter 5 when I discuss the strength of individual needs.

If you get up in the morning and feel miserable, you can be
sure that one or more of the five basic needs is not satisfied to the extent you would like to satisfy that need or needs. For example, if you wake up with the flu, the
pain
tells you that your need to
survive
is being threatened by an infection. If you awaken
lonely
because your last child has just left for college, your need for
love and belonging
is acutely unsatisfied. If you are up for a promotion at work and you will get the news today, your edginess is your way of dealing with this possible
loss of power.
If you get the promotion, you will feel good; if not, you will feel worse than you feel right now. If you have been counting on being
free
to go on a family vacation and discover that the dog is missing, you are angry because you are not at liberty to leave until you find him. If you are scheduled to have
fun
playing tennis, but it’s starting to rain, you don’t have to wonder if your need for fun is frustrated; your disappointment tells you immediately that it is.

Once you learn about the needs, you can usually recognize which are frustrated when you feel bad and which are satisfied when you feel good. It may not be as obvious as in these clear-cut examples, but you can usually figure it out if you take the time.

All living creatures are genetically programmed to struggle to survive. The Spanish word
ganas
describes the strong desire to engage in this struggle better than any word I know. It means the desire to work hard, carry on, do whatever it takes to ensure survival, and go beyond survival to security.
Ganas
is a highly valuable trait; if you want a job done, hire someone with a lot of it. If you are looking for a mate you can count on to help build a family and a life with you, find one with
ganas
and treat him or her well. Try not to criticize this motivated mate; you don’t want the
ganas
turned against you.

The other aspect of survival, the survival of the species, is based on sexual pleasure and, from a genetic standpoint, has been highly successful. There are few places where there is a shortage
of people. Sex is, of course, involved with our other needs beyond survival; sex for pleasure is very often on the minds of many people. Whether or not love is combined with sex, birth control is an easy way to increase this pleasure, perhaps one of the best ways that human beings have figured out to eat their cake and have it, too.

One of the differences between human survival and the survival of animals is that early in life, humans become aware of the need to survive, both now and in the future. We make an effort to live our lives in ways that lead to longevity. Many people exercise, diet, and even buy bottled water in the hope of living healthier and longer lives. Unfortunately, fat, which is readily available but is harmful to survival, tastes good because our distant ancestors survived by eating it. Some of us give up our lives for cheeseburgers, but usually not until our children are well launched. So the genetic pleasure associated with eating fat is still with us and has to be overridden if we want to be healthy. But since we are conscious of the future, many of us are not comfortable eating fat, and this discomfort helps some of us avoid it.

I recognize that there are millions of people who suffer continually from hunger and disease because they do not have enough food or medical care. These people are not choosing to go hungry or without medical care. The pain of hunger is automatic, built into our need to survive, but this book does not deal directly with this kind of involuntary deprivation. I do, however, cover voluntary deprivation in some detail when I explain why so many teenage girls choose to starve themselves, a few even to death. Their doing so is an example of the ability to override one need, survival, for another, power. If survival was still the single basic need, there could be no anorexia and, of course, no suicide.

Choice theory can be applied to all human activities, including survival, but this book focuses on social activity: how giving up external control can help us to get along better with each other. However, it is interesting to note that in our violent society, getting along better with each other may have a lot to do with survival. For young men, gunshot wounds, not disease or accidents,
are the leading cause of death. That many more would survive if they could get along better with each other is obvious. In our prehistoric past, survival was the single basic need, as it is with almost all animals today. But gradually, those who loved gained a survival advantage and, as this advantage continued, love began to separate from survival and became a basic need on its own. The same happened with power. As time went on, those who succeeded in achieving power had a much better chance of surviving than did those with little power, so the need for power also became a separate need.

To escape from the domination of others so we could more easily survive, we needed freedom; thus, it, too, became a separate need and served as a buffer against power. Fun, which is the genetic reward for learning, also became a separate need as we began to learn many things that were unrelated to survival but closely related to how to gain more love, power, and freedom. It is these additional lifelong needs beyond survival that make our lives so complicated, so different from those of animals. Next, I begin to take a closer look at the four
new, beyond survival,
needs, beginning with love and belonging, so you can better understand these complications. More will be explained about these psychological needs as I go further into the intricacies of choice theory, but what follows is a necessary beginning.

Almost every great book, play, or opera tells the story of people who, seeking sexual love, often start out well but fail miserably later on as criticizing, blaming, complaining, and jealousy take their toll on the relationship. The beginning isn’t so difficult. But our love and belonging genes demand that we keep love going for our whole lives, a demand that is hard to satisfy in an external control world. In time, many of what seemed in the beginning to be good relationships start to deteriorate. It is this deterioration that makes the trials and tribulations of love so interesting in literature.
If the love continued strong, there would be no story. Infidelity, murder, suicide, and mental illness are the common miseries associated with deteriorating love. The feelings of jealousy, abandonment, revenge, and despair often dominate the lovers’ behavior.

But whether they kill, die, or suffer lesser degrees of misery, all people who are unhappy in love are involved in the first three variations of external control described in chapter I, all variations of
You make me miserable, and I want you to change.
The books and plays, while often extreme in their portrayal of this misery, are accurate. Failure at love may top the list of human misery.

Love, as all of us know, is hard to define. But however we define it, all of us believe we know the difference between being in love, which feels ecstatic, and not being in love when we want to be, which feels miserable. Later in this book, using a choice theory concept that I will explain, I offer a definition of love that has worked for many people. But for now, use whatever definition of love you are comfortable with. For what I am going to explain here, we need not have the same definition.

Although we are driven to find both love and belonging, we rarely have difficulty with belonging or friendship. We make and keep friends easily. It is love, mainly sexual love, that is the most frustrating part of this need. Because infidelity is almost universally fantasized when sexual love is not satisfying, there is no evidence that we are genetically driven to find sexual love with the same person for our entire lives. Our genes want someone; they don’t care whom. This truth is evident in the high divorce rate and the almost equally high remarriage rate, but, as I stated earlier, divorce is hardly the only indicator of an unhappy marriage. There are probably more unhappily married people who never divorce than those who do.

In most of our minds, satisfying sex and satisfying love go together. But when we get married and make a commitment to each other for life, we have no idea how difficult it will be to keep both sex and love going for anywhere near a lifetime. As the relationship continues and the coercion with which too many of us try to control each other starts to take its toll, the association between sex
and love becomes tenuous to nonexistent. It is hard, if not impossible, to love someone who wants to control and change you or someone you want to control and change. Sex usually continues in the marriage, but it now becomes controlling. One or both partners practice external control and no longer finds love in the marriage. And each blames the other for how lonely they both now feel.