Loving Him Without Losing You (15 page)

When Summer first met Matthew, who was six years older, she had many friends. Being an outgoing, fun-loving, attractive young woman, people grav- itated to her. But Matthew was a very insecure man who was extremely threatened by Summer’s popularity. Before long he was telling her that she was too friendly to strangers, that her friends were too important to her, and that if she really loved him, she wouldn’t need anyone else.

Summer loved Matthew and wanted to make him happy, so she tried being less friendly to people when they went out and stopped seeing her friends as often. After work, instead of going out for a drink with her cowork- ers, as was her habit before she met Matthew, she went right home. And when her friends called to ask her out for the weekend, she turned them down. She even cut her phone conversations short if a friend called in the evening because Matthew would stare at her or motion for her to get off the phone.

As time went by, Summer became more and more dependent on Matthew. When he had to go to an out-of-state training program for his job, she begged him to take her along because she didn’t want to be alone.

Looking back on it now, I realize that it was a warning sign for me that I’d become too isolated and too dependent. I’d cut myself off from so many people that I actually didn’t think I could
survive
without Matthew, even for a week.

Instead of taking advantage of the fact that he was gone and I could finally go out with my friends again, I stayed home waiting by the phone for his nightly phone call. As soon as he hung up I started roaming around the house, crying like an abandoned child. I couldn’t sleep because I missed him so much and because I was deathly afraid some- one was going to break in the house. I was a mess.

Summer, who had been an easygoing, confident young woman, had turned into a nervous, insecure person who had grown dependent on her boyfriend for her very security.

Equally important is the fact that when your contact with others is lim- ited, your suggestibility is greatly increased. Since you have little contact with the outside world, you not only tend to become too emotionally dependent on your partner but also are likely to become more easily influenced by your part- ner’s beliefs, values, and perceptions. As experts in brainwashing will con- firm, when a person is receiving very little information, what she does receive makes a more powerful impression.

Even highly successful women can become emotionally dependent and blinded to what is really going on when they become too isolated in a rela- tionship. In her autobiography
What Falls Away,
Mia Farrow laments:

Why did I stay with Woody Allen when so much was wrong? How can I explain it to my children, when even to me it is incomprehensible and unforgivable?

I could protest that I didn’t know—how could I have known—what he was capable of. How could I believe it. I could argue that the world I had occupied with him for a quarter of my life was so utterly removed

from any other that it was impossible for me to envision a life for myself beyond it. Every aspect of my existence was interwoven with his.

Mia had, in fact, isolated herself from her friends during her relationship with Woody. It was only after she was able to break away from him that she was able to reconnect with them.

I connected with my old friends and slowly, piece by piece, I began to reclaim my
self
, the identity that had somehow, over the years, slipped almost out of existence.

In addition to isolating herself with Woody, Mia also made another mis- take. She agreed to work for him, making her not only emotionally but finan- cially dependent as well.

When Woody first asked her if she’d like to be in his upcoming movie, her initial instincts told her not to. Like most actors, she’d been hoping to work with him, but it felt strange to be offered the role because she was “the girl- friend.” And she was concerned that she wouldn’t measure up. Besides, life was complicated enough. What would it be like doing scenes with him and having him be the director-boss
and
her boyfriend all at once?

Needless to say, Mia didn’t heed her own internal warnings and began the first of thirteen movies they would do together. By the time she became painfully aware that he was not the man she had envisioned him to be and that she needed to get out of the relationship, she felt stuck, partly because she had become financially, as well as emotionally, dependent on him:

I felt I should end the relationship, but I didn’t know if I would be able to do that. Emotionally I was dependent on him, and the possibility that he would not want to work with me anymore was frightening. I seemed to have lost whatever definition I had once had of myself as an inde- pendent working woman, and in the process I had also lost confidence in my ability to survive without him.

Pay Your Own Way

Money is power. There is no way around it.
One of the most obvious ways that a woman loses herself in relationships is by allowing a man to buy her, by let- ting him have complete control over her finances, or by becoming dependent on him for her livelihood
.

Certainly this does not mean you don’t allow a man to pay for your din- ner or take you out on a big night on the town. But it does mean you shouldn’t expect him to pay each time and that you should sometimes reciprocate by cooking him dinner or taking him on a picnic you’ve prepared. And it espe- cially means that at the beginning of a relationship you don’t allow a man to buy you expensive gifts, pay your rent, or support you. Even after marriage, you will retain a lot more personal power and will not risk losing yourself in the relationship if you continue to contribute to your own support and the run- ning of the household.

Even married women or women who live with their partner need to main- tain a separate bank account with enough savings in it so that you are not dependent on your partner to take care of you or constantly bail you out of financial trouble. Many women end up staying with men they are unhappy with or men who are abusive just because they don’t have enough money to pay their own way or enough money to leave.

Because women’s salaries are often still less than men’s, many women continue to enter relationships with men partly or primarily for financial security. Although things have changed considerably, many women still believe they can’t survive without the support of a man, especially women with children.

But this economic dependency can greatly increase a woman’s chances of losing herself in a relationship by encouraging her to be overly accommo- dating toward her partner. This is how Angie, forty-one, explained it:

When I married Rick I felt pretty good about myself. I knew who I was, and I was proud of the things I’d accomplished. But after only a few years of marriage I noticed that my feelings of self-confidence had greatly diminished. I realize now that because Rick was so wealthy and because I was completely dependent on him financially, I tended to give into his every whim. In many ways I began to think of Rick as my employer—that I had to do whatever he wanted. If he wanted to do something, I’d go along, even if I had no interest in it, including having sex.

Paying your own way also means not working for your partner. Like Mia Farrow, several of the women I interviewed for this book shared with me how they had ended up working for their partners in some capacity—one became her boyfriend’s secretary, another the office manager in her lover’s business, another her husband’s dental assistant. All regretted doing so.

“It just blurred the lines too much. How could we have an equal rela- tionship at home when he was my boss at work?” Dana, fifty-two, shared with me:

“Since Carson told me what to do at work he started feeling like he had the right to do it at home. And I slipped right into obeying whatever he told me to do because I was used to doing it at work.”

Maintain Your Own Separate Space

For those who are still single, maintaining your own separate space can mean resisting the temptation to move in together right away (even if you are spend- ing most of your time at his house).

Your home should not just be a place where you live while you wait to meet the man of your dreams and move into your dream house. It is an exten- sion of your identity, a reflection of who you are.

Maintaining your own separate space is similar to maintaining your usual schedule in that it helps provide you with needed structure and identity. It is a place where you keep your most precious belongings, reminders of places you’ve been and people you’ve known. It is a place where you can go to find solitude, a place where you can connect with yourself and your deepest feel- ings.

While many single women experience their homes as a lonely place instead of a warm, welcoming one, it nevertheless provides a space where they can let down their facades, kick off their shoes, and be who they really are without worrying about what someone else is thinking about them. This is essential for Disappearing Women, who are all too often preoccupied with their image and with gaining the approval or recognition of others.

The first months of a new relationship are especially stressful. While it can be a time of great joy and excitement, it is also a period when most peo- ple are still intent on presenting their best side to their partner, a time when we are still being careful about what we say and how we act for fear of turn- ing the other person off. Having a sanctuary to come home to, a place where you can let your hair down, relieves some of the stress, helps ground you and reminds you of who you were before you met your partner.

The beginning of a relationship is also a time of great passion, especially when you first begin to have sex together. This is the time when many women are tempted to start spending several nights a week at a man’s house or spend- ing all weekend there. While all this closeness can feel incredibly exciting and fulfilling, it can also feel frightening. This is because during this time women are especially prone to merging with their sexual partner and losing track of

how they feel. Getting up out of bed and returning home after a passionate night or morning together may be the last thing you want to do, but it is exactly what you need.

You need to go home where you are surrounded by reminders of who you are—pictures of the important people in your life, souvenirs of places you’ve traveled to, gifts and objects of art you love. You need to take the time to read books and return phone calls, take your clothes to the cleaners, and clean your house.

E
X E R C I S E
:
How Much Structure Do You Need?

To test how important maintaining your separate space is in terms of helping to provide you needed structure, answer the following questions:

1. Do you tend to become depressed after returning home from a vaca- tion or from a visit with a relative or a friend? Is this a feeling simi- lar to the one you get when you return home after spending several nights at your boyfriend’s house?
   

   This depression is what clinicians call
   abandonment depression.
   While you may convince yourself that you are depressed because you miss your lover so much, the truth is you are depressed because you are once again facing your aloneness. This in turn triggers uncon- scious memories of times when you felt alone and abandoned as a child.
   

   The more time you spend with your lover, the more likely it is that you will feel this abandonment depression when you are alone, espe- cially in the beginning of a relationship. You need time to structure a life that leaves room for autonomy in addition to the intimacy of a relationship. Maintaining a separate space where you can go to inte- grate your new relationship into your present life will provide you this structure.
   

2. Is traveling especially stressful for you? Are you often relieved to return home from a vacation, no matter how pleasurable it was?
   

   Starting a new relationship is like going on a journey. It is new and exciting, but it is also stressful. Because you are in unfamiliar terri- tory, you have to be especially alert. You may feel a little disoriented since you probably aren’t doing things on your own time schedule and you are away from your familiar surroundings.
   

   Often what makes a vacation so wonderful is that it takes us away from the responsibilities and stresses of our regular life, with its
   

   work pressures, bills, and daily chores. Our mind is freed, and we tend to fantasize about what it would be like to live in this place, to change our whole life. But all the while, in the back of our mind, we have the memory of our real life back home to ground us. This mem- ory helps make our vacation as pleasurable as it is, making every day we are away from our typical stresses that much more precious. How- ever, no matter how much we may regret it when our vacation is over, if we are honest with ourselves there is a small part of us that is look- ing forward to coming home, where we can relax from the stresses of our vacation and check back in with our real lives.
   

   The same is true of a new relationship. The very things that make it exciting and new are the things that make it stressful. You are on unfamiliar territory, not quite knowing where you are going from moment to moment. Because of this you may tend to become a little disoriented and be especially mindful of your actions.
   

   You also tend to fantasize about what it would be like if you two were to join your lives together, how it would feel to give up your old way of life for an entirely new one with your new lover. Knowing you have to go home or to work makes the time you spend together that much more precious. But deep down inside, if you are honest with yourself, there is a part of you that welcomes those times when you can relax from the stress of the new relationship and check in with the rest of your life.
   

3. Do you often have arguments with those you are traveling with, espe- cially in the beginning of the trip, en route to your destination, and when you first arrive?
   

This is most likely because you are anxious and disoriented about being away from your home and your usual routine, which tends to ground you.

But it also may be because you are anxious about spending a con- centrated amount of time with your partner. We’ll discuss the fear of entrapment later on in this chapter.

For those who are married or living together, maintaining your separate space can mean setting up a room in the house that is just yours, a space where you can go to get away, to gather your thoughts, to write in your journal, to pursue creative outlets.

Decorate this space with pictures and memorabilia that remind you of your life before the relationship and that remind you of who you are
separate
from the relationship. Even if space is limited, you can create a space for your- self in an existing room by placing a few meaningful objects there and by tak- ing time alone there from time to time.