Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior and Feel Great Again (19 page)

JED: I am emotionally dead. My lack of
intimacy
with women applies to all my relationships. I’m not close to anyone, not to any family members, not to friends.

For Jed the world is an emotional desert. His only respite from isolation is in the very early stages of his relationships with women. And, as we have noted, these are short-lived.

Some people with this lifetrap show a tendency to be
demanding
in relationships. There is an
insatiable
quality to the lifetrap. No matter how much people give you, it never feels like enough. Ask yourself, „Do people keep telling me that I am too needy, or that I ask for too much?“

Jed is an example. Elaine arranged an elaborate birthday party for him at great effort and expense. Nevertheless, when he opened her present at the party, Jed felt a sharp pang of disappointment: „The one I gave her was
much
more expensive.“ It is this persistent feeling of deprivation in the face of clear evidence of caring that marks the person with an Emotional Deprivation lifetrap.

One way Elizabeth expressed her lifetrap was by choosing a field of work that involved meeting the needs of other people. She became a social worker. Perhaps you are in one of the healing or helping professions. Giving
nurturance
to others may be a way for you to compensate for your own feelings of unmet emotional needs. Similarly, you might exert great effort toward meeting the needs of your friends. Elizabeth said:

ELIZABETH: I am always the listener. Other people tell me their problems, and I help them as best I can, but I don’t tell anyone my problems. I guess that’s why I came to see you. I understand people better than they understand me, or care to understand.

Finally, it is a sign of the Emotional Deprivation lifetrap to feel chronically
disappointed
in other people. People let you down. We are not speaking about a single case of disappointment, but rather a pattern of experiences over a long period of time. If your conclusion as a result of all your relationships is that you cannot count on people to be there for you emotionally—that is a sign that you have the lifetrap.

The origins of emotional deprivation lie in the person who serves as the maternal figure for the child—the person who is chiefly responsible for giving the child emotional nurturance. In some families this figure is a man, but in our culture it is usually a woman. The father figure is important also, but in the first years of life, it is usually the mother who forms the center of the child’s world. That first relationship becomes the prototype for those that follow. For the rest of the individual’s life, most close relationships will bear the stamp of that first experience with mother.

With emotional deprivation, the child received a less than average amount of maternal nurturance. The term
nurturance
has a number of dimensions, as you can see from the table below outlining the origins of this lifetrap. We use the word
mother
to refer to the maternal figure.

THE ORIGINS OF EMOTIONAL DEPRIVATION

1. Mother is cold and unaffectionate. She does not hold and rock the child enough.
   
2. The child does not have a sense of being loved and valued—of being someone who is precious and
   special.
   
3. Mother does not give the child enough time and attention.
   
4. The mother is not really tuned into the child’s needs. She has difficulty empathizing with the child’s world. She does not really
   connect
   with the child.
   
5. Mother does not soothe the child adequately. The child, then, may not learn to soothe him/herself or to accept soothing from others.
   
6. The parents do not adequately guide the child or provide a sense of direction. There is no one solid for the child to rely upon.
   

Jed’s deprivation was severe. He was almost totally neglected. Jed’s mother was seventeen when she became pregnant. His father was much older and married, and refused to acknowledge Jed as his son. His mother had hoped that once Jed was born, his father would relent and assume his place beside her. This is not what happened, however.

JED: My father showed no more interest in her after I was born than he had shown before. As soon as she realized I was useless as bait to win him back, she lost all interest in me. She expected her life to return immediately to normal, so she could resume dating rich older men. She really never should have had me.

We often hear phrases like these from patients with Emotional Deprivation: „I don’t know why she had me,“ or „They never should have had me.“ Jed remembers from the time he was very young, having no one to take care of him.

JED: Most of the time she wasn’t around. But even when she was with me it was no different. Whenever I wanted something from her, she would say, „Be quiet, go to sleep, you need a nap,“ and go on with what she was doing as if I wasn’t there.

For Elizabeth, the deprivation was more subtle. Her mother was a responsible person and would not
neglect
her child. However, like Jed’s mother, she was
narcissistic.
Instead of viewing her child as a separate person with needs of her own, she viewed her child as an extension of herself. She saw Elizabeth as an object, to be used for her own gratification.

What Elizabeth’s mother wanted, what she had failed to achieve in her own life, was to be rich. She wanted Elizabeth to marry a rich man.

ELIZABETH: She taught me to be pretty and charming. It was the price of her love. She taught me to perform for company. She took me shopping. She dressed me up like a doll. But when we were done shopping and the company was gone, she ignored me. I just wasn’t relevant anymore.

As we know, Elizabeth grew up to fulfill her mother’s wishes. She married a rich man. Now she is the executive’s wife. He expects her to be pretty and charming for company. When the company is gone, he ignores her.

Dustin, the man who keeps falling in love with unavailable women, seemingly had a good mother. She did all the right things. She gave Dustin the best toys, the best clothes, the best schools, the best vacations. Yet there was a sense of coldness. Dustin’s mother was a successful lawyer. She had built a career at a time when it was a rarity to find women working in the professions. She focused her attention almost exclusively on her work. At home she was self-absorbed and withdrawn.

Although she did not admit it to herself, in her heart she regarded Dustin as a nuisance, as a demanding child who distracted her from matters of true importance. And she was simply not a warm woman. She had difficulty showing affection, even to people whom she appreciated more than Dustin. Secretly, she blamed Dustin for the low intensity of her feelings toward him. It was not
her
fault that he aroused so little love.

Dustin grew up with a core of grief over the absence of a nurturing mother. He covered his grief with a hard shell of anger. This is an example of the Counterattacking coping style we discussed in Chapter 4. On the surface, he seemed very much the spoiled, petulant boy.

Now, as an adult, Dustin reenacts his Emotional Deprivation lifetrap in his numerous romantic relationships with unavailable women. He pursues one doomed relationship after another. Inevitably, each woman frustrates him and he becomes increasingly demanding. It always ends with the woman breaking his heart.

DUSTIN: Before I started therapy I really had no idea I was caught in this process. Each time I thought I just happened to fall in love with a woman who just happened to be unavailable.

Although his mother was emotionally depriving, Dustin was fortunate in one respect. He had a loving father. If not for the relationship with his father, Dustin might have sealed himself off forever from intimate human contact. The love Dustin’s father gave him partly healed the damage done by his mother, so that the lifetrap developed in a more limited way. He was able to form other healthy relationships outside the family.

Dustin’s lifetrap has a restricted range in his adult life. He does not view
everyone
as depriving—only the women with whom he falls in love. Dustin has satisfying relationships with many people. He has many good friends, both male and female, to whom he pours out the misery of his stormy love affairs.

Dustin’s case illustrates the important role the father plays in the child’s early life. If a child has an emotionally depriving mother, but a father who is not depriving, the father can become a bright spot in the child’s otherwise dark psychic life. The father’s love can serve as partial remediation of the child’s emotional deprivation. If the child is lucky, the father will sense the inadequacy of the mother and assume a greater portion of responsibility for providing nurturance. As Dustin said, „My father helped me keep hope in the world.“ Similarly, children who have a depriving father but a mother who is not depriving, may reenact their emotional deprivation as adults in certain relationships but not in others. For example, girls with depriving fathers may reenact this lifetrap in love affairs with men, but not so much in other types of relationships.

It sometimes takes us a while to realize that a patient has the Emotional Deprivation lifetrap. Unlike most of the other lifetraps, where the parent does something
active
that damages the child, emotional deprivation results from the
absence
of certain mothering behaviors. Behaviors of the parent such as the criticalness that gives rise to the Defectiveness lifetrap, or the domination that gives rise to Subjugation, are highly visible. The parent commits actions the child can remember. But emotional deprivation is not always like this. Emotional deprivation is something
missing,
something the child never knew.

Emotional deprivation, therefore, can be a difficult lifetrap for you to recognize. Unless you experienced extreme neglect, it might take some exploration to determine whether you were deprived as a child. You might recognize the lifetrap in yourself only after you have asked yourself specific questions: „Did I feel close to my mother, did I feel she understood me, did I feel loved, did I love her, was she warm and affectionate, could I tell her what I felt, could she give me what I needed?“

In therapy, many people with the Emotional Deprivation lifetrap at first say things like, „Oh, I had a normal childhood. My mother was always there.“ Dustin began therapy saying, „My mother gave me everything. I had everything I wanted.“ However, when people with this lifetrap describe their past and current relationships, something is wrong. A disturbing pattern emerges. There is a feeling of disconnection. Perhaps the person is hypersensitive to being deprived or is chronically angry. It is only when we work our way backwards that we understand the origin. Although Emotional Deprivation is one of the most common lifetraps, it is often one of the hardest to detect.

In our culture, it is romantic relationships that are usually the most intimate. For this reason, some people who have the Emotional Deprivation lifetrap avoid romantic relationships altogether, or only get into them for a short time. This is typical of the Escape coping style. However, if you are willing to become involved in romantic relationships and do not simply remain alone, it is probably in these relationships that your lifetrap is most visible.

Perhaps you, like Jed, have a history of breaking off relationships when the person starts to get too close. You conveniently find reasons to end the relationship. Or, like Dustin, you protect yourself from closeness by choosing partners who are unavailable. Or, like Elizabeth, you choose someone who is there, but is cold and ungiving. No matter what path you take, the final outcome is the same. You wind up in a situation that is emotionally depriving, thus replicating your childhood deprivation.

The next table lists some of the danger signals to avoid in the early stages of dating. They are signals that you are about to repeat the pattern again and become involved with someone who is emotionally depriving.

DANGER SIGNALS IN THE EARLY STAGES OF DATING

1. He/She doesn’t listen to me.
   
2. He/She does all the talking.
   
3. He/She is not comfortable touching or kissing me.
   
4. He/She is only sporadically available.
   
5. He/She is cold and aloof.
   
6. You are much more interested in getting close than he/she is.
   
7. The person is not there for you when you feel vulnerable.
   
8. The less available he/she is, the more obsessed you become.
   
9. He/She does not understand your feelings.
   
10. You are giving much more than you are getting.
    

When several of these signals are occurring at once,
run
—particularly if the chemistry is very strong. Your lifetrap has been triggered full force.

We know it will be hard for you to take this advice. All your yearning will be directed toward staying in the relationship. This is what happened to Dustin. Dustin began dating Christine in the course of therapy. Christine was beautiful; she was a successful model in New York City. Dustin was just one of a throng of men who pursued her. Although he knew the affair was doomed, he could not stop himself. His lifetrap fought for the relationship’s survival. We watched the whole process spin itself out, from the height of Christine spending the weekend with him at his country house, to the depth of her final refusal to see him or to return his increasingly desperate phone calls.

Even if you choose an appropriate partner who is emotionally giving, there are still pitfalls to avoid as your relationship progresses.

EMOTIONAL DEPRIVATION LIFETRAPS IN A RELATIONSHIP

1. You don’t tell your partner what you need, then feel disappointed when your needs are not met.
   
2. You don’t tell your partner how you feel, and then feel disappointed when you are not understood.
   
3. You don’t allow yourself to be vulnerable, so that your partner can protect or guide you.
   
4. You feel deprived, but you don’t say anything. You harbor resentment.
   
5. You become angry and demanding.
   
6. You constantly accuse your partner of not caring enough about you.
   
7. You become distant and unreachable.