The Nine Rooms of Happiness: Loving Yourself, Finding Your Purpose, and Getting Over Life's Little Imperfections (9 page)

We would tell Joanna to think about how she contributes to the disconnecting circles. Is she actually encouraging Rick to disappear with his dad but feeling resentful in the end? Is she standing on ceremony with her usual rituals and not being flexible about fitting in with his family? Maybe she can lighten up on the strict diet, or figure out a way to better connect, even if it’s just over the kids. The point isn’t to “win” or occupy the high moral ground; the point is to overlap.

Sarah fights with her older brother almost every day, and his abusive phone calls are wearing her out. Yes, they love each other, but they are still having the same fight they’ve been having their entire lives, which is about his need to run every aspect of her life. She puts up with it because she feels responsible for him. “Teddy is antisocial and angry and I’m the only person who puts up with him. He’s single, brilliant, acerbic, and funny, but he’s a tech geek and he spends most of his waking hours alone and not connecting with people in a meaningful way.” She says she has put up with his abuse because “How else is he going to feel loved?”

Consequently, she regularly gets phone calls during which he yells at her when she doesn’t do exactly what he says, about everything from her landlord situation to her relationship with her husband and anything else he might have an opinion about. She hangs up the phone and wants to cry. She wants him to butt out, but she can’t break the cycle.

Their parents stay out of it because they’re older and have their own issues with Teddy, since he was always a difficult child who got straight As but was impossible to be with. Sarah feels she is the only one who can save him from total isolation.

The sibling dynamic is one of the most complicated ones we deal with as adults because both parties are constantly evolving, yet both get stuck in the past. Whether you are the “oldest” or “youngest,” the “smart one” or the “athlete,” the “pleaser” or the “problem child,” Mom’s favorite or Daddy’s Little Princess, the role you had in your family while growing up is nearly impossible to shake.

The problem here: They’re mired in the past. Catherine calls this being “fossilized.” The unconscious process is once again “repetition compulsion.” The question is, what purpose is this pattern serving now? Is this behavior somehow soothing or protecting you? Who benefits and who is
allowing it to happen? There may be some emotional benefit, but it’s also keeping you down. Ask yourself: What is this costing you and how is it affecting your happiness?

For the answer you have to consider the memories in your basement. Catherine says you replicate patterns of how you communicated love as a child, and if you grew up in a house where bickering is a form of connecting, then you perceive that as love. You can’t bicker with your friends or work colleagues or even spouse, since they will read it as a negative emotion. But your sibling understands that bickering is just “our way” and it will be comforting because it is familiar, just like your mom’s beef stew…even if the meat was overcooked and the vegetables were mushy.

No matter how unhealthy the relationship with a sibling is, you stay “fossilized” as long as you both get something out of it, Catherine says. Often the benefit is the reassuring ping coming back to you, even if it’s a negative one. Perversely, here in the family room, familiarity breeds contentment.

At some point, though, you have to ask yourself, Are we going to be like this all our lives? Watching Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly in
Step Brothers
or any of the Judd Apatow movies where the adults act like pre-adolescents, we all laugh because we can relate to them on so many levels. It’s funny and painful at the same time.

A physical therapist and “soother” by nature, Sarah wants to “fix” hurts and help others feel better. She doesn’t have kids, so Teddy is like her only child. She is gratified by their relationship, except when he gets nasty. She needs to figure out how to get off the phone whenever he gets abusive and tell him, “Teddy, I need to go now, but I will call you later,” and when she does, she can start to turn their conversations in a different direction and stay away from the topics that get him going.

How can Sarah change the dynamic and set limits when needed? A + B = C. She is A, her brother Teddy is B, and C is the current relationship. She can’t control his behavior, Catherine points out, but she can change their dynamic by pulling back and engaging less, including getting off the phone earlier. She doesn’t need to actually hang up on him, just tell him she has to go now, in a civil way, and then hang up. As long as she is
trying to fix him—or letting him upset her—she will be stuck in the same cycle of dependency and never change things.

Sarah needs to understand that she is Teddy’s sister, not his mother, and that is enough. Only then can they return to a healthy sibling relationship. Sarah needs to know that she can be needed without it costing her so much.

Her key process is: “too much of a good thing is a bad thing,” meaning that while she thinks she is being the super sister, always nice and loving, she is doing a disservice to herself and to her brother. Even adults need limits. Placing limits on our relationships is healthy and necessary for safety, boundaries, and comfort. Catherine adds that we have to remember: Limits are a form of love. We all need them. Our happiness depends on it.

Nancy is making enough money to live in a tiny Manhattan apartment on her banking salary and is thrilled to be living away from home, even if it’s just a quick train ride from her parents’ house, where she spends Sunday dinner and brings her laundry with her. Vacations would be local or supercheap without the help her parents give her, and she’d probably not even own a car, much less a new one. Her budget is so tight that she accepts the help even though she hates the fact that it means her parents still have a say in
everything
she does, to the point that she thinks:
What will they say about this guy?
when she meets a new potential boyfriend in a bar. She filters
all her thoughts through the same mind-set she had years ago, when she was a teenager living at home. It’s as if she has her parents looking over her shoulder, even though she’s old enough to make her own decisions.

“They have input on where I live, who I date, what I do with my time…even my wardrobe choices! But I like the lifestyle their help affords me. I hate this bind I’m caught in.”

Her parents enjoy having total input into what she does and perpetuate this dynamic by giving her money. Before Nancy can be happy in the family room she has to get to a few other places in the house and clean them up. Let’s start with the basement, where memories are stored. By her own admission, Nancy enjoys the cozy, comfortable feeling of being taken care of by her parents, such as getting money from her dad to go shopping with her friends. The first time she held out her hand and her dad put a stack of bills in it, she thought,
That was easy.

Little did she know her dad would later ask to see what she bought. She soon learned that if he didn’t approve of her purchases he got tighter with the cash or asked her to return the offending items, like that one time he made her take back a low-cut top and she was humiliated because she knew the salesgirl at the store. The next time she bought a miniskirt she shoved it into her purse so he wouldn’t see it and showed him the more conservative choices instead. She’s still doing it, rebelling by wearing clothes she knows her parents would never approve of, all these years later.

Catherine says the process at work here is acting out, and Nancy has to ask herself why she continues to behave like a child. In her heart she knows that she would be better off in a sensible dress that didn’t make her look overly sexy, but she wears the skirt her dad wouldn’t approve of into the bar as a way of reacting, as opposed to acting.

The problem: She doesn’t want to be controlled, so she is reacting to her father’s voice in her head rather than making her own decisions. But at what cost? She is failing to move ahead and grow up and think: How do I want to represent myself in the world?

She’s “infantilized,” stuck in the role of the child. Catherine says Nancy has to be honest with herself about the fact that she is materially driven
and then decide to either accept her parents’ money and constraints, or live a different and less expensive life on her own terms.

Nancy has to get out of the basement. We’d say: Get to the office and start making your own money, and then live within your means. Grad school can wait, and you can pay for your own life now and live it the way you choose.

So Nancy’s key to cleaning up her family room and being happy there is to think about her life going forward—growing up and untying the parental strings—as a way of leaving the past behind. If she is really invested in breaking this cycle, she has to take responsibility for her behavior and make some changes. (Get a roommate to share the monthly nut? Live without a car?) She can’t expect that her parents will change their desire to control her—which they see as loving—but her own choices can have a real effect on the relationship.

Whenever a pattern of relating ends up frustrating you, think of the relationship equation A + B = C. If Nancy is A and she focuses on a few lifestyle shifts, her overall relationship will change, even if her parents don’t. Nancy needs to pull away slightly, to be more of an individual. She can pull back a little or a lot, but she needs to do it in a way that is appropriate (for example, don’t tear up the check and say, Take this money and shove it!). She should simply tell her parents what she is doing so they understand it’s not meant in an unloving way, just a healthy one. It’s up to her to decide if she wants to go with the status quo or grow up.

The pearl for Nancy is “Go or grow”—she can go along with the flow of her family and their rules or grow by stepping out of the pattern and being her own woman. This is an example of the adult decision making that comes with leaving the family room and the nest, financially and emotionally.

Stephanie is an investment banker who wants to pack as much into her day as she possibly can, starting with a run along the Schuylkill (with her sister Elizabeth), until she goes out after work to meet friends for drinks (with her sister, of course). In between she spends long hours at work, but texts and phones her sister several times a day. “I don’t even talk to my husband that often, so I know it’s weird. But on the other hand, he and I don’t have to check in that much because we don’t have that much to talk about. With Elizabeth it’s like we’re in lockstep. I know I should branch out and meet new people, but I just don’t want to. And whenever I do go off and do my own thing it’s not as much fun without her.”

The sisters take every vacation together, and Stephanie’s husband is resigned to it. He knew, going into the relationship, that he was getting a “two-fer,” but since he and Elizabeth get along great, it works. Sometimes she’s the tiebreaker and a useful ally when he needs one. But Stephanie is now afraid that she’s stuck in her childhood and won’t even want to have kids until her sister is married and having them also.

Catherine refers to this as twinning, a concept first described by Heinz Kohut, M.D., which is when you so connect with a best friend, a sibling, or a work pal that you are overidentified. You want to be alike in order to build strength, feel safe, have a positive pinger right next to you all the time. It’s your built-in security blanket. Twinning can happen in ways big and small, like on a sports team, when you find someone you always pass the ball to, or with a college roommate you only will go to the dining hall with. Later it can be someone you love to socialize with, since you have the same taste in movies and theater, restaurants and bars.

But rarely do you have such a “twin” from cradle to grave; that is when the twin can become an impediment. You move away from the roommate once you graduate, and you might change jobs and be separated from the
work pal. With a sister, it’s harder to get the right amount of separation, since the relationship lasts a lifetime. The twin relationship may get in the way of personal growth. Stephanie, newly married, isn’t bonding with her husband, Sam, the way newlyweds do, while Elizabeth, who’s not seeing anyone, spends nights with her sister and brother-in-law watching TV, and not meeting anyone new, including a potential mate.

The two young marrieds are not figuring out their own way to resolve conflict, and this may later blow up in their faces. All marriages hit bumps. How you deal with them and communicate is the key to whether you get through the inevitable stresses. If Sam and Stephanie never learn to connect, then Stephanie will forever feel “married to” her sister, and her actual marriage may not survive in the long term.