Loving Him Without Losing You (16 page)

Frida Kahlo was a woman who turned things around in an existing relation- ship by establishing a separate space for herself and by maintaining certain boundaries.

On December 8, 1940, Frida and Diego Rivera remarried. But it was not the same Frida going back into the marriage. Perhaps it was the fact that she had survived the devastation of the divorce, perhaps it was the reality of her thirty-three years that confronted her. According to biographer Martha Zamora, this time Frida rejoined Diego with her eyes open, accepting the complexities of her own personality as well as his. She began to craft her own ambience, a personal world apart from the one she shared with her husband.

When she returned in 1941 to make the family home her residence, she set about arranging its decor to suit her unique personality. On the walls and in cupboards she arranged her distinctive figurines, pieces of folk art, and an array of toys and dolls. Larger-than-life Judas figures dominated patios and rooms and a skeleton hung next to her bed. The Judas figures, along with her exotic plants and animals, which were her constant companions, appear in many of her paintings.

The headboard to her bed, often her world for long periods of time, was completely covered with photographs of people dear to her, and alongside hung portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. Paintbrushes, pen- cils, and her diary completed the decoration.

In addition, according to Martha Zamora, Frida made two stipulations governing their reconciliation: She would pay half of the household expenses with earnings from her work as a painter, and they would not resume sexual relations, since for her the mere memory of Diego’s infidelities prevented it. While neither of these conditions stood for very long, they represented a strong statement on Frida’s part and a move in the direction of independence. In spite of her poor health, the five years following Frida and Diego’s sec- ond wedding were the most serene of their married life, a time when they seemed to come to terms with one another. This was more than likely due at least partly to the fact that Frida was determined to carve out a life separate

from Diego.

According to Martha Zamora in her book on Frida called
Frida Kahlo: The Brush of Anguish,
by the end of her life Frida had built for herself a per- sonal world separate from that of her famous husband.

With strength and patient dedication, she created her own work, distinct from the art movements of her time. She demonstrated that she could flourish beneath the shade of a tree as prominent as Diego.

Coping with Your Fear of Engulfment

While many Disappearing Women have a fear of abandonment, many have an equal fear of engulfment. When they spend too much time with a partner, especially in the beginning of a relationship, many begin to feel smothered. This is a sign that you are losing yourself in the relationship and need some time apart.

Most women don’t recognize this need when it comes up. Instead, they find they are irritable and critical of their partner. They suddenly discover things about him they don’t like and begin to see him as all bad. Some pick a fight in an unconscious attempt to get some distance from their partner, while others withdraw in silence.

Instead of falling into this familiar pattern, recognize your irritability, crit- icalness, and withdrawal for what they are—indications that you need some time and distance from the relationship. Tell your partner you need a few days to yourself. Unless he’s terribly insecure himself or a control freak, he’ll respect you for it and you’ll get a chance to regain your sense of self before going deeper into the relationship.

Even getting away from your partner for a few minutes can help when you feel suffocated. For example, if you are on a trip with your partner, a solitary walk can help give you the necessary space.

If you have a fear of being smothered in a relationship, it is important that you communicate your need for separate space early in the relationship, or at the first sign that your partner may tend to be a bit suffocating.

Hannah, a long-term client of mine, recently became engaged. Although she loves her fiancé, Stephen, very much, she had some reservations about get- ting married, since too much closeness felt threatening—even suffocating— to her.

I suggested she communicate her concerns to Stephen and make it clear that she would need space in the relationship.

Several weeks went by without Hannah speaking about this again, but one day she came into my office with a huge smile on her face:

Well, I guess I successfully communicated to Stephen how important having my own space is. Last week Stephen surprised me over dinner with the blueprints to a cottage—a cottage just for me, my own private sanctuary—he’d had designed to be built in the backyard of our new home.

I can’t tell you what a wonderful gift this is to me. Not only the cot- tage, but the fact that he really heard how important my space is to me and that he didn’t take it personally or become offended. I really feel that now I can get married knowing that I can truly be myself without hav- ing to apologize for it. That I can be connected to someone else and still maintain my connection with myself.

You can have a connection with a man without losing the connection with yourself.

In systems theory, a branch of family therapy, a relationship is viewed as a third entity. The goal of a healthy relationship is for each individual to remain intact as two separate beings, while a third entity—the relationship— is created.

When you merge with another person you don’t create a true relationship but simply piggyback yourself onto the life of another person, losing part of yourself in the process. Not only have you not created a third entity, but you have lost part of one—yourself.

Allow yourself the space to continue growing, and give your partner the same space.

Loving Him

Since men generally need more space in a relationship than women, main- taining a separate life is a very loving thing for you to do for your man. The more of a life you can maintain outside the relationship, the more you will bring to the relationship and the less tendency you will have to be needy and to demand of your partner things he is incapable of or unwilling to give to you.

If you truly love a man, give him his space by practicing the following:

1. Don’t always try to fill in the silences during conversations. Give him the time and space to think and to maintain
   his
   self. Constant talking can make
   

   a man feel overwhelmed, and it is often just a way for you to avoid con- necting with yourself and your feelings.
   

2. Don’t come on too strongly when you first see him (i.e., at the beginning of a date or when he comes home from work), either by talking a mile a minute, or with demands for emotional closeness. Give him some time and space to come down from his hectic day.
   

3. When your partner begins to send out messages that he needs space, give it to him instead of taking it personally or asking for connection or com- fort. Once he has had enough space, he’ll return for more intimacy.
   

8

Commitment 4

S
TAY I N THE
P
RESENT AND IN
R
EALITY

In real love you want the other person’s good. In romantic love you want the other person.

M
ARGARET
A
NDERSON

You can never plan the future by the past.

E
DMUND
B
URKE

I live most of my life in fantasy. Reality is just too painful for me. In my fantasy world my lovers are always loving and romantic and kind. They’re never impatient and they never get angry with me like the men I date. And they never take me for granted. If I’ve had a fight with my boyfriend I just go home and go to bed and live in my fantasy world until it all blows over. That’s how I get past the pain.

M
ARJORIE
,
AGE THIRTY
-
SIX

In this chapter I offer specific strategies for staying in the present and in reality, another important way for you to stop losing yourself in a relationship. There are three ways women avoid staying in the present and in reality:

1. living in fantasy and not facing the truth;
   

2. trying to rewrite the past;
   

3. not differentiating the past from the present.
   

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   Be Aware of Your Tendency to Fantasize
   

   Let’s begin with fantasy. As mentioned earlier in this book, Disappearing Women tend to lapse into fantasy when they first meet a man, and many Disappearing Women continue to live in a fantasy world throughout the rela- tionship. They create an elaborate fantasy about who the man is, how he will treat them, what they will do together, and ultimately, how he will change their lives.
   

   Many women weave such a web of fantasy in the very beginning of the relationship that they never get to know the real person. This was the case with Tia, a thirty-five-year-old client of mine:
   

   I met Hunter while taking a walk along a beach in Malibu. He was tall and tan and good-looking, in that rugged kind of way. We talked casu- ally for only a few minutes, during which time he told me he was in real estate. Then I had to go, so we said good-bye.
   

   I couldn’t help thinking about him after that. He seemed to be just the kind of man I had been looking for—athletic, established in his career, but not so status-oriented that he couldn’t take time off to enjoy life. I knew he must have money because he’d said he lived nearby, and Malibu is a very exclusive area.
   

   I went back to that stretch of beach several more times hoping to run into him again, and sure enough, I did. From the moment our eyes met I knew he’d been thinking about me, too. We started walking together, and it was just magic. We didn’t talk much, we just enjoyed each other’s company and held hands.
   

   He asked me out for that Saturday night, and we became a couple from that time on. I didn’t find out for a long time that he wasn’t at all like the man I’d fantasized about. He lived in Malibu, all right, but in the servant’s cottage in back of someone else’s house. And he was in real estate, but not as a top selling agent, as I’d imagined. In fact, he didn’t even have his broker’s license yet.
   

   Just like Tia, many women fall in love with men they make up.
   Whether they create an illusion about a man’s career, his personality, or his feelings about them, these women never really give the relationship a chance to develop. Instead, they weave a web of fantasy that impedes their ability to get to know the real person.
   

   Many of the fantasies women weave have to do with the future, such as what they and their boyfriend are going to do next summer, what kind of a honeymoon they are going to have, and what it will be like when they get mar- ried. By allowing themselves to do this they are not perceiving the man or the situation through clear eyes. In addition, by lapsing into fantasies of the future they are probably avoiding dealing with issues in the present and are setting themselves up for disappointment.
   

   This is what Vicki, age thirty-two, shared with me about her tendency to fantasize about the future:
   

   “When I meet a man I’m interested in I immediately begin to fantasize about our future together. My fantasies are very detailed, down to what kind of dress I’m wearing when he asks me to marry him, who I will invite to the wedding, and what our honeymoon suite will look like. I have it all worked out in my mind before he even asks me out on a second date.”
   

   Women like Vicki are so ahead of themselves they can’t appreciate the moment, and they are far too invested in a man before they have even gotten to know him.
   

   When a woman spends too much time fantasizing about a man in the beginning of a relationship he becomes larger than life, and the relationship itself becomes unreal. The next time she sees him she will tend to feel off-cen- ter and awkward, since her emotions will be far more intense than the situa- tion warrants. In this state she is vulnerable to losing herself.
   

   Some women create such unrealistic fantasies they can’t help but become disappointed. This was the case with my client Emily, who created elaborate, dramatic fantasies about the men in her life. Here is an example of the kind of fantasy she entertained:
   

   The man I’m dating drives an older car and doesn’t dress very well so I pretend he’s secretly very wealthy. He wants to make sure I love him for who he really is, not for his money. He falls madly in love with me, and after a few months he decides I really love him, too. He tells me we’re going to a party at a friend’s house and we drive up to this gorgeous man- sion in the hills overlooking the city. When we get there all the servants line up to greet us. We walk in the house and I notice there’s no one else inside. He leads me to the back patio, where there’s a beautiful table set for two with flowers and candles. We sit down, and he confesses to me that it’s his home. I’m so shocked I don’t know what to say. A servant pours some champagne and then goes back into the house. He makes a
   

   toast to me and looks deeply into my eyes. Then he gets down on his knees and asks me to marry him.
   

   Since Emily’s boyfriend is more than likely
   not
   a secret millionaire, if and when he ever does ask Emily to marry him, she will probably feel let down. Real life just can’t compete with her fantasies.
   

   Fantasy as Comfort
   

   Many Disappearing Women have essentially lived their lives in fantasy, some spending more time in fantasy than in reality. They use fantasy as a coping mechanism to help them get through everything from the commute to work to serious illnesses. Some use fantasy to help them get to sleep at night, while others use it to help them get through their lonely weekends alone. Hav- ing found no other way to soothe and comfort themselves, they spend hours in bed weaving one elaborate fantasy after another in a desperate attempt to avoid their aloneness.
   

   Women who did not receive appropriate bonding and nurturing when they were babies and toddlers are the ones who are most likely to use fantasy as comfort in this way. Since as infants and toddlers they didn’t receive the comfort and soothing they needed when they were distressed, they do not have the memory of this comfort to call on in times of need. Instead, they use fan- tasies to soothe and comfort themselves.
   

   Other Disappearing Women use fantasy as a way of comforting them- selves when they are in unhealthy relationships with men who are unavailable or inappropriate. Several of the women I interviewed for the book told me how the use of fantasy kept them in relationships with married men. Sharon’s story was typical:
   

   I was involved with a married man for five years. All during that time, except for the very end, I convinced myself that he was going to leave his wife to be with me. After he’d leave to go home to his wife I’d lie in bed crying my eyes out, feeling so lonely I thought I would die. Then I’d comfort myself with fantasies about what it was going to be like once we were together and soon I’d feel better and forget all about the pain.
   

   The Two Kinds of Rescue Fantasies
   

   The most common type of fantasy Disappearing Women have is the rescue fantasy—the hope and sometimes the belief that eventually a man will come to rescue them from their loneliness and unhappiness. Rescue fantasies have
   

   been encouraged by literature and film, teaching women that they must wait, like Cinderella, to be rescued by the prince. This tendency to live in a fantasy world and to hope that someone will rescue them also comes, as we discussed earlier in the book, from the socialization process that encourages women to feel “less than,” incompetent, and helpless. In addition, those who fall on the more extreme end of the continuum may suffer from an intense desire for val- idation and an idealistic belief that saviors will rescue and transform them, a belief created by the severe neglect and/or abuse they experienced as a child. They hope that they will receive now what they didn’t receive as children— protection, nurturing, and unconditional love.
   

   This is the case with my client Maria. Raised in a very chaotic household by a mother who was emotionally, verbally, and physically abusive, Maria reported to me that from the time she was a little girl the only pleasure she remembers having was her fantasies. She couldn’t wait to go to bed so she could daydream about a boy she liked or about the man she would eventually marry.
   

   Unfortunately, Maria still lives her life in fantasy a great deal of the time. No matter what the actual circumstances are, whether a man is married, unin- terested, or out-and-out abusive, she convinces herself through her fantasies that he really loves her and that soon they will be together and all her prob- lems will be solved. As long as she continues to fantasize this way she doesn’t have to face the pain of her childhood or the reality of her present life.
   

   And there is another type of rescue fantasy that women get caught up in. This is the fantasy that through your love a man will be transformed, a fan- tasy that is common among those typically called “codependent” women— women who have a pattern of getting involved with men they try to rescue or take care of. Codependent women live their life for others, anticipating others’ needs, and doing things for others they are actually capable of doing themselves. Often brought up in homes where one or both parents are addicted to alcohol, drugs, food, gambling, shopping, or sex, causing the children to feel out of control, they often gain a false sense of control as adults by becoming involved with men who have major problems such as addictions and who seem to need to be rescued.
   

   Remember Tia and Hunter, the hunk on the beach? Right after they started dating, Hunter told Tia he was down on his luck financially. As she got to know him a little better she discovered that he couldn’t seem to keep a job. He told her he didn’t like his current job and was looking for something that was more interesting, something he could feel excited about doing. Tia, who had a long history of being with men who had problems making commit- ments, didn’t recognize this as a warning sign but instead told Hunter that she
   

   understood and that he didn’t have to worry about taking her out to expensive dinners. She told him she’d be just as happy ordering pizza and renting a video. She even offered to cook for him so he could save money.
   

   When I pointed out to her that it sounded like Hunter had some serious problems since at thirty-five he still hadn’t found his life’s work, she became very defensive.
   

   “Maybe he’s never had anyone believe in him before,” she countered. “Maybe with my support he’ll be able to get his act together. He probably just needs to be motivated.”
   

   Tia’s comments reflected the fact that she was already lost in a rescue fan- tasy about Hunter.
   

   The Fantasy of Romance
   

   The fantasy of romance is the idea that by meeting your “soul mate,” the one true love meant for you, you will become complete or whole. This belief is based on the idea that we can, seemingly by osmosis, gain those qualities we lack by joining with someone who has these very qualities.
   

   This fantasy has partly been created and made stronger by the fact that there is such a split in most societies between “male” and “female” qualities. Instead of recognizing that we all have within us both male and female char- acteristics, men are supposed to embody all the so-called male qualities of autonomous thinking, clear decision-making, aggressiveness, competence, and responsible action, and women are supposed to embody the so-called female qualities of passivity, vulnerability, empathy, and compassion.
   

   In addition, if we have repressed or suppressed certain qualities in our- selves because they are “unacceptable” or “inappropriate”—such as aggres- siveness in women and passivity in men—we are that much more likely to want to own or possess someone on whom we can project all our missing qualities. So women continually fall in love with men who are doing the kind of work they long to do themselves or living the kind of life they wish they could live. And men often fall in love with women who embody all the emo- tions they are unable to express.
   

   In reality, the reason romance creates such an intense feeling of melting, merging, and losing boundaries is that, in essence, we are making love to those aspects of ourselves we have repressed, suppressed, or rejected, or that we have not developed in ourselves, as was the case with Justine.