If Love Could Think, Using Your Mind To Guide Your Heart
Overcoming the Patterns of Failed Love in Dating and Relationship
by Alon Gratch, a New York Based clinical psychologist
If you find that you always run into the same problems in your relationship, then maybe you are have some dating patterns which you may or may not be aware of. Most of the time, many dating books out there teach you to do this or that. But until you tackle the root issues, you will find that applying those tactics on the surface wouldn't help you to move on further in your search for a long-term steady and healthy relationship. This book tells you some of the most common love patterns that Alon Gratch, a clinical psychologist who has counselled many singles with dating and marriage problems, has seen through his years of practice. If you are at a loss of what to do to get your love life going or if you feel completely confused by all the advice your family members and friends and those dating books out there are giving you, this book is the first one you should read!
What I like about this book is that Alon really helped singles to drill right down to their root problems so that they were able to turn their hurtful relationship around or get into new and steady relationship. He identified seven patterns of love: Narcissistic Love, Virtual Love, One-Way Love, Triangular Love, Forbidden Love, Sexual Love and Androgynous Love. Each of these types is described in a separate chapter. All of us have some patterns of these in our dating and marriage relationships. The difference between a healthy relationship and a problematic one is that healthy relationships have moderate amounts of these types of patterns but problematic relationships have excessive amounts of one type of pattern or a few different types. Alon also used characters from Greek mythology in the introduction paragraphs for each type of love to illustrate and explain even more fully what those patterns are. I really enjoyed these analogies that he drew with Greek mythology, allowing me to understand that the problems of love existed for as long as human civilisation has existed!
Alon also provided many real life examples of what his clients had gone through in their love lives. So you can understand better if your own pattern falls into the pattern he discussed. All problems, he found, are due to ambivalences present in his clients' understanding of they really wanted in a partner. Ambivalences are those qualities that turn you on initially to your mate but also the same qualities that cause you tobreak off with your mate after the initial honeymoon bliss wears off and the realities sink in.
In Narcissistic Love, you love someone because he or she represents something that you want to see in yourself but you cannot have. I really like the part Alon explained about men's midlife crisis. I have always read about it in newspapers and magazines but have not really thought about the cause of it. Alon explained very well: There are some men who, in their forties and fifties, are unable to come to terms with their career stagnations, deteriorating health and sex drive. Therefore they start falling in love with young women because these women represent attractiveness, youth and vitality. By being with these women, these men can temporarily forget their limitations and feel better about themselves.
On the other hand, there are also women who want only rich and powerful men. These women mistakenly think that receiving expensive gifts is a form a love. Most of the time, these women are only in love with the jewelleries and pretty dresses, shoes and bags that make them feel good, not the men who give them such gifts. They stick to these men because they feel good about looking nice, not because they are so in love.
In Virtual Love, you date someone because you can form a safe relationship at a distance. The distance can be physical or emotional. This kind of relationship breaks up most easily when the lovers are tested with a crisis or when they start to talk about commitment.
I feel strongly about this type of love pattern because I have experienced once. There was a guy from Nigeria who contacted from Facebook and told me he liked me. He was three years younger than me, still studying in university and was a devoted Christian. He asked me for my phone number after a while. Initially I didn't want to give because I was suspicious that he could be a fake. But after he had convinced me that he was sincere, I gave and we started talking on the phone. After about a month, he felt so strongly for me that he announced our relationship publicly on Facebook. I was appalled because I didn't feel that strongly about him as there was a lack of physical contact and I felt very uncertain if I would continue to like him if he ever made the trip to Singapore to see me. All our communications are through direct phone calls and Facebook Messenger. I asked him how he would be able to come to Singapore to live with me since he had never come here before to study or work. He also said he wanted to have babies with me. I asked him how he would be able to start a family with me since he was still a student now and not rich enough. I questioned how he would be able to afford the expensive housing here in Singapore to start a family with me. All he told me was he was a devoted Christian and he trusted that God would work out everything for him eventually. Plus, he hadn't even seen me yet. So I was unsure whether he would feel physically comfortable with me if he ever came? He was showing way too much emotion for me and disproportionately underestimated the hurdles to settle down with me.
Alon also touched on online dating. If you find that the man you are talking to for the past three months have only been communicating through emails, IM, and phone, this can be a signal of Virtual Love. It's not going to work out eventually even if the communication has been fine.
Alon had also seen virtual love in a long-term relationship in which both husband and wife led separate lives by and far. He had a busy career and was regularly away from home for business trips. He was not even home during the weekends because he went on on golf trips with his friends. On the contrary, the wife was a stay-at-home mother. At first she complained about this but decided to go back to school to learn new things and make new friends. With new activities, the wife no longer needed to complain about her husband and their relationship became less tense. The only people who might be affected were their children, who might learn the wrong things about relationship.
The problem with Virtual Love is that you are so in love at a distance that you underestimate the amount of real obstacles to overcome to seal the relationship. I am aware of distance relationships that are successful. But that is because the couples have worked out a reasonable plan to come together finally. If you find that you or your partner has been downplaying the obstacles that need to be dealt with or both of you don't even want to think about, the relationship is not going to work and it's better to step out earlier than later so as not to waste each other's precious time and prevent further investment of emotions.
Next, Alon talked about One Way Love. If you are the victim in one way love, you will notice that no matter how much you show a man how interested you are in him, he just won't reciprocate with the same amount of love. Or, if you are the perpetrator of one way love, you only want your partner to love you but you are not willing to open up yourself to your partner. It's about unavailability, or having some assumptions about the partner such that you help to accentuate his unavailability.
For example, a female client of Alon talked about a man who on their third date shared that he was afraid of affection. Without probing deeper, this female client started to assume that this man had issues and ignored him. This execerbate his issue, which also worsen her view of him. Had she probed further and understood why he had that emotion, things might not have gone downhill so much as the man would feel more appreciated.
I also like the 13 flip side conversions Alon came up with to help people who are in relationship crisis due to one way love. It helps you see the two sides of a trait so that you can appreciate your partner better. Let me just highlight a few.
If the man is boring, he could be a reliable man, and you can be assurred that when you need help, he will always be there for you. If the man doesn't make a lot of money, it could be because he is more of a family man. You can spend more time with him at home and have more initmacy. On the other hand, if your man is a workaholic, he gets things done and is a good provider, and you can have more money to spend and enjoy more independence.
Next, in Triangular Love, Alon made us realise how prevalent this kind of relationship was, as opposed to what we might have perceived. Most of us would have encountered his kind of relationship. For example, a Mum-Dad-Child relationship is a triangular love pattern, where the child has to compete with his/her father for the affection of the mother. Another example is the Mum-And-Two-Child relationship where one sibling competes with another for the attention of the mother. In triangular love, there's a third party that comes into a couple's relationship. In most cases, the third party is another romantic partner which leads to what we called an extra-marital affair. However, the third party could also be a relative such as a mother-in-law, or a friend. Triangular love pattern happens because there is something that the couples don't want to deal with, with one party not even aware of sometimes.
I have experienced a similar case before. When I was in my early twenties, a guy asked me out. He was probably in his late twenties or early thirties. The first time we met, he asked whether I could have sex with him because his girlfriend was a devoted Christian who practised abstinence. I said no. I wouldn't even want to meet with him in the first place. He said he didn't really love his girlfriend because of that and was looking around. Once he found a better one, he would leave her without fail. I was appalled. He's wasting a girl's time. But he said he had known his girlfriend for a long time and was comfortable with her, only to fell that some excitement was missing. This guy should try to find a compromise with his girlfriend. I hoped his girlfriend was aware of this problem.
If you have a husband who has a lover whom he has not openly acknowledged to you and you choose to suppress your suspicious feelings about it because you are afraid of losing him, you may well have fallen into this pattern. Your husband's affair lead you to value him more because of fear of losing him, and since you don't want to lose him, you let him be which at the same time makes you feel spiteful. To solve this, you have to be, again, clear about what you want. You also have to talk to your husband about what he really treasures. If there's still a chance for the two of you to work out, come up with a plan to slowly let your husband cut off all contact with the woman. Also, there must be something about you that your husband is not satisfied with. Find out and see if you can improve (I'm not suggesting that you change yourself completely because it's simple impossible) some minor areas that can make you more attractive to him.
Next in Forbidden Love, you are in love with someone to satisfy your teenage-like rebellious side. You may have been brought up by a very strict parent and you have been obedient by suppressing your desires. You thought you are an independent adult now, not being aware that your parent has such a great influence on you. Now, when the time has come to choose a partner, you choose someone who could never be accepted by your parents. For example, if your parents are strict jews, they may not allow you to date someone who is not jew. However, in order to express yourself to show that you are a grown-up, you choose to date someone out of your religion, knowing full well you can't have that man in the end. Deep down, you are still the obedient child who won't want to separate from your parents so you choose such a relationship that won't work out anyway.
Alon also talked about interracial relationship. To know if you are in a problematic relationship, you just need to ask yourself this: would you still consider this relationship even if your family or others in your society disapprove? If you can accept your relationship, it is not forbidden love. But if you care so much about the convention in your family or community that you know that eventually the relationship will not work out and yet you still plunge yourself into it, then it is forbidden love.
Next, what is Sexual Love? It's simple. If you are a woman and you satisfy your man sexually, he will be happy with you. But if there's ever an attempt by you to turn down his request for sex, he will start to run you down very quickly and often viciously. If you truly want this man, both of you need to compromise. You have to help him (given that he realises his problem and is willing to deal with it) to reduce his sexual needs. He may think that sex is the only way to have intimacy. So you have to show him other ways of having intimacy by learning other ways of expressing himself such as through sports or arts. At the same time, you can work on increasing your attractiveness and sexual drive. Wear more sexy lingerie, be more daring on the bed and have wilder sexual fantasies with him.
Last but not least, we have a pattern called Androgynous Love. If you are a man who doesn't want a needy woman, you may get yourself involved with a self-confident successful career woman, but subsequently, you feel intimidated by her agressiveness and then break off with her. After that, thinking that such a woman is not for you, you move on to find one who is sweet and supportive, but subsequently, again, perceive her as weak, needy, and dependent. Then again, you break up the relationship again. Can you see that this goes on and on with no end in sight? You must be willing to calm down and give yourself time to think about what you truly want.
Especially in today's society where women are asked to be more career-minded, more demanding and more assertive as a sign that women are moving forward with times, and men are asked to be more sensitive to cater to the needs of modern women, a new problem known as Conflicted Gender Identification has appeared. Women want a more sensitive man and they end up with a weakling. Sensitive men, who want a more independent woman, find themselves choosing a bully.
What do wimps and bullies look like? Let me quote a few examples from Alon's book. This is by no means an exhaustive list. Wimps usually don't offer dinner treats. They have no preference where to go during dates. They are not into their jobs. They have no ambition. Bullies are always at work. They have no emotion other than in bed and want to talk only about politics, business and sports They don't care about feelings and cancel appointments last minute because of "some work commitment".
Ultimately, you should want want a balanced person. How much of assertiveness and sensitivity will depend on how much you understand about what you need.
Lastly, I also lik the list of qualities Alon has provided for a good long-term relationship. Use it to assess yours!
1. A certain degree of mutual idealization
There must be something you like about that person.
2. A deep identification with each other
There are some life experiences you can identify with. For example, maybe both of you have lived your childhoods as orphans.
3. A balance of similarities and opposites in personality
Too much sameness is boring. Too much opposites can lead to discord.
4. The ability to talk
Being open about communication
5. Sex
Yes it helps!
6. Tolerating and resolving conflict
Can you deal with conflict directly by airing out negative feelings and then deal with the issues and move on?
7. Implicit or explict ground rules
There are some things that should be out of bounds, like verbal abuse and extra marital affairs
8. Affect and impulse regulation
Must have the capacity to contain your feelings and refrain from acting on impluse
9. Individual capacity for self reinvention
Each of you must grow. Each of you must have your own space. Have you set aside time to take up some classes?
10. A joint generative project greater than the self
Having children, start a business together, commit to a charity cause. Doing these put less pressure on the relationship itself.
11. An unquestioned internal personal belief in the value of commitment
I guess I don't have to elaborate right?
All relationships involve some of the elements of these seven love patterns. The question is whether they exist in moderation or in excess. At the basic level, lovers need to ask themselves whether they are in a relationship because they are in total acceptance of the other party, both the good and the bad, or whether it is to satisfy some insecurities they have about themselves and want their partners to save their lives.
This is a very good guidebook on love and relationship, full of solid content. This book has helped me to learn more about myself and my past mistakes and unhealthy relationship patterns. I have even used this to analyse the type of relationship pattern for some friends who keep getting into the same wrong kind of unhealthy relationship hurting themselves again and again. The message from this book is about understand yourself and your contradictions, and more importantly, understand why you have those inclinations and contradictions so that you will be able to map out a series of steps to gradually move away from your unhealthy relationship pattern into a healthy one. So I strongly recommend this book to singles and couples who have gone through much hurt.
I AM SORRY I MADE THIS BOOK REVIEW SO LENGTHY BECAUSE IT'S SUCH A GOOD BOOK!
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| Alon Gratch |
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