Brave New Kitty

Many may think the answer to this question is obvious, but often it is not. If your partner uses physical force or the threat of it when he’s angry or to make you behave a certain way, then yes, of course you are in an abusive relationship. But emotional abuse–belittling, shaming, derision, disappointment, name-calling, emotional blackmail, emotional distance, etc.–can be just as damaging even if it doesn’t result in bruises or broken bones, and it is far more difficult to ascertain.

When people grow up in dysfunctional families, whether that dysfunction takes the form of subtle invalidation (such as a pattern of emotional distance) or overt cruelty (such as physical or sexual abuse), they learn to not trust their feelings. This is a defense mechanism that enables a child to survive a less-than-nurturing environment, but it can cause big problems in adulthood. John Bradshaw defines feelings (emotions) as “tools that allow us to know when we’re fulfilling our needs.” People who lack these tools can make all kinds of bad choices, particularly in the personal realm. Like lacking an antibody against a virus, people lacking a reliable emotional guidance system are susceptible to all kinds of predators, perpetrators, and abusers; in many cases, not only do we lack good radar for avoiding mean people, but we are actually drawn to them because they re-create the childhood situations that feel as familiar as they do awful.

This can be a very difficult pattern to break because the malfunctioning emotional guidance system is also responsible for us not knowing if a person is treating us badly. One ubiquitous trait of adult abused children is “guessing at what is normal.” There is usually a tremendous cognitive dissonance between what we experience at home and what we see outside of it. Since a child doesn’t have the capacity to make sense of this, she will stop trying. When carried over to adulthood, this translates to not knowing the difference between respectful treatment and disrespectful treatment. Further complicating matters is not knowing that you don’t know, which makes change difficult. (There are many other facets complicating matters as well, but these are all I’ll address here.)

So you can begin to see that discerning abuse is not as straightforward as it might seem. Emotional abuse can be very, very subtle, and emotional abusers are very, very good at making their partners shoulder the blame and believe that they “deserve” what they get. Emotional abusers use fear and shaming tactics to erode what little self-esteem their partners have and to maintain the upper hand at all times. For these tactics to work, they need to find partners who won’t stand up for themselves. In this way, abusers and abusees are like two puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly–but complete the wrong puzzle.

One simple test to determine if you are in an emotionally abusive relationship is to ask yourself this question: How comfortable do I feel to be myself? You can determine this by gauging the level of spontaneity you feel in the relationship. For example, do you feel free to say what’s on your mind, to be silly, to be angry, to express your thoughts without any worry about his reaction? Or do you rehearse in your head what you’ll say and how you’ll say it to evoke the best possible response? I am not talking about times of stress, when we can all be touchy, but rather, as a general pattern in the relationship. If you find yourself rehearsing or worrying on a regular basis, there’s a good chance you are in an emotionally abusive relationship. And just because there are occasions of intimacy, caring, and a sense of connection does not change the truth that as a general rule, you do not feel free to be yourself. And that is an awful way to live.

A therapist once asked me this question: If a man is a wonderful, caring husband 364 days out of the year, but beats his wife on the 365th, is this an abusive relationship? At the time, I didn’t know (still having a lot of healing to do), but I gave the question a lot of thought. The answer, of course, is yes, it is an abusive relationship. Anticipation of that one day taints all the other days and makes a true partnership and true intimacy impossible. And this is the way of all abusive relationships. There is no hope and no future and no way to ever make it work. Yes, people change, but waiting for that to happen when there’s a good chance it won’t is a recipe for wasting your life. Far better to move on, scary as it can be. I have found that this simple act of self-care, whether leaving a relationship, a friendship, or a job that wasn’t right for me, has always resulted in abundant new levels of positive energy in my life, so much so that I’ve always looked back incredulously, wondering what I was so afraid of.

When you take care of yourself, the whole planet benefits.

This brings me to my second thought about this question, and the more relevant one, which is that rather than worry about labeling a relationship “abusive” or “addictive” or “dysfunctional” or anything else, the far more important concern is whether or not the relationship makes you happy. People who struggle with self-care because of abusive pasts tend to get too caught up in labels, I think because we trust labels more than we trust our own feelings, our own judgment, and our own capacity to make good decisions. We want the assurance and security of pointing to something outside ourselves for evidence and validation; we want to be able to say, “See? I’m not alone, I’m not wrong!” And while validation is nice, the search for it distracts us from the more pressing issue, the core issue, the issue underlying all of our problems with intimacy (and for that matter, everything else), which is that we need to learn how to decide for ourselves, independent of external authority, what we want.

What we want is enough; no external validation is required. When you see the issue in this light, asking yourself “Am I in an abusive relationship?” takes on an entirely different meaning. The very act of wondering this is an automatic admission that you aren’t happy and, having made that admission, you are now obligated to do something about it if your own happiness is important to you.

It is that simple. No further analysis is required. Yes, deciding what action to take and working up the courage to take it can be difficult, but you can no longer deny that some action is necessary.

If you are struggling with abusive relationship issues, there is help out there: shelters, self-help groups (like Al-anon), therapists, books. The Internet has made finding these resources easy, but if you can’t find help, please contact me and I’ll do what I can. Remember, it’s your life, it’s short, and nobody else can live it for you.

Good luck!

I must preface this post by saying that I had never heard of this book until ads for the movie came out, so I don’t know how much Hollywoodizing was done to turn the story into a romantic comedy where maybe there wasn’t one. If this is the case, I apologize to the author in advance for the opinion I am about to express here. But even if I’m wrong about the story, it doesn’t really matter, because I am speaking more to what catches the interest of the American public than I am to the story itself.

That said, if the story is actually about what the advertisements would have us believe, then–gag me! A woman spends a year of her life on a quest for self-awareness and fulfillment. She visits three very different parts of the world and spends her time doing three very different things. The first leg is in Italy, where she eats wonderful food. The second is (I’m assuming) in India, where she goes to an ashram and learns how to meditate. And the third takes place somewhere exotic (I don’t know where), where she has a blazing hot love affair with a sexy hunk of a man.

I can envision the movie executives discussing how to package and market this movie: “It’s a great story, but spirituality is boooring! We can’t sell a movie about spirituality! We have to make it about the sex!” “Yes, couldn’t agree more, Bob. And let’s bring in a smokin’ hot foreign actor to play the love interest!” “Yes! And let’s make the ashram scenes funny so they don’t put the audience to sleep!” “Brilliant! Well, now we’re gettin’ somewhere!”

Again, gag me.

Now, understand that I am not anti-romantic comedy. If you’re in the mood for lighthearted entertainment, without a lot of depth or realism, a romantic comedy can be fun. But this movie’s message–again, judging only by the ads–seems to be that romantic love will solve all your problems and bring you the bliss you so desperately desire.

Well, what’s wrong with that, you might ask. That is the plot of every romantic comedy. Yes, that’s true. So what’s the problem? Well, the problem is that in this one, the woman actually undertakes a spiritual practice, and apparently, finds it less significant than the love affair that comes afterward.

This whole idea that romantic love will bring us bliss and joy beyond our wildest dreams is just so wrong. Not only because it is a total falsehood that sets people up for misery and defeat, but also because of its absurd prevalence and priority in our society. People want to believe it, so they do. They sincerely believe that their sense of completion lies “somewhere out there,” either in the perfect mate, or the children that would result from union with such a mate, or both. This not only keeps people on a fruitless search, it keeps them distracted from the real search, which has far more to do with an internal journey than an external one.

Romantic love has no power to fulfill any needs or desires. It is not a magical fix for our problems, or, in fact, for anything. And the belief that it is is actually completely backward: rather than make you whole or fix what ails you, romantic love brings all your issues to the surface. It stirs up fears and insecurities, it does not subdue them. In doing so, it is an opportunity to become more whole, but in itself does not make you whole. Like everything else in life, it is merely another path. It just happens to be a particularly powerful one, which is why the giddy heights of new love can so quickly plummet into the deepest, dankest depths of misery.

This is not negative or cynical; it’s merely honest. And people who don’t accept this simple truth will forever be searching for fulfillment in all the wrong places.

All romantic comedies ignore this truth. And again, there’s not really anything wrong with that, as long as people understand that what they’re watching is fantasy, simple entertainment. But Eat Pray Love takes it a step further. The message of this movie (again, based on what I gather from the ads) is that romantic love triumphs over even the spiritual search–over the one thing that really can bring true contentment and true happiness, the one thing that really can answer all the important questions, the one thing that will enable us to put romantic love, as well as all other quests we undertake in life, into a more realistic perspective. In short, the one thing that really matters.

In that sense, I find this film–or at least the ads for it–to be not just indifferent to spiritual concerns, as most Hollywood films are, but actually antagonistic toward them.

I’m probably wrong. At least I hope I am. I hope this film goes beyond its marketing to have an important message about the process of self-discovery. But knowing how Hollywood likes to fit the human experience into neat, easily explainable little packages that won’t disturb or surprise anyone, I’m not expecting too much.

In the world of romantic relationships, people tend to think that if it doesn’t last forever, then it was a failure. People are looking for “soulmates,” for that one person who they are “meant” to be with. If a person turns out to not be this, there is almost always a sense of failure involved in the realization. And the cultural expectation is that marriages should last forever, so divorce is seen as a disaster, a sure indication of inadequacy, deficiency, and maybe even moral bankruptcy. “Forever” is, for most people, the ultimate goal of a romantic relationship.

I would like to declare the opposite: A relationship can be both successful and temporary. Forever is a somewhat arbitrary gauge of success, foisted on us by a culture that has never bothered to question the concept. “‘Til death do us part” is taken for granted as the only right way to view a long-term romantic liaison. But we can learn to think differently about relationships.

Here’s a novel suggestion: We can choose whether or not “forever” is the gauge we want to use to measure the success or failure of our romantic relationships. (Or, for that matter, relationships in general.) Because the truth is, there are many, many other ways to judge the success or failure of a relationship.

First of all, the vast majority of romantic relationships are temporary. You meet someone, date a few times, or for a few months, but for whatever reason you find you aren’t compatible, and you move on. Sometimes, you fall in love with someone who doesn’t love you back, or vice-versa. Sometimes, circumstances prevent the connection from lasting. For myriad reasons, the overwhelming number of people you meet and date are not going to remain a constant in your life. And that’s just fine. Healthy, even. Finding out what what isn’t a good fit for you is all part of narrowing the search and improving your ability to find someone who is a good fit. Even if all you learned was what you don’t want, the relationship, and the person, taught you something valuable.

This all makes good sense. But I believe the same is true for long-term relationships and yes, even marriages–and even marriages where there are children involved. If people aren’t happy together–and if one person isn’t happy, neither really is–then they shouldn’t stay together, and doing so isn’t good for anybody, not even the children. I would submit especially the children.

Yes, it is sad when marriages break up. No matter how strained a relationship might be, there is always a sense of loss that comes from its permanent break. But that sense of loss needn’t be compounded by feelings of failure and remorse that have nothing to do with the relationship itself and everything to do with societal expectations. Going through a breakup is painful enough. You just don’t have to do that to yourself. And learning to take realistic stock of what happened will inevitably lead you to that conclusion.

If a long-term relationship breaks up, there are always legitimate reasons. These reasons can be many and varied, but mostly have to do with change. People grow and change, and that’s good, but sometimes it means people grow apart. Or sometimes, change isn’t for the better, and one partner develops a problem with, say, addiction, that results in emotional distance or sometimes even abuse. Sometimes, people are too immature to know how to make a relationship work, but that doesn’t become apparent, or at least unbearable, for several years, and a couple of children, into the relationship. Sometimes, people simply get married for the wrong reasons in the first place and eventually gain the courage to do what they really want to do. When this happens, it should be celebrated, not mourned! “Falling out of love” is a facile concept that doesn’t explain anything, but there are always, always valid underlying reasons why a long-term relationship falls apart. If both parties aren’t ready, willing, and able to make it work–and understand the work involved–then ending it is for the best on every conceivable level.

Of course there is loss and grief. Of course there is adjustment. But if a relationship isn’t working and both people aren’t willing to work at it, then ending it is the right thing. In a weird way, it is actually something to be celebrated. Even if it wasn’t your choice, some part of you knows this is true. Being with someone who no longer wants to be with you erodes self-esteem and destroys confidence. Only when it ends are new beginnings possible. And this is something to rejoice, even if it is not what you wanted.

Because with those new beginnings comes new knowledge. All people and all relationships have something to teach you, but the most painful ones usually hold the most valuable lessons. The pain opens and softens you. It’s humbling. It creates new windows of awareness that weren’t there before, insights about yourself and what you really want and how you might go about getting it. Not that this pain is something to deliberately seek out, but we all have our share of it, and it can provide opportunities for growth like nothing else in the entire realm of human experience. In this sense, even if only in retrospect, the pain of a long-term relationship breakup is something to be embraced–and milked for all it’s worth, which can be a lot.

And yes, children of divorced parents have a whole new set of complicated issues to sort through that they didn’t ask for and don’t deserve. And yes, this is sad. But not as sad as it is for children to endure parents who don’t want to be together, stay together. Doing so provides models of unhappiness and dishonesty that can only be bad for children. It is far better to deal directly with emotional issues and be a model to your children of how to pursue their own happiness. I’ve always believed that people who say they’re “staying together for the children” are using their children as an excuse: to avoid the painful feelings of loss and the hard work of making a new life for yourself. Because in this scenario, everybody loses.

As sad as ending a relationship can be, it’s far sadder to stay in one that isn’t working. Forever may be the cultural standard, but it doesn’t have to be your standard. When we can appreciate and even celebrate all aspects of our lives, whether permanent or impermanent, happy or painful, what we want or what we don’t want, then we will have moved a long way toward taking responsibility for our own happiness, thus making it far more likely that we actually might find someone we truly enjoy and want to grow old with. But even more important is knowing that finding such a person is not necessary to a sense of wholeness, and merely icing on the cake of a life well-lived.

Many people have the idea that when they find the right person they will feel whole. This idea is foisted on us in novels, movies and songs, and was expressed most directly in the movie Jerry Maguire when Tom Cruise tells Renee Zellweger, “You complete me.” And of course, she melts, and all her anger at this otherwise childish, self-absorbed person evaporates and they live happily ever.

Pardon my crudeness, but, gag me.

In the world of romantic relationships, two halves do not make a whole. No matter what the popular notions about this are, no matter how much people want to believe that the “right person” will complete them, no matter how many songs, stories, novels, poems, tv shows, movies, and advertisements tell us otherwise, it is simply not the case. When two half-people hook up and try to have a romantic relationship, the result can only be disastrous.

If a person is only “half-developed” in the sense of not having undertaken the difficult work of healing from emotional wounds, what will the relationship look like? The most common pattern is for a person whose lack of healing causes her to be insecure to hook up with someone whose lack of healing causes him (or her) to be emotionally aloof. Both are acting out of neediness, one externalizing and one internalizing (although this is somewhat of a simplification), and when they first meet there is indeed a sense of completion, which can be extremely powerful when you are operating from a place of deficit. In fact, this is often what causes that intoxicating feeling of early “love.” But what happens in the day-to-day grind of being present for a partner when you haven’t yet learned to be present for yourself? We all know, because we’ve all been there at least once: a feeling of loneliness far more unbearable than the loneliness of being by yourself. And it goes downhill from there.

This sense of completion common in early romantic relationships has almost nothing to do with love. Yet sadly, this feeling is exactly what most people are looking for. They’re fooled into believing it is love by popular sentiment and their own longing. The truth is, in the world of romantic partnerships, there is no such thing as a white knight, as being rescued, as being completed by another person. These are all highly skewed notions of what a good relationship is all about.

In The Power of Myth series, Joseph Campbell described romantic love more accurately than anything else I’ve heard. He called it “an ordeal.” It is not for the faint-hearted or needy, who simply do not have the fortitude to stay present with another human being in the trenches, which, as one of the most difficult, stressful, exhausting, frustrating undertakings imaginable, is what romantic love demands. Of course, it is also one of the most rewarding ones, which is why it gets so much attention. The rewards just tend to not be what most people think they are. In fact, if most people understood the true nature of a love relationship and the emotional demands it would make on them, they would probably run as fast as they could in the opposite direction! (The same goes for parenthood, but that is another topic.)

Romantic love is, at its best, a partnership of two equals whose melding creates a whole greater than its parts, a connection and a synergy that didn’t exist before. But this is not a wholeness that can develop between two people operating from a place of deficit and neediness, which, when put together, only makes a greater deficit and more neediness. No, this is a wholeness borne of strength. And also fortitude, willingness, patience, empathy, kindness, tenderness, forgiveness, and so much more. If you view love as a way to fill an emptiness inside yourself, it is unlikely you’ll have many of these necessary traits. Better to forego romance for awhile and work on developing them in yourself; the long-term results will be vastly more satisfying.

This is not to say that a person must be “cured” of all her humanness before being capable of real romance. If that were true, romantic love would be nonexistent. But for a relationship to work, both people ought to have a few things figured out: you don’t have to be completely free of emotional baggage, but you do have to know how to deal with it on your own, and take responsibility for it when it rears its ugly head in the relationship. And ideally, you’ll have dispelled all your notions about romantic love whisking you away from yourself and curing all your pain and problems because, in reality, it merely provides another avenue to confront all that messy, uncomfortable, scary stuff that you were hoping to avoid. (Which kind of explains a lot if you think about it, doesn’t it?)

Ironically, when needy people seek completion in another person, their impulse is correct; they just get the execution wrong. The wholeness they intuitively seek can only be found by looking inside themselves. Looking for it externally is largely an avoidance tactic, and will keep them stuck in that place of deficit they’re so unwilling to face. Sadly, sometimes for a lifetime.

The desire for completion is a natural human drive and nothing to be ashamed of, but if you don’t understand that what you’re looking for can only be found within, then your thinking about love will be forever skewed, and you will never find it or yourself, and that is truly a tragedy.

First, you can tell a person’s maturity level by how well they listen in general. Are they usually available for you? Do you feel comfortable talking to them, and know this is a person you can count on for good counsel and feedback? If so, then this person probably has some stuff figured out.

There is a huge difference between being angry at someone and being angry with someone. Being angry at someone creates distance; being angry with someone is an opportunity for intimacy.

The idea that anger could be a path to closeness might sound crazy if you’re uncomfortable with anger, as I was (and still often am). In my family of origin, there was no such thing as being angry with someone; it was all at. Anger was the exclusive property of my father, who expressed it as rage. Yelling, swearing, thrashing volatility that made everyone in the house quake. I dreaded the time of day when he got home from work.
My mother, like many women in relationships with an unequal balance of power, expressed her anger as hostility: burning dinner, “forgetting” to do things my father asked her to do, spending money on things he forbade her to spend money on, making comments she knew would irritate him (yes, even at the risk of starting a fight), and picking at her children because she couldn’t say what she wanted to say to her husband.

With these childhood models, I learned to associate anger with fear and anxiety. To see it differently was unfathomable. Which was sad, because I had a lot of anger corked up inside me, and I had a very uncomfortable relationship with it.

When first presented with the idea of being angry with someone, I couldn’t comprehend it. It was as if the person were speaking a foreign language, gibberish, nonsense. Yet disturbing nonsense, because it shook my core beliefs about anger: that it was bad, wrong, evil, even; a tool to hurt people you’re supposed to love. Something to be deeply, deeply ashamed of if you have it yourself.

Sadly, anger is those things for many of us. But it doesn’t have to be, and indeed, shouldn’t be if we want to fully embrace who we are. Because we all get angry—just like we all get happy, sad, and afraid—and denying that can only be detrimental to a sense of emotional well-being and wholeness.

In order to get to a point of being angry with somebody, I had to start by getting comfortable with anger in general, my own and that of other people. I had to learn to see anger differently, as an indelible part of the human condition, neither good nor bad. Which, I eventually realized, is exactly what it is: like all emotions, anger is a tool to keep me in touch with my wants and needs. A neutral, benign tool with a specific function and purpose. Nothing more, nothing less. All the connotations I had with anger were because of my childhood experiences; a post-traumatic belief that kept me in reactive mode and prevented me from having a rational view.

The sheer realization of this was enough to start shaking it loose. Once I was able to see that my beliefs about anger were skewed and why that was so, I was able to develop a much more neutral relationship with it. And once this was the case, I began to see what that person meant, how anger was an avenue to intimacy.

It’s simple and straightforward, really. Anger is an emotion, and all emotions, when expressed as indications of our wants and needs, are paths to intimacy. Sharing emotions is the bulk of intimacy, what it’s really all about. As such, restricting that sharing to only the positive, non-threatening emotions is a contradiction in terms. You have to be willing to share all your emotions, those you like and those you don’t like, those you’re proud of and those you’re ashamed of. Without the whole emotional picture, intimacy can’t really happen.

I think this is a core cause of unhappy relationships. Many people are unwilling to risk sharing emotions that might make their partner feel angry or threatened. But when people share only the positive, a giant portion of their feelings go unaddressed, so they feel “disconnected” and “distant” from the person they should feel closest to. In his book, The Passionate Marriage, David Schnarch refers to this as gridlock, and holds it responsible for nearly all the unhappiness couples experience with their relationship.

It’s a hard thing to do, share your anger, your dark side, your negativity. So much so that we often have to find excuses that make the other person a “deserving” object of our uncomfortable feelings, then express them accusatively. But this is anger at, not with, and it creates distance, not intimacy, making you feel worse, not better.

Instead, why not own the anger? It’s mine, nobody else’s, and I have it for a reason. It’s a reaction to something going on in my life; nobody’s fault and nor does it need to be. I can do with it as I please—that is, as long as I don’t intentionally hurt another person with it. And herein lies the key to being angry with somebody.

A person may have done something mean or hurtful, and it made me angry. But it’s still my anger, and I can choose how I want to handle it. Maybe if I want this person out of my life, I can yell at him and berate him for what he did, thus creating distance. But if this is not a person I want out of my life, then maybe I could, instead, explain how his behavior made me feel and why. From there, we might have a conversation about such behavior in general, and why it’s a trigger for me, and maybe he’ll see that he never considered it from that angle before, and maybe we’ll talk about how we might handle that situation differently in the future. And we walk away feeling like we both got something we wanted: he heard and acknowledged my anger (which is, I think, all that any of us really want), and I respected him enough to believe that he would do so. And instead of blaming and fighting and tearful apologies without real resolution, we do resolve something, and we grow closer because of it.

Or, maybe I said something hurtful or thoughtless. In a truly intimate relationship, I have to be willing to listen to my partner explain how it made him feel without getting defensive. If I don’t, he’ll stop talking to me about his feelings, and our intimacy will suffer.

It can be a hard thing to accept, that our feelings are ours alone and nobody else is responsible for them. But this is the truth. If you don’t believe me, here’s an experiment to try. Say something to twenty different people; you’ll hear twenty different responses. Some positive, some negative, some big, some small. Or think of a time when somebody said something that would normally make you angry, but for some reason, that time it didn’t. The point is, the reaction lies within the person, always, in every situation. We truly can choose how we respond to events in our lives, regardless of how emotionally charged they might be.

Once I understood that all my feelings serve a logical purpose, and that attaching a value judgment to them or blaming other people isn’t helpful, I became more able to express them in ways that make me feel good, not bad, and ways that create intimacy, not distance. I still struggle with my childhood legacy, but now I’m usually able to get to the core faster and often avoid the big, messy, ugly parts.

What a concept, that all emotions can be avenues to intimacy! But isn’t it exciting that it’s possible to share our whole selves with another person, not just the pretty parts? And isn’t it just as exciting to see those parts in ourselves without judgment, shame, or the need to deny them?

I sure think so.

When we first meet someone, we love everything about him. Then, six months or a year into the relationship, the euphoria wanes. That thin veneer begins to crack and we start to notice some faults. If we’re lucky, they’re inconsequential, surface scratches that don’t say anything about the person beneath and are entirely tolerable. If we’re not so lucky, the cracks deepen into fissures and we have to make a decision: is this a person I want to spend more of my life with, and if so, how do I come to terms with his faults? This is the point at which we are most susceptible to one of the greatest time- and energy-vortexes in existence: falling in love with potential.I’ve fallen in love with potential more times than I can remember. I’d hook up with someone I had nothing in common with and no possible future with and try to make him be the person I wanted him to be. I can teach him how to be emotionally available…We could kick our addictions together…Once he understands how much I hate his critical comments, he’ll stop making them…I’ll make him love me so much, he’ll never cheat again…I can get him out of his depression…I can, I can, I can.

No. I can’t. I can’t make any of these things happen. People rarely change. And if they do, it won’t be because of anything I did. I had to have this idea pounded into my brain with a ball-peen hammer.

It was only after a particularly bad breakup, and the glorious alone time that resulted, that I realized this. On paper, we looked really good together. He was brilliant, sensitive, thoughtful, willing to talk, willing to listen. But I began to feel that every time we talked, it was him pointing out my faults, and once I apologized for them, he was satisfied and the talk was over. When I wanted to talk about his contributions to a problem, he either clammed up or got accusative. He was masterful at it. I would often feel confused and empty for days afterward, not knowing what hit me. And I’d be angry and irritable, which of course wreaked more havoc, resulting in more conversations in which I had to “own my shortcomings.” This became an awful, escalating pattern from which there was no way out—I know this because I beat my head against the wall trying to find it, trying to make him do it differently; he wouldn’t. When it finally ended, it took me months to figure out how I could miss somebody so much and yet be so relieved to have him out of my life.

If ever there was somebody who had potential, it was this guy. He was interesting and exciting, yet had all the traits of a conscientious, caring, supportive partner. It was like he dangled this potential in front of me like a carrot I chased relentlessly but could never quite reach. Because he was so “perfect” in so many ways, I was hooked deeper than I had ever been. And because of this, I had a lot of fodder to chew on when it was over. What had gone wrong? And why? And why do I keep getting involved with people who aren’t good matches for me? And how can I do things differently if I ever get an opportunity?

This breakup got me to a miraculous point where it became more important to answer those questions than to be in a relationship. Where once I was edgy and anxious until I jumped back on that treadmill, now I was unwilling to invest a single ounce of energy in somebody who didn’t feel right for me—and nobody felt right for me. In two years, I had two dates, both of whom I told within a couple of hours, kindly but directly, that I didn’t want to see again. If I didn’t detect the possibility of a real connection, it just seemed so needlessly exhausting, so pointless, so unnecessary. For the first time in my life, I preferred solitude to that silly dance that I never did very well, anyway.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I had inadvertently stumbled onto the whole key to not falling in love with potential: don’t invest time or energy in relationships that aren’t satisfying.

That may sound like an oversimplification, but I don’t think it is. Although, if we’re operating under the influence of a lot of cognitive dissonance from childhood, it can take some time, as it did for me, to figure out the difference between what’s truly satisfying and what isn’t. I spent a lot of time coming up with, and pondering, questions like these:

• Does the relationship make me content and happy? Is it fun? Do we enjoy each other?

• Does it feel like a friendship?

• Can I accept him, faults and all? Can I overlook his faults because his good points outweigh them?

• Am I relaxed, or do I want his approval?

• Do I feel stuck, or do I feel like I’m growing?

• Do I feel a solid connection? Does it feel like a partnership? (Do I know what a partnership feels like?)

• Do we share values and a similar outlook on the world?

• Am I willing to work at this thing, be as present as possible, and have realistic expectations?

It was a long road (here are some more details about it), and mostly a lonely one, but when I was able to answer these questions “yes,” I knew I’d found something real. And until that happened, I found better things to do with my time than chase phantom potential. I probably needed all the experiences I’d had to figure out what I really wanted, so I’m not discounting them, but I’m so glad I was able to move past them. If I hadn’t, I would never have found my jewel, with whom I’ve built a great connection and a great life.

Even a good relationship is work. A lot of work. But the work should feel like a team effort. Not like a power struggle, with one of you trying to make the other do or be something different than they want to do or be, or give something they’re unwilling to give. If the work feels like that, like gears grinding and nothing ever moving, then that’s probably because it isn’t. You have to seriously consider if that’s how you want to spend your time.

By the way, these principles also apply to non-significant-other relationships. Time is too valuable to spend it trying to gain approval from critical parents, siblings, friends, coworkers, or anyone else you can’t seem to establish a satisfying connection with. You don’t necessarily have to cut people out of your life, but you can certainly stop expending time and emotional energy trying to get them to notice you, like you, or be kind to you. There are plenty of people in the world who appreciate you just the way you are. Spend time with them. Or, if you’re in an interim period, go help people less fortunate than yourself. Give up on the others. Just give up! My life got infinitely better when I figured this out.

In getting emotional needs met, the only thing that matters is how someone is today, right now, at this moment. Potential only counts for talent and physics, and projects are for Sunday afternoons.