Patterns Of Relationships

MOST of us have some kind of idea in our minds about how a "good" or "correct" relationship is supposed to be. We can cause ourselves needless distress by comparing our own relationships with such an idea of what a relationship "should be like" and then concluding that our own is defective by comparison.

There are many kinds of relationships, and a given kind may fit a given person or couple at one stage of development but not at another. Driven by our personal history, we choose partners who help us meet our present needs, fulfill our expectations, and if we're lucky, work through our issues and grow in the directions in which we need to grow

•Survival relationships

These exist when partners feel like they can't make it on their own. The choice of a partner tends to be undiscriminating, made out of emotional starvation almost anyone available will do.This involves relating at its most basic: "Without you I am nothing; with you I am something." The survival involved may be physical as well as emotional, including the basics of finding shelter, eating, working and paying bills.

Partners tend to have a very fuzzy sense of their personal boundaries. Their contact is characterized by "confluence," in Fritz Perls' terms, in which it is unclear where one leaves off and the other begins, with considerable projection of the needs of each onto the other and introjection of the other's definitions of oneself. Often partners think in terms of what the other person wants them to want, and are out of touch with what they themselves want.

Despite all this, they are getting something out of it. The connection feels better than being alone or institutionalised. Since the partners are so afraid to be alone, when they leave one relationship for another, they tend to make sure there's someone else to jump to before they let go of the person they've been with, or make a quick impulsive choice of a new partner

• Validation relationship.

A person may seek another's validation of his or her physical attractiveness, intellect, social status, sexuality, wealth, or some other attribute. Sex and money are especially common validators. In response to a sexually unsatisfying relationship, a person may choose a new partner with whom sexuality is central or sexual validation. The packaging tends to be very important: physical beauty, sharp clothes, a cool car the package of romantic images which fit the reference group the person wants to be a part of.

These relationships are always a little insecure: "Does she like me, or not?" There are theatrics and acting-out designed to get the other person to pursue you. Since the partners are immature, there is enormous tension and constant testing: "Do you really love me?" One small act can be everything, a source of tears and anguish, despite everything else the partner has done all week. (This element can also occur in other types of relationships.) Each partner can be looking for a different kind of validation .

A validation relationship can further the valuable goal of shoring up a person's self-esteem in areas where he or she has felt inadequate or doubtful. When that has been done, and the partners begin to be able to give themselves some of the validation they relied on the other person for,  the question which begins to emerge is, "How much do we have in common besides the validating item? Where else can we go in the relationship? Can we find other sources of connection besides the surface personality traits and social roles that originally brought us together?" When an older man marries a beautiful trinket, if that's all she is, the relationship may not have a promising future.

•Scripted relationships

This common pattern often begins when the partners both are just out of high school or college. They seem to be "the perfect pair," fitting almost all the external criteria of what an appropriate mate should be like. The marriage involves living out their expectations for the roles they learned they were supposed to play. He has the "right" kind of job and she is the "right" kind of wife and they have the "right" kind of house or apartment or condo in the "right" place. Their families think it's the perfect match. These relationships are intended to be for the long haul. They are often very child-focused. Everyone is getting raised at the same time: The parents are growing up while they're raising the children.

In these relationships differences often take the form of power struggles. Endless arguments develop about everything: how to maintain the illusion of perfection to family and friends as well as how to handle their own feelings and inclinations. This often turns into a pattern  in which the issue isn't really the matter at hand but rather who "wins." A mistake one person made ten years ago is still brought up today. Sexual attraction and involvement may suffer as a by-product of the power struggles and the difficulty in talking to each other in intimate ways.

In these relationships, partners tend to get stuck in old patterns. They don't try new things, don't find a way to discuss where to go on vacation. They may divorce in their forties after twenty-five years of marriage, often because when the kids are gone, so is most of what held them together.

•Healing relationships

These liaisons follow periods of loss, struggle, deprivation, stress, or mourning. Participants typically feel wounded and fearful. They need Tender Loving Care  badly, and at the same time need to undertake some reassessment of themselves and their ways of relating. They don't have to be at the same place at the same time in their own growth and development, and frequently they aren't. By external criteria the partners may appear to be misfits, sometimes greatly so. The lack of fit may involve age, with twenty or thirty years difference between them. It may involve I.Q., like the brilliant woman lawyer with a ski instructor who's not too intellectual. It may involve sexual attitudes and experience, based on recent or ancient traumas, or on a questioning of old attitudes.

Physical distance is common in healing relationships. One woman who divorced after ten years of marriage got together with an out-of-state ex-professor whose wife had died. Her friends disapproved, insisting that "it'll never go anywhere," but at the time it was exactly what they both needed. They were together for about two years, sharing that stage of their lives.

• Experimental relationships

These are "trying it out" relationships. A man who has always chosen partners emotionally similar to his mother, for example, may try being with someone very different. The intention is to find out how to relate to someone like this person, and what a such a relationship is like. That can open a door to finding new ways of behaving with others, and perhaps to discovering little-known sides of oneself and allowing them to grow. Dating relationships often have this quality of exploration. When two people in an experimental relationship make a connection that clicks, it may evolve into one of the dominant forms. Or an experimental relationship that almost clicks, but not quite, may influence what a person looks for in the next partner.

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