Leaving a Pretty Good Relationship
A dear client of mine, Craig*, is in a pretty good relationship. The woman he is dating is someone he cares for and who cares for him.
*Names and identifying information always altered to protect confidentiality
And, Craig is considering leaving the relationship.
Craig’s earliest, deepest relationship with a female was with a stepmother, with whom he longed for closeness. The stepmother, however, was not particularly gifted at offering closeness. She was not able or willing to be someone who would know herself deeply nor wish to or be able to know Craig deeply.
Craig reports that he has times with his current girlfriend that are “incredibly fun, incredibly satisfying.” This is good news and healing for him from some of the lingering feelings of not being enough, of not having a certain quality inside of himself that would have evoked increased intimacy from his stepmother.
Yet, it is not surprising, is it? to find that the person Craig is now dating has a character structure that is reminiscent of his earliest relationship with his stepmother. His girlfriend, I’ll call her Kathy, is a fine person who, according to Craig, “tries to make him happy.” Again, one can easily imagine how this is satisfyingly healing to Craig’s hurt from history with his stepmother Yet, too, Kathy is, while kindly and decent, someone who is not geared towards wanting to know herself deeply, to being a feeling-based person, nor to being someone who has much energy for knowing Craig deeply either.
And so Craig is considering leaving the relationship. We all may be able to empathize with his worries … “Kathy is a good person. If I leave this relationship, will I ever find another person who is as solid, who loves me like she does?”
How does therapy help? In sessions, Craig can consider that he, like each of us, has a personal history that results in him having relationship antenna that naturally move towards people who feel “familiar.” An adage that is too succinct to be totally true, but also focused in a way that carries a lot of truth is the following: “we tend to marry our opposite sex parent.” In Craig’s case, this adage was carrying some truth. Craig knows what it feels like to be loving towards a woman who is not particularly gifted at showing love in return, like with his stepmother. Indeed, this was the situation he was in as a child. All of us have a similar story … we are predispositioned to love and seek love from our earliest caregivers. If they are compromised in their love-ability, we tend to wonder if there is something wrong with us, with our ability to elicit love from another. And, like in the case we are exploring here, we all can have a tendency to slide into adult relationships that are similar to being in a relationship with one or both of our parents/caregivers.
Craig’s choice of Kathy, a “pretty good person,” seems unlikely to be very damaging, hopefully not to Kathy nor to Craig. Yet, when Craig is invited in his therapy to envision a future with Kathy, his shoulders tend to round and he looks a bit embarrassed and uncomfortable. When he is invited to pay attention to this, Craig increasingly realizes that the thought of living years into the future with someone who may well not be able, or willing, to be as emotionally present and connected as Craig, leaves him feeling unwell about continuing on the same relationship path.
It can be hard to leave a pretty good relationship. And sometimes it may not even be the thing that one really wants to do or that seems best. However, when we take a journey like Craig is taking … when we get to know ourselves and our own internal longing for the greatest depths of relationship that we are capable of, then sometimes therapy is a place that helps us find the clarity and courage to say goodbye to something that is decent and pretty good, yet not a full enough expression of who we can be.