The Great "No No"

*Author's Note - This article is actually a chapter from a book I am now writing.  I would be grateful for your feedback if you would please send it to me on the form at the bottom of this page.

            If you picked up this book because of difficulties in your own relationship, then your simple act indicates two important things about you.  First, it signifies that you’re feeling some pain. I’m not talking about the obviously physical just-cut-your-finger kind of pain.  I’m talking about the kind of pain that hurts somewhere in your spirit.  But even though your pain is spiritual, it can still be described in physical terms.  If your relationship is in acute crisis then the pain may feel sharp and piercing.  Or if your frustration is chronic then the pain may feel like a dull ache or perhaps an empty, hungry kind of sensation.  Another possibility is a stifling, suffocating kind of feeling. You may associate it with your chest, your heart, the pit of your stomach, the back of your neck or even your head.  But wherever you feel it, whether it’s subtle or intense, you’re still feeling some form of pain.  You may also have the disturbing sense that your life wasn’t supposed to turn out this way.  You started this marriage with dreams that you hoped your relationship would fulfill.  You wanted love, respect, and a soul-mate with whom you could share life’s experiences.  You not only wanted to be nurtured but you wanted to be appreciated for being the loving person you always knew you could be.  You wanted the opportunity to let your love unfold and now you fear that the opportunity is passing you by. 

The second thing indicated by picking up this book is that you still harbor hope.  Maybe it’s not a lot of hope.  Perhaps it’s just the tiniest fraction of hope.  However, it’s still hope.  After all, this isn’t a book about divorce or suicide.  And you’re probably also hoping that this book will offer you tools that are effective.. You want this help to be practical because you’re concerned about results.  You’re probably tired of skimming the plethora of self-help books that speak of the 8 principles of this and the 6 rules of that and yet still leave you with unsettling questions of how to get to from here to there.  Questions like: “HOW can we work on emotional intimacy when all we do is fight?” or “HOW can we rebuild this relationship when all I ever get from my partner is the feeling that I’m never enough?!”  You want practical interventions for these kinds of problems. 

I promise you, this book will be practical.  You can expect to learn the following:

·        The feeding and proper care of your relationship

·        Common myths that hinder your relationship

·        Common scripts that threaten your relationship

·        Destructive relationship patterns such as the emotional starvation syndrome, the pursuer-evader syndrome, and the initiator-dependent syndrome

·        The five most common forms of conflict and the best strategy for handling each one

·        How to approach conflict in order to improve your chances for positive results

             In this book you can thoroughly learn all of these things.  Your perspective and understanding may become crystal clear.  And even if your vision does become clear, and even if you do see your past mistakes as well as a new and better path, even if all this happens and you rely on this knowledge but only on this knowledge to help you, then you will probably fail. That’s right.  I said “fail.”  Not that I want you to fail. In fact I’m going to do my very best to help you to succeed.  But if you rely only on your insight and knowledge to help you then you will probably fail because the biggest obstacle we all face in emotional intimacy is not our ignorance.  It’s our fear.  And we usually fear ourselves most of all.

If you’re going to successfully improve your marriage, then you will need more than insight and knowledge. You will additionally need both courage and faith to help you face what you fear most about yourself.   In addition to teaching you new behavioral strategies, this book will help you to prepare for the emotional challenge ahead.  Most self-help relationship books shy away from this topic.  A few exhort you to get your external life in order and focus on your interests or behavior. That’s OK advice but I’m more concerned that you get your internal life in order.  Relationship change strategies usually fail a person who is emotionally unprepared.  In fact, most surveys of couples in marriage counseling indicate that only a third of them report significant improvement.  My own interpretation of this disappointing percentage is that most people unknowingly sabotage their attempts at marital improvement and they do so because of emotions they don’t understand or even recognize.  The reason why these emotions are so enigmatic is because we don’t want to talk about them.  We’re afraid of them.  We collectively keep each other in the dark because we all act as if these emotions don’t exist.  The emotions to which I’m referring are both shame and the fear of shame.  And an interesting thing about shame is that, like mold, it grows in the dark.

If there were ever such a thing as a worldwide conspiracy it would be this: That no one wants to admit that we are all influenced by fear throughout our everyday existence,  that along with the more positive emotions of love, curiosity, sensuality, and the desire for pride and self-actualization, we are similarly motivated by the fear of shame that both nips at our heels and narrows our vision of opportunity.  But a conspiracy involves people getting together to covertly communicate.  What do we call it when people are secretive about something and they covertly discourage communication?  An “un-conspiracy” or a “reverse conspiracy”?  Somehow, those don’t quite get it.  For want of a better name, I’ve resigned myself to calling it “The Great No No.”

            At this point, let me invite you to get a more personal feel for this subject. The following self-exam lists personal challenges that we all experience.  The items are framed in the second person plural “We” instead of “You” because I didn’t want you to feel individually targeted as if the rest of the human race doesn’t struggle along with you.  If you’re feeling especially adventurous you might ask your partner to also take the exam and then compare your answers. 

The purpose for this exercise was to let you to confront some of your own defenses, not for you to obtain a score.  However, I know that some of us have a proclivity towards measuring things. Therefore, let me interpret the following.  If you score 10 or less then your defenses are so strong that you’re probably deceiving yourself.   If your score is above 40 then you’re experiencing a lot of defensive inefficiency.  Your life may be disrupted in a number of spheres.  Most people score between 20 and 40. 

All of the items in the preceding self-exam involve our fear of shame.  We fear and try to avoid the shameful sense that we’re unimportant and undeserving.  Shame takes different forms but in this context it’s the pain of feeling that we’re somehow less than we’re supposed to be. While guilt is a negative feeling about what we do, shame is a devaluation of who we are.  It’s about whether we perceive our very existence as being important.  And this fear of shame plays out on a totally symbolic level.  In our civilization we no longer fear cave bears and saber-tooths.  Instead, we fear a loss of stature in our own self-evaluation.  Because this self-evaluation is not about physical reality, we’re really afraid of something symbolic. We fear the symbolic meaning of a mistake or a poor performance.  We’re afraid of the negativity in a disapproving glare, a sarcastic comment, a forgotten date, a raised eyebrow, or a bored sigh.  We’re vulnerable to the personal devaluation inherent in a raised voice, an irrelevant interruption in the middle of our talking, inequity in our relationships, having another person tell us how we feel, the lack of pursuit by a person who says they still love us, and especially the experience of not being asked about what we want or feel.    

Most of us don’t fully appreciate how much the fear of shame operates in our lives.  One reason is that we don’t like to admit to others anything about ourselves that doesn’t enhance our popularity.  Neither fear nor shame is a hot commodity in the interpersonal status market.  We want others to view us as always being motivated by positive emotions.  Nobody wants to talk about or acknowledge the negative feelings.  And when we adopt a distorted popular image of what being human should be, we often fool ourselves about how we really are. We want to fit in.  We want to be normal.  We don’t like to admit even to ourselves that we have feelings of vulnerability.  The irony in this situation is a truth that sounds like a weird distortion of Roosevelt’s famous admonition about fear.  Only this one goes: we’re afraid of our shame and ashamed of our fear.

Another reason why we’re unaware of this fear is that the feeling can be very subtle.  It’s usually not the experience of strong terror. It’s more often a subtle anxiety that leads us to react quickly before we even become aware of it.  Think about whether you’ve ever experienced the following:

·        You didn’t apply for a position or opportunity because you thought you might fail even though there was a possibility for success.  (Probable dynamic: You were afraid that failure would give you the shameful feeling that you didn’t deserve what you wanted.) 

 ·        Another person directly expressed to you their deep affection.  You became uneasy and changed the subject.  (Probable dynamic: You were afraid that you wouldn’t be able to say or do the right thing in return.  You were afraid of feeling the shame of an inadequate emotional performance.)  

·        You didn’t pursue a private interest of yours because your partner wanted you to stay home.  You really didn’t want to stay home but you didn’t want to cause any friction.  (Probable dynamic: You were afraid of your partner’s wrath and/or accusations of your “selfishness”.  More importantly, you were afraid of having to utilize your anger in a conflict situation.  You were afraid that your own anger would make you appear “ugly”, “selfish”, or “unloving.”) 

·        At the end of the day, you think about taking your coffee cup to a private place to relax and think.  However, you quickly change your mind because you have more important things to do.  (Probable dynamic: If this happens very occasionally, you may just have pressing responsibilities.  If it happens more frequently, you’re probably afraid of letting go of responsibilities because they’re your defense.  Your activity helps you to avoid feeling shame.  Although you tell yourself that relaxing would be too indulgent, you’re actually afraid to stop feeling proud of your accomplishments.  You feel driven to accomplish things because you’re afraid of otherwise feeling unimportant or inadequate.  Many people start feeling depressed and unimportant if they stop frenetic activity.) 

·        When you sometimes get up in the middle of the night, you think about how quickly time is passing in your life. You feel some of your losses more acutely.  You fear your eventual death and you wonder about the overall meaning of your life.  However, you never get around to sharing these thoughts and feelings with your partner.  (Probable dynamic:  You’re afraid of talking about these feelings and sounding silly or weird.  You’re afraid of your partner’s possible reaction if you did share them.  You’re afraid that they might confirm that you’re abnormal or perhaps intellectually inadequate for attempting such a weighty discussion.) 

·        You’re feeling taken for granted in your relationship.  You indict your partner for a long list of past wrongs.  You demand for them to change instead of requesting that they sit down with you for some planning sessions.  (Probable dynamic: You covertly fear that you’re too dependent.  You’re afraid that being too dependent makes you weak and defective.  Therefore, you don’t want to appear weak by making a request.  By making demands, you get to view yourself as being strong.  By indicting your partner for past transgressions, you get to feel superior as well.  More importantly, you protect yourself from having to experience your personal request being ignored or refused.  Demands don’t hurt as much if they’re rejected.  A request that is ignored, forgotten, or refused is more likely to stir up the sense that you expected too much for yourself.  After all, is seems that if you were truly important to your partner, they would have been more responsive.)  

·        You indict your partner for not being sufficiently available to the children.  You omit the fact that you especially want your partner to be available for you.  (Probable dynamic: You’re ashamed of your dependence again.  You’re afraid of a more obvious and therefore painful rejection compared to the subtle one you’re already experiencing.  While it’s true that you’re concerned about your children’s welfare, it’s also true that the children are to some extent being used as surrogates for your own needs.  You’re afraid of feeling ashamed if those needs were to be exposed and somehow ridiculed.)  

·        You want your partner to “help” with the household responsibilities.  You’re critical of him not helping enough.  (Probable dynamic:  It doesn’t occur to you that you’re holding onto authority by delegating tasks.  You’re unaware of treating your partner as a subordinate.  You resist the loss of authority that would come if you and your partner were to negotiate task ownership as equals.  After all, it seems that the household should all be your domain.  There’s a subtle threat of covert shame if you were to give away some of your control.  Your partner’s different performance standards might negatively reflect back on you.  Besides, you don’t like giving up your pride in organizing all aspects of your household.)  

All of these situations involve the fear of shame.  It’s subtle and usually operates well beneath our awareness.  What’s more relevant to the current discussion is that our fear of shame inhibits our ability to change our behavior or negotiate changes from our partner.  If our relationship were a car, then our fear of shame would be the emergency brake stuck on hold.  We might move forward but it would be slowly and with great resistance.   

            In the next chapter, these dynamics are revealed in a case example that happened to coincide with my writing on this topic.  It’s a good illustration of how the fear of shame can influence our interactions far beyond our awareness.  Read about Jim and Marie’s argument and see if you can see any of yourself in their story.

  ã COPYRIGHT (12/2000) Allied Psychological Services.  All rights reserved.                       

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