We are subconsciously programmed and emotionally set up in early
childhood (by fairy tales which are later reinforced by books, movies, songs,
etc.) to believe that a romantic relationship will lead us to "happily ever
after." This makes us feel like failures when it does not happen.
Because we feel like failures and are codependent, we go to one of the extremes:
we try harder to change the other person, to earn their love, to make them
available; or we blame. (And trying harder is really about blaming
ourselves, thinking that it is our fault, that we are not doing it "right.")
There is no happily ever after in this lifetime, in these bodies - it
is a misconception, a misinterpretation of Metaphysical levels of reality.
Knowing that consciously, intellectually, does not help us stop feeling
like a failure. It is vital to heal our emotional wounds and forgive
ourselves for expecting life - and romance - to be something it is not.
""We learned about life as children and
it is necessary to change the way we intellectually view life in order to
stop being the victim of the old tapes. By looking at, becoming conscious
of, our attitudes, definitions, and perspectives, we can start discerning
what works for us and what does not work. We can then start making choices
about whether our intellectual view of life is serving us - or if it is setting
us up to be victims because we are expecting life to be something which it
is not."
Consciousness raising is a process of enlarging the intellectual paradigm
which we base our relationship with life upon. As I have stated previously
in this series, our beliefs, attitudes, and definitions determine our expectations
and perspectives - which in turn dictate our emotional relationships to
everything and everyone in our environment. And when I say everything,
I am not just talking about objects. Everything includes ideas, concepts,
opinions, etc.
In order to have healthier romantic relationships it is very important
to examine our concept of romantic love. If we do not have a healthy
concept - realistic definitions and beliefs about - romantic love, then
we do not have much chance of having a healthy relationship. If our
concept of romance is based on the fairy tales and books, songs and movies,
from our childhood, then we are set up to be disappointed in our romantic
relationships.
Read the quotation above and substitute "love" everywhere it says "life"
and you might better understand why you have felt like a victim in romantic
relationships. We were set up to be victims in romance because we were
taught that it is a magical paradise where we will have all of our needs
met - and live "Happily ever after". We were taught that getting the
romance was the goal and that after that everything was smooth sailing."
We were set up to feel like failures in romantic relationships by dysfunctional
societal beliefs. Feeling like a failure is emotional - buying into
the belief in failure is mental: two different levels of our being.
It is very important in recovery to start being able to practice discernment
in relationship to our own inner process. A major component in becoming
empowered to take responsibility for being co-creators of our life experience
is being able to recognize when our feelings are a direct result of the
beliefs we are empowering. Becoming conscious of how our subconscious
programming from childhood is still affecting us today is the only way we
can change that programming. Consciousness can lead to empowerment
when we are willing to focus on the things we do have the power to change
- and own our power to make choices instead of being the victim of dysfunctional
programming.
The intellectual paradigm we are empowering to define our lives determines
our perspective of life and our emotional reactions.
"One of the biggest problems with relationships in this society
is that the context we approach them from is too small. If getting the relationship
is the goal, we will end up being the victim. If we can start seeing relationships
not as the goal but as opportunities for growth then we can start having more
functional relationships. A relationship that ends is not a failure or a
punishment - it is a lesson. As long as our definition of a successful relationship
is one that lasts forever - we are set up to fail. There is nothing wrong
with wanting a relationship that will last forever, expecting it to last
forever is what is dysfunctional."
When the intellectual paradigm which we are allowing
to define our lives - the context in which we are relating to life / love
/ romance - is based upon the belief that if we do it "right" we will reach
the destination of "happily ever after," we are set up to feel like failures
when we are not magically transformed by a relationship.
Codependency in Romantic Relationships for Men and Women
I have been using the pronoun we - in this discussion of being set up to
feel like failures if we do not reach a destination where we live "happily
ever after" - because both men and women are programmed with this unrealistic
delusion in early childhood. It is women however, who traditionally
were brainwashed to believe that their self worth is dependent upon reaching
this destination. As I mentioned in part 1, traditionally women in
this society were taught to be codependent upon their relationships with
men - while men were taught that their self definition and worth comes from
what they do. Additionally, men were taught to be shut down to their
emotions.
In this society, in a general sense,
the men have been traditionally taught to be primarily aggressive, the "John
Wayne" syndrome, while women have been taught to be self-sacrificing and
passive. But that is a generalization; it is entirely possible that
you came from a home where your mother was John Wayne and your father was
the self-sacrificing martyr. . . . . . .
When the role model of what a man is does not
allow a man to cry or express fear; when the role model for what a woman
is does not allow a woman to be angry or aggressive - that is emotional dishonesty.
Both men and women had their relationships with their own emotions twisted
and distorted by the messages and role modeling of a dysfunctional, emotionally
dishonest, patriarchal culture. The traditional societal standards
for appropriate female behavior included the belief that it was not appropriate
(not "lady like") for a woman to be angry or assertive - which not only
makes it virtually impossible to set boundaries but also precludes real emotional
intimacy. It is not possible to be emotionally honest and intimate in
relationship to anyone with whom it is not okay to be angry. True emotional
intimacy requires sharing all of our emotions. Someone who does not
have permission to own anger is forced to use other methods to try to get
their needs met, learns to manipulate in emotionally dishonest ways - crying
when they are angry, or using sex manipulatively to gain power in a relationship,
for instance.
And, though the traditional societal standards set men up to be "John
Wayne" and women to be martyrs, this role was in reality reversed in many
families due to the reactive extremes of codependency. In other words,
some men who hated the abusive behaviors of their father / male role models
would react to the other extreme, would suppress their own anger and become
more passive and martyr like - and would then usually end up marrying a
woman who was like their father. While a woman who could not stand
the "doormat" role modeling of her mother, would become the angry abusive
one in a relationship with a man who would be the doormat. Twisting
things even further, in most cases, though the roles were reversed within
the relationship inter-reaction, the couple would then try to look "normal"
out in society - in other words, they would attempt to keep up appearances
and be seen by others as a "normal" couple. Normal in this dysfunctional
society meaning the man was the boss and the woman was his helpmate.
Men got the message from societal role models that it was not "manly"
to be emotionally vulnerable. Someone who cannot be emotionally vulnerable
is truly incapable of any level of emotional intimacy. Both men and
women in this dysfunctional society were set up to feel like failures in
romantic relationships, but it was women who were taught that their self
worth depended upon success in the relationship. It is normally women
who seek counseling because their self esteem is invested in the relationship.
It is not possible to work out problems in a relationship without dealing
with emotions - and a man is taught not to deal with emotions. A man
focuses on the work that his self worth comes from and ignores problems in
the relationship, and/or blames the woman for them. It is a double
set up for women in this dysfunctional, emotionally dishonest society.
"We learn who we are as emotional beings from the role modeling
of our parents and the adults around us. I have never had an emotionally
honest male role model in my life. I am having to become my own
role model for what emotional honesty looks like in a man.
Romance means nothing without emotional intimacy. "In - to -
me - see" We can not share our self with another being unless we can
see into our self. As long as I couldn't be emotionally intimate with
myself, I was incapable of being emotionally intimate with another human being.
It is absolutely vital to learn how to be emotionally honest with ourselves.
It is impossible to have a Truly successful Romantic Relationship without
emotional honesty. (Truly successful being used here to mean: in balance
and harmony between the physical, emotional, mental, and Spiritual levels
of being.) Sex can ultimately be an empty, barren animal coupling -
involving physical pleasure but really having little to do with Love - without
emotional & Spiritual connection.
This results in one of the major problem areas of many relationships.
Without emotional intimacy many women get turned off to sex and withhold
because their emotional needs aren't being met - and men get angry because
they don't even have a clue of what women are asking for.
"Traditionally in this society women were taught
to be codependent - that is take their self-definition and self-worth from
their relationships - with men, while men have been taught to be codependent
on their success/career/work. That has changed somewhat in the past
twenty or thirty years - but is still part of the reason that women have
more of a tendency to sell their souls for relationships than men do." -
Relationships & Valentines Day by Robert Burney
It is a double set up for women in this society. First of all
the men were taught that it was not manly to be emotional and that what
makes them successful as a man is what they produce - and then women were
taught that they needed to be successful in romantic relationships with emotionally
unavailable men in order to be successful as a woman. What a set up!
It is not women's fault. It is also not men's fault. It
is a set up."
The Heart Break of Romantic Relationship
- part 2
Men were programmed to be emotional cripples whose only acceptable emotional
outlet was anger, and women were brainwashed to feel they had worth only
in relationships to men. Truly a set up! Women were brain washed
into defining themselves so completely in relationship to men that they
give up their name for their husband's name. (Of course, the name they give
up was their fathers - a symbolic transfer of ownership.)
I will be addressing in more depth the traditional male and female roles
in society - and the historical context in which our beliefs have been molded,
including some recent changes brought about by the Feminist Movement - in
a later part of this series, but I wanted to make the point here of how our
early childhood experiences and programming set us up to feel like failures.
It is vital to start becoming conscious of this so that we can change the
intellectual paradigm we are allowing to define ourselves and dictate our
emotional relationship with life and love.
right and wrong is a dysfunctional dance
Failure and success, winning and losing, right and wrong are part of the
polarized belief system - the black and white thinking - that is the foundation,
and cause, of codependency. Anyone who is thinking in terms of failure
and success according to dysfunctional, delusional definitions is being
codependent. They are exhibiting the programming - the brain washing
- that results from growing up in a codependent culture.
When we believe in the deepest levels of our being, at the core of our
programming, that we have to have a romantic relationship to be whole, to
be happy and fulfilled in life, we are making that dream / delusion our higher
power which determines if we have worth - which is a set up to feel like a
failure. And because failure, being wrong, is considered shameful -
a sign of unworthiness, of being defective - we end up putting a great deal
of energy into blaming and/or denial. (Blaming is a manifestation of
denial - and is only possible because of a polarized belief system.)
When our self esteem is dependent upon reaching "happily ever after,"
we are set up to give away power over how we feel about our self to a delusion,
a fairy tale. We look outside of ourselves and see other codependents
- who were taught to keep up appearances and wear masks - who seem to have
reached happily ever after. We feel like something is wrong with us
because other people seem to be happy and successful and we feel like failures.
We judge how we feel on the inside against how they look on the outside.
And when those people that we put up on pedestals as having it made, prove
to be human - get arrested, get a divorce, commit suicide, etc. - we are shocked
(and sometimes secretly pleased) but we go right back to judging our self
in comparison to someone else whose life looks better than ours feels.
As magical thinking children we were brainwashed / programmed to believe
that love will magically transport us to happily-ever-after. We had
that delusion reinforced by songs and books and movies. We are constantly
being bombarded with advertising that uses our desire to be loved "happily
ever after" to manipulate us into spending money on the magical ingredient
that is missing - the right beer / car / clothes / makeup / medication /
whatever - that will transform our lives.
It is a false belief, a dysfunctional concept, that sets us up to feel
such desperate need for our dream to come true. When our feelings
of self worth are dependent upon an illusion, we will put a great deal of
energy into convincing our self that the dream has come true. Our investment
in the fantasy, the dream, is what can make it so hard to let go of a relationship.
"It is letting go of the dream, the idea / concept, of the
relationship that causes the most grief in every relationship break up that
I have ever worked with. We give power and energy to the mental construct
of what we want the relationship to be and cannot even begin to see the situation
and the other person clearly.
Far too often - because of the concept of toxic / addictive love we
are taught in this society - it is the idea of the other person that we
fall in love with, not the actual person. It is so important to us
to cast someone in the role of Prince or Princess that we focus on who we
want them to be - not on who they really are. In our relationship with
our self, we attach so much importance to getting the relationship that we
are dishonest with ourselves - and with the other person - in order to manifest
the dream / concept of relationship that will fix us / make our life worthwhile.
Then we end up feeling like a victim when the other person does not turn out
to be the person we wanted."
The True Nature of Love - part 4, Energetic Clarity
2
What makes relationship break ups so difficult in a codependent society
is not the pain of the romance ending - although there is certainly a lot
of pain and grief about such endings - it is the shame that our disease beats
us up with for: being "failures;" or for being unworthy and unlovable;
or for being so "stupid" as to make such a "wrong" choice. Very often
we hang onto a relationship long after it is empty and dead because we feel
that ending it will prove that we were "wrong" - or that something is wrong
with us. This is especially true in instances where our family or friends
warned us that the person wasn't good for us - then we have a great deal of
ego investment in proving them wrong. This kind of attempt to avoid
"failure" - to avoid admitting "defeat" - has caused many a person to stay
in relationships that were abusive long after they knew it was hopeless.
The subconscious programming is so strong that it overrides common sense,
intellectual knowledge, and conscious awareness - and keeps us putting a
great deal of energy into rationalizing and denying reality. It is that
subconscious programming - which can not be substantially changed without
becoming emotionally honest, which includes releasing the repressed grief
energy from childhood - that makes us powerless to live life in any way except
reacting to the extremes of codependency. It is powerlessness over that
programming that has caused us to be our own worst enemies.
Because of our broken hearts, our emotional wounds,
and our scrambled minds, our subconscious programming, what the disease
of Codependence causes us to do is abandon ourselves. It causes the
abandonment of self, the abandonment of our own inner child - and that inner
child is the gateway to our channel to the Higher Self.
The one who betrayed us and abandoned and abused
us the most was ourselves. That is how the emotional defense system
that is Codependence works.
The battle cry of Codependence is "I'll show you
- I'll get me."
It is a sad reality that many codependents spend their whole lives living
in reaction to their childhood wounding. Whether we are trying
to earn our parents love and respect by being what they wanted us to be,
or going to the other extreme rebelling against them, we are living in reaction
to childhood - we are not living our own lives. Many women, and men,
have stayed in marriages - that they knew were a mistake on their wedding
day - for 20 or 30 or 40 years because they were trying to prove their parents
wrong, or trying to avoid the shame of "failing."
As long as we are reacting to some arbitrary, absolute standard
- a marriage that lasts is a success, one that ends is a failure;
a man who is emotionally vulnerable is unmanly; a women who gets angry
is not a lady; etc. - we are set up to live our lives in reaction.
We are set up to feel like a failure, or to blame someone or something for
how we live our lives. We are set up to feel like a victim. It
is only by seeing our self and reality with more clarity that we can start
to own our power to make choices instead of reacting. We become empowered
to take responsibility for being a co-creator in our lives by owning our power
to make choices. (Empowerment
and Victimization - the power of choice)
Until we start becoming conscious of the power of this subconscious
emotional programming, we are powerless to do anything in our life except
react. We do not have the ability to respond - response ability - if
our choices are limited to right and wrong according to some arbitrary, dysfunctional
cultural beliefs.
We must start recognizing our powerlessness over
this disease of Codependence.
As long as we did not know we had a choice we
did not have one.
If we never knew how to say "no," then we never
really said "yes."
We were powerless to do anything any different
than we did it. We were doing the best we knew how with the tools that we
had. None of us had the power to write a different script for our lives.
A woman who stays in a marriage because she does not believe she has
a choice to leave it, is not making a choice to stay. We can only
Truly commit to a course of action by owning that we have a choice in the
matter. Staying because we "have to" / it is "wrong" to leave, is not
a choice.
Traditional Family Values - patriarchal supremacy
It is people like Dr. Harley who trumpet the sanctity of "traditional family
values" - the sanctity of the institution of marriage. The traditional
context for family values and marriage in this society is patriarchal supremacy.
To speak of marriage without acknowledging the historical reality of the
treatment of women in society is not just ignorant, it is downright stupid
- in my opinion.
"For all of the so called progress of
our modern societies, we still are far behind most aboriginal cultures in
terms of respect for individual rights and dignity in some kind of balance
with the good of the whole. (I am speaking here of tribal aboriginal
societies - not urbanized ones.) Nowhere is this more evident than
in terms of our relationship to our children.
Modern civilizations - both Eastern and Western
- are no more than a generation or two removed from the belief that children
were property. This, of course, goes hand in hand with the belief
that women were property."
Marriage has not been a full partnership, a Sacred Union, for most women
in this society. It has historically been a form of indentured servitude.
It is probably an appropriate irony that marriage is referred to as an institution
- since in modern day usage that term is most often used to refer to places
where people are locked up.
The first paragraph in Dr. Harley's article is a very revealing one.
"Those of us in the business of trying to save
marriages struggle daily with cultural beliefs and practices that make our
job difficult. The sudden surge of divorces in the 1970's, that has made America
the country with the highest divorce rate, has a great deal to do with changes
in our basic beliefs. More to the point, it has to do with a major shift
toward self-centeredness. Beliefs that encourage self-centeredness destroy
marriage."
The "sudden surge of divorces in the 1970's" for those unconscious souls
like Dr. Harley who are not able to understand historical context, coincides
with the rise of the Feminist Movement. What Dr. Harley identifies
as "self-centeredness" is actually about the liberation of women - women
starting to own their right to make choices. What so changed the basic
beliefs that this man holds dear, is the empowerment of women to have a self
- to be an individual with self respect and rights as a person, instead of
an extension of men. Women being so "self-centered" as to want to be
liberated from the codependent bondage of being defined in relationship to
men, has definitely challenged the traditional marriage of indentured servitude.
He is no different than any small minded bigot or racist. He bemoans
the changes in society that led "those people" to forget their rightful
place in the white male patriarchal system. In this case, "those people"
are women. Women have forgotten their place as the servants of truly
self-centered, immature, emotionally crippled little boys masquerading as
men. Those same immature men who run the world and are always going
to war to protect their right to keep raping the planet and trying to steal
all the toys away from the other boys.
"History has been, and is being, made by immature, scared,
angry, hurt individuals who were/are reacting to their childhood wounds and
programming - reacting to the little child inside who feels unworthy and
unlovable."
When someone in a relationship is hanging onto to it for dear life to try
to avoid feeling like a shameful "failure" - what could possibly be worse
scenario for them than to go to a counselor who believes that relationships
that end are failures. The "expert" who is supposed to be helping
a couple resolve problems in their relationship has an agenda because the
expert's self esteem is invested in saving the marriage. That type
of situation is, too often in a dysfunctional society, a sad reality when
the people who are supposed to be helpers in the healing process are still
unconscious to their codependency.
Any therapist who describes divorce as a disaster and believes his/her
job is to save marriages, is empowering black and white, dysfunctional,
codependent thinking.
"Dr. Willard F. Harley, Jr. has saved thousands
of marriages from the pain of unresolved conflict and the disaster of divorce."
Dr. Harley defines divorce as disaster, and believes
that it is his purpose as a marriage counselor to save marriages.
That is the belief system which he empowers. That is the perspective
he will bring to any couple that comes to see him. It is impossible
for him to see the relationship dynamics clearly as long as he has an agenda
that he is projecting onto his clients. He is set up by his own beliefs
to try to manipulate and shame people into staying in a marriage - no matter
how dysfunctional that relationship may be - because it is what he bases
his ego strength upon. Saving marriages is what he does - what he believes
makes him successful, gives him worth.
What makes many divorce experiences feel like "disasters" is not the
end of the relationship - it is the blaming that goes on to keep from feeling
the shame of being a "failure." It is the battle over who is "right"
and who is "wrong" that causes so much emotional trauma. It is trying
to identify - and punish - the villain, that makes divorce lawyers rich
and emotionally wounds the children who get caught in the middle of this
codependent dance of blame and shame.
On the day I was finishing this part 2, a man I had never met before
came to our CoDA meeting. In the course of sharing, he started to
talk about his parents. This man was probably around 50, and was going
to visit his parents the next day. He started crying - struggling mightily
to control his emotions, gulping shallow breaths and holding them as his body
quivered. He choked out that he wished his parents hadn't behaved so
horribly in his childhood.
He recounted how his mother had said to him recently, "Oh, but our family
wasn't dysfunctional. Your father and I stayed together." He
cried as he said in a strangled voice, "That was a big part of the problem."
Children are damaged just as much by parents who stay together in
a dysfunctional marriage as children whose parents divorce. Sometimes
it is even more damaging in the long run because the delusion that the family
was successful is so strong that it makes it hard for the adult children to
understand why they have lived their lives so dysfunctionally - after all,
they came from a happy family. The happy family myth was the higher
power the parents sacrificed themselves to maintain. Keeping up appearances
to avoid shame, to avoid "failure." Parents who stay together for "the
children's sake," or to keep up appearances, are disasters as role models
for what a romantic relationship looks like.
Any counselor or therapist who does not see a connection between the
emotional wounds and intellectual programming of early childhood and problems
manifesting in a marriage / romantic relationship, is not going to be able
to help the people involved deal with the cause of the problems. Focusing
on symptoms will not heal the cause.
For a marriage counselor to believe his purpose is saving marriages,
without any consciousness of the cause of marital / relationship dysfunction,
or of the historical context in which our beliefs about marriage have been
programmed - is very diseased, codependent thinking, in my opinion.
This is part 2 of a web article written in response to an article on the
internet - it was originally published
