Difficult love relationships are problems, right?

Concerned friends and family members may shake their heads over the poor choices we make, wonder out loud why we don’t leave, remind us that we can do better.

We ourselves may wonder why we can’t be satisfied with a calmer or more “normal” relationship. Do we harbor some unconscious masochistic streak? Are we addicted to drama? Do we have low self-esteem which causes us to choose pain or settle for less than what we deserve?

Often, relationship problems are unconscious attempts at solutions to even greater issues.

Love shouldn’t hurt!

Have you seen this bumper sticker: Don’t Believe Everything You Think? It is one quality of the human psyche that we tend to believe our own thoughts as if they were truths.

And if we’ve struggled and suffered over a long period to make sense of a confusing, painful relationship, we have likely formulated some “answers” which helped us “understand” what we were going through.

• Love requires pain and suffering
• Relationships don’t work
• I can’t be myself and still be loved
• I’m destined to be alone
• No matter what I try, I fail
• I’m fatally attracted to screwed-up (wo)men
• I’m a loser
• (Wo)Men have low self-esteem and can’t handle how well I treat them
• (Wo)Men are out to control me
• (Wo)Men are out to take advantage of me

Whew, love is hard work!

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read Peter Kramer‘s book, Should You Leave? I’m on my second copy; I wore the first one out!

Here’s some more advice towards making positive relationship change happen, heavily inspired by Kramer’s wisdom:

[This photo shows a casket commissioned by a Roman nobleman. He hasn't yet selected a wife, so her face remains uncarved.]

In Jewish tradition it is the matchmaker’s job to find you your “bashert.” The word literally means “destiny.”

We commonly translate is as “soulmate,” or “true love” or “ideal match.” It’s a wonderful, romantic idea.

But your bashert is NOT that one, perfect person who is identical to you in every way, whose love will cure all your troubles, and with whom you’ll experience uninterrupted passion and bliss.

The true idea behind the bashert is a very real and practical one. There’s this Yiddish saying: Bashert is bashert, which means, roughly: whatever will be, will be.

The notion is that God has chosen another person for you to share your life with, and that therefore you should accept this person and put your best efforts into making this relationship work.

The wisdom behind the bashert is this:

• Don’t search endlessly for some “perfect” person.
• Instead, make a great match with an imperfect but wonderful partner, and then invest in making the relationship work.
• View the imperfections in your relationship as gifts; they are the challenges which spur you to grow and mature.

Here are a few more related ideas from Peter Kramer and his book Should You Leave?

• Personal growth happens within relationships. “It is the complexity, the impossibility, the dullness or painfulness of the current imperfect relationship that provides the context for change.” (p. 129)
• Your partner is a mirror onto yourself. People tend to pair up quite precisely, naturally choosing mates who are about as mature as they are. Running away from one relationship after another is, in effect, a running away from your own flaws.

Photo taken at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

For Valentine’s Day I offer you some relationship advice.

My ideas are heavily inspired by the writings of Dr. Peter Kramer. He is renowned as the author of Listening to Prozac, but he is also a specialist in relationship dynamics. His book Should You Leave? is the most insightful book I’ve ever read about matters of the heart.

So…should you leave? Dr. Kramer and I both err on the side of: No.

Abusive relationships, hopelessly doomed relationships…sometimes, of course, it’s necessary to leave.

But this advice is about staying and trying to make it work:

Do you know how Pluto was discovered?

Before 1930, telescopes weren’t strong enough to see Pluto directly. Yet, scientists knew there had to be “something” out there. Why?

Because Neptune, the planet closest to Pluto, was acting funny. It didn’t always follow its predicted orbit; it wobbled and behaved erratically.

There was some invisible gravitational force tugging at the planet and altering its path.

Past loves can be just like this. Still drifting in our emotional depths, they may exert their unseen gravitational pull, disrupt our healthy orbits and cause us to lurch and hesitate and behave oddly in our new relationships.

A relationship ends.

In the ideal version, both people will understand and agree, and they will walk away as close friends.

Of course, they will also be sad and hurt and disappointed, and so they will each take at least a few months to be single, to mourn and cry and heal and think things through and gradually regain their bearings.

Then, after each person feels whole and calm and centered and recovered, they will begin dating new people. They’ll bring healthy expectations and clean emotional slates, and they’ll offer the best of themselves to their new potential partners.

Heinz Kohut was one of a number of psychoanalysts who mostly subscribed to Freud’s theory but felt Freud wasn’t on target in all respects.

Kohut disagreed with Freud’s drive constructs. Kohut believed that, instead of being motivated by guilt-saturated, repressed sexual urges, people are driven to construct and maintain healthy Selves.

During childhood, people develop their sense of Self through their interactions with others. Kohut identified three poles necessary for healthy Self development:

1. Mirroring: The need to be with someone similar to oneself. This is also called twinship.
2. Grandiosity: The need to be understood and approved of and to feel powerful and effective.
3. Ideal/Mentor: The need to be with someone one can admire and emulate and rely upon.

Kohut also described the selfobject, a person (most commonly a closely beloved one such as a parent or a love partner) who is used psychologically to meet Self needs.

Kohut insisted that the Self is a work in progress which constantly requires renovation and repair.

Healthy relationships accommodate selfobject needs. Partners use each other as fantasy objects for psychological transference, but only within healthy limits. They manage to maintain realistic perspectives on the actual characteristics of each partner and are able to respond to those real needs.

Sometimes, though, a damaged or deprived Self may have excessive or skewed selfobject needs. This person relies too much on overly-idealized, fantasy-based love relationships to attempt to meet those needs. These sorts of relationships are generally painful and do not last, as these people fail to see their partners accurately or meet their actual needs. They treat their partners as objects to the exclusion of interacting with them as real people.

Kohut developed his theory as he worked with people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Such people lack empathy for others and are overly concerned with meeting their urgent needs for mirroring and grandiosity.

But people don’t have to be suffering personality disorders to experience extreme Self needs. A stressful love relationship, especially a long-term one, might leave a person starved for mirroring, affirmation, approval, inspiration, affection, or any number of kinds of essential Self fuel.

And then people may bring this …

Dating services and personal ads make meeting other single people easier than ever.

But meeting a good match and then making a relationship succeed is as hard as it ever was.

One problem lies in the psychological dynamics going on as people search for new partners. There’s a tug-of-war of needs and wishes, of realities and fantasies, that goes on inside people as they date.

Human Being or Object?

We are already naturally opinionated about “the kind of person we want to meet,” “the right match for us,” “the qualities we seek in another person.”

Then, the more dating experience we log, the more entrenched we become in these ideas. Every failed relationship is likely to be chalked up as “he or she wasn’t right for me,” “I need to choose better next time,” etc.

Friends encourage this sort of thinking; they remind us to “not settle,” that we “can do better.”

Dating services and personal ads also play to this same focus on “what we want” in another person. They have us describe what we are looking for; the more detail the better!

Too often the result is people searching for potential mates as if they were interviewing job applicants or shopping for cars.

Heinz Kohut, the author of the theory of Self Psychology, speaks of the human tendency to use other people as “self-objects;” that is, to ignore their actual human characteristics and use them psychologically as objects upon which to transfer one’s own needs and desires. We all do this with our loved ones to a certain, normal extent.

There’s an ad running on TV lately for an online dating service; the young man asks: If your service is so good at matching people, why should I have to join for a whole year?

I smile and sigh every time I see this commercial. I want to tell this guy: Trust me, you’ll need that year!

I’ve been a tutor and educator my entire life, but there was also a ten-year stretch where I was a professional relationship coach and matchmaker.

Matchmaking operates at the intersection of Love in its most idealized form, and Reality at its most stark. Matchmakers and most online dating sites specialize in the Romantic Dream: “finding that special someone” and then “living happily ever after.”

Have you ever filled out an enrollment questionnaire for any of these services? You tell them all about “who you are” and “what you are looking for” in a partner. From there it should be a simple matter of matching you with singles who meet your criteria and vice versa. You’ll meet a few eligible people and soon, with one of them, mutual chemistry will click in, and viola! The relationship you’ve always dreamed of!

Never say never. During my matchmaking decade I saw it happen just like this plenty of times. But, truth be told, most people need that year, and most likely they’ll need more than just a year.

Here’s what you’ll need that year for:

• To meet a variety of people. Dating services and personal ads make this easier than ever. Try to relax and enjoy the process of dating. Make some friends along the way. Try not to be too single-minded and intense about your search; view it, instead, as an adventure.
• To learn about yourself and others. Reflect on your dating experiences. Keep a journal. Think hard about your feelings during this process. Also try to notice how others react to you.
• To put the past to rest. So many people don’t take the time to recover from bad break-ups or assess and learn from past experiences, and instead they bring this baggage with them as they begin dating …
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