Herman Melville's story "Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street" is about a clerk in the period before Xerox machines and typewriters whose job it is to copy legal documents by hand. Though Bartleby is initially a diligent copyist, he is unwilling to run errands or work in groups to check for errors. This does not win him any good will. "Imagine my surprise," his employer says incredulously, recounting Bartleby's response to his request for assistance, "nay, my consternation, when . . . Bartleby in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, “I would prefer not to.”
"I would prefer not to" may also be the response, though more likely delivered as passive resistance, when one member of a couple moves from power to preference. It's rare to find a couple that starts so mismatched, since we are usually drawn to partners at a similar level of consciousness. But sometimes, through therapy, one person can change, and then then as they say, "Let the games begin."
If it's the other way round, and you play the power game, there's really nothing new of any substance to discuss. As always, you'll be trying to get your partner to agree. You'll assume that only one of you can be right in any conflict. That the one who is right will be the only one who is normal. And that that person will have a corner on the sanity market. The other one will be wrong, abnormal, and crazy. Same book. New cover. Disturbing and familiar.
However, if you're the one who prefers to prefer, and if you love your partner enough to want to stick around, how do you handle the pressure to duke it out? The answer essentially is to refuse to engage. You can't fight a war if no one shows up. Or so they said during the Vietnam conflict.
But refusing to engage is only the shorthand. The longhand is that it's necessary to hold onto your experience in the face of tremendous pressure from your partner to have theirs. That to hold onto your experience you must have strong and clear boundaries. That to have strong and clear boundaries you must accept difference from your partner. That to accept difference from your partner you must tolerate being separate. And that to tolerate being separate you must handle loneliness, doubt, and fear -- the terrifying feelings that come with having a distinct body, the state of existential aloneness from which no one escapes.
Few of us, if any, manage all this consistently. But even understanding this disengagement conceptually can help you circumvent the habitual clashes that destroy the integrity of so many relationships. It can help you determine when your partner is scared and is trying to merge to find emotional shelter. It can help you determine when you're overwhelmed and are tempted to merge to find any shred of safety. And it can help you begin to do the invaluable work of developing the capacity to sit with your feelings -- which is the real hope for internal and interpersonal change.
If you're lucky, your partner will benefit from your efforts and will discover that they also can survive on their own without demanding that the two of you pretend to be one. Hopefully, they'll find their way to a compassionate therapist who can help them start to build a more robust sense of self. And if possible, the two of you will begin couples counseling and have a chance to view your relationship through the eyes of a professional. Being able to deal with separateness can make it possible to come together as two distinct people in search of common ground. And there's no telling how close two such people can be.
If you're unlucky, however, your partner will feel abandoned and will be unable to sustain the connection between you. They'll refuse to seek help individually or as a couple, not because they're immoral but because they're afraid. In this instance you may find that no choice is appealing. To leave can be gut wrenching, but to stay can be deadening. Either way, it may be time to start asking tough questions. Because as challenging as it is to deal with existential aloneness it's even more challenging to deal with the loneliness of a relationship in which there's no one with whom to share the utter terror of being separate.
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2 comments:
What happens when I know he can survive on his own but I know I can't. It isn't like like I can't have my own expiriences and we certainly have distinct opionions and preferences...but I feel like without him I would not want to live....would not be able tot ake care of myslef. I tried therapy but then I just felt the same way about my therapist.
It is hard to learn to survive on one's own, especially if one hasn't had many chances to try, parents to teach one, friends to lend a hand.
And yet, it's essential to develop this skill if one is to be able to be in relationship. This is because the ability to be in relationship requires the capacity to establish basic conditions and to leave the relationship if these conditions aren't met.
The inability to survive physically and emotionally on one's own makes it impossible to require that one's conditions be met and to walk away from the relationship should this not occur.
This is not to say that it's easy to survive on one's own. Few challenges are more daunting in my experience of life. But it is to say that it's important to cultivate this skill, and that therapy is a wonderful place to begin -- especially if one can use one's relationship with one's therapist as a vehicle to learn a new way to engage.
If one can learn to relate to one's therapist in a new way, one can transform the way one relates to all others. This is the hope and benefit of psychotherapy. An achievement that makes the great commitment worthwhile.
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