*I will share about 2 dysfunctional relationships that I had in my life:
Mary and Kay
10 Emotional Hooks in Relationships
1. Lack of Individual Identity
When I met Mary I had just gone through a spiritual abuse situation, so, no, I was not sure of who I was by that time, and I craved acceptance of a mother-figure more than life itself.
With Kay, Mary had just abandoned me after several years of a close relationship (though very unhealthy one in many ways). Kay played "rescuer" and "hero" to me. I came to believe that, without Kay's help in telling me what God wanted me to do, I would be LOST. (Usually in such relationships, one says to the other, "I don't know what I'd have done without you." or "I'd be nobody without you." A popular song goes "how will I live without you, I want to know...how will I ever ever survive, oh tell me how will I oh how will I live?" (SICK!) or "I can't live if livin is without you. I can't give. I can't give anymore." or "If I can't have you, I don't want nobody baby." (ever think MUSIC has taught us some thinking/being patterns too?)
2. Scarcity Principle
With Kay, history repeated itself. Mary and Kay sounded in text EXACTLY LIKE each other, after the "honeymoon phase" with Kay was over. I began to feel scared that the relationship with Kay was going to end up just like it did with Mary...NON-EXISTENT...yet, because Kay bought me gifts and seemed to keep promises better than Mary did, I convinced myself that everything would work itself out.
With Mary, I put my family/spouse relationship totally out of my mind, ignored them for 3 years, stayed in a room by myself and screamed at anyone who dared come near me to suggest I get back "into the real world." Mary had an illness that caused her to be very debilitated and only able to go on the computer. She also had marriage trouble so she stayed away from her husband and gradually withdrew from her children. By the time Mary deserted me too, we had switched roles and I almost lost my children/husband, because of my selfish interest in Mary and lack of love for them. (IT WAS HORRID, but I couldn't honestly SEE what I was doing)
With Kay, I didn't desert my family as much, and I even tried to set boundaries with her, which she refused saying "I never had to set boundaries with ANY of my friends and I'm not about to START!" As a result, her one daughter moved out of her house, because SHE had been spending too much time with ME. (it's all just a sick, detrimental, divisive cycle)
4. Inability to Differentiate Love from Sympathy
both relationships with Mary and Kay involved feeling "responsible" to caretake. Mary had the debilitating disease, and Kay had another sort of physical problem. Both ladies had a lot of pain and were often very helpless physically. I felt that I, as their friend/helper, needed to play "nurse" in a large sense. So, you would say I felt OBLIGATED for the most of the relationship.
I do believe Mary loved me and still does. I do not believe Kay did or does, because she has no clue what true LOVE is, having been raised in a severely strict, non-feeling home with absent parents.
5. Helplessness and Neediness of Relationship Partners
Maybe you get hooked by the neediness and helplessness of your relationship partners. You find yourself hooked when your partners get into self-pity, "poor me" and "how tough life has been." You find yourself weak when your relationship partners demonstrates an inability to solve personal problems.
To be honest, I felt this with Mary, but it was both Kay and I who exhibited this in our relationship. Mary was the overall needy one, but with Kay, we sort of took turns being needy or expecting compassion and sympathy I think.
You find yourself wanting to teach and instruct, when your relationship partners demonstrate or admit ignorance of how to solve problems.
Mostly when Kay would feel stuck in situations, I'd want to try and help her work through them, but I crossed the line when I'd agree with her right to really despise people at one point. This was when I started sensing the red flags...last week this group of people adored her (according to Kay), but this week, they are rotten ^$&()(^)* who don't DESERVE squat of her time or care.
You lose all sense of space and time...
Yep, I sure did, and what's more... I didn't CARE anymore what day it was, what time it was, who in my family was going through what or anything EXCEPT MARY. For 3 and a half YEARS my children were without an emotionally and sometimes physically present mother.
It feels so good. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook is: "No one is helpless without first learning the advantages of being helpless. Helplessness is a learned behavior which is used to manipulate me to give of my resources, energy, time, effort and money to fix.
Most of the people I became enmeshed with, exhibit this learned helplessness because of their own pasts. Usually people with learned helplessness will talk themselves out of every good opportunity as they are telling you about it. You will try and encourage them but they will tell you why they can't do it, lack of talent, people might not like me, people might make fun of me, what if I get there and don't know what to say/do...etc etc. (this fuels your wanting to keep trying to encourage them and almost FORCE them to ACT when they won't)
I am a good person if I do not try to fix and take care of my relationship partners when my partners are acting helpless. I cannot establish healthy intimate relationships with my relationship partners if I am trying to fix or take care of them all of the time. I need to put more energy into fixing and taking care of myself if I find myself being hooked by my relationship partners' helplessness."
YEP! THIS IS KEY!
6. Need to be Needed
Yes, I sure did and sometimes do battle this one.
. There is no reason to feel responsible for your relationship partners if they let you know that they are dependent upon and need you for their life to be successful and fulfilled. This is over‑dependency and is unhealthy. It is impossible to have healthy intimacy with overdependent people because there is no give and take.
I agree with this 100%. Both Mary and Kay let me know that "without me they just didn't think they wanted to go on." this gave me a sense of being "all-important and necessary for their existence" in essence, the position of being sort of a "god." That is too high of an esteem for ANY human to have. There was some GIVE on both ends in both relationships, but in the end of the one with KAY, it was all TAKE on her end...taking my dignity, my identity, my value, my worth, everything she had supposedly taught me to never let anyone take.
7. Belief that Time will Make it Better
Maybe you get hooked by the belief that: "If I give it enough time things will change to be the way I want them to be."
I definitely experienced this after I knew Kay was showing N signs and BPD ones. I wanted so badly to make her see the damaging behaviors in herself. Her reply was to mock me, tell me it was I who had those issues, and basically remain in denial before replacing me with the next person, whom she immediately informed me was "much more suited" to her than I.
Since you are not sure how to have them or how they feel, you rationalize that maybe what the relationships need is more time to become more healthy and intimate.
I can remember telling Kay that I had NO CLUE what a healthy relationship even was, and she promised me that she would not allow things to get unhealthy.
. It is OK to set time limits in my relationships such as: if in 3 months or 6 months things do not get to be intimately healthier then I am getting out of them or we will need to seek professional help to work it out.
I did just this. First, I joined my church choir in order to make REAL LIFE friendships. Second, I sought psychological help when things began going downhill and looking too familiar.
8. Belief that It Must be All of My Fault that there are Problems in the Relationships
There is a reason we'd feel this way. We were TOLD IT WAS OUR FAULT...by parents, teachers, authorities, N's or ourselves, etc. Then, we BELIEVED it!
You feel blamed and pointed out by your relationship partners as the reason why things are not healthier or more intimate in your relationships. You find yourself having to defend yourself from attacks from your relationship partners for "not being good enough" or "doing enough" to make the relationships work. You find yourself with a mounting list of expectations, duties or responsibilities, given you by your partners, which must be accomplished if the relationships are ever to become what you want them to be.
I sort of smiled on this one. I actually have a written LIST of what Kay expected of me. Remember not to ever question her...do not act like you don't understand...do not ask for hugs...do not talk about certain subjects, always fall over yourself with thanks to her and those dear to her...etc..."
You find yourself needing to change the ways you think, feel, act, dress, talk, look, eat, work, cook, entertain, have fun, socialize, etc before you will be "good enough" for your relationships to work. You find that you will have to basically give up "who you are"
Yes. I LOST myself in the relationship with KAY, giving up my beliefs, my way of ministering, my types of friend choices, etc.
What keeps you hooked is the affirmation and reinforcement you get from your relationship partners when you effect a small change. The only problem is that there is always something else identified which needs to be changed after the last change has been accomplished. You are in a never ending loop of needing to change and unfortunately there never seems to be an end to it.
I don't usually exclaim in this manner but OH MY GOD! and I am saying that TO God...Lord KNOWS I experienced THIS one...always trying to figure out how to make Kay approve of me. there always was one more thing I was striving for, feeling like I never arrived, yet, when I'd question Kay, she'd say "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm fine with you." No, she was never fine with herself nor with me.
Worried about the future outcome of partner's life
It was more Kay who was always caught up in my future. She believed she knew the future of everyones, as far as where they were headed, and it was HER JOB to get you onto the path to take you there. At one point though, she came to me and admitted that God told her that it was HIS job to direct people, not hers, thus admitting her flaw in this area.
10.) Idealism or Fantasy Thinking
My biggest thing with this in both relationships, was that, I believed no matter how bad we fought, as long as we could talk on the phone about things, mary and Kay would ALWAYS come back to me and things would be ok again. WHen the relationships were clearly NOT going to come back together, it sent me into a panic to try and hold on even tighter and DEMAND that Mary and Kay stay with me...with words of "but you PROMISED! Was our relationship really all that shallow to you? Don't you care how this is hurting me? You are mean, you are EVIL. I don't like you." That is how someone who is insecure, dependent, codependent and borderline will act when another person pulls away from them. I also used to say a lot "But it wasn't supposed to BE this way. It wasn't supposed to END like this. THIS IS NO FAIR"
The pull to make the fantasy become real is very powerful. You seem brainwashed into believing that it is possible even though all of your efforts have not made it happen, after years and years of effort on your part. You get hooked by the delusion of the fulfillment of the fantasy and live as if the fantasy has become reality.
OH, VERY MUCH SO!
You are sometimes so out of touch with reality that you appear to be psychotic to others when you discuss your relationships.
Very ACCURATE way to put it. I DID seem crazy the way I obsessed over both Mary and Kay, yes...that was cause without them, I didn't believe I EXISTED.
They know they are not real and in some cases do not even closely approximate what you are saying. You keep pouring your resources, energy and time into empty pits which seem to never get filled.
The common statements from my children and husband during all this were: "Why do you keep on doing this to yourself? You have to be crazy to keep going through this!"
ept my relationships the way they are rather than how I want them to be. I am a human and subject to making mistakes and failing and I will forgive myself if I make a mistake in my efforts to establish healthy intimate relationships with my relationship partners. Once I give up the delusion that things are the way they are supposed to be, I will work with my partners to try to correct the problems in our relationships."
The best thing I did at this point, was fall apart, hit rock bottom and begin to HAVE to get back into REALITY one second at a time...LITERALLY, looking at my wristwatch. I would tell myself "come on, Laur...you can make it just one more millisecond. Then, I'd take the next minute and do the same, working up to 5 minute intervals at a time, then 10 then 15, etc...till minutes became hours, hours became a day and then 2 days, etc...I HAD to LITERALLY do this to re-establish my "personhood" and "existence" as part of a real, tangible planet. I was that "far gone" by the time Kay finished "rescuing me" from Mary. UGH
I do have to thank her for taking so far into the world of fantasy and pain that I came to realize that the only place left to go was TO GOD! HE WAS MY SALVATION!
~Laura
