by Chris G Moon
Humans play by different rules,2 and the motives for one of us to join with another are often quite different from those of our animal friends who have been using the same process of selection for thousands of years. If you consider how marriages came about throughout human history, you will note that it has only been within the last few hundred years that people have had the freedom to choose their partner. There are still places in the world where marriages are arranged by the parents of the couple to be joined, for social, practical or financial reasons rather than romantic.
So for those of us that now enjoy this wonderful power of choice, what makes us choose the kind of partner we do? Of all the thousands of people you encounter in a year, why that particular kind of person? Is it the mysterious magic of “love at first sight”? Chemistry? Loneliness? What is this romance thing anyway? A friend told me that when he first met his wife, he could actually feel an electrical charge between them from as much as two feet away. (A few months after their divorce I reminded him of that and he replied, “Oh that! That was just static electricity from the carpet!”) Another friend told me he fell in love when he saw his future wife walking barefoot through a pasture, stepping in cow pies—on purpose! He said that he knew right then that he would never get bored of making love to her. (They are still passionately married after thirty years.) Some people have fallen for a beautiful face, and others for the chance to settle down with someone kind and considerate. One woman told me she was in love with a man because she knew he would never cheat on her. When I asked her if she found him attractive on their first encounter, she replied that she couldn’t remember what he looked like at all. One of the most interesting examples was of a friend who told me she got married just to get away from her father (I happened to know both her husband and father, and they were identical in mannerism and even general appearance). Everyone “falls in love” for different reasons.
However, after numerous personal experiences with romance, and years of studying relationship dynamics, I have come to realize that almost nobody gets romantically involved for the reasons they think they do. The actual motives behind the start and maintenance of relationship come down to needs.
As a die-hard romantic, I did not want this to be true. I really wanted to believe that there was a certain special woman out there who was created and put on this planet for the sole purpose of opening my heart to true love, and that once I found her I would be happy with her forever. We would walk down country lanes and through meadows together (avoiding the cow pies), holding hands and quietly communicating through our hearts; rarely, if ever, speaking except to share some gem of wisdom, or humorous insight. I would be her hero, and because of her faith in me, I would become the great success I was born to be! I wanted to believe that two people could meet and, after a quick test of love, live happily ever after. It was perfect picture except for one fact: I was in it—and, having tons of needs, I was far from perfect.
From very early childhood, perhaps as far back as our time in the womb, the more we identified with our physical body and surroundings, the more we became influenced by our physical, mental and emotional needs. Most of what we do on this planet in our present lives, we do to get some need met. We pursue someone or draw them to us out of the need for companionship, nurturing, understanding, support, acceptance, recognition, touch, sex, etc.…
There is nothing wrong with this—it’s just the way it is. However, it becomes a huge problem when we begin to believe that something or someone outside of ourselves can fulfill our need for happiness, security, self-esteem, or any of our other numerous requirements. But looking outside of ourselves to satisfy our needs is precisely what we did as children; we looked to good old Mom and/or Dad to fulfill all of our desires. In her books about positive discipline for children, Dr. Jane Nelsen outlines the two basic childhood needs as the need to belong, and the need to be significant. And what did we do with those needs when they weren’t met? We couldn’t just throw them away; that would be throwing away our humanity. No, we held onto those needs, desperately hoping that they would be recognized and fulfilled eventually. We cried, complained, whined, wheedled, threw tantrums or begged. We tried any number of twists and contortions, and never saw the needs completely fulfilled. Still we held onto them, ultimately relegating them to a storage room in our minds to be joined by thousands of other unmet needs.
Primary to all of these needs is the need to belong. As children are driven by this need, they soon learn that the best way to ensure that they will always be wanted, and therefore be a significant part of their parents’ lives, is to prove that they have a special value to their parents. They have to prove this through some visible means because, for some reason, parents don’t seem to see the child’s inherent value (at least this is how the child sees it). Thus is born within the individual the desire to be special.
Specialness is really what inspires the romantic in us. We tend to look for someone who will place such a high value on being with us that our being away from them would be the emotional equivalent to their very death (which has inspired such famous lines as, “I cannot live without you,” or “I would die if you left me!”). This person will overlook all our faults, never hurt us, always support us no matter how wrong we are, and always see how incredible we are. And that special someone will need us as much as or (preferably) more than we need them. All of our desires to be important, worthwhile, useful, valuable, recognized, appreciated and accepted come from this need to be special; for without at least one person who sees us as totally indispensable, we would be forced to confront that unendurable feeling of exclusion (we would also have to face the terrible realization that no one will ever give us what we need!). We therefore embark on a quest filled with sentiment, fantasy, and tons of old unmet needs to find that one true paramour who will love us, forsaking all others, and put no one else before us for ever and ever.
Thus the sentimental journey of romance has begun. What a wonderful, exciting time it is (and I say this sincerely, without cynicism) when a person is smitten by that passionate desire to break through all boundaries and connect with someone else on a deep, heart-to-heart level! When I experienced the thrill of romance, it was the first time in my memory that I actually felt larger than life itself. And it was no different every time after that. My heart pumped wildly whenever I thought of the object of my attraction, and my mind was filled with unending optimism for a wonderful future. What I failed to realize the first dozen or so times was that it was the hunger of my needs filling my mind, exciting me with the hope and optimism that the needs would soon be fulfilled.3 However, on some deep level I was aware of the gnawing desires, and since I had very strong shame defences against actually revealing these needs, the “Mating Game” would begin. Let me give you an example of what I mean:
Remember high school dances? The whole point of those events seemed to be to “strut your stuff.” This meant that many of the boys and girls were putting on their best performances, especially those without a current partner. When we were without girlfriends,4 my male friends and I would stand together practicing our looks of supreme indifference to all the girls in the gym-turned-discotheque. Whenever a desirable girl got within earshot, the conversation would change to macho discussions about how we were going to handle the coming weekend’s rumble with the Hell’s Angels, or the big drug deal going down with some dangerous gangster. All the while we were posing in such a way as to deliver the message that the girl nearby was of little importance to us. In fact, the more important the girl was to our fantasy-filled minds, the more bravado we generated, and the more unconcern for her presence we displayed. Why did we put on this charade? Because we needed her. But since the only thing our needs ever did was leave us feeling alone and weak—and very unspecial (after all, what self respecting girl would want to hang out with a needy wimp of a guy?), we had to pretend that we had no needs.
My friends and I were looking for a girl who could ma
ke us feel special, and somehow instil in us the qualities we lacked. The paradox was, in order to attract that very girl, we had to pretend we already had the very qualities we wanted her to give us! Let’s look at this again in another way: Say for instance you don’t feel like you have enough confidence. Wouldn’t you then be attracted to someone who appeared to have tons of self-confidence? How about that other person though? Why would that person be attracted to someone who lacks confidence? In your mind, you would believe that they simply couldn’t. Therefore, the best thing to do, if you want to be special to that person, is to pretend that you’re already a confident, self-assured individual. Which is, by the way, the very same thing that this other person might well be doing to attract you! This dynamic is often what brings two people together (and is the only reason for most boys to attend a high school dance): the illusion that one person has what the other person needs.
This is not to say that we purposely try to deceive someone we want to be in a relationship with, but we do often put on our best face to attract others—even when we ourselves don’t like the desperate needs that lie in wait behind that face. Maybe we reason that, if we do attract “the one,” this perfectly wonderful person will find us so special that they’ll overlook our innocent deception, and be so perfectly wonderful as to fulfill all our needs—without us ever having to actually reveal them! This however raises the question: how will we ever find that perfectly special mate? The answer to that lies in…
***
THE DREAM MACHINE
———————————
“When I want you… all I have to do is dream…”
—The Everly Brothers
One of the major changes during our childhood was how we began to perceive the world when our most important needs were not fulfilled. The need to belong, coupled with the need for significance were the drivers of most of our early behaviour. When these behaviours did not achieve the desired results, we tended to feel even more excluded and less important. We saw a world that lacked emotional nurturing, and despaired that our environment had so little to offer in the way of warmth and true affection. As a result of this perceived deficiency, our sense of personal importance dwindled. In order to compensate for this, we often turned to an inner world of fantasy, where we could live as heroes—the most special person in our universe. I remember even as a five-year-old, imagining myself as a dashing young cowboy he-man type, who would come into a troubled town and rid it of its evil influence. And then everybody would love me—even my older brother!
As we grew, the dream machine grew with us, and as our needs for an intimate sexual partner developed, an ideal mate was constructed in our minds. We constructed this ideal mate by taking our list of needs and filtering them through the dream machine, until a picture was engraved in our imagination. Have you ever heard a friend say that their newfound partner is what they’ve been looking for their whole life? Then let me ask you this: how would they know that if they didn’t already have some kind of picture in their minds—even if that picture was buried in their subconscious? Since they had been looking their whole life, the picture probably began to form back in their childhood, with the image and characteristics being supplied by a large number of unmet needs. As the individual grew and their needs multiplied, the image of the perfect mate became more sophisticated.5
By the time I was eighteen, the fantasy woman I carried around in my mind was a composite, developed during eighteen years of hunger. This woman with whom I saw myself walking down country lanes, holding hands and quietly enjoying each other’s company, had the nurturing nature, gentleness, love and safety of a mother, the maturity and kindness of a certain grade school teacher, the understanding of an older sister, the lithe sexiness of another grade school teacher, the engaging humour of a seventh-grade heart throb, and the angelic presence of a heaven-born being such as one might read about in religion class. In short, she encapsulated all my emotional and spiritual desires. But whenever my fantasy world clashed with the so-called “real world,” I did not like what I found. Every girl I was drawn to had at least one of the required qualities, but rarely more than two and never all of them. Sometimes I would be in love until I heard them speak. At other times the nurturing was missing, or the understanding absent. No one that I got close to ever lived up to or surpassed my dream woman, and my attachment to her was such that for a while I chose to “love from a distance,” and hold out until my fantasy woman appeared.
It became obvious that I might have to hold out forever, but there was also no way that I could bring myself to accept anyone who did not live up to the standards of my dream woman. There was only one solution that I could come up with—the same solution most of the world has come up with since romance was discovered. I would choose the most suitable prospect, and then undertake the project of moulding her to meet my fantasy image. I could buy her books that would improve her ability to understand me; I would teach her to be kinder. If she couldn’t keep up with me on a hike, I would get her on an exercise program. And she’d get used to the dust and the bugs and the heat of the country lane. At all costs, my Dream Woman must live!
Thus begins the process of refinement we all go through. Once our needs bring us to a solid prospect, someone who has the basic ingredients to satisfy these needs, we begin to mould them to match the picture we carry in our minds. They just need a little bit of our help to become—for their own good as well as ours, we reason—the kind of person we need to make us happy. With this intention to refine, or even rebuild our partner, in no time we find ourselves on one of…
***
THE ROADS TO HELL
———————————
“The road to hell is paved with expectations.”
Expectations and demands can either be spoken or unspoken. The unspoken expectations are used quite widely, the two main reasons being: 1) you want your partner to satisfy your needs without you actually appearing weak and needy, and 2) In your fantasy, your ideal mate is a mind reader who can anticipate your every whim.
To employ unspoken demands you must rely heavily on body language to express your displeasure whenever your partner fails to deliver. Cool silences and subtle looks of displeasure will eventually get the message across to most partners, but for the more insensitive ones, you may have to resort to visible pouting. Say for instance that your newfound love interest fails to call you on Friday night. Now you don’t want this kind of inconsiderate behaviour to go on, because it will make you feel un-special, but you can’t explain outright that you need to hear from him or her every day. Besides, you shouldn’t have to tell them what any considerate, caring person who’s totally dedicated to you should know in the first place! So when he or she finally does call, you might try to maintain a distant coolness in your tone as you remain polite and communicative. Most good prospects will catch on immediately, but if your love interest is so crass as to repeatedly ask you if there is something wrong, you may have to resort to a terse, “Well, I would have appreciated it if you had called last night and let me know your plans so I could make some plans of my own.” This approach combines the right mixture of hurt and indifference, and, in the early stage of relationship, it usually has the love interest apologizing profusely, and swearing never to do it again—sometimes even offering to write it out in blood for you!
Then again, if you are the unspoken demanding type and you’re forced to spell things out, you will probably be starting to think that maybe this potential mate is seriously flawed. But don’t give up trying to mould them yet. Many people, given enough time and tolerance, are perfectly capable of transforming themselves into the perfect mate that you require. 6
If you’re the type to verbalize your needs, your best bet is to present it as a demand. Even better, make it sound like it’s a universal law of relationship, and thus not merely one of your unmet childhood needs. Another all-time favourite of spoken expectations i
s to throw in the tried and true cliché: “If you really loved me, you would…” (Fill in the blank with your need-of-the-day). Sometimes whining or complaining is a good way to put added pressure on the romance. While your partner is going crazy trying to satisfy you, you can spend your time thinking up more demands. The really experienced “romantic” will instinctively know how to mix the two approaches, so that the spoken and the unspoken demands will be employed at the perfect time. For those of you that do not possess this kind of expertise, keep trying! Always remember that the goal of these attempts is to coerce the person into proving that they “love” you as much as you already know that you “love” them.
A significant problem that expectation causes in relationships is that so many people think needing someone is the same as loving them; thus, they have suffered in the name of “love.” They sit by the phone in agony and wait for “the one” to call and make everything better for them; only to be emotionally crushed because the expected expression of affection never comes. The rock singer Meatloaf was stating a great romantic truism with his words, “I want you; I need you; but there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you…” Expectations are the roads to hell because they block the loving feelings of acceptance and release. If I cannot accept someone as they are, or let them go to walk their own path, I do not really love them. I just want to take something from them to satisfy me. My priority in the partnership is not love; my priority is to fulfill my needs for importance and belonging, that is, my need for specialness.
Whenever there is tension in my marriage or a resistance to being intimate with my wife, I have many options. I can try to analyze what is going “wrong.” I can try to do something for her. I can withdraw into my emotional cocoon until things look better. I can start a fight. I can attempt complete denial of the existence of any problem and whistle my way through it. OR, I can simply ask myself, “What is it that I am subconsciously demanding from my partner?” It is amazing how often the source of discomfort comes down to an old need that had been lying dormant for years. In one case, for reasons that I will explain later, my wife and I had become emotionally close enough to awaken some sleeping desires in me. They reached out with their needy claws for their target. I wanted her to show me she loved me. I needed her to comfort me because I was feeling insecure and inadequate.