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When Facebook erodes real-life relationships:
“I’m only checking in with friends and seeing what they’re up to.”

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"Passion — Eclipse 500" by Mimi Stuart ©
Live the Life you Desire

Like any technological medium, Facebook and other social media can enrich your life, waste your time, or cause damage, even though you are not doing anything illegal, unethical, or immoral.

Facebook time is increasingly contributing to the erosion of real-life loving relationships. Here are two primary ways in which such technological devotion can insidiously take a toll on existing relationships with loved ones:

1. Facebook Overload

There is nothing wrong with keeping in touch with friends and enjoying the entertainment value of Facebook and other social media. Friendship, camaraderie, community, entertainment, and laughter are very healthy human pursuits. For some people, who might be shy, housebound, or isolated from friends, social media provides a wonderful opportunity to communicate with friends and to participate in community. Many people enjoy getting in touch with a variety of people they might not otherwise stay in touch with, sharing photos and status updates.

Yet, for some people, such pastime easily turns into a compulsive addiction. When you start to crave getting online and impulsively logging on without any specific goal, you may find yourself wasting a lot of time.

You only need to ask yourself how honestly proud, pleased, or fulfilled you feel after spending time on Facebook to know whether you are squandering your time. Sometimes you DO feel good about the time spent — that you’ve had some laughs, made some connections with people, found out about a great event, or seen some interesting videos. But other times you might feel empty and dazed as though you’ve been flipping channels between bad TV stations for the past hour.

2. Curiosity, Attractions, and Fantasies

It’s human nature to be curious about what’s happened to old friends and lovers and to be intrigued about people you find interesting or attractive. However, when you start nosing around on Facebook much beyond a one-time glance at people you find attractive, you may be taking that time and intention away from your real relationships and other activities that you may want to pursue to become the best person you can be.

Given the apparent confidentiality of being online, curiosity can slip into voyeurism. When you start repeatedly checking out particular individuals’ photos and entries, it’s easy to project your fantasies on them. After all, they generally post only their most attractive photos. When you don’t have an in-depth relationship with someone, you fill in the unknowns with whatever you most desire.

There’s usually nothing harmful in having momentary fantasies. Being attracted to others is normal and not necessarily damaging. What’s unhealthy and destructive is thinking obsessively about them. Ultimately, directing your energy toward your fantasy will come at the expense of your real relationships.

When you look at the photos and follow the profiles of those people you find attractive repeatedly, you can easily start having obsessive projections and fantasies about them. This can significantly erode the real-life relationship you have, even if your significant other is not aware of the direction of your attention. If much of your energy and focus is directed toward these fantasies, then the lack of attention, openness, love and passion in your real-world relationships will eventually destroy those real-time relationships.

If you’re not in relationship, obsessive fantasies can similarly prevent you from interacting face to face with people and learning how to develop live relationships with people.

Solutions

With self-awareness and a desire to choose the life you want to live and the type of relationships you want to have, you can monitor your habits and change them.

It is very simple to see how much time you spend on Facebook each week, and to think about what else you might have accomplished in that time. Then you can decide if you want to reduce that time spent online.

You can also check out your browser history over the past few months and see how you have been using Facebook and other social media and ask yourself if you are being obsessive about specific people or topics. Think about whether that time looking at others’ photos has inspired and enhanced your real-time relationships and your life, or whether you are eroding your relationships and demeaning yourself by developing a preference for engaging in fantasy over other choices you might make.

Life is a series of experiences and adjustments. To live the life you desire, it helps to look at the choices you’re making and tweak them to best serve the goals you set for yourself. It’s less painful to make those adjustments frequently, before your patterns of behavior wreak havoc on your life and relationships.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “Text… phone call… email… ‘Oh…what were you saying?’”

Read “After multiple affairs, he promised he’d never cheat on me again. Can I trust him this time?”

Acknowledging loved ones:
“We don’t really greet each other anymore.”

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"Fly By" — Blue Angels by Mimi Stuart ©
Live the Life you Desire

Saying “good morning,” “hello,” “good bye,” or “how are you?” every time you see a loved one or when you leave the house or come back home will make a great deal of difference in your relationship over the long term. It shows that you care and makes your partner feel that he or she is not simply taken for granted. While you don’t have to be melodramatic or sentimental, you don’t want to be perfunctory or hasty either.

An actress recently told me that the way she avoids looking fake when she smiles endlessly for the camera is to think happy or loving thoughts while smiling. If instead she thinks, “I hope I don’t look horrible” or “how long is this going to take?” those thoughts show up in her facial expression, despite the smile.

Similarly, when you greet loved ones, or almost anyone for that matter, they will sense it if you’re thinking, “But where are my keys and how long is this going to take?”

It makes a real difference to put your other thoughts on hold and actually look at your loved ones when you greet them or say “good bye.” Real connection occurs best with full presence of mind and body, giving you the ability to connect with real energy and to receive it as well. The long-term well-being of a relationship is built on all the small moments of acknowledgement, appreciation, kindness, and passion over the years.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “Respect each other: ‘He’s always talking down to me.’”

Read “Overgeneralization: ‘You never show appreciation.’”

Read “Living together Part I: Manners and Boundaries — ‘What’s the matter with you? Look at this mess you made!’”

Where’s the passion?
“I’ve toned down my dreams, achievements, and spontaneity so I won’t annoy my partner. Now we take each other for granted.”

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"Salsa Picante" by Mimi Stuart ©
Live the Life you Desire

Consideration vs. catering to weakness

To have a fulfilling relationship, you have to learn to speak your truth and become the best person you can be without living in fear of your partner’s reaction. In a reciprocal loving relationship, each partner’s joy and accomplishments should, by love’s definition, make the other happy.

It is important to be considerate of your partner. However, diminishing yourself to cater to your partner’s weaknesses does neither you nor your partner any justice.

The moment you play into the fear that your partner will feel inadequate when you shine, you start down the path of undermining your joy and capabilities in a futile attempt to pander to your partner’s fears. Such pandering will only enhance your partner’s anxieties by accommodating them, and will eventually breed resentment in the both of you.

Dependence and predictability

All relationships involve some dependence. As dependence increases, partners fear that change might destabilize the relationship’s security. When people become highly dependent on their partners, they tend to limit intimacy and spontaneity. They try to accommodate the fear of their partner by maintaining the comfort of the status quo.

Yet, the status quo becomes increasingly tedious and tiresome over time. Predictability leads to taking your partner for granted. When partners take each other for granted, romantic desire fades to extinction.

Desire requires tolerating anxiety

It takes courage to grow and change in a long-term relationship. Specifically, you have to deal with the deep-rooted, subtle fear of being rejected or humiliated when stepping out of the confines of your comfort zone.

Desire requires appreciation for the partner AND the ability to withstand the tension in continuing to grow and flourish. People who tolerate little anxiety have a small window through which to experience desire. Routine and predictability become ways of avoiding anxiety. Unfortunately, they also become ways of stifling vitality, excitement, and desire.

Uncertainty and novelty

A healthy level of anxiety enhances desire by increasing receptivity, awareness, and focus. Notice how you are more alive and alert when you travel to exotic places. The new smells, sights and experiences enhance a traveler’s awareness. Uncertainty and novelty cause low-level anxiety, which increases anticipation and exhilaration.

You don’t have to travel to enhance the awareness and excitement in your relationship. Yet, you need to engage your creativity and change what you do on occasion. For example, make a special meal, have a picnic in a new place, invite different friends over for dinner, try a new sport or hobby, take classes on your own, plan a trip, or take dance classes. It doesn’t matter if any of these unfamiliar events turn into a disaster. You will feel alive, and you will have something to talk and laugh about.

You simply have to have the courage to risk following your own dreams, as well as doing new things together and with others. It helps if you can do so with an irresistible sense of adventure, humor, and delight.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “Positive Bonding Patterns: ‘We never fight, but we don’t talk anymore and there’s no more passion.’”

Read “Our relationship is such hard work. The spark is gone.”

Read “I’m always walking on eggshells. I don’t want to upset my partner.”

Impatience: “It drives me crazy to wait in long lines and deal with slow, incompetent people.”

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"Soothing Sax" by Mimi Stuart ©
Live the Life you Desire

Most everyone experiences impatience when waiting in long lines, listening to someone’s long, boring story, and enduring other frustrating situations. However, impatience is magnified in people who have developed a strong preference for doing at the expense of being. Such people can enjoy the moment when it is fascinating, fruitful, or fun-filled, but get frustrated easily otherwise.

Impatience is not bad in itself. In moderation, it indicates that your time could be better spent. But when impatience is excessive or when a situation is beyond our control, our frustration turns into an unnecessary waste of time and energy. While stimulating activities, achievement, and productivity are necessary as well as fulfilling in themselves, excessive impatience can indicate that action is emphasized to the detriment of being in the present.

Impatient people have a sense that if they’re not getting something done, whether working, buying groceries, reading a book, getting somewhere quickly, or enjoying an event, then they’re wasting their time or missing out on something.

Impatience not only doesn’t help the situation, it harms our state of mind, our relationships, and our health. Therefore, it is important and beneficial to find a balance between being goal oriented and being able to be at peace in an ordinary moment. Such balance allows us to experience and enjoy the moment even while waiting in a long line at the DMV.

Here are some alternative ways of enjoying the moment rather than silently cursing that deliberately-slow bureaucrat who’s holding up the line:

1. Take time to relax your body and your mind. Breathe slowly and deeply, relax your face and shoulders, and think pleasant thoughts.

2. Find humor in the situation. If you’re the mental type, then challenge yourself to describe the scene in a humorous way.

3. Find something interesting about the surroundings and the people around you, no matter how unappealing they may seem.

4. Strike up a conversation with someone in line. No-strings-attached banter with a complete stranger can be pleasant or at least intriguing in a socio-psychological way. Who knows — you might meet somebody interesting or hear an amazing story.

5. Do some planning on how to improve your life. Design an activity, dinner, or adventure that you would enjoy. Or think about how you can become a better person.

6. Mentally list all the things you are grateful for. Research shows that this simple process makes a person happier.

If the line is really long, you can do everything on the list and beyond, and gain that desired sense of achievement.

People are more enjoyable to be with when they are not frustrated, rushing about, and impatient. They can get just as much done, AND they are able to make the most of those unproductive moments, despite the pressure of time. We all enjoy being with people who balance action with serenity, because they don’t exude that unpleasant fidgety desire to get moving.

Too much patience is the support of weakness; too much impatience the ruin of strength.

~Charles Caleb Colton, paraphrased

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “Road Rage: ‘That blankety-blank cut me off! I’ll show him!!’”

Read “Rushing: I’m only five minutes late and got so much done.’”

Guest Author Sam Vaknin, PhD:
“I feel bad even though the abuse has stopped.”

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"Purple Heart" by Mimi Stuart ©
Live the Life you Desire

So, you have mustered courage and left the abusive relationship. Why do you still feel so bad, so down, and so sick at heart? Repeated abuse has long lasting pernicious and traumatic effects such as panic attacks, hypervigilance, sleep disturbances, flashbacks (intrusive memories), and suicidal ideation.

Victims and survivors experience psychosomatic and “real” bodily symptoms, some of them induced by the secretion of stress hormones such as cortisol: increased blood pressure, racing pulse, headaches, excessive sweating and myriad self-imputed diseases. The victims endures shame, depression, anxiety, embarrassment, guilt, humiliation, abandonment, and an enhanced sense of vulnerability.

Surprisingly, verbal, psychological, and emotional abuse have the same effects as the physical variety [Psychology Today, September/October 2000 issue, p.24]. Abuse of all kinds also interferes with the victim’s ability to work. Still, it is hard to generalise. Victims are not a uniform lot. In some cultures, abuse is commonplace and accepted as a legitimate mode of communication, a sign of love and caring, and a boost to the abuser’s self-image. In such circumstances, the victim is likely to adopt the norms of society and avoid serious trauma.

Deliberate, cold-blooded, and premeditated torture has worse and longer-lasting effects than abuse meted out by the abuser in rage and loss of self-control. The existence of a loving and accepting social support network is another mitigating factor. Finally, the ability to express negative emotions safely and to cope with them constructively is crucial to healing.

Typically, by the time the abuse reaches critical and all-pervasive proportions, the abuser had already, spider-like, isolated his victim from family, friends, and colleagues. She is catapulted into a nether land, where reality itself dissolves into a continuing nightmare.

When she emerges on the other end of this wormhole, the abused woman (or, more rarely, man) feels helpless, self-doubting, worthless, stupid, and a guilty failure for having botched her relationship and “abandoned” her “family”. In an effort to regain perspective and avoid embarrassment, the victim denies the abuse or minimizes it.

No wonder that survivors of abuse tend to be clinically depressed, neglect their health and personal appearance, and succumb to boredom, rage, and impatience. Many end up abusing prescription drugs or drinking or otherwise behaving recklessly.

Dr. Judith Herman of Harvard University has proposed a new mental health diagnosis to account for the impact of extended periods of trauma and abuse: C-PTSD (Complex PTSD).

The first phase of PTSD involves incapacitating and overwhelming fear. The victim feels like she has been thrust into a nightmare or a horror movie. She is rendered helpless by her own terror. She keeps re-living the experience through recurrent and intrusive visual and auditory hallucinations (“flashbacks”) or dreams. In some flashbacks, the victim completely lapses into a dissociative state and physically re-enacts the event while being thoroughly oblivious to her whereabouts.

In an attempt to suppress this constant playback and the attendant exaggerated startle response (jumpiness), the victim tries to avoid all stimuli associated, however indirectly, with the traumatic event. Many develop full-scale phobias (agoraphobia, claustrophobia, fear of heights, aversion to specific animals, objects, modes of transportation, neighbourhoods, buildings, occupations, weather, and so on).

Most PTSD victims are especially vulnerable on the anniversaries of their abuse. They try to avoid thoughts, feelings, conversations, activities, situations, or people who remind them of the traumatic occurrence (“triggers”).

This constant hypervigilance and arousal, sleep disorders (mainly insomnia), the irritability (“short fuse”), and the inability to concentrate and complete even relatively simple tasks erode the victim’s resilience. Utterly fatigued, most patients manifest protracted periods of numbness, automatism, and, in radical cases, near-catatonic posture. Response times to verbal cues increase dramatically. Awareness of the environment decreases, sometimes dangerously so. The victims are described by their nearest and dearest as “zombies”, “machines”, or “automata”.

The victims appear to be sleepwalking, depressed, dysphoric, anhedonic (not interested in anything and find pleasure in nothing). They report feeling detached, emotionally absent, estranged, and alienated. Many victims say that their “life is over” and expect to have no career, family, or otherwise meaningful future.

The victim’s family and friends complain that she is no longer capable of showing intimacy, tenderness, compassion, empathy, and of having sex (due to her post-traumatic “frigidity”). Many victims become paranoid, impulsive, reckless, and self-destructive. Others somatize their mental problems and complain of numerous physical ailments. They all feel guilty, shameful, humiliated, desperate, hopeless, and hostile.

PTSD need not appear immediately after the harrowing experience. It can – and often is – delayed by days or even months. It lasts more than one month (usually much longer). Sufferers of PTSD report subjective distress (the manifestations of PTSD are ego-dystonic). Their functioning in various settings – job performance, grades at school, sociability – deteriorates markedly.

What can you do about it?

The short and long of it is: seek professional help. You cannot cope with the aftermath of harrowing abuse all by yourself. The prognosis in case of treatment – even brief treatment – is good: PTSD can be alleviated and eliminated.

Second: re-connect with friends and family. Make amends where necessary. Re-establish your network of emotional support and share, share, share. The more you share, the easier the burden.


by Sam Vaknin, PhD, the author of “Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited” – an excellent, comprehensive book about Narcissistic Personality Disorder and abusive behavior – and other books about personality disorders.

Read “Traumas as Social Interactions” by Dr. Sam Vaknin.

Read “I Attract Abusers Like a Magnet” by Dr. Sam Vaknin.

Watch “Self-Respect: How to Avoid becoming a Doormat” by Alison Poulsen, PhD.