Category Archives: Intimacy

“I’m afraid she won’t like me if she finds out how ordinary I am.”

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"Quodlibet" by Mimi Stuart ©
Live the Life you Desire

Intimacy requires letting yourself be known, and this requires knowing yourself and accepting yourself, ordinariness and all. To have a fulfilling relationship, you need to be strong enough to acknowledge your failings, to own your talents and uniqueness with equanimity, and to accept your unexceptional qualities with dignity. It takes courage to risk not being accepted for who you are.

The media glamorizes some of the tackiest eccentrics, turning them into celebrities, often making people feel less-than in their every day normality. It causes an unfortunate need to feel superior, special, or even freakish in order to feel worthy of love.

The fear of not being liked is really about not accepting ourselves. It’s easier to accept who we are when we realize that most of the joy we experience comes from authentic commonplace moments when we laugh at our failings, are true to ourselves, and are honest and naked in our simple truth.

Most humor, love, and connection demands compassion for one another. One thing we can all have compassion for is our commonality, our ordinariness.

What can be more ordinary than a shared comedy of obsessive rituals in the face of the fear of flying, the embarrassing things uttered on a first date, or the delight of a great cup of coffee. Notice how comedians get their greatest laughs by highlighting the quirkiness of run-of-the-mill events and thoughts that we all experience but go by unnoticed.

Wouldn’t it be exceptional to be able to experience unremarkable moments as special or even sacred in their very human ordinariness?

Always remember you’re special, just like everyone else.

by Alison Poulsen

Read “Parental Boasting for Self-Esteem: ‘Honey, I was just telling the Jones how smart and athletic you are.'”

Read “I don’t have any natural talent.”

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

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"Two Tunes" by Mimi Stuart ©
Live the Life you Desire

How often have you heard people say, “I still love him/her, but I’m not in love anymore”? Very often this loss of passion is the result of falling into a “positive bonding pattern” through countless decisions to hide true opinions and feelings to appease the other person.

“Positive bonding patterns,” which feel good at first because they are comfortable and safe, are ironically detrimental for the long-term health of a relationship. Each person puts on an attitude of agreement to placate the other and to avoid bringing up painful points of view or differing opinions. Each accommodates the other beyond the point of reasonable compromise.

Positive bonding patterns usually occur because we don’t want to rock the boat. Anxious to avoid upsetting the other person, we keep difficult thoughts and feelings to ourselves and put on a happy face.

However, thoughts and feelings that are hidden in a relationship will grow and fester. Eventually, the positive bonding pattern will lead to a lifeless relationship or a negative bonding pattern, in which fighting, anger, and bitterness will consume the relationship.

If a woman, for instance, doesn’t like the way her partner physically touches her but never says anything about it, the physical relationship is likely to peter out. She might remain agreeable, but she will find ways of avoiding physical intimacy.

Likewise, a man who never reveals that he dislikes the way his partner treats him may suddenly leave the relationship after years of acquiescence, in search of the dignity and respect he craves.

If one person does not express his or her differing opinions, discussions are likely to become dull and one-sided, and eventually come to an end. Silent judgments intensify. The relationship becomes stagnant and predictable. Sexual intimacy loses its passion or disappears. One’s opinions and preferences go underground. One loses one’s passion for life, and ultimately, one’s sense of self.

Here are some keys to avoid a positive bonding pattern:

1. Learn to communicate effectively, so that you can be honest without being offensive.

2. Avoid pretending to think or feel something that you don’t in order to keep the peace. You’re less likely to develop underground judgments and resentments.

3. Resist becoming overly dependent on another person, and you’ll feel less need to mollify the other.

4. Minimize overreacting, manipulating, and controlling your partner into doing what you want and agreeing with you, and it will be easier for your partner to retain a sense of self, which is vital for sustaining a long-term passionate relationship.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “Too much guilt: ‘He makes me feel guilty if I don’t do what he wants.'”

Read “Disappointing others: ‘I am not good at confrontation because I don’t want to hurt people.'”

Recommended: Hal and Sidra Stone’s “Partnering: A New Kind of Relationship.”

Guest Author Sam Vaknin, PhD:
“I Attract Abusers Like a Magnet”

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"Mesmerize" by Mimi Stuart
Live the Life you Desire

Many victims of narcissists are firmly convinced that they have been “chosen” by their abusers because of their capacity to empathize, their innate sensitivity, compassion, and their ability to love and care. Indeed, these qualities tend to attract exploitative psychopathic predators who leverage these human emotions to their advantage.

“Classical” narcissists, however, are actually repelled by such displays of contemptible “mushy” frailties. They regard natural born empaths as deplorable and nauseating weaklings who deserve all the abuse and ill-fortune that life and the narcissist mete out to them.

Narcissists, therefore, are highly unlikely to be drawn to such displays of tenderness, understanding, and sympathy. They are bound to consider them fake manipulative ploys whose sole purpose is either to extract something of value from the gullible narcissist by harping on his emotional needs – or to hurt and torment him once having secured his attachment and reciprocal love. Narcissists attribute to empathic, sensitive persons their own faults, traits, and motives – a primitive psychological defense mechanism known as projection.

So, what is the profile of the “typical” victim of narcissistic abuse?

There is none. Victims come in all shapes, sizes, professions, genders, and ages. They vary in educational and professional attainment; levels of self-esteem and self-confidence; family background; personal history; socio-economic strata; political affiliations; and any other parameter you can think of. Narcissists are not choosy and have no predilections when it comes to sources of narcissistic supply. They shack up with anyone who shows them adulation and showers them with attention.

You ought to get rid of this self-defeating refrain: “I attract abusers like a magnet, I am a narcissist-magnet (N-magnet)”!

Review your life in minute detail. Over the years and in a variety of settings — your family, your workplace, church, voluntary organizations — many people of both sexes must have found your company desirable and your personality agreeable. Were they all narcissists? Surely not! Were all those who found you sexually attractive and sought your friendship and companionship monstrous abusers? Were you victimized in all your relationships whether romantic and intimate or not? There is no way you can answer any of these questions in the affirmative!

If you chose your partners badly, or if you did not extricate yourself post haste once you have been mistreated it must have been your doing! Magnets are passive, they have no judgment, and cannot exert control over their destiny. They are a bad simile: human beings are not an inert, helpless, mindless substance. They are aware of what they are doing; can distinguish right from wrong; can and do act upon information; and exercise judgment. Bad relationships, however harrowing, constitute opportunities to learn lessons. If you fail to do so, you have no one to blame but yourself!

Sam Vaknin, PhD, is the excellent author of “Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited” and other books about personality disorders.

Read Sam Vaknin’s “I can’t live without him/her.”

“She’s just like my mother! — so weak!”
“He’s just like my father — so controlling!”

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"Journey" by Mimi Stuart
Live the Life you Desire

The quality of all of our relationships is a direct function of our relationship to ourselves.

~James Hollis

Since no one influences our relationship to ourselves as much as our parents, we are often drawn to people who have some key qualities of our parents (or their extreme opposites.) While at first familiar and comforting, eventually those qualities become all-too-familiar triggers to our childhood responses. For example, what at first seemed attractive, “strong and in control,” turns into “controlling and dictatorial.”

“How many marriages are wrecked for years, and sometimes forever, because he sees his mother in his wife and she her father in her husband, and neither ever recognizes the other’s reality!” wrote Carl Jung.

Imagine a wife is projecting onto her husband, “You’re just like my father — controlling and dictatorial.” Naturally, she will respond with the same defenses as she did as a child — she will behave like a child, whether with hostility, withdrawal, or reluctant compliance. Such a response intensifies the dynamic between the couple. He will see her as weak and become more domineering as a defense against vulnerability.

Projection triggers automatic responses, closing off the opportunity to relate in a fresh way in the current situation. By projecting all the control onto her husband, the wife assumes a lack of self-empowerment and continues to give away the power that she can develop within herself. The husband projects away his vulnerability and becomes increasingly forceful to repress any healthy though uncomfortable feelings of uncertainty.

To avoid this unhappy vicious cycle, the partners can try to take back their projections and overcome their automatic reactions.

Taking back projections is not easy. Partners feel obligated to point out the weaknesses of their partner that really reside within themselves. However, by taking back our projections, we have a chance to grow and learn to approach our partners fair-mindedly.

So, if we see our partner as controlling, for example, we must

1) learn to deal effectively with controlling people,
2) develop more personal authority to become less of a victim, and
3) deflate the power of controlling behavior by seeing the fear of vulnerability beneath the controlling behavior.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “Negative Projection.”

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

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"Garden of Eden" by Mimi Stuart
Live the Life you Desire

The most indispensable quality in a relationship is respect. When two people deeply respect each other as human beings, they can deal with a lot of challenges and differences of opinion.

The greatest threat to mutual respect is a spouse’s intense needs and fears, which often manifest themselves as controlling or demeaning behavior. While it’s fine to disagree or to be angry, there must be an underlying sense of respect for each other.

It is absolutely critical not to talk to one another disrespectfully. When one person starts speaking disdainfully, with a sneer or a sense of superiority, the other must stop it immediately. It’s up to you to make it perfectly clear that you won’t take it.

When someone goes after you like a judgmental parent, you have to set a boundary. Don’t respond to the advice or accusation. Say meaningfully, “Please, do not speak to me that way,” “Don’t do that,” or “Excuse me?”

Love based on respect requires a sense of self-respect on your part. Moreover, people who exude self-respect by stopping others from crossing a line or talking down to them are more attractive than those who accept it. Expecting respect is a more powerful aphrodisiac than unconditional positive regard.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “Inner critics attract critical partners. Why does my partner criticize me all the time?”

Read “I always fall madly in love; we do everything together; and then, out of the blue, I get dumped.”