Wired for Love (4 page)

Autonomy versus Mutuality

Implicit in Jenny’s and Bradley’s narrative is a belief that each should stand independent of the other and should not expect to be looked after. We could say their model is one of autonomy. That is, they see themselves as individuals first, and as a couple second. When push comes to shove, they prioritize their personal needs over their needs as a couple. If you questioned them about this, they might reply that they value their independence, or that they are “their own person” and don’t let the other one boss them around.

However, it’s not quite that simple. Yes, each expects the other to behave in an autonomous fashion, but in reality, this is the case only when it suits his or her own purpose. When either finds that the proverbial shoe is now on the other foot, he or she feels dismissed, dropped, and unimportant. This couple’s sense of independence works especially poorly in situations in which they depend on one another to feel important and protected. They are unaware of this problem when they think they’re maintaining their so-called autonomy, but painfully aware when they feel they are the victim of neglect.

I think it’s fair to say the autonomy implied by Jenny’s and Bradley’s behavior is not really autonomy at all. Rather, they are living according to an “If it’s good for me, you should be all right with it” type of agreement. As a result, they continually play out situations wherein they each fail to remember the other person. Their underlying message is “You do your thing and I’ll do my thing.” Sounds mutual, doesn’t it? Yet it is anything but mutual because it requires that the other partner be okay
or else
, and it condones the partners readily throwing one another under the bus. This brand of autonomy doesn’t reflect true independence, but rather a fear of dependency. Instead of representing strength, it can represent weakness.

In contrast, Bram and Greta each appear to know something about how the other thinks and feels, and each cares about that. We can say their model is one of mutuality. It is based on sharing and mutual respect. Neither expects the other to be different from who he or she is, and both use this shared knowledge as a way to protect one another in private as well as public settings. For example, Greta anticipates Bram’s discomfort and addresses it in a way that protects his dignity. She acts as if she needs him, though she knows he is the needier one in this situation. Neither Bram nor Greta is poised to throw the other under the bus. It is as if they maintain a protective bubble around themselves.

The
couple bubble
is a term I like to use to describe the mutually constructed membrane, cocoon, or womb that holds a couple together and protects each partner from outside elements. A couple bubble is an intimate environment that the partners create and sustain together and that implicitly guarantees such things as:

• “I will never leave you.”
  
• “I will never frighten you purposely.”
  
• “When you are in distress, I will relieve you, even if I’m the one who is causing the distress.”
  
• “Our relationship is more important than my need to be right, your performance, your appearance, what other people think or want, or any other competing value.”
  
• “You will be the first to hear about anything and not the second, third, or fourth person I tell.”
  

I say “implicitly,” but couples can and often do make explicit agreements around any or all of the elements that constitute the couple bubble.

Exercise: How Close Are You?

The feeling of closeness is subjective; that is, how close you feel to your partner and how safe you feel both take place within you. You may feel very close to your partner, but he or she isn’t likely to know how you feel unless you say so. And the same goes for how your partner feels about you.

Now, discover some of the ways you offer closeness to your partner.

1. In the previous section, I listed some guarantees couples give one another—for example, saying, “I will never leave you.” What such guarantees have you given to your partner?
   
2. What guarantees would you like to give?
   
3. What guarantees would you like to receive?
   
4. You don’t need to receive a guarantee from your partner before you offer one. Look for moments when you can express your feelings of closeness and promise safety.
   

How Couples Come to Value Autonomy Over Mutuality

Alongside our modern Western emphasis on autonomy, we see increasing evidence of loneliness inside and outside of marriages; a rising incidence of violence and alienation; and divorce rates that, while they may be decreasing, remain well above ideal. Like Jenny and Bradley, couples in distress too often turn to solutions that can be summed up by “You do your thing and I’ll do my thing” or “You take care of yourself and I’ll take care of myself.” We hear pop psychology pronouncements such as “I’m not ready to be in a relationship” and “You have to love yourself before anyone can love you.”

Is any of this true? Is it really possible to love yourself before someone ever loves you?

Think about it. How could this be true? If it were true, babies would come into this world already self-loving or self-hating. And we know they don’t. In fact, human beings don’t start by thinking anything about themselves, good or bad. We learn to love ourselves precisely
because
we have experienced being loved by someone. We learn to take care of ourselves because somebody has taken care of us. Our self-worth and self-esteem also develop because of other people.

If you don’t agree with what I’m suggesting, check it out for yourself. Think of a time when you were young and your parents didn’t believe in you in some way. Were you still able to believe in yourself? Maybe you were. But if so, how did you do it? From where or from whom did you get your belief? Or think of an ex–romantic partner who didn’t believe in you or trust you. Were you able to believe in or trust yourself nonetheless? From where did you get that belief and trust? In each of these cases, chances are very good that if you did believe in yourself, that belief originated with somebody important to you. This is how we come to be as we are: all our prior interactions and relationships have shaped the person we are today.

Many couples who come together these days share various ideals about love relationships, yet their prior experiences of love don’t match up with their ideals. That’s a problem, because nitty-gritty personal history always trumps ideals. This is just the way we’re wired. If, for example, we didn’t witness devotion in our parents’ marriage, we won’t have positive role models for loving to draw upon in our own adult relationships. If we never saw mutual care, sensitivity, and repair in our parents’ marriage, those values likely will elude us.

Our two couples clearly illustrate this principle. Neither Bradley nor Jenny is doing anything radically different from what he or she experienced as a child. For instance, Jenny’s mother often abandoned Jenny’s father in social situations, just as Jenny now abandons Bradley. Jenny never experienced her parents as loving or close. To the contrary, they often used the children in their arguments. Jenny’s mother complained to her father about his going off to be with his pals at the bar and leaving her to fend for herself. Bradley’s parents often were too busy doing their own thing to spend much time with their kids. His mother was known to drive his father out of the house with her criticism, something Bradley also resents whenever he becomes Jenny’s target of harsh judgment.

Neither Bram nor Greta consider their parents perfect, but both felt as children that their parents loved and respected one another. Both have childhood memories of their parents apologizing to one another and fixing without much delay any hurt feelings that arose between them. Greta’s mother was quite skilled at handling Greta’s father, who sometimes got rather grumpy and difficult. Because she had learned from her mother how to respond to him—in the best way, mind you—Greta was never afraid to approach her father. Despite his irascible nature, she knew her father was devoted to her mother’s happiness and well-being.

Bram had a similar experience, though in reverse. His mother was high strung, which sometimes caused problems outside the home. His father, on the other hand, was rather low-key and had no difficulty responding to his mother in the best way. Bram’s father loved his mother’s liveliness and spunkiness; his mother loved the father’s calmness and unflappability. When I speak about responding to a partner “in the best way,” I mean in a way that works well for and feels good to both individuals.

Why Pair Up?

You might be wondering whether the kind of commitment I’m suggesting is one you want to make. In fact, this raises the question, why pair up at all?

There is nothing inherently better about coupling than about being single. This book is not about which is better, a single lifestyle or a coupled lifestyle. I know plenty of perfectly happy singles who neither feel the need to avoid coupling nor weep about being uncoupled. These individuals are fine with their lives either way: if a relationship happens to develop, that would be great, and if not, that would be dandy as well. Moreover, research on the relative merits of relationships has failed to yield firm conclusions one way or the other. Some data—including statistics popularized by authors Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher in their book
The Case for Marriage
(2000)—suggest that married people are happier and healthier than are nonmarried people. However, others—including Alois Stutzer and Bruno Frey (2003) in Germany and Richard Lucas and Andrew Clark (2006) in the US—have reported that people who get married tend to be happier in the first place than people who don’t marry. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser and her colleagues (2005) found unhappily married folks to be more prone to illness than are happily single folks.

One obvious reason people pair up is for procreation. This instinct is embedded in our DNA to ensure the survival of our species. However, pairing up for this purpose doesn’t necessarily translate into the need for a long-term, committed relationship. There’s certainly no proof, at least as far as our species is concerned, that monogamy is nature’s mandate. I find it interesting that some mammals, such as wolves and prairie voles, do pair up for life. In fact, neurobiologists studying voles report that prairie voles (who bond with a partner for life) and meadow voles (who do not bond for life) have identifiable genetic differences. It is possible scientists one day will identify human genes that explain why we do or don’t decide to pair up.

In the meantime, to understand the purpose of pairing up with another human being, we can think about what happens to a baby. Ideally, all babies have a parent or other caregiver who puts their relationship before all other matters. The baby feels loved and secure, and the adult also enjoys the feeling of being loved and of being with and caring for the baby. The two are in it together. We call this a
primary attachment relationship,
because the baby and caregiver are bonded, or attached, to one another. You could say this is a “baby bubble”—much like the couple bubble, only occurring during infancy.

This baby bubble sets the stage for enjoyable relationships with others later in life. If at an early age we experienced security and a love we could trust, we carry this with us. As adults, we are able to form new primary attachment relationships. We feel capable of being strong and loving and secure. On the other hand, if at an early age our relationships with caregivers were less than secure, and the caregiver did not seem to value being with us over all other matters, we are likely to be fearful or worried about entering into or being in relationships. (We will talk in more depth about attachment in the next chapter.)

We Come First

Obviously we can’t change what happened when we were infants. However, if those early influences are affecting how we feel about relationships now, if they hinder our ability to form the kinds of bonds we want in our lives now, we can work toward resolving them. For some couples, therapy is helpful to achieve this kind of rewiring. Other couples are able to discuss and work on their issues together, with minimal external input.

Let’s look at what it takes to create a couple bubble in which you as partners keep one another safe and secure.

Making the Pact

The couple bubble is an agreement to put the relationship before anything and everything else. It means putting your partner’s well-being, self-esteem, and distress relief first. And it means your partner does the same for you. You both agree to do it for each other. Therefore, you say to each other, “
We
come first.” In this way, you cement your relationship. It is like making a pact or taking a vow, or like reinforcing a vow you already took with one another.

Sometimes people say, “I don’t want to commit until I can be sure this thing that worries me about you won’t be a problem.” I have heard variations of this from both men and women in my years as a couples therapist. Popular deal breakers include religion, money, kids, time, and sexuality. There’s no better way to scare off a potential partner than to suggest he or she is inadequate with respect to any of these, or to insist that partner prove himself or herself before security is assured. This kind of approach is doomed to failure.

Partners entering into a couple bubble agreement have to buy into it and own it to fully appreciate it. They have to be in all the way. When partners don’t honor the couple bubble and complain they aren’t being well cared for, often the reason is that they get exactly what they paid for. Pay for part of something, and you get part of something. Now, you might argue, “Stan, how can you say I must buy him or her in order to know whether he or she is good enough?” My answer is that if he or she is so far from good enough, then he or she shouldn’t even be a contender. However, this isn’t usually the case. Mostly, I see partners who have carefully and thoughtfully chosen one another, but fear the problems that arise after getting to know one another better will become deal breakers. Typically, these problems involve the positive features each chose in the other person, which they now realize also contain annoying elements. For example, you may adore his sense of humor, but now dislike that he cracks jokes when you want him to be serious. Or you may admire her musical talent, but be annoyed when she wants to practice the piano instead of walk with you.