by Edith Eger
But what happens if the “bad” one in the relationship gets sick of that role? What if he shows up to audition for the other part? Then the “good” one’s place in the relationship is no longer secure. She’s got to remind him how bad he is so she can keep her position. Or she might become bad—hostile, explosive—so that they can still balance the seesaw even if they switch positions. Either way, blame is the pivot that keeps the two seats joined.
In a lot of cases, someone else’s actions really do contribute to our discomfort and unhappiness. I’m not suggesting that we should be okay with behavior that is hurtful or destructive. But we remain victims as long as we hold another person responsible for our own well-being. If Ling says, “I can only be happy and at peace if Jun stops drinking,” she leaves herself vulnerable to a life of sorrow and unrest. Her happiness will always be a bottle or a swig away from disaster. Likewise, if Jun says, “The only reason I drink is because Ling is so nagging and critical,” he gives up all of his freedom of choice. He isn’t his own agent. He is Ling’s puppet. He might get the temporary relief of a buzz as a protection against her unkindness, but he won’t be free.
So often when we are unhappy it is because we are taking too much responsibility or we are taking too little. Instead of being assertive and choosing clearly for ourselves, we might become aggressive (choosing for others), or passive (letting others choose for us), or passive-aggressive (choosing for others by preventing them from achieving what they are choosing for themselves). It gives me no pleasure to admit that I used to be passive-aggressive with Béla. He was very punctual, it was important to him to be on time, and when I was annoyed with him, I would stall when it was time to leave the house. I would intentionally find a way to slow us down, to make us late, just to spite him. He was choosing to arrive on time, and I wouldn’t let him get what he wanted.
I told Ling and Jun that in blaming each other for their unhappiness, they were avoiding the responsibility of making their own joy. While on the surface they both seemed very assertive—Ling always on Jun’s case, Jun doing what he pleased instead of what Ling asked him to do—they were both experts at avoiding an honest expression of “I want” or “I am.” Ling used the words “I want”—“I want my husband to stop drinking”—but in wanting something for someone else, she escaped having to know what she wanted for herself. And Jun could rationalize his drinking by saying that his drinking was Ling’s fault, a way to assert himself against her oppressive expectations and criticisms. But if you give up the authority of your own choices, then you are agreeing to be a victim—and a prisoner.
In the Haggadah, the Jewish text that tells the story of liberation from slavery in Egypt and teaches the prayers and rituals for seder, the special Passover feast, there are four questions that the youngest member of the family traditionally gets to ask—the questions it was my privilege to ask at my childhood seders, that I asked the last night I spent with my parents in our home. In my therapeutic practice I have my own version of the four questions, which I developed years ago with the help of several colleagues when we were sharing strategies for beginning a session with a new patient. These are the questions I asked Ling and Jun to answer now, in writing, so they could liberate themselves from their victimhood.
What do you want? This is a deceptively simple question. It can be much more difficult than we realize to give ourselves permission to know and listen to ourselves, to align ourselves with our desires. How often when we answer this question do we say what we want for someone else? I reminded Ling and Jun that they needed to answer this question for themselves. To say I want Jun to stop drinking or I want Ling to stop nagging was to avoid the question.
Who wants it? This is our charge and our struggle: to understand our own expectations for ourselves versus trying to live up to others’ expectations of us. My father became a tailor because his father wouldn’t allow him to become a doctor. My father was good at his profession, he was commended and awarded for it—but he was never the one who wanted it, and he always regretted his unlived dream. It’s our responsibility to act in service of our authentic selves. Sometimes this means giving up the need to please others, giving up our need for others’ approval.
What are you going to do about it? I believe in the power of positive thinking—but change and freedom also require positive action. Anything we practice, we become better at. If we practice anger, we’ll have more anger. If we practice fear, we’ll have more fear. In many cases, we actually work very hard to ensure that we go nowhere. Change is about noticing what’s no longer working and stepping out of the familiar, imprisoning patterns.
When? In Gone with the Wind, my mother’s favorite book, Scarlett O’Hara, when confronted with a difficulty, says, “I’ll think about it tomorrow … After all, tomorrow is another day.” If we are to evolve instead of revolve, it’s time to take action now.
Ling and Jun finished their responses to the questions, folded up their papers, handed them to me. We would look at them together the following week. As they got up to leave, Jun shook my hand. And then, walking out the door, I saw the reassurance I needed that they were willing to try to bridge the distance they had let damage their marriage, to get off the seesaw of blame. Ling turned back to Jun and gave him a hesitant smile. I couldn’t see if he returned it—his back was to me—but I did see him gently pat her shoulder.
When we met the following week, Ling and Jun discovered something they wouldn’t have predicted. In response to the question “What do you want?” they had each written the same thing: A happy marriage. Just speaking this desire, they were already on their way to having what they wanted. All they needed was some new tools.
I asked Ling to work on changing her behavior in the moments after Jun got home each day. This was the time when she usually felt most angry and vulnerable and frightened. Would he be drunk? How drunk would he be? How drunk would he get? Was there any possibility of closeness between them, or would it be another evening of distance and hostility? She had learned to manage her fear by trying to exert control. She would sniff Jun’s breath, make accusations, pull away. I taught her to greet her husband the same way whether he was sober or drunk—with kind eyes and a simple statement: “I’m happy to see you. I’m glad you’re home.” If he was drunk, and she was hurt and disappointed, she was allowed to talk about those feelings. She could say, “I can see you’ve been drinking, and that makes me feel sad because it’s hard to feel close to you when you’re drunk” or “that makes me feel worried about your safety.” And she was allowed to make choices for herself in response to his choice to drink. She could say, “I was hoping to talk to you tonight, but I can see you’ve been drinking. I’m going to do something else instead.”
I talked to Jun about the physiological components of addiction, and told him that I could help him heal whatever pain he was trying to medicate with alcohol, and that if he chose to get sober, he would need additional support in treating his addiction. I asked him to go to three AA meetings and see if he recognized himself in any of the stories he heard there. He did go to the assigned meetings, but as far as I know he never went back. In the time that I worked with him, he didn’t stop drinking.
When Ling and Jun ended their therapy, some things were better for them and some things weren’t. They were better able to listen to each other without the need to be right, and they were spending more time on the other side of anger, where they could acknowledge their sadness and fear. There was more warmth between them. But a loneliness remained. And the fear that Jun’s drinking would spiral out of control.
Their story is a good reminder that it isn’t over till it’s over. As long as you live, there’s the risk that you might suffer more. There’s also the opportunity to find a way to suffer less, to choose happiness, which requires taking responsibility for yourself.
Trying to be the caretaker who sees to another person’s every need is as problematic as avoiding your responsibility to yourself. This is something that has been
an issue for me—as it is for many psychotherapists. I had an epiphany about this when I was working with a single mother of five who was unemployed and physically challenged in addition to being depressed. She had a hard time leaving the house. I was happy to step in to pick up her welfare checks and get her children to their appointments and activities. As her therapist, I felt it was my responsibility to help her in any way possible. But one day as I stood in line at the welfare office, feeling benevolent and generous and worthy, a voice inside me said, “Edie, whose needs are being met?” I realized the answer wasn’t “my dear patient’s.” The answer was “mine.” In doing things for her, I felt very good about myself. But at what cost? I was fueling her dependence—and her hunger. She had already been depriving herself for a long time of something she could find only within, and while I thought I was sustaining her health and well-being, I was actually sustaining her deprivation. It’s okay to help people—and it’s okay to need help—but when your enabling allows others not to help themselves, then you’re crippling the people you want to help.
I used to ask my patients, “How can I help you?” But that kind of question makes them Humpty Dumpty, waiting around on the pavement to be put back together again. And it makes me the king’s horses and the king’s men, ultimately powerless to fix another person. I’ve changed my question. Now I say, “How can I be useful to you?” How can I support you as you take responsibility for yourself?
I’ve never met a person who would consciously choose to live in captivity. Yet I’ve witnessed again and again how willingly we hand over our spiritual and mental freedom, choosing to give another person or entity the responsibility of guiding our lives, of choosing for us. A young couple helped me understand the consequences of abdicating this responsibility, of turning it over to someone else. They struck a special chord in me because of their youth, because they were in the phase of life when most of us are hungry for autonomy—and, ironically, the time when we may be particularly anxious about whether we are ready for it, strong enough to bear the weight of it.
When Elise sought my help, she had reached suicidal despair. She was twenty-one years old, her curly blond hair gathered in a ponytail. Her eyes were red from crying. She wore a man’s large athletic jersey that came almost to her knees. I sat with Elise in the bright October sun as she tried to explain the roots of her anguish: Todd.
A charismatic, ambitious, handsome basketball player, Todd was a near celebrity on campus. She had met him two years ago, when she was a freshman in college and he was a sophomore. Everyone knew Todd. The revelation for Elise was that he wanted to get to know her. He was physically attracted to her, and he liked that Elise didn’t try too hard to impress him. She wasn’t superficial. Their personalities seemed complementary—she was quiet and shy, he was talkative and outgoing; she was an observer, he a performer. They hadn’t been dating long before Todd asked her to move in with him.
Elise brightened as she recounted the early months of their relationship. She said that in the spotlight of Todd’s affection, for the first time she felt not just good enough, she felt extraordinary. It wasn’t that she had ever felt neglected or deprived or unloved as a child or in her earlier relationships, but Todd’s attention made her feel alive in a new way. She loved the feeling.
Unfortunately, it was a feeling that came and went. Sometimes she felt insecure in their relationship. Especially at basketball games and parties, when other women flirted with Todd, she would feel chills of jealousy or inadequacy. Sometimes she scolded Todd after parties if he had appeared to flirt back. Sometimes he would reassure her, sometimes he would express irritation at her insecurities. She tried not to be the nagging girlfriend. She tried to find ways to be indispensable to him. She became his main academic support. He struggled to maintain the passing grades that his athletic scholarship required. At first Elise helped him study for tests. Then she started helping with his homework. Soon she was writing his papers for him, staying up late to do his work in addition to her own.
Consciously or not, Elise found a way to make Todd dependent on her. The relationship would have to last, because he needed her in order to maintain his scholarship and everything it enabled. The feeling of being indispensable was so intoxicating and soothing that Elise’s life became organized around one equation: The more I do for him, the more he’ll love me. Without realizing it, she had begun to equate her sense of self-worth with having his love.
Recently, Todd had confessed something that Elise had always feared would happen: He had slept with another woman. She was angry and hurt. He was apologetic and tearful. But he hadn’t been able to break things off with the other woman. He loved her. He was sorry. He hoped he and Elise could still be friends.
Elise could barely force herself to leave the apartment that first week. She had no appetite. She couldn’t get dressed. She was terrified of being alone, and she was ashamed. She realized how completely she had let her relationship direct her life—and at what cost. Then Todd called. He wanted to know if she could do a huge favor for him if she wasn’t too busy. He had a paper due on Monday. Could she write it?
She wrote the paper for him. And the next one. And the next one.
“I gave him everything,” she said. She was crying.
“Honey, that was your first mistake. You martyred yourself to him. What was in it for you?”
“I wanted him to be successful, and he was so happy when I helped.”
“And what’s happening now?”
She told me that yesterday she had learned from a mutual friend that Todd and the new woman had moved in together. And he had a paper due the next day that she had agreed to write.
“I know he’s not coming back to me. I know I have to stop doing his homework. But I can’t stop.”
“Why not?”
“I love him. I know I can still make him happy if I do his work for him.”
“And how about you? Are you becoming the best you can be? Are you making yourself happy?”
“You make me feel like I’m doing the wrong thing.”
“When you stop doing what’s best for you and start doing what you think someone else needs, you are making a choice that has consequences for you. It has consequences for Todd too. What does your choice to devote yourself to helping him say to him about his ability to meet his own challenges?”
“I can help him. I’m there for him.”
“You really have no confidence in him either.”
“I want him to love me.”
“At the cost of his growth? At the cost of your life?”
I was very worried about Elise when she left my office. Her despair was profound. But I didn’t believe she would take her own life. She wanted to change, which was why she had come to seek help. Still, I gave her my home phone number and the number to a suicide hotline and asked that she check in with me every day until her next appointment.
When Elise returned the next week, I was surprised to see that she brought a young man with her. It was Todd. Elise was all smiles. Her depression was over, she said. Todd had broken up with the other woman and she and Todd had reconciled. She felt renewed. She could see now that her neediness and insecurity had pushed him away. She would try harder to trust in the relationship, to show him how committed she was.
During the session, Todd looked impatient and bored, glancing at the clock, shifting in his seat as though his legs were falling asleep.
“There is no such thing as getting back together without a new beginning. What’s the new relationship you want? What are you willing to give up to get there?” I asked.
They stared at me.
“Let’s start with what you have in common. What do you love to do together?”
Todd looked at the clock. Elise scooted closer to him.
“Here’s your homework,” I said. “I want you to each find one new thing you like to do by yourself, and one new thing you like to do together. It can’t be basketball or homework or sex. Do something fun and get
out of the familiar.”
Elise and Todd returned to my office occasionally over the next six months. Sometimes Elise came alone. Her main focus continued to be on preserving their relationship, but nothing she did was enough to erase her insecurities and doubts. She wanted to feel better, but she wasn’t yet willing to change. And Todd, when he came to the appointments, seemed stuck too. He was getting everything he thought he wanted—admiration, success, love (not to mention good grades)—but he looked sad. He slumped, he receded. It was as if his self-respect and self-confidence had atrophied because of his dependence on Elise.
Eventually, Elise and Todd’s visits tapered off, and I didn’t hear from either of them for many months. And then one day I received two graduation announcements. One was from Elise. She had finished her degree and been accepted to a master’s program in comparative literature. She thanked me for the time we spent together. She said that one day she woke up, and she had had enough. She stopped doing Todd’s schoolwork. Their relationship ended, which had been very hard, but now she was grateful that she hadn’t settled for whatever she had been choosing in place of love.
The other graduation announcement was from Todd. He was graduating—a year late, but he was graduating. And he wanted to thank me too. He told me that he had almost dropped out of school when Elise stopped doing his homework for him. He was indignant and furious. But then he took responsibility for his own life, hired a tutor, and accepted that he was going to have to put in some effort on his own behalf. “I was a punk,” he wrote. He said that without realizing it, the whole time he had relied on Elise to do his work for him, he’d been depressed. He hadn’t liked himself. Now he could look in the mirror and feel respect instead of contempt.