The Most Common Problem Destroying Romantic Relationships
Romantic relationships play an extremely profound role in our lives and too often those relationships that seem to begin so well end badly - commonly with very damaging and painful consequences.
Given the high frequency of this playout, it is worthwhile trying to understand why that is so.
To simplify the exploration of this topic, the issue of whether lifelong monogamy for humans is natural or not - while a very interesting and important issue meriting proper evaluation - will not be addressed in the paragraphs that follow.
That stated, the premise of what will be discussed is that it is possible to have an enduring, and even lifelong, fulfilling romantic relationship, despite the fact that such relationships are rare.
Leo Tolstoy began his famous novel, Anna Karenina, with the insightful line - “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
And so, while each failed romantic relationship will have its own unique details, drama, and problems specific to it, there is one problem that stands out from the rest as being the most common problem destroying romantic relationships in general.
To begin to understand this problem, let’s look at the phenomenon of “falling in love.”
Falling in love can be defined as becoming suddenly and powerfully attracted to someone, with strong feelings of attachment and affection for that person.
The American Psychological Association defines romantic love as “a type of love in which intimacy and passion are prominent features.”
A 2023 article from Live Science website entitled “12 Scientifically Proven Signs of Love” quotes Helen Fisher, a noted American anthropologist, who has studied love from a scientific perspective. Some of the “telltale signs you're in love” listed in the article include:
Thinking this one’s special - you begin to think your beloved is unique, coupled with an inability to feel romantic passion for anyone else - due to elevated levels of dopamine which enhance attention and focus.
Focusing only on the positive characteristics of the beloved, while ignoring their negative traits - focusing on trivial events and objects that remind them of their loved one - again related to dopamine as well as norepinephrine. This prevents the person in love from focusing on other negative information and thus unable to think rationally and clearly.
Emotional instability - “As is well known, falling in love often leads to emotional and physiological instability. You bounce between exhilaration, euphoria, increased energy, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, trembling, a racing heart and accelerated breathing, as well as anxiety, panic and feelings of despair when your relationship suffers even the smallest setback. When extreme, these mood swings parallel the behavior of drug addicts, according to a 2017 article in the journal Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology. And indeed, when in-love people are shown pictures of their loved ones, it fires up the same regions of the brain that activate when a drug addict takes a "hit". According to Fisher, being in love is a form of addiction and when this is taken away from someone they can experience "withdrawals and relapse".”
Feeling out of control - those in love express a sense of helplessness that their passion is involuntary, irrational, and uncontrollable.
Seeking emotional union - while wanting sexual connection is commonly part of being in love, even stronger is the desire for emotional connection.
Emotional dependency - people in love typically experience possessiveness, fear of rejection, jealousy, and separation anxiety. In brain scans the same areas of the brain were activated by rejection by a loved one as those when cocaine addicts experience cocaine cravings.
Losing the spark - the euphoric state generally lasts no longer than three years, if that, and the relationship either ends (with breakup or deteriorating into a non-relationship relationship) or changes into another type of potentially healthy relationship.
To anyone who has ever fallen in love or has dealt with someone who has fallen in love, it is clearly an altered state.
As suggested above, it is most similar to being under the influence of a powerful, highly addictive drug due to which one’s reasoning abilities are severely impaired.
It would seem obvious that aspiring to be in that state and then making some of the most potentially impactful decisions of one’s life while in such a state would be unwise. If one were doing the same with an actual drug, it would be strongly socially discouraged.
Nonetheless, almost everyone wants to have the experience of falling in love at some point in their life, many spend their lives trying to stay continuously in that state, and it is popularly considered to be a prerequisite for anyone wanting to have a lasting and fulfilling romantic relationship.
In general, choosing to be in a drug-induced state is best understood as a coping mechanism, a way to relieve distress.
If falling in love / being in love is of a similar nature, what distress does it relieve?
Humans naturally require a tremendous amount of nurturing during their first years of life and some nurturing for a much longer period of time than other animal species. To emphasize - receiving a lot of nurturing is a basic human need.
If this nurturing is not adequately provided, it is traumatic and also results in the development of a negative sense of self-worth. "If I did not receive the nurturing I needed it must have been because there was something not ok about me" - is what the young child typically concludes due to its limited understanding of reality.
This negative self-concept and the associated retained post-traumatic discomfort are generally established very, very early in life, typically even before one’s earliest conscious memories.
As it turns out, our present day societies are universally inadequately-nurturing and so virtually everyone is suffering in this way, to varying degrees, depending on the extent of their nurturing-deficiency related trauma.
The suffering experienced due to inadequate early childhood nurturing is often extremely intense. This is so because we are born completely dependent and a completely dependent individual’s very existence is potentially in peril if nurturing is not provided and that is unconsciously sensed by the young individual.
The earlier and the greater the nurturing deficiency, the more painful and damaging the emotional wound.
This produces a lifelong underlying pervasive state of internal distress, associated with a fundamental sense of inadequacy. Existing in this ongoing state of distress and self-discontent produces chronic anxiety and depression, which can be overwhelming, as well as a multitude of other symptoms, conditions, and problems.
This distress and the feelings of inadequacy are typically subsequently heightened by the triggers of rejection and failure. The discomfort from childhood’s lack of nurturing is repeatedly reactivated within oneself with exposure to these triggers.
As we age, however, some degree of rejection and failure are inevitably encountered by everyone, commonly on a daily basis. Not everyone will consistently absolutely affirm us and none of us are perfect.
Non-affirming experiences in childhood are inevitably extremely traumatizing. However, while rejections and failures that occur later on can have significant actual implications, they seldom threaten our very existence and should not completely destabilize us and cause us to doubt our core value as individuals.
We have the potential capacity to respond to later-on situations of rejection and failure in a manner that is appropriate for the situation and in most cases even serenely.
However, due to childhood nurturing deficiency we have out-of-date triggered responses which are excessively intense and out of context with what is actually happening in the present. We keep reacting to later-on situations of rejection and failure as if we were still young children being rejected by the caregivers upon whom we were truly dependent.
Parents are the principal providers of nurturing for their offspring in the natural order of things. Children seek unconditional love and high levels of positive attention from them but unfortunately these needs are not met. Nonetheless, the child continues to yearn for this love and attention, if not from the parent, then from someone else.
As the child reaches the age of sexual maturity the natural desire and possibility of establishing an intimate connection with some non-parental figure increases. One is typically unconsciously attracted to someone similar to the insufficiently nurturing parent(s) to provide unconditional affirmation.
If such a person is found and that affirmation is received, it is the magical antidote that instantly neutralizes lifelong feelings of unhappiness, insecurity, and inadequacy. The more this person is like the parent who did not fulfill the childhood nurturing needs and the greater the emotional trauma due to the parental non-nurturing, the more powerful and irresistible the antidote of their affirmation. It is a superdrug.
The person falls in love - suddenly the world becomes a wonderful place in which everything feels right and one discovers the possibility of feeling good within and about oneself and one's insecurities evaporate.
This phenomenon can occur for the other person participating in the relationship as well, whereby both are smitten, each fulfilling the other's unmet needs for affirmation and so both fall in love, typically magnifying the intensity of the experience. It becomes a magical time that only those two can truly appreciate and fully enjoy. It also typically produces codependency.
Alternatively, there are also predators who recognize the pain and hunger for affirmation that many people have and provide it to them in a very calculated manner to manipulate and use them, just like any drug dealer - with potentially catastrophic results for the addict.
The greater the emotional pain due to past traumatic experiences, the greater the desperation to neutralize this pain, the more vulnerable to manipulation, and the greater the risk of a very bad outcome.
But whether the other person’s agenda is innocent or malicious, for a number of reasons, the relief from distress provided by their affirmation is inevitably effective only for a while, as is the case with any coping mechanism.
First of all, coping mechanisms lose their impact when relied upon repeatedly and one needs an ever greater intensity to achieve the same effect. And so one requires increased levels of affirmation and attention to experience the same degree of relief from feelings of inadequacy and insecurity.
Such demands upon the other person over time become both tiring and harder to fulfill, and so the person making these demands eventually encounters some degree of rejection which then elicits precisely the distressing feelings that the affirmation had previously negated.
Additionally, even in the most ideal relationship there will be some conflict or diminished attention at some point. The long yearned-for absolute unconditional love dissipates and as that happens the old pain from one’s childhood returns, compounded by discomfort from present day events which can lead to a distressing downward spiral.
As well, it turns out that the person who can most effectively neutralize the distress of deficient childhood nurturing is in key respects very similar to the parent who did not provide that nurturing. Almost inevitably someone very similar to the non-nurturing parent will also sooner or later not nurture within the adult relationship as well.
We typically fall deepest in love with someone who can also trigger our greatest degree of distress with their rejection and most likely will. The term “falling in love” is fittingly chosen. Generally in life the further we fall, the greater the injury upon landing.
So the most common problem in romantic relationships is that they are used as a coping mechanism, a means to neutralize the pain that is carried around within oneself due to childhood parental nurturing deficiencies.
When romantic relationships are used as coping mechanisms and one is "in love", what one is in love with is not actually the other person but the wonderful state of freedom from the longstanding feelings of emotional distress and inadequacy that the other person's affirmation temporarily elicits.
One loves that good feeling and it just so happens that this other person can somehow trigger it.
The person in love, as stated above, is generally oblivious to the negative qualities that the object of their affection may have. In many cases the person one is in love with is objectively otherwise not special or admirable at all and may have many negative attributes and even treat them horribly. But receiving their affirmation has that unique magical distress-relieving quality that they yearn for.
As a result, when confronted with the neglect, abuse, and unredeeming characteristics of the person they love, they will typically helplessly reply, "I know, but I can't help it, I just love him/her."
Spoken like a true addict.
Coping mechanisms do not address root problems and when these problems are not addressed they not only don't go away, they worsen.
It is possible to heal the wounds of childhood nurturing deficiencies but that must be done internally by the wounded individual themself and no external coping mechanism or other person can do that.
Romantic relationships will not do this.
Ideally one should heal all of one's wounds due to childhood nurturing deficiency prior to engaging in romantic relationships. But, of course, nobody actually ever does this.
But whether one is presently in a romantic relationship or not, or even if one has no plans to ever have a romantic relationship in the future, it is always a good idea to begin healing these wounds as soon as possible.
The Vivir program, with the unique core Emotional Updating technique used to eliminate post-traumatic triggered emotional distress, is an effective means to do just that.
By freeing oneself from this emotional suffering and the accompanying diminished self-worth one is able to increasingly feel well within oneself by oneself.
As a result, one becomes able to have a completely different kind of romantic relationship, not based on killing longstanding emotional pain and feelings of inadequacy.
Another definition of a romantic relationship is “when two people form an intimate connection based on attachment, interdependence, and a sense of their healthy mutual needs being met.”
This may not sound as intense or dramatic as the typical portrayal of what we are taught we should want in a romantic relationship.
However, it is a relationship grounded in reality and able to be experienced by two people who feel whole and well within and about themselves.
Since they are fundamentally fine within themselves they don’t need each other, or anybody else to feel well and whole. However, to enrich their lives they may want this type of romantic relationship.
Their relationship choices are not driven by pain but instead by healthy life-affirming goals, standards, and values and are made wisely.
This kind of romantic relationship has the greatest probability of lasting and flourishing over time and, if children result from such a relationship, their nurturing needs will be more closely met, enhancing their ability to live healthy, fulfilled lives and then make wiser romantic relationship choices themselves when their time comes.
