this turn of events, the nature of the irrelationship became clear to Glen and to his analyst. His connection with Vicky was isolating, stultifying, and filled with resentment. Vicky’s bright-eyed receptivity to Glen’s routine was revealed as her fantasy-based routine. At that moment, Glen woke up and began the process of finally looking seriously at his history as a Performer, facing how he had unconsciously depended upon his song-and-dance routine to short-circuit any approach of closeness in relationships.
Deeper Analysis and Some Brain Science
As we can see again in Glen and Vicky’s story, the behaviors associated with irrelationship are designed to defend against anxiety. But just what is anxiety? Anxiety is the initial reaction of a sensitive system that is wired to keep us vigilant to danger and to protect us from harm.1 Everyone experiences anxiety and finds ways of managing it. When anxiety is managed well, we function better and are happier. But when anxiety is handled in ways that diminish awareness of our feelings, but not the feelings themselves, we lose the guidance of our emotions. This puts us at risk for unhealthy and even dangerous emotional situations. As our denial of anxiety grows and deepens, we are at an ever-increasing risk of being overwhelmed by tidal waves of apparently unintelligible feelings that seem to come out of nowhere.
This psychological adaptation actually results in changes to the structure of the brain and function of brain networks. Our frontal cortex (the higher brain) gets into the habit of ignoring our limbic system (the emotional brain), resulting in a combination of too much and too little inhibition, plus a poor sense of timing. Because we never learned the skills needed to deal constructively with emotional crises, we use one of two blunt instruments to handle them: either we use dissociation to numb our feelings, or we explode into rage to crush challenges based on our carefully agreed-upon roles. This is known as emotional dysregulation and is essential to maintaining irrelationship. As we saw in attachment theory, two people—who individually have difficulty with emotional regulation within intimate relationships and are emotionally dysregulated—can resort to the mechanisms of irrelationship to create long-term stability.
The bottom line is that no matter how hard we work at convincing ourselves (as Glen and Vicky did) that we are in touch with ourselves, we can, and will, use irrelationship to maintain distance and hide from our feelings. Regardless of the devices we use, our best thinking can’t trick our feelings.
When we blind ourselves to our emotions, responding to them authentically is practically impossible. We may want to present ourselves to another person—especially a romantic interest—as a source of strength and support. But if we’re putting on an act of always looking strong when we’re actually terrified, we’re paying the price of not being emotionally present in the relationship. If we’ve lost a sense of our own emotions and needs, we’ve lost the ability to reflect and make good decisions even for ourselves. On the other hand, if we believe that what we feel is the only reliable indicator of how things really are (called emotional reasoning in cognitive behavioral therapy), we live in a shrunken reality with little space for the joy, excitement, and wisdom that come with spontaneity and space for reflection.
In Glen and Vicky’s life of irrelationship, Glen’s apparent abundant generosity toward Vicky seemed to be a kind of strength, and Glen was gratified by Vicky’s tolerant attention. But Glen and Vicky were trapped by false ideas about themselves and each other that became prisons of isolation and resentment from which both feared escaping.
How Our Brains Make or Shut Down Love
Most people caught in irrelationship have no inkling that anything is wrong until it begins not to work, particularly since it seems to have worked well in the past. Our song-and-dance routines so effectively distract us from our anxiety that we can’t imagine anything needs to change. We have no idea how afraid we are and how our unconscious fear disallows change of any kind. Or, equally destructive, our fear drives us to pursue change compulsively and unreflectively without allowing a new person or situation the chance of proving worthwhile. Unsettling as this may be on some level, and may appear to others, the price of shutting down oneself is willingly paid in order to anesthetize anxiety.
While we’re doing our song-and-dance routine, the brain continues to produce bonding chemicals. Oxytocin, for example, shifts us into a state of unconditional caring appropriate for a mother caring for a distressed child but lacks the erotic potential driven by testosterone and suppresses dopamine, the brain chemical that mediates many of the pleasurable sensations associated with passionate sexual interaction. In addition, studies of the experience of unconditional love demonstrate that while involved in an intense caretaking role, our brain’s capacity for experiencing pain, mediated in the periaqueductal gray matter, is muted.2 This can be seen in a mother caring for her highly vulnerable newborn or sick child. When administering such care, as Performer or Audience, the sensibility of one’s own needs and pain are temporarily suspended. Our mind becomes that of the soldier, dancer, yogi, or even the martyr whose single-minded concern is the completion of a task whose significance overrides all other considerations.
Irrelationship thus sidelines large quarters of our emotional life, placing balanced, real relationships out of our reach—whether in business, with friends, or, perhaps especially, with lovers, spouses, or partners. When acting as Performer or Audience, the long-term need to be in healthy, supportive relationships is sacrificed to the immediate imperative of smothering our deep-seated discomfort, thus putting us radically out of balance with others and ourselves. We can live like this for a while, but eventually we crash. At that point, we often become overtly sick and in need of care. The debt has come due and has to be paid back at a high rate of interest.3
Toward Positive Change
1. Looking back at your worst romantic relationship, what made it disappointing or a failure?
2. What role did your song-and-dance routine play in that failed relationship? What was your partner’s part in the routine? How did each of you prevent closeness from developing?
3. Think about your best relationships in the following areas: family, work, friendship, and romance. What similarities can you identify?
The Threat of Intimacy The Threat of Intimacy
Irrelationship is widespread and subversive. By its nature, it conceals itself, almost hypnotically, confusing and distracting those living within it. Ironically, it clothes itself with language and gestures resembling genuine love and care. We fool ourselves into believing our compulsive caretaking proves how generous and kind we are. This does not mean that, at heart, we are not genuinely inclined toward generosity and kindness. However, our anxiety has hijacked the vocabulary of love, using it instead to manufacture a risk-free space of irrelationship. One aspect of irrelationship is that crucial elements of one’s song-and-dance routine become nonnegotiable, such as a rigid need to always be right or an inability to see anything beyond one’s own point of view. This is the case with Betty and Hank.
Betty and Hanks’ Irrelationship Storyline
“I don’t care how bad arguing with me makes you feel, I’m going to win this argument no matter what, because I’m right,” said Betty the Performer to her Audience husband Hank.
If being right is part of one’s identity as a caregiver, it can easily become more important than the feelings of others, including loved ones. Betty’s parents trained her to think that being right was more important for gaining their regard than love and empathy. This type of regard was what they gave to Betty in place of actual love. Performers often fail to recognize this trait because they believe being right is essentially where their goodness or lovability lies—not realizing they learned this harsh attitude toward