How Do You Sabotage Intimacy?
We all carry some confusion and shame about past relationships. You’d be unusual if you haven’t thrown yourself at someone you idealized or stayed in a situation where you sacrificed your self- respect for the longing of another. These are both ways to sabotage intimacy.
In your younger days, the behavior may have been obvious. Now, it may be more subtle: Do you pretend to have greater intimacy with friends than you feel? Are you as openly sharing with your partner as you’d like? This next exercise will help you gain insight into any current barriers to intimacy.
Self-Discovery Exercise: Should Have, Would Have, Could Have
Recall times when you felt embarrassed and vulnerable after instant intimacy. Did you idealize someone to the point that you sacrificed friends, health, or your money? Recall enmeshed situations where you were miserable and told yourself you couldn’t leave. Did you ever figure out why?
In your journal:
Draw three vertical lines down the page, creating three columns. Make the first two just big enough for names. The far right column will hold comments. This exercise will take at least fifteen minutes, although you may want to return to the list, adding names as they occur to you.
Step 1. Think of people whom you have clung to, idealized, or hopelessly tried to please. Include bosses, teachers, ex-partners, family, and coworkers. The central issue is that you feel you should have recognized the problem and done something about it earlier. People who expected special treatment because they were beautiful and talented may come to mind. Include those who were frequently careless about keeping you waiting or who forgot to repay small loans. Pitiful people who sabotaged themselves, then expected sympathy or bailing out, fit here. Family can certainly be included. Write the names in the first column on the left.
Step 2. In the second column, name the core self that was attracted to each person. Did your Protector like to save them, making you look good or feel needed? Did your Child feel special in their reflected glory? Is it possible that your Adult saw them as damaged, needing another chance, or that your Adult believed they were truly special and deserved to be tolerated? In Sid’s case, he soon knew Betty was toxic, but he was caught up in the belief he was learning from a master. More than one self can be involved in each relationship.
Step 3. Ask yourself, “When could I have ended it graciously?” Write your answers in the third column. This is your chance to use hindsight. Be curious and gentle with yourself: “I think I knew from the beginning—he left his wedding ring when he traveled.” Alternatively, “She started complaining about two years into the friendship that I wasn’t available enough and acted hurt when I spent time with other friends.” Include the big stuff: one affair forgiven, followed by another; relationships with addicts (to anything); pathological liars; and people who couldn’t keep promises.
Step 4. Where are you currently sabotaging intimacy? Be kind to yourself as you name those whom you idealize and think of recent examples of instant intimacy. What do you hope will happen? Let your Child and Adult sort this out, without feeling pressure to change anything right away.
It takes courage to review problems in your past relationships. It takes even more to recognize how you may be continuing with old patterns in the present. There is a big reward for having the courage to trust yourself and be honest with others: deep and lasting relationships that nurture your best self.
It’s important to strengthen your intuitive sense about whether an involvement is taking you in a good direction. Some relationships may deserve more time and attention, and others you may want to limit. There may be a few that you recognize it is time to end. This next section offers you a way to view current relationships and will help you define intimacy.
Circles of Belonging
The following model (see figure 1) and exercise will help you identify the levels of belonging you presently have with important people in your life. You’ll ask yourself where you would like to invite more intimacy and where you might want to increase some boundaries.
In this model, everyone who is not currently involved in our life is on the outside. From the moment that people step inside our lives, we arrange them in circles that measure our sense of belonging with them. People we no longer seek out, even if they once were close, are outside.
There are five circles of belonging, starting with the least intimate relationships in the outer circle and becoming increasingly more intimate toward the center. Here’s a description of each:
Acquaintances. People you meet more than a few times fit into this outer circle. You may know people for years and enjoy exchanging services with them, but you don’t connect with them in other aspects of your life. Acquaintances include people like your mechanic, doctor, and hairdresser. You’d probably offer assistance if something tragic happened to them.
Companions and coworkers. These people have become more than acquaintances as you have worked or studied with them or shared another activity. You seldom go to each other’s homes and wouldn’t casually reveal the details of your personal problems because you don’t know how they’d respond. They are “nice people,” but there’s no impulse to pursue a deeper relationship. If one of you quits your shared activity or moves away, it’s unlikely you’d meet, but you would go to a good-bye party.
Friends. A friend is someone with whom a shared activity is secondary to being together. Friends are the people you tell the personal details of your life. You have a mutual sense of trust and connection. Even if you see older friends infrequently, you make special efforts to support them during troubling times.
Intimates. The people with whom you have a profound sense of empathy are your intimates. Belonging grows with mutual give-and-take. You both feel confident that you can share your feelings and flaws without fear of being pushed away. Even if you disagree or don’t like what you hear, you are not likely to reject each other. You talk it through to understanding.
Soul mates. These are the people you can call when you’re very upset at three in the morning, and they say, “Come stay with me,” or “How much money do you need?” Soul mates are the people we want as romantic partners or as associates in creating a new business, where everything is on the line. Being consistently accepting is the key to this connection, and it cannot be built quickly. To be reflective, nonjudgmental, and honest is hard work and often brings up deep emotional challenges. It is a big responsibility to be this available for more than a couple of people at a time. You can’t imagine life without these people. Self-sacrifice is required at times, but it needs to be equal. The intimacy will weaken if sacrifice becomes uneven.
Self-Discovery Exercise: Your Current Circles of Belonging
The intention of this exercise is to help you assess the level of trust and intimacy in current relationships. This exercise may take anywhere from thirty to forty-five minutes, depending on how many people are active in your life. It can be done in stages, adding names as you think of them. Let your Child, Protector, and Adult direct your thoughts. This is private and you don’t need to show this to anyone.
In your journal:
You’ll need two different colored pencils. Copy the Circles of Belonging from figure 1 as large as you can on one page.
Step 1. Put the names of people you currently spend time with into the circle that feels right for you at this moment. Be sure to include members of your family. Use variations inside the depth of each circle to show levels of belonging within each category.
Step 2. Look over the placement of the names. Do you wish some were deeper toward the center or would you like to move others further out? Allow yourself the freedom to admit a desire for closeness, even if you believe certain people have no time for another friend or you are afraid they may not like you as much as you like them. Draw arrows to show where you would like to move them.
Step 3. Think of where some people in your life might place themselves. Is it different from where you put them? With a diffe
rent colored pencil, draw an arrow to show where the other person would see themselves. (Example: A coworker loves talking about herself and doesn’t notice you are less open. She thinks she’s a friend, but you consider her a companion.)
Step 4. Reflect on this process. Are you judging the number of names in each circle, thinking you have too many or too few in some categories? Are you sad at some losses or frustrated with the pressure to be more social with someone than you wish? Where do your life partner and family members belong at this moment? Would it surprise them to know you feel this way? Where do you think they would put themselves? Where do you wish they could be?
Natural Fluctuations of Belonging and Intimacy
There will always be movement within your circles of belonging, both inward and away from the center. Life circumstances such as moving away and changing interests will cause fluctuations. There is no point in expecting a relationship to continue if you no longer share similar needs and values with someone. Some friendships fade because one or both people do not have the time it takes to remain close. The love is there, but not the time.
When your trust is betrayed, such as when a painful secret is told or you are deceived, someone can suddenly shift from intimate or friend to being completely outside the circle. This is devastating. What happens next depends on the mutual willingness to rebuild trust or decide to disconnect.
Sometimes when a broken trust is mended, the sense of belonging becomes stronger. Often the memory of the breach will permanently limit how much trust you’re willing to risk again. It is your right to decide. The purpose of the exercise you just did is to give you permission to choose whom to trust and how much to trust them. Pretending to trust, or feeling pressure to be closer than feels safe to the Child, will never create real intimacy.
An intimate relationship may shift outward to friend or companion, despite your best efforts. This doesn’t mean you have done something wrong. Although it hurts when people reject you, or even if they push you slightly out from their circle of intimates, it’s important to support their right to decide whom they trust and how much.
The idea of an ebb and flow in trust feels quite fair and logical to the Adult. However, trying to give the same latitude to family and committed relationships is much harder. In these cases, fluctuations in belonging trigger the fear of rejection.
Preparing for the Next Chapter
It is excruciating when a soul mate, intimate, or family member betrays you. Belonging vanishes and your heart feels broken. Everything may be changed, including your address. Your life will need redirection.
The next chapter focuses on acknowledging your feelings and responding to the needs of your three core selves when you have felt betrayed. You will learn the second foundation trust skill, “Finding Out What You Want,” to help return your self-confidence after a break in trust. Betrayal is a powerful experience, regardless of the size of the betrayal or the intention of those who hurt you. Everyone feels knocked down by the confusion and uncertainty that results. Chapter 4 will help you to get back up and decide what you want after trust has been broken.
Chapter 4
When You Feel Betrayed
Why do small hurts feel so big?
Betrayal is a very powerful word that is usually reserved for deliberate acts. Trust can also get shaken when we feel we’ve been rejected or criticized by those who didn’t mean to hurt us. This throws us off in our day-to-day interactions and lessens our ability to trust others.
This chapter will help you to understand and cope with your own reactions to feeling betrayed and rejected. We’ll return to this topic in chapters 8 and 9, where the focus will be on building your confidence to seek greater intimacy or deciding if it is time to leave.
Everyone has suffered being betrayed. Those who delight in using people may have deceived you. Being rejected by someone you trust is more agonizing. In a normal situation, the trust we have in those we love is more often bruised instead of broken. Yet the feeling of betrayal can be remarkably painful, at least for a while.
If your childhood was marked by severe abuse, it’s logical that it would be harder for you to handle small breaks in trust as an adult. The truth is that anyone can have strong reactions to the possibility of being betrayed, even if no abuses occurred in youth.
The slimmest of evidence can evoke the fear that you have been deliberately deceived or rejected. In an instant, you may be overwhelmed by a confusion of feelings, whether or not the trust was broken on purpose. Your core selves split apart and your body gets overpowering signals that something is terribly wrong. You have to struggle against the fears of being rejected and can temporarily lose a sense of reality. This calls out the Protector.
To try to ignore signs of possible betrayal will distract you from clear thinking and is seldom successful. This chapter introduces effective tools to help reclaim your sense of personal power as quickly as possible.
Forms of Betrayal
The four forms of betrayal are deliberate, careless, unintentional, and subconscious.
Deliberate betrayals disregard or discount the suffering caused to another person. They are often motivated by self-centered drives, such as greed and revenge.
Careless betrayals result from self-absorption and a temporary absence of empathy. If asked to put themselves in the other person’s place, people who are guilty of careless betrayals will recognize their lapse and feel remorse.
Unintentional betrayals are often due to misunderstandings. They are also caused by unavoidable circumstances. Sudden illness, cell phone batteries dying, and writing down the wrong date can happen to anyone and prevent the keeping of a promise.
Subconscious betrayals stem from unacknowledged conflicts that may exist between people or solely within the one who betrays the other person. Hidden resentment or a sense of inadequacy can cause people to break commitments and to not recognize the real reasons for their actions.
Self-Discovery Exercise: What Does Betrayal Feel Like?
Read the following story and put yourself into the experience. Imagine the stakes are high and you really are counting on this person to the exclusion of others.
You have an appointment with a specialist for a very personal matter. This meeting is critical to a decision that you have to make right away. Your future rides on what you learn in this meeting. You’ve spoken with the specialist on the telephone at length. He understands your dilemma, seems genuine in his enthusiasm to help you, and his references are terrific.
You arrive ten minutes early and sit outside the locked office, reviewing your well-prepared notes, trying to be as calm as you can. He doesn’t show. You check your cell phone (he has the number), and there are no messages. You check the time, date, and address. You’ve paid for the appointment in advance, and you were careful to mark your calendar. You call his number and get his answering machine, which says he’ll be available later the same day. You check your messages at home, and there are none. Half an hour and then an hour go by. Finally, you give up and leave.
What do you feel? Use a mental form of the Trust Check-In (see chapter 2) as you consider the forms of betrayal below. Let your Child be as irrational and young as it gets. Encourage your Protector to be righteous and angry. Ask your Adult to sit back and wait for a cue. In this way, you can identify where your sensations, emotions, and thoughts run when in the limbo of rejection. Add any feelings you have from similar experiences.
What if this were a deliberate betrayal? The specialist knew you were coming. He just didn’t bother to show. Your little problem was of no concern to him, and he feels he earned his fee by the telephone time. He wouldn’t have stood you up if you were important. How do you feel about him? Yourself? What thoughts and memories does this trigger?
What if he were just careless or thoughtless? He runs toward your car as you pull out of the parking lot. He says he lost track of the time and will meet with you now, but only for half an hour. You take the offered time, and the conversatio
n is scattered. He seems distracted and can’t recall the details of your problem. He ends the meeting abruptly, saying “I’m sure you’ll do fine. You’re very bright.” How does his careless attitude affect you?
Suppose it was unavoidable. Mistakes and accidents happen. The consultant had written down the time incorrectly and was busy doing research for the meeting he thought was an hour later. He may have had an accident and was unable to reach you. He intended to honor your trust. What changes occur in your feelings when you learn this?
What if the betrayal were subconscious?
Here is the most difficult issue of betrayal. The consultant didn’t intend to stand you up. However, the dilemma you present disturbs him more than he consciously knows. He feels inadequate, or he should be dealing with the issue for himself and is terrified to address it. He loses his appointment book to avoid the pain of exploring it, or he forgets to buy gas and runs out on his way to the appointment. Where does this take you emotionally?
In your journal:
Capture any especially strong reactions. Did any of these questions remind you of past events that were painful? If so, please note them. The people who have caused the disappointments and abuse you suffered had their own reasons behind their actions. Unless they explained it to you, there was no way you could know how much or how little it really had to do with you. You can take the sting out of past hurts by sorting the ways they still affect you.
The point of this exercise was for you to grasp that trust may be broken whether it was intentional or not. The specialist not showing up collapses the Child’s sense of dependence and throws you into uncertainty. Now we will look at ways to restore your confidence when trust is broken.
How We Use Stories When We Feel Uncertain
The Courage to Trust Page 6