Stephanie Dowrick: Intimacy & Solitude
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The empathy and care we are able to offer to other people depend almost entirely on the quality of understanding, self-trust and awareness of choice we have within ourselves — the quality of our intimacy and solitude.
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But the paradoxes of intimacy are well known: the more intense the relationship, the more needs, longings, yearnings projected into it, the more that’s required of it—especially unconsciously—the more inevitably it will ignite old patterns and fears, some arising from the earliest years or even months of your own existence, no matter how ‘grown up’ and ‘in charge’ we believe we are. What’s even truer and more illuminating is that we seldom learn most or grasp the complexity of life most effectively through what’s going well. We are understandably inclined to glide through those easier times with minimal introspection, and why not? It’s when we come up against obstacles, particularly within ourselves but sometimes through our pain or frustration with others, that we are forced to look deeper.
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Adapted self behaviour can also be part of the life of someone who feels overly ‘together’, who would claim to know him or herself inside out. Of that kind of adapted self, analyst Harry Guntrip suggests: ‘The more possible it is to predict consistently what a human being will do, the less of a real person he has become.’
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When the abandoned lover screams ‘I can’t live without him’, she is screaming her fear that in place of a sense of self—which is an internal experience—she has borrowed an identity from outside herself. This is not something she has chosen to do! Her belief is that the man, or their relationship, has given her an identity. In removing himself, he is taking her identity-self away. He is not there and now she wonders, most painfully, ‘Who am I?’.
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From the very start of your own life you were vulnerable to messages about how you ‘should’ be. These were passed on explicitly as well as unconsciously by those you loved and depended upon. If the messages told you how you had to be in order to be accepted, and if this was far from the who I am you longed to express, your experiences may have alienated you from your own self, resulting in a feeling of being only half-alive, or as though you were alive in someone else’s life, rather than your own. Such a fate is not rare; it is one of the most common tragedies of our time.
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In intimate relationships this is frequently a crucial demand: that you will know what I want without my having to tell you; that you will be able to anticipate my unspoken thoughts and even my unformulated desires; that you will appreciate my complexity better than I can myself. And when you fail to do this? That can feel to me like you have failed to love.
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Few of us want to believe we are loved for our bank balance, our membership in a rock band, our Key West apartment, our velvet eyes or perfect legs. Most of us want to be loved ‘for ourselves’. But what does that mean? Who is that self to be loved above and beyond the trappings of personality, charm and possessions? Is that self even known to you? Can you stand to spend time alone with the self you want recognised, valued and loved?
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Knowing who you are, trusting that your existence is real and is valid, you can also be alone. Not in a state of defensiveness against others, nor in a state of loneliness, but knowing that you are alone with your own self. And who is that self? Someone with memories and experiences of others.
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Adapted self is a shorthand way to describe someone whose behaviour is limited by a conscious or unconscious belief that opinions from the outside hold more weight than whatever information the person has on the inside about their own self.
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You cannot know other people better than you know yourself nor allow other people freedoms that you do not allow yourself. So a limited perception of your own gender will also limit what you are prepared to understand or tolerate about other people’s choices. If you have spent a good deal of your life snuggled tightly into a gender role, other people’s attempts to ‘break out’ may feel dangerous to your sense of inner order. They may arouse disturbing feelings of anger, perhaps against your family or even against yourself, that the belief you hold that a woman must behave like this, or that men must not feel that, is an attitude only, and not an inviolable truth.
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Emancipation from sex-role stereotyping has been part of the social agenda for more than 200 years, but while women’s place in the world of paid work has certainly changed dramatically, and some men do transcend the old divisions between the public and private spheres, it would seem that when it comes to the deep feelings which create self-image, to people’s inner experience of themselves as women or men, boys or girls, not very much has changed at all.
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Theo’s remark that ‘Heterosexual men are the centre of the world. They don’t have to define themselves’ points to the ways in which outsiders from the male-majority culture can see men as limited by that ‘centre-of-the-world’ attitude which points not to a well-developed sense of self, but to a fragile, out-of-touch self bolstered by the trappings of self-importance.
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The person who has relatively little sense of self, and therefore little possibility to be genuinely aware of others, is likely to make and even to need sharp divisions between people. Such a person fears difference, yet sees difference everywhere. This is especially dramatic when the inner psychological conflicts, which difference disturbs, are unknown to them, and shied away from.
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You can encourage in yourself a vital flexibility of perception which mocks the dualistic thinking (right/wrong; black/white; woman/man; rich/poor; deserving/undeserving) upon which racism, sexism, and social and economic exploitation depend for their (non)sense. Such flexibility comes out of acknowledging the infinitely flowing mutuality of self and other, lived out in a world in which illusion and reality are very close neighbours indeed. If you are lucky, it is possible to hold many ideas in your mind at once, even contradictory ideas.
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Well, not in every case, and maybe in very few. Being highly tuned to the way other people see her, and taking her cues as to her own self-value from this, can make the bravest of women unauthentically childlike and create in her a fear of abandonment she is probably unable to acknowledge.
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In our communities the dangers for the good girl are in losing touch with—or never getting in touch with—desires which emerge from her knowledge of her own self and are not a reflection of the needs and desires of others. The good girl I am referring to does not dare to initiate. She does not direct her own life. She acts out roles which others have prescribed. And often with the awful fear: have I got it right?
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Fear of feeling is an awesome barrier to satisfying experiences of either intimacy or solitude: In solitude it is difficult to care for your own needs unless you know what you feel and also that you can tolerate your own ambivalence. Without that, the prospect of time alone may fill you with anxiety, self-pity or the dread of aloneness. Intimacy is not possible until you can, from an aliveness within yourself, express who I am freely, and can be with the other person as they express who I am without feeling the need to shut them out or off to protect yourself.
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In many significant ways Carl and Yvette are having a very different relationship from that of either set of parents. Perhaps the major difference is their awareness that there are more ways to behave than the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ way. This awareness comes from the freedom they have to discuss these possibilities and the feelings that go along with them.
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Taking another adult seriously, believing that another adult can and must look to their own issues and take care of themselves—even while being loved and supported—is central to any sustained experience of intimacy. But adult-with-adult relationships of this kind are surprisingly rare to find.
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‘Women say things they want you to hear and expect you to say things they want to hear. They expect certain things you consider crucial to be put aside in the light of certain other things. I think it’s impossible to function effectively with a woman in a relationship.
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This capacity to move on blithely strikes many women as crass—or just incredible.Yet the story is not a simple one. It is also men, largely, who are so palpably unseparate (or fused/confused) from their partners that what they perceive as their partner’s acts of betrayal can arouse them to react with extreme violence or even murder.
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Self-awareness is not about ‘you’ only. It is always and inevitably about you and about you and others. It is impossible to be more in touch with the inner reality of another person than you are with your own inner world of feelings. It is impossible to be more attuned to another person than you are to your own self. It is impossible to honour the complex self of another person more than you honour your own complexity.
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Romantic love remains a potent force. And the dreams of ‘completion’ that romantic love fosters somehow survive contemporary cynicism—itself not much more than a shaky defence against the awesome fears of dependency and disappointment. What also survive though are women’s routine complaints about men and men’s about women. The frustration felt within a personal relationship—or in the absence of one—is frequently universalised: ‘Men can’t . . .’; ‘If only women wouldn’t . . .’ Those familiar, bitter outcries frequently hide a yearning to be better understood or simply to be liked more and accepted more readily, and criticised much, much less.
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Or perhaps you are questioning why these people cannot stay at home and take a look in their mirror if they need to find affirmation? After all, can the approval of a stranger have any real value? If they need stimulation, why can’t they explore their own thoughts and memories? Do they not have old friends who could embrace them with affection? Why would loneliness be a worse option than going home with and perhaps to bed with a stranger?
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I cannot be ‘together’ with you unless I have some sense of my own separateness and autonomy. I can’t be my own self with you if I am bound to you in dependency. When our togetherness enhances my life but my life does not depend on it—I can be together with you and still be myself.
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A friendly hand, the ‘right person’ at the ‘right time’, a sense of being understood: these are all immensely enhancing experiences for your sense of self, but they do not negate the need each of us has gradually and patiently to find our solid ground within.
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When Sebastian was in his mid-twenties his first marriage broke up. He stopped having recurring nightmares, and also stopped dreaming. For him, some of the functions of dreaming have been taken over by solitude. ‘When I’m alone my imagination works and things happen and my mind turns over. I am sure for people who dream that the dream fulfils the function of allowing them to shake out the costumes, and dress up in them, and race around. Being alone inside my head allows me to do that.’
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Not everyone will recognise that image—being alone inside my head. For many people solitude is a time to be in your head with thoughts and memories and plans which concern other people, or perhaps with music or reading which can be enjoyed without interruption.There is no right way; when you are lucky, there is your way.
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‘Being in contact with others’ does not necessarily mean communicating well, being understood, or feeling that a positive connection exists. Your way of being in contact may be extremely uncomfortable. It may humiliate you. But even uncomfortable contact confirms that you are alive. And for many people that reassurance from without is vital.
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Death is the ultimate loss experience and the absolute rebuff to our childish beliefs that someone ‘out there’ will save us.
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Knowing what you think; understanding how conflicted and inconsistent your thoughts can be; assessing what other people tell you without feeling the need to respond immediately nor to defend your own position: these are also opportunities offered by time spent in solitude and reflection.
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It is worth examining from time to time the ‘characters’ who inhabit your mind when you are alone. Why are you wasting so much time thinking about a boss you claim is a fool? The woman whose beauty is a reminder to you of your own loss oflooks: must she be your constant companion? The man your lover is now with, can he really be such a monster?
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It may be that the very idea of talking about intimacy in the profoundly unintimate world of contemporary Western ‘civilisation’ is a ludicrous proposition. Even the barest definition of intimacy involves the idea of someone other than yourself. But can we seriously take on the idea of the other—the idea that other human existence is as valid and as real as our own—when the cry to ‘get ahead’ dominates in the developed world, and lack of the most basic necessities of life—food, water, shelter, safety—affects the daily life of billions in the majority world?
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It may seem frustrating or even agonising that in a fairly well-intentioned relationship talking openly or ‘telling all’ can become more difficult with time and not easier. And it may feel deflating as well as mysterious that the frankness so highly prized early on can come to be experienced as intrusive, unwelcome or even threatening.
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An unconscious solution can also be found through being intolerably unpleasant—or critical—in order to drive the other person away because you literally cannot bear the love or hate or rage or envy that their closeness stirs up in you.
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Could it also be that it is precisely those people who are capable of very deep feeling, and who are vulnerable to being stirred up by deep feeling in others, who may have most difficulty in balancing their needs for and actual experience of intimacy, and who may sometimes recoil from their own intensity, thus bringing about in their partners the feeling Anthony Storr defined as a ‘lack of commitment’ and an awareness that ‘something important is missing’.
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The world is a frightening place. What you cannot control, what you cannot predict, can seem unendurably threatening. This very human fear has been exploited since political leaders first took to standing on rocks. It is the fear which right-wing or fundamentalist certainty exploits with its spurious promises of order, predictability, control.
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Two halves longing to become one whole is still the myth of which some romances are made, but in general people are more aware that where there is a loss of self within a relationship, there is also more likely to be an impoverished or endangered relationship.
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living in a world with other equally greedy and unreasonable human beings you are best off when you can understand what needs lie behind your cries of ‘I want’.
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Obsessive interest in your own and other people’s looks and material possessions is, in general, a symptom of lack of a secure sense of self, and the genuine power-from-within that goes with that. Desiring someone else’s wealth, looks or cleverness may also express envy or a belief that with the addition to your life of those assets—money, looks, brains—your life might be substantially safer or more admirable than anything you can manage on your own.
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Desiring someone who has those assets—ass, tits, wallet—desiring someone for those assets, is an act of appropriation (I want what you have. I want to make what you have my own. I want literally a piece of your ass.). This is not an expression of intimacy; it is the now familiar cry of infantile narcissism. Fill me up, it pleads. Pour yourself into me, for I am empty.
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