1HOW WE LOSE OURSELVES
“Taking on a challenge is a lot like riding a horse, isn’t it? If you’re comfortable while you’re doing it, you’re probably doing it wrong.”
—Ted Lasso, Ted Lasso
MARIE’S LIFE WAS like a closet full of clothes that didn’t quite fit. New to Washington, DC, the twenty-eight-year-old spent her days working as a fundraiser for her mother’s alma mater. At night she barhopped with her boyfriend’s law school buddies, or dodged fly balls on his softball team. Her schedule was full, but her life wasn’t. She’d gone to several therapists over the years, eager to follow their instructions. They sent her to Al-Anon to help her deal with her father’s history of substance use. They printed worksheets to help keep her anxious thoughts at bay. Everything helped, until it didn’t.
Marie was a likable person. Small talk came easily to her, and she was quick to mimic body language. Not in a manipulative way—it was just the mark of a woman who wanted to make everyone around her feel comfortable. Her laser focus on others was a useful skill for her fundraising job, but it generated tension in her romantic life. Her boyfriend, Jake, was a frazzled law student with a full social calendar. So after a full day of work, Marie dragged herself to softball games, networking nights, and lecture series so she could see him. Borrowing her boyfriend’s friend group was less intimidating than building her own in a new city.
When Marie grew tired of borrowing Jake’s routine, the conflict started. She demanded that Jake cut back on his socializing and spend more time with her. When he refused, she kept showing up at the grad school gatherings. It’s better than nothing, she told herself.
Most people would say that their life choices don’t fit them perfectly. We’re a mishmash of beliefs and values we’ve borrowed from people who are important to us. A combination of choices that seem to get us some love and attention. This is because we look to others to find ourselves. When experts give us answers, we take them. When your friends get Botox, it begins to feel necessary. When you just want to survive another Easter dinner with your family, you accept that Jesus rose from the dead and pass the mashed potatoes. The decisions themselves aren’t the problem. It’s how quickly we adopt them into our lives. Do you stop to think? Or do you toss them into your shopping cart and say, “Good enough”?
We borrow from others because we are social creatures. We care a lot about what other people think about us and how they will react to us. We’d like to avoid disagreement, disapproval, and rejection as much as possible. Because deep in our brain is a very ancient fear, the worst thing that can happen to a social mammal: being tossed out of the group.
Being part of a relationship system is an absolute workout. You don’t want to piss anyone off. You need to know who’s allied with whom, who hates whom, and what’s socially acceptable, while all of this information is constantly shifting. You have to soak up a lot of relational data, and then know when to deploy that knowledge at the right time. The more people in your social group, the harder it all becomes. I get exhausted just reading this, so imagine the amount of energy your brain uses every day. That’s why we have big, fancy ones.
This relationship focus is also why we’re really good at learning. Humans don’t have to wait for new genes to drop in order to get a new trait or skill. We can just watch Bill next door, and do whatever he does. The influence of our family, neighbors, and yes, even influencers, is how we learn. We have a word for this—“culture.” And it’s the newest and fastest form of evolution there is.
If you’re waiting for the downside, here it is. Sometimes we influence one another a little too much. In Bowen theory, there is a phrase for how we let people’s reactions, real or imaginary, affect us—it’s called being relationship-oriented. Some humans are more relationship-oriented than others. They invest a great deal of energy in trying to be what others want them to be. Or in making others what they want them to be. We owe this variation to our families, our genes, and other environmental factors. For example, a family that’s experienced a great deal of generational trauma is probably going to be more nervous about upsetting someone. You can’t blame them for that.
How relationship-oriented is your thinking? Take a look at this list.
CONSIDER HOW MUCH TIME YOU SPEND:
Wondering what someone thinks about you.Assuming you are annoying people.Detecting potential disapproval or distress in others.Trying to be the kind of person others want you to be.Trying to get others to behave better or differently.Worrying about people’s potential reactions to your choices.Trying to gain approval, agreement, and attention from others.I don’t know about you, but I look at these examples and think, Woof. It’s humbling to think about how much energy we spend focusing on others. Being relationship-oriented is not the same thing as valuing your relationships. It’s about trying to control an uncontrollable variable—other people. In his work with families, Murray Bowen observed how a person who invests their energy in trying to manage others (or letting others manage them) has little energy left to think for themselves or pursue their own direction in life. They give up what he called self. “Self” is just a catchall term for being able to think, and then act based on that thinking. Another great thing that humans can do. To have a choice in what you do, rather than living life as a series of automatic emotional reactions. Sounds nice, right?
STOP “FIXING” AND ZOOM OUT
Humans love to fix. It’s in our DNA, like a shark who has to swim. We can’t help it that our brains are brilliantly fashioned to pursue solutions to problems. But sometimes we chase after things that aren’t all that important to us. Like a graduate degree, a thinner body, a million Instagram followers, or, like my twelve-year-old self, a closet full of Beanie Babies. This pursuit manifests in therapy as well. People are driven to borrow answers, to fix, before they’re clear about what they think is the best way forward. Because when you’re upset, any direction is better than the discomfort it takes to stand still and know your own mind.
Keen on keeping the group calm, we can become obsessed with solving relationship problems. People often come to therapy very intent on fixing a relationship before they have done much thinking about it. Marie spent a lot of time describing the fights between her and Jake. She exhausted a great deal of energy reading Jake’s moods, trying not to upset him, or trying to teach him how to not upset her. “I need Jake to not get so anxious when I’m annoyed with him,” she’d say, over and over. If you had asked Jake what he needed, he probably would have said, “I need Marie not to get so annoyed with me when I’m busy.”
You can see the dilemma here. When our fate depends on other people changing, we get stuck. Jake and Marie were so finely tuned to fluctuations in each other’s moods that they couldn’t tolerate each other’s distress. They craved closeness, but also found it unbearable. They were investing (and wasting) a lot of energy trying to fashion each other into a calmer, more thoughtful partner. And if anyone’s ever tried to make you a better partner, you know how allergic we are to these efforts. When two people are trying to change each other, with neither giving in, Bowen theory calls this “conflict.” Conflict doesn’t have to involve screaming; it’s often much subtler. And it’s one of the patterns a relationship system uses to manage anxiety.
Most people understand, at least intellectually, that the solution to anxious fixing isn’t more of it. But that’s exactly what many people do. In therapy, Marie wanted to use a magnifying glass (or sometimes an electron microscope) on her relationship. But there was more to her story than the conflict with Jake. Marie brought less self to other arenas in her life. She was frozen on the career ladder, uncertain if she should keep climbing or jump off. She felt overwhelmed by the expectations of family members she rarely saw. By focusing on one symptom—her relationship conflict—she forgot that there were multiple avenues for working on maturity.
One thing that helped was the decision to zoom out—way, way out—and see the bigger story. The story of Marie’s own family across the generations, and how they handled the delicate balance of individuality and togetherness in relationships—the true challenge of being human.
Marie talked about her family and the problems they had faced over the generations. And I tried to ask questions that helped both of us get a sense of how relationship-oriented the people in her family were:
How much were people permitted to be themselves?Who had to hide their beliefs or parts of their identity to keep things calm?Whom did other people try to fix or label as the problem?Who moved away or disappeared when things became intense?What were parents’ reactions to their children’s choices?Questions engage our best thinking in a way that answers cannot. They also steer us away from self-criticism when we begin to see our emotional inheritance, the patterns we learn from our family.
Marie could look at her family history and see the origins of her sensitivity to others. A grandfather who felt intense pressure to follow the family business and died young from a heart attack. A grandmother who immigrated and resented her children’s assimilation to the new culture. Marie saw a history of marriages where one partner eclipsed the other, making all the choices and directing their beliefs. There were parents with substance use problems and children (like herself) who learned how to be careful not to upset them. A history of people acting and reacting to one another, in the best way they knew how.
We look for the patterns not to blame our ancestors, but to take the bull’s-eye off a single person’s back. There is no one person who needs to be “fixed.” And there is no one relationship that has to be the focus of therapy. Every human interaction is an opportunity for learning to build a self. And every movement toward maturity benefits our relationships. When we limit our scope to the current fire, we usually end up getting burned.
THREE REACTIONS THAT STEAL OUR ENERGY
We like to think that humans are complex, unknowable unicorns. But much of the time, our behaviors are predictable reactions driven by anxiety. Bowen theory uses a very simple definition of “anxiety,” which is also sometimes called “emotional reactivity.” It’s simply a response to a real or an imagined threat. Bowen saw the family as an emotional unit, or emotional organism, that is trying its best to manage anxiety. This is also true for any group where people are significant to one another. If you only look at an individual, you miss seeing how others participate in, and reinforce, the patterns that are activated to manage the threat. You see the predictable ways we respond to pressure from others. These patterns will be defined and discussed at length in the book, but here’s a simple way to start thinking about them.
THE MORE SENSITIVE WE ARE TO PEOPLE’S REACTIONS, THE MORE WE:
Accommodate, trying to be what others want us to be.Act out, rebelling or attacking the other.Avoid, distancing from others or cutting off the relationship.I call these the Neapolitan ice cream of reactions. They are safe, familiar options when anxiety is high. Strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate are fine, but there’s not usually much self in them. They are automatic and emotionally driven. They are not responses based on reasoning, or one’s own beliefs or principles. And when we limit ourselves to these options, we miss out on the other flavors. Because there are other ways of relating to people than giving in, fighting back, or getting the hell out of town.
Marie could see these patterns at work in her relationship with Jake. She was quick to give in and attend events that didn’t interest her. And when she got tired of accommodating, she would act out by picking fights or giving him the cold shoulder. But these patterns existed in her other relationships as well. Marie tried to live up to her mother’s career expectations (accommodating). When she did call her parents, she played it safe, only talking about superficial things (avoiding). On the rare visits home, Marie quickly regressed to her teenage self, slamming doors or starting arguments at dinner (acting out). Though not ideal, these reactions felt safer than simply being herself. Sharing her interests, joys, challenges, and beliefs with her family felt way too risky.
HOW YOU FIND YOURSELF
Marie and Jake persisted in their intense focus on each other. Their conflict escalated when Jake begged her to attend yet another social event for his school. Unwilling to put up with the blowback from saying no, she tagged along, nursing a Diet Coke while Jake extroverted himself around the room. After tracking his movements with great resentment, Marie bolted without a goodbye. Jake came home at 3 A.M., drunk and grumpy, and Marie, still fuming, pretended to be asleep.
Some people might call this relationship “codependent.” I’m not a fan of the term. People tend to use it like a diagnosis—something a relationship either is or isn’t. Bowen proposed that someone is always losing at least a little bit of self in a relationship. It’s impossible to interact with anyone and not adjust yourself a smidge, or vice versa. The question is, to what degree? Holding on to yourself is a universal, human challenge, sometimes an easier one than others. So don’t be hard on yourself when you feign interest yet again in March Madness or the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Just be curious about how to lead with more of your own thinking.
A decision with less self is automatic and rooted in emotion. One with more self has that heartbeat or two’s worth of time when you can ask yourself, What is my responsibility here? It sounds so simple, but in the heat of conflict, it can feel impossible. We are swept along by the tide of emotion, grasping for familiar patterns rather than steering our own ship.
Think about the directions you’ve pursued in your life. How did you arrive at these decisions? We are often so focused on the content of our decisions (what we accomplished, where we failed, etc.) that we forget to look at the decision-making process. How much self, or how little, was at work in your choices?
MORE SELF
Ability to override automatic, emotional reactions.Decisions based on thinking/principles.Less need for others to be like you.Greater ability to evaluate yourself.LESS SELF
Driven by automatic, emotional responses.More thinking borrowed from others.Focus on managing others.Focus on others’ real or imagined reactions.Marie began to see that her efforts to keep Jake happy (and to change him) had been automatic, emotionally driven, and largely ineffective. They mirrored the pattern in her family, where one partner was eclipsed by the other. Marie needed a strategy that had more self in it. She had to think about how she wanted to conduct herself, and how she wanted to respond when Jake was distressed or pressuring her. Here’s what it can look like in the brain when you’re making this shift toward building self.
LESS SELF: My boyfriend expects too much of me.
MORE SELF: I need to get clearer with myself (and him) about what I can and cannot do.
LESS SELF: I need my partner not to panic when I’m feeling annoyed with them.
MORE SELF: How can I focus on managing my own distress?
LESS SELF: If I sigh dramatically enough, perhaps he will ask what’s wrong with me.
MORE SELF: What do I think is important to communicate?
LESS SELF: I wonder if the next fight will destroy our relationship.
MORE SELF: What might happen if I focused on changing my part in relationship patterns?
Marie also knew that she had even more work to do outside the relationship. It would take energy to build friendships outside of Jake’s grad school friends. More research to learn about jobs outside her career path. More effort to pursue relationships with her parents than to maintain a superficial distance. But this is the shift from borrowing to building a self.
Moving away from a relationship-oriented life isn’t a fast process. But it’s a lot easier to interrupt your automatic reactions if you’ve given yourself an alternative path. Marie had invested so much energy into trying to make her boyfriend less of an extrovert, and in trying to make herself more of one. Now she had a new directive for herself—dialing down her anxiety enough so that she could really observe the relationship. If they were allowing each other to be themselves, would they be compatible as a couple? Whether they stayed together or broke up, Marie wanted the decision to come from her best thinking. From real observations, rather than the anxious “what-ifs” that crept into her brain at night.
Marie also tried to pepper her days with more self-direction. She made attempts to reconnect with old friends in the area. She began to share more about her life with her parents, even if they disapproved or sounded uninterested. She turned down more of Jake’s invitations and ended her softball career. And she stopped trying to teach him not to grumble when she passed on a social event. Instead, she expressed her interest in spending time with him one-on-one, whether it was taking a walk in the evening or hitting up the bookstore together. They both tried to take a few minutes each morning to set down their phones and talk about their day. Over time, she found that these connecting points helped reduce the anxiety when they spent time apart.
By no means was this a perfect process. The urge to focus on Jake’s mood, to see more love and attention as the only remedy for their intensity, was always hovering in the background. And there certainly were moments when Jake tried to make Marie more like himself, just as there were moments when Marie attempted to squash his earnest dedication to networking or group sports. But they were moving in the right direction. Marie was getting a glimpse of what it was like to operate more as a self. To stay thoughtful when Jake was reactive, instead of matching him pout for pout. To stay curious when she was lonely, eager to find joy in new friendships. To define her thinking to Jake, rather than waiting for him to make his best guess.
Reducing relationship orientation isn’t about giving up on a relationship. Nor is it about putting up with bad behavior. By adding more self to the equation, we give the relationship a chance to succeed (or not) based on reality. Not our worst fears or greatest fantasies of what other people could be. And we allow ourselves to make choices based on our best thinking, rather than the anxiety of the moment. Slowly, Marie was taking the pressure off her relationship to regulate her mood or direct her steps. By relieving this pressure, we give our relationships a chance to be what they were meant to be. A place where we can be ourselves, and permit others to do the same.
Copyright © 2024 by Annie Kathleen Smith
