The DNA of Relationships (9 page)

A friend of mine, Scott, has a four-year-old daughter, Shelby, and a twenty-month-old son, Hayden. Even the youngest member of Scott’s family has danced the steps of the Fear Dance.

“Right now,” Scott says, “I am the ‘flavor of the month.’ People who have kids understand what I mean. Sometimes you’re the flavor; sometimes your wife is the flavor; and sometimes neither one of you is the flavor (it may be the neighbor). Right now, I am the flavor for my son. Regardless of what happens—whether he gets hurt or if he’s happy or if he feels sad—he comes to me first.

“My wife, Jen, has noticed this. She’s aware, of course, that the ‘flavor’ choices ebb and flow. But she feels hurt when she wants Hayden to hug her but instead he just grunts—and then runs to me.

“Last night Hayden hit his head and ran over to me. Jen walked over and said to him, ‘Oh, do you want Mommy to kiss it?’

“He grunted at her.

“ ‘Do you want Mommy to give you love?’ Jen asked.

“Grunt!

“In those few moments,” Scott said, “I saw a dynamic develop between the two of them. They started into the Fear Dance. Now, what could a twenty-month-old fear? Well, already he’s starting to get into little power struggles with his parents. He wants things
his
way. Last night he feared that he was going to have to do it his mom’s way. He could feel the pull from Jen to get him to do what she wanted him to do, and he reacted against it by grunting. Notice that grunting is not on the list of reactions, but toddlers are creative, right? The more that Jen felt rejected, the more Hayden tapped into
her
core fear: ‘My son doesn’t love me.’”

Of course, no mom likes to feel rejected, whether with words or with grunts. And the more Jen felt that fear, the more she pursued her son to get him to fulfill her want and relieve her fear. So what did Jen do?

“Our daughter was walking by,” Scott explained, “and Jen said to her, ‘Shelby, do you want me to give you love?’ Shelby’s a sucker for that stuff. So our daughter dove onto Jen on the couch, and my wife started cuddling her. Well, when Hayden saw that,
he
wanted some Mom action too. He jumped down from my lap, ran over to Jen, and jumped into her lap—and my wife looked over at me, smiling. She had sufficiently manipulated Hayden into doing what she wanted.”

What a very clever and funny tactic! Scott and Jen laughed about it afterward.

Do you see the Fear Dance this mother and toddler did? Hurt, want, fear, reaction. It was not a healthy dance, of course, and Jen realizes this. She realizes that if patterns like these never change, she and Hayden will be headed for trouble. If she continues to try to manipulate her son into acting in ways that she hopes will fulfill her wants and relieve her fears, then by the time he grows to be a teenager, they will have a very unhealthy relationship. Any parent who thinks
I’ll feel good about my relationship with my child by getting him to do things that show me love
is setting up the relationship for hard times. Very quickly the child is going to look for more and better ways to avoid the parent’s control. And one day the parent will say things like, “Now, why is it again that our child is so dead set on marrying someone so radically at odds with us?”

The Fear Dance can also kick in at work. When I spoke about this relationship-destroying dance on a recent live TV simulcast, for example, something I said pushed a colleague’s fear button. The person reacted to it, but quietly. The next day, however, when the topic came up in a meeting, my colleague exploded. I had said that we were making some changes on our staff to improve our customer service. It was innocent to me, but not to him. He imagined that his job would be changed, even though I hadn’t even mentioned who or what we were going to do. All night long, he dreamed with a sick stomach that he would be fired or reassigned. He just knew I was talking about him. So, he blew up at the meeting. Things quieted down quickly as soon as I asked him what he was feeling. I already knew his core fear (failure), so it was easy to watch him calm down when he realized I understood him. He instantly admitted his failure to recognize his button. If either of us had not understood this dance, his outsized reaction could have significantly damaged our relationship. When he learned that I had not even thought of his department, we both laughed and enjoyed the power of knowing our core fears.

I mentioned earlier that Greg and Erin realized that in many ways they had been having the same fight for years. That’s true for many of us. As I worked on this chapter, I vividly recalled how I failed in two friendships with godly men. As I thought about what went wrong in those relationships, I remembered hurtful images of boyhood friends teasing me—way back in the second or third grade! The patterns of hurt, want, fear, and reaction that marked my schoolyard relationships still plague me as an adult. I keep doing the same dance.

I have two main core fears: being controlled by others and being belittled. I lost two great friendships by not understanding myself better in this area. Years ago these two friends on separate occasions said things that “made” me feel belittled and controlled. They didn’t make me feel this way; I chose to hear their words as belittling and controlling. My past reaction has always been to verbally attack those who push my two buttons. I was really good at degrading people who tapped into my core fears. After those encounters, I was embarrassed and wondered who I really was as a person. It was as if I changed into someone else I didn’t recognize. I didn’t seem to have any control over my mean-spirited remarks. As I look back, I completely invalidated both friends, and I’m sure I tapped their core fears. Our relationships ended, and each of us developed a fear of just being together because we were not sure the whole situation would not repeat itself. We were out of touch for more than fifteen years. Last year I started e-mailing both of them, and to my surprise, both relationships were greatly repaired because we all started to better understand each other. By listening to each other, we started to reconnect.

When friends or couples don’t understand how to change the hurtful patterns in their relationship, they will have the same fight for twenty years. Nothing ever gets settled. Nothing ever gets better. At best, they learn to “live with it,” and never achieve the heart-to-heart connection they both long for. At worst, the fights escalate out of control and end up blowing the relationship to bits.

Give It Up?
When we describe the Fear Dance, almost everyone “gets it.” They quickly see how destructive the Fear Dance can be. They grasp its dangers and recognize its sorry track record in their own relationships.

Yet some people don’t want to give it up. They feel as if they just can’t. Why? Because it’s a “successful” system to keep them stuck, and it feels normal. By “successful,” of course, I don’t mean helpful. I don’t mean pleasant. I don’t mean beneficial. I mean that once it gets going, it gets the same result every time—even if it’s exactly the result you don’t want.

The Fear Dance works with guaranteed success every time it goes in motion. It doesn’t matter what you throw at it; it works perfectly to get you right to where you
don’t
want to be. And it does it every time, without fail.

But we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves. We do react in unhealthy ways, but we do it with a worthy goal of keeping the relationship going. You might call such a system “functionally dysfunctional.”

It’s
functional
in that it keeps two people bouncing off one another. It allows them to continue some sort of interaction, even if that interaction consistently hurts. It functions in a painful, crazy kind of way. At the same time, however, it’s deeply
dysfunctional.
The relationships it creates bring tremendous pain. The Fear Dance “works” in that it allows the people involved to continue some sort of relationship, but it has no power to create the kind of relationship they really want.

Suppose you grew up watching your dad fix your bicycle. You didn’t know it, but because he couldn’t afford the proper tools, he always used whatever he could find—a chicken bone here, a bent tin can lid there. Your bike “worked,” after a fashion, and over the years you got used to a handlebar falling off as you zoomed downhill or a tire bouncing away as you took a sharp turn. You retrieved the damage parts, took them back to your dad, and he “fixed” your rickety vehicle—at least well enough so that it could venture out once more. You didn’t particularly like the way your bike rode, or the scars it put on your shins and elbows, but you couldn’t imagine life without it.

What do you think would have happened if a bicycle repairman saw your bike and told you that he knew how to make it work much better? Maybe you’d go back home and tell your dad. And maybe he’d say, “Now Son, I used to watch my dad repair my bicycle, and he did it the same way I’m repairing yours. His daddy did it the same way, and so did his granddaddy. I think I know a thing or two about repairing bicycles. Don’t listen to that man.”

You could think of your bike as “functionally dysfunctional.” And if that’s the only bike you knew, would you find it easy to risk your ride on something completely unknown? Probably not.

That’s the problem facing many people today in their relationships. They may not like the way their friendships or marriages “ride,” but everybody they know seems to suffer from the same wobbly wheels and bent-up handlebars. They may not like it much, but why risk what they have for something they can’t imagine? Better to stick with the known, no matter how much grief it causes. It may not work well, but it works successfully enough to get the same (crummy) results, time after time.

It’s a perfect system! It’s just not a pleasant one.

One of the worst things about the Fear Dance is that, eventually, it makes us dependent on other people for our happiness and fulfillment. We look to our friends or family members or spouses to fulfill our wants. And there’s something functionally dysfunctional about such a dependency.

God created us to depend on him, and as human beings we naturally gravitate toward being dependent. But there’s a problem: such dependency was designed and reserved for God alone, not for our spouses or friends or bosses. So although the Fear Dance “works” after a fashion, it cannot bring us to where we want to be.

May I ask, do you want to enjoy everything that God meant for you to have? If so, you have to acknowledge that the unhealthy dance and the unhealthy reactions
will not
work. We usually tell clients, “I’m not telling you not to use them, but I am saying that if you continue to use them, you’ll never reach God’s best for you. The dance you’ve been doing has been successful for getting the results you’ve been getting. So if you want different results, you have to break the rhythm of the Fear Dance and learn a new dance.”

Break the Rhythm of the Fear Dance
Do you see now how the Fear Dance has injured, crippled, and maybe even destroyed some of the relationships that mean the most to you? Perhaps you not only recognize the hurtful patterns but also feel compelled to change them. You don’t want the Fear Dance to continue to ruin your relationships.

But what do you do now?

First, it amazes me how quickly many conflicts get defused once both people in the relationship recognize their part in the Fear Dance. Once both people identify their core fears, a solution often suggests itself. In many cases, all it takes is a true understanding of the
real
underlying problem.

Let’s return one last time to Dan and Celeste. After Michael helped them to identify their core fears, it became very clear that the real problem was not about the move. Michael also helped them to see themselves in the picture; it’s never just about the other person.

First, Michael asked Dan, “Are Celeste and her family responsible for your feeling controlled?”

“No, they aren’t,” he replied. “I’ve just never understood that my fear was feeling controlled.”

“What should you do about it?” Michael continued.

“I need to do what’s right and true, no matter how I’m feeling. I’ll need God’s help to do that, of course, but I want his peace to rule my heart. Finally, I want to stop reacting to others when I feel controlled. That’s my problem, not theirs.”

Michael turned to Celeste. “What could you do to help yourself feel valued and important?” he asked.

“I can remember who God says I am. I can spend time doing things I enjoy. And I can stop controlling Dan and become the wife that God created me to be.”

Dan leaned toward her and said softly, “Thank you, honey. You are important to me.” Then the couple hugged warmly.

But the exercise wasn’t finished. Michael then asked Dan, “What could you do for yourself when you feel controlled?” Dan offered several ideas that showed he was placing the responsibility on himself, not others.

Now that the real issues had come out into the open, the pair started talking freely. Celeste opened up, and almost miraculously
she
began describing the boundaries they could draw around their family.

And no one talked about a move anymore.

“It was a very powerful moment when they got down to the real problem and their core fears,” Michael said.

This couple enjoyed a huge breakthrough in their relationship because they finally stopped waltzing to the deadly rhythm of the Fear Dance. Once they determined the real problem, they could move on in their relationship.

So is that it? Are we done?

Hardly! It’s one thing to identify the fear buttons that drive any particular conflict; it’s quite another to break the rhythm of the Fear Dance. While I’m thrilled that this couple broke their stalemate about where to live, I believe they have a lot more work ahead of them. This was a great first step! But to continue down this satisfying road, they
have
to learn the new dance steps.

And that’s what I want to show you in the next five chapters. The first dance step is my all-time favorite. More improvements in my life came from this one step than from all the other dance steps combined.