SABOTAGING A RELATIONSHIP
EASY TO DO
WITHOUT FEELINGS OF WORTHINESS
A woman who has always felt unlovable--feels compelled to tell her husband (who
adores her) all the ways in which other women are superior to her. When he does
not agree, she ridicules him. The more passionately he worships her, the more
cruelly she demeans him. Finally she exhausts him, and he walks out of
their marriage. She is hurt and astonished. She wonders how she could
have so misjudged him. Soon she tells herself "I always knew no one could ever
truly love me."
A man falls in love, a woman returns his feeling, and they marry. But nothing
she can do is ever enough to make him feel loved for longer than a moment; he
is insatiable. However, she is so committed to him that she perseveres.
When at last she convinces him that she really loves him and he is no longer
able to doubt it, he begins to wonder whether she is good enough for
him. Eventually he leaves her, falls in love with another woman, and
the dance begins again.
Those vignettes, taken from Nathaniel Branden's book "The Six Pillars Of Self-Esteem"
(Bantam), underlie a basic truth: there is no greater barrier to romantic happiness
than the fear that I am undeserving of love and that my destiny is to be hurt.
Branden says that if I enjoy a fundamental feeling of being worthy, and experience
myself as lovable, then I have a foundation for appreciating and loving others.
Love, benevolence and caring feels natural. I have something to give; I am not
trapped in feelings of deficiency; I have a kind of emotional "surplus" that
I can channel into loving, and happiness does not make me anxious. I have confidence
in my competence and worth, and in your ability to see and appreciate it.
But if I lack respect for and enjoyment of who I am, I have very little to give--except
my unfulfilled needs. I tend to see other people essentially as sources of approval
or disapproval, and I am looking for people who will not condemn me. My ability
to love remains undeveloped.
We have all heard the observation "If you do not love yourself, you will be
unable to love others." Less well understood is the other half of the story.
If I do not feel lovable, it is very difficult to believe that anyone else loves
me. If I do not accept myself, how can I accept your love for me, since
I "know" I am not lovable. Your feeling for me cannot possibly be real, reliable
or lasting. Your love for me becomes an effort to fill a sieve, and eventually
the effort is likely to exhaust
you. Unwittingly I become a saboteur of love.
My foundation of inner security is not there. Instead there is the secret fear
that I am unlovable and will be rejected, so I pick someone who inevitably will
reject or abandon me. Or if I pick someone with whom happiness might be possible,
I am likely to subvert the relationship by demanding excessive reassurances,
by venting irrational possessiveness, by making catastrophes of small frictions,
by seeking to control through subservience or domination, by nitpicking, judging,
or criticizing my partner to death--by looking for deficiencies in my partner--by
finding ways to reject my partner before he/she can reject me.
We need to confront those destructive voices within; engage them in inner dialogue;
challenge them to give their reasons and patiently answer and refute them, says
Branden.