I read Bober's divorce thread with much pain and sadness and thought I'd share a story told to me by, well by someone very important ot me. He was a psychothrapist, married, the best marriage that he know of, and an all around highly successful professional. One day he found out that his wife wanted a divorce, that she thought he did, and they got divorced. He was staggered, and set out to find out what and how this could have happened. He read the entire literature on divorce, but could find nothing to satisfactorily explain what happened.
He also had a patient at this time, a young woman, very different from him who had profound inferiority feelings. One day she came to session full of sunshine and joy. He asked her what had happened and she told him that she was in love. Then one day she appeared depressed and in tears. She had broken up with her boyfriend. During the session she went into her feelings deeply and in the midst of her tears, when she was in a place where he knew there could be no dissembling, he asked her why she had broken it off. She replied, "He loves me the dope."
He got the implication, that her feelings about herself were so bad that anybody who loved her had to be crazy, that there had to be something wrong with him, the boyfriend.
Could his wife have felt that way? Could he, himself feel that way. He set out to find out. He had more therapy than anybody alive. He had been to the big names. Some of them, the ones he didn't particularly like got him to experience things he hadn't known. He drove into the country in his car and let go of powerful, suppressed feelings. He said he remembered his own sh!t at six months of age.
He discovered that in addition to being a highly successful person, that burried deep within and totally unknown was the feeling that he was the worst person in the world. He relived that feeling to it's core and discovered it to be a lie. He experienced some kind of a powerful, transformation, I don't know what, enlightenment. He said that the truth was 180 degrees from where we look. That there was another reality that was like turning your shirt inside out. He said that he was OK that he was 99.99% sure that he was OK. His life was like a knife through butter. that totally without defenses there were no putdowns that anybody could direct at him that could hurt at all.
I have never seen anybody more alive, conscious, or full of love.
He said that while we want love we push it away because we feel we don't diserve it. In relationship, we test to see if we are loved, with every test designed to fail. We fall in love, but when, in closeness, we touch the partners pain, or make demands for love on their emptiness, he described us as vacuum cleaners sucking on vacuum cleaners, we make the other feel his or her worthlessness. That is the one thing we cannot stand, to be made to feel how we already do feel and don't let ourselves know.
So we long to flit from flower to flower with fresh loves unspoiled by the forced and inevitable contact with the ugly thing within, or long to flit.
The other is always blamed, it is they who is trying to make me feel bad, but the unrecognized fact that I already feel that way.
The hope for relationship, in my opinion, in addition to the possibility of working to know all the way down that there is nothing wrong with us, is to see the dynamic in action of how the partner triggers our self hate. In other words, the problems we have in relationship are our fault, our illness, not the illness of the other even if their action may be the result of their illness.
Put differently, we cannot be hurt as adults, just reminded of how badly we were hurt long ago. With self hate we cannot truly love. With self love there is only love for everyghing.
I can't make you love yourself, I can't even do that for myself. But understanding the real inner dimension and mechanism, the unconsciously operating schema, that is going on in our relationships, makes it possible to completely change the the way we see, and potentially react to our partners. I wish you all much insight, love, and good luck.
He also had a patient at this time, a young woman, very different from him who had profound inferiority feelings. One day she came to session full of sunshine and joy. He asked her what had happened and she told him that she was in love. Then one day she appeared depressed and in tears. She had broken up with her boyfriend. During the session she went into her feelings deeply and in the midst of her tears, when she was in a place where he knew there could be no dissembling, he asked her why she had broken it off. She replied, "He loves me the dope."
He got the implication, that her feelings about herself were so bad that anybody who loved her had to be crazy, that there had to be something wrong with him, the boyfriend.
Could his wife have felt that way? Could he, himself feel that way. He set out to find out. He had more therapy than anybody alive. He had been to the big names. Some of them, the ones he didn't particularly like got him to experience things he hadn't known. He drove into the country in his car and let go of powerful, suppressed feelings. He said he remembered his own sh!t at six months of age.
He discovered that in addition to being a highly successful person, that burried deep within and totally unknown was the feeling that he was the worst person in the world. He relived that feeling to it's core and discovered it to be a lie. He experienced some kind of a powerful, transformation, I don't know what, enlightenment. He said that the truth was 180 degrees from where we look. That there was another reality that was like turning your shirt inside out. He said that he was OK that he was 99.99% sure that he was OK. His life was like a knife through butter. that totally without defenses there were no putdowns that anybody could direct at him that could hurt at all.
I have never seen anybody more alive, conscious, or full of love.
He said that while we want love we push it away because we feel we don't diserve it. In relationship, we test to see if we are loved, with every test designed to fail. We fall in love, but when, in closeness, we touch the partners pain, or make demands for love on their emptiness, he described us as vacuum cleaners sucking on vacuum cleaners, we make the other feel his or her worthlessness. That is the one thing we cannot stand, to be made to feel how we already do feel and don't let ourselves know.
So we long to flit from flower to flower with fresh loves unspoiled by the forced and inevitable contact with the ugly thing within, or long to flit.
The other is always blamed, it is they who is trying to make me feel bad, but the unrecognized fact that I already feel that way.
The hope for relationship, in my opinion, in addition to the possibility of working to know all the way down that there is nothing wrong with us, is to see the dynamic in action of how the partner triggers our self hate. In other words, the problems we have in relationship are our fault, our illness, not the illness of the other even if their action may be the result of their illness.
Put differently, we cannot be hurt as adults, just reminded of how badly we were hurt long ago. With self hate we cannot truly love. With self love there is only love for everyghing.
I can't make you love yourself, I can't even do that for myself. But understanding the real inner dimension and mechanism, the unconsciously operating schema, that is going on in our relationships, makes it possible to completely change the the way we see, and potentially react to our partners. I wish you all much insight, love, and good luck.
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