The rocky road to relationship: It's not you, it's "We"

Have you ever thought, when you’re involved in a discussion with someone: “Why can’t they hear me? Can’t they see how hard this is for me?” Or, perhaps: “I’m so scared to say this, I feel as though the world will explode if I go there.” Or, maybe: “How can they be with me, I must sound so needy that I must be unbearable.”

Perhaps you felt that you weren’t being genuinely heard, or felt as though you were being dropped, or experienced emotions that just felt… disproportionate and somehow out of sync with the flavour of the conversation and the person with whom you were talking.

Have you ever wondered whether someone’s momentary silence or absence in your life was because you might have crossed an invisible and unknowable relational line? If so, how did that feel? I wonder if it felt as though it were your fault, somehow; that you were now beyond the pale and isolated or abandoned? A relational “hole” like this can be very potent indeed!

Relationships can be bumpy. And this is, to an extent, because our pasts can build some pretty corrugated roads for us to navigate, complete with potholes and ruts that we need to manage. Every present-day relationship holds us and the other person of course. But let’s just consider for a minute how it also holds every other person with whom we and they have ever engaged. Right there, unseen, at our shoulders. In our minds and our hearts. And sometimes their voices might be louder than our own and louder than the person whose ears we fear don’t hear us and whose eyes, it feels, just aren’t seeing us.

What can this mean for here-and-now relationships? Well… it can mean that younger versions of us are sometimes louder than present-day us. It can mean that the person we’re with doesn’t quite understand that- and sees the us in front of them, when the younger, hurt us that’s been hooked by the current context, is screaming to be caught and held. So this need that we feel we’re explicitly making known becomes a bit obscured because the historical hurt isn’t obvious.

What happens if we aren’t aware, ourselves, that this might be what’s going on? Well... we might be left feeling a real sense of unfairness, and of not mattering, of frustration and of any number of emotions that might have a real familiarity and resonance. And how can anyone else be sensitive to our historical needs, much as we’d want them to be, if we aren’t quite clear ourselves about what’s occurring? 

If our wanting them to be aware, attuned and sensitive to our needs harks back, in an unknown way, to earlier deficits in our care, then this can create real complexity in how we navigate through our relational lives.

Let’s think about this a little bit differently. What happens - what might it mean - if it feels as though the person in front of us seems to be a stranger? If the person with whom we’re in a discussion suddenly seems to be something or someone other than who we’re used to seeing? Or hearing?

Have you ever felt: “Where did that come from?” Or: “That doesn’t sound like them!” Or: “I can’t believe they’d say that- how could they?” The lenses of perception hang on what it is we bring with us and those lenses can become clouded or fogged by our earlier experiences and how these are baited and hooked by the present moment. And in that present moment, the past makes an appearance in a way that can vividly overwhelm even the most accurate vision, creating a picture of its own. 

What might happen, then, if we not only feel unheard or unseen but also if we can’t recognise the other in front of us? How might that be for the other? What happens when our unrecognised aspects- our historical, young aspects, meet those belonging to someone else? Who might feel dropped, who might feel abandoned? It might well be that both of you feel dropped and abandoned.

They - or we - might bring a sense (and strategy) of attack being the best form of defence, if that’s what the past has taught. And defending against being unseen, unheard, dropped and left to fall might feel dreadfully potent and overwhelming. Who wants to run, who wants to fight? Who feels trapped and immobilised?

It might be difficult indeed to untangle whose hurt belongs to whom, whose pain is a past pain and whose is a present pain (if that can even be separated). And it might be helpful to spend a bit of time reflecting that if we can’t recognise ourselves and hear our own internal anguish, how can we expect others to do so?

How we might expect to see the confusion and pain of others when our relational lenses are clouded in this way has a real bearing on our capacity for relationship. And if we do expect any of this, where might this be coming from in us?

This might all feel quite overpowering at times, even when not quite identifiable, and that’s really understandable, isn’t it? We’re exploring some truly complex relational dynamics which might well be enrobed in deeply felt and unrecognised pain. It can be so helpful to look more profoundly at what is going on, and what has gone on, and to make emotional sense of the emotional patterns that might be there in the driving seat. It can be hard work, and it can be the work of therapy.

Therapy, too, is a relationship and can play a vital role in holding and unfolding our bumpy relational patterns. The relational capacity to be more authentically ourselves, comfortable to be seen for whom we are, and to be more genuinely connected with others for whom they are, can make a real difference to living life in a social world. What would it be like to create a new relational road map? Working collaboratively together in therapy can be a wonderfully supportive way forward.