Patterns of Interaction Between Love Addicts and Love Avoidants

From the writings of Pia Melody on Love Avoidance and Love Addiction

The Cyclic Dance Between

Love Addicted and Love Avoidant Partners

Love Addicted Greatest fear is that of abandonment with an underlying fear of intimacy.	Love Avoidant Greatest fear is that of intimacy with an underlying fear of abandonment.
	1. Enters relationship out of duty, not love
1. Is responsive to the avoidant's seductiveness and enters the relationship.
	2. Enters behind wall of seduction (which actually impedes intimacy)
2. Denies partner's walls and importance of life outside the relationship.
3. Experiences an event that shatters the denial.	3. Becomes overwhelmed by the neediness of the partner and moves from the wall of seduction
4. Emotional withdrawal from fantasy Feelings: Pain anger fear rage shame panic suicide This is a psychological emergency of worthlessness	4. Escapes the relationship: In some way, creates distance from the partner Feelings: Avoided
5. Obsesses and medicates to get out of the feelings of the withdrawal from the relationship. Feelings: Self-destructive behavior	5. Creates intensity outside of primary relationship and can use addictions or thrill-seeking. Feelings: Anger and revenge
Either the fantasy is rejected and the relationship ended OR The Love Addict Resolves the conflict and the cycle is repeated. The relationship becomes a repeating of the cycle. Returns to the relationship out of FEAR of abandonment.	Either the relationship ends OR The Love Avoidant Becomes overwhelmed with GUILT for abandoning responsibilities (because self-worth is derived from rescuing and care-taking) and returns to the relationship.

From Pia Mellody's writings and lectures,

and professional training with "The Meadows" treatment facility.

And from

“Facing Love Addiction”

by Mellody, Miller and Miller

HarperOne, 1992.

Multi Generational Faithfulness: The Ultimate Tragedy

“Love is a Choice: The Definitive Book on Letting Go of Unhealthy Relationships” by Hemfelt, Minirth and Meier.

In the very first chapter of the book “Love is a Choice,” the authors offer the story, what they would call a case history. They describe a couple with marital difficulties and a little about each of their grown children, using an example that allows us to see a more obvious example of how interconnected a family is, in both function and dysfunction. These books are filled with such little vignettes of people, examples of real life situations and how real people struggled with them.

The authors go on to describe how professionals came to understand this field of study – addictions, obsessive-compulsive disorders, workaholism, etc. – as a WHOLE FAMILY problem. He explains the history of the Christians who came up with the “Twelve Step” program for alcoholics, but how they soon noted that addictions were not just an issue of the person using some substance, as destructive and involved as that is. The problem is also one of the family, family roles and family behaviors, and addictions are just a symptom of a greater cause.

The alcoholic (or any who use a substance or a behavior as a means of coping or as a way of escape) becomes dependent upon either the behavior or the substance, whatever that may be. Because families all work together to help one another and provide balance (keeping all those relationship triangles in some kind of balance), each member of the family develops a role within the family. The addiction itself becomes problematic but is not the primary problem but merely a symptom. The real disease is whatever the addicted person tries to overcome or compensate for through the addiction.


From page 7:

The Ultimate Tragedy

Another tragedy with which we will deal in later chapters is a problem of multigenerational nature. The serious dysfunction in a founding family will be absorbed by the children’s families and then their children’s families, a ripple of misery extending farther and farther down through the years. The dependency or dysfunction may change: an alcoholic father may sire, for instance, a worka holic son who sires a compulsive daughter who spends her way to bankruptcy. But it’s there. It’s almost always there, wreaking it’s damage.

Excerpts from
Robert Hemfelt, Frank Minirth and Paul Meier’s
“Love is a Choice:
The Definitive Book on Letting Go of Unhealthy Relationships”
Thomas Nelson, 1989

Defining "Balance" and "Healthy" in Terms of Relationships

In general, a balanced and healthy relationship between two parties defines that which respects the abilities, limitations and needs of each party. Another very simple way of describing these relationships through an application of the “golden rule”: each party considers the needs, wants and feelings of the other party so that they act as much in the best interest of the other party as they do their own. Healthy and balanced relationships are not NOT “zero-sum” situations where if one party benefits, the other party suffers some type of loss.

There are always times when one person will sacrifice on behalf of the needs, wants or feelings of the other party, deferring their own out of love and respect of the other, but this is episodic and it is reciprocal. Such a way of relating to the other party strengthens and builds trust and therefore the relationship, because needs, wants and feelings of each party are held in both mutual love and honor.

In order to achieve this, both parties realize and accept the limitations and abilities of one another, refraining from unrealistic demands or expectations. As an example, if one party were very short in stature and the other was tall, the taller person would not expect, ask or demand that the shorter person be capable of reaching on to a high shelf to hand something to him (assuming there is no step-ladder or other device to aid the short person, of course). Likewise, provided that the short person realizes that the ceilings in a basement do not allow for the tall person to stand fully upright without leaning over, they are unlikely to expect, ask or demand that the tall person perform many activities in that basement. 

 Not only are they not capable of normal function in that environment (standing upright – something all human beings should be afforded), doing so causes them physical pain and harm that is very difficult to avoid. The short person then assumes responsibilities for the “basement duties” whenever possible out of respect of the needs, wants and feelings of the taller one. As a general rule, the tall person reciprocates, sharing in the responsibilities of the needs, wants and feelings of the short person by assuming the duties that come easier to a taller person (reaching for items on shelves).

Unique Consideration of the Parent-Child Relationship

Parenting adds additional considerations because of the inequitable abilities of children to meet their own needs as well as the duties of parenting to teach children nearly everything. In addition to providing for the obvious learning and care needs that a child cannot possibly provide for themselves, the parent bears the burden of teaching that child boundaries: where the child's own needs, wants and feelings begin and where they end in relationship to others. This is subtle but vitally important – an aspect of parenting that can be easily forgotten as the child grows older, taking more adult appearing behaviors and performance. (I often find this to be true when observing children who are far beyond the mean for their age group in terms of physical growth. My young cousin looked as if she was four years old when she was only three, and I often found myself “forgetting” that her abilities were still that of a three year old's.)

Because of these factors, all responsibility for the child falls to the parent. The relationship demands this because the child is helpless at birth and requires the parent's sacrificial provision for their needs. An infant provides the most obvious example of this, and the responsibilities are clear: the child depends completely on that parent. But as the child grows older and takes on more adult-like behaviors, the adult must never look to the child to meet their own adult needs within the parent-child relationship. 

 Such a task is complex, because there is so much satisfaction and pleasure that parent's derive from their children. So there is an ever-changing demand placed upon the parent to wisely note that, though the child has developed certain abilities (listening, sharing work, encouragement, emotional support, etc.), the parent must always act in the best interest of the child within the parent-child relationship. Until the child grows into adulthood, the parent bears the heavier burden and must act in the child's best interest above their own. (This is completely apart from the idea that a parent cannot place demands upon children and does not presume that things like household chores or contributing to considerations of the family are improper expectations. This in no way should or does imply “child rights” or other such activism.)

The Predictive Power of Triangles

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.

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From pages 140 – 142:

We actually see this sort of dynamic occur around us all the time. Let's take a simple example. Imagine that you are the parent of a six-year old girl. One Saturday, you invite your daughter's best friend from school to come over to your house for the afternoon. You also invite your child's best friend from church. These children have never met each other before.

Things go well for awhile. But soon the friend from school corners your child and says, “I thought I was your best-best-best friend. Am I?” Your child reassures her that, of course, she is her best friend. Immediately, this little girl runs to the other guest and says, “I'm her best friend and you're not!”

...As any parent knows, before very long, one of two things is almost certainly going to happen. Either one of the two friends will feel hurt and will start whining that she wants to go home, or both of the invited guests will become “best friends” with each other and ignore your child...

Children seldom have the maturity and the relational skills to resolve this kind of situation such that everyone winds up being friends – even with parents' help. When that does happen, we are usually so amazed by it that we comment about it to others! Nine times out of ten, what happens is that the two pair off against one. That is the nature of this kind of triangle, and the reason why we consider it an “unbalanced” triangle...

This principle of balance holds true with a remarkable degree of consistency and tenacity. Our experience (and that of other family system theorists) shows that over time, in a close, intimate setting like the family, all three way relationships will inevitably resolve themselves into one of the “balanced” triangle patterns. [Blog host note: Either all relationships and communications between points will be healthy and appropriate, or two persons will align to provide a stable and united front against the third party. Each system provides a type of stability that the other alternatives do not provide. Even human relationships work towards stability or “homeostasis.”]

Not only that, but the characteristic of any given two-way relationship (whether it is a straight-line or a [red, dashed-line] relationship) will remain the same no matter what third party is added.

Sometimes people will say, “My brother and I always got along great.” But then an interesting thing happens. When we draw a triangle to include their mother, there is a straight line between them and their brother. The same thing happens when we draw a triangle to include the sister. But when we try to add in their father, they say, “Well, the three of us never could hit it off together. In that case, you'd have to put a wavy line between my brother and me.”

Our response would be, “Something's not right here. Experience shows us that the quality of your relationship with your brother should remain the same no matter what third party we include.” We will then probe more deeply to see if the individual is not either idealizing his relationship with his brother in the first two settings, or wrongly estimating the negative impact of his father in the third setting.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

Family Balance and How All Members Help Keep It Afloat

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About Covert Incest from “Silently Seduced” by Kenneth Adams. .

From pages 12 – 13:

All families function as a system in which one person's actions affect another and vice versa. Although each member functions independently, that member also affects and is affected by the whole. Salvador Minuchin, in “Families and Family Therapy,” says the family system has a function or purpose of seeking to bring itself back into balance or stability when disrupted. So in the case of a marriage not bonded in a healthy way, the parents' unmet dependency, intimacy and emotional needs will be met by the rest of the system – the children...

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The child becomes the parent's confidant. Loneliness, bitterness and dissatisfaction with the marriage and sex life are common topics in these discussion. The child feels “icky” about it but quickly comes to the parent's rescue and begins to serve as the surrogate spouse the system is lacking. Both parents are active participants in this covertly incestuous relationship. One is getting some needs met through the child and the other is relived at not having to deal with the reality of the dissatisfied partner. Covert incest victims often report that the same-sex parent encouraged them to comfort the opposite-sex parent after a marital fight or in their absence, for example, “You take care of your mother while I'm gone; I'm counting on you.” The child, hoping to get some of his or her own needs met, readily obliges.

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Once the boundary between parents and child is crossed in a covertly incestuous relationship, potential for more victimization exists. For example, if the oldest boy is in a psychological marriage with his mother, he may act out the covert sexualized energy with a younger sister in an overt sexual way. What started out as a spillover of unmet intimate needs from the marriage to the oldest boy in a covert way works its way into the overt incest between siblings. This example clearly demonstrates how one person's behavior in a family affects the family system as a whole.

The family system works to seek balance and tries to correct itself even in adulthood. As long as the abuse or neglect experienced in childhood remains buried within, we recreate our family all over again in adult relationships. This is an effort to work our and resolve that childhood pain. Yes, the family system continues to affect one's life even when one is no longer living at home and has dismissed childhood as gone and best forgotten.

Excerpts from

Kenneth A. Adams"Silently Seduced:
When Parents Make Their Children Partners
~ Understanding Covert Incest"
Health Communications, 1991

Start Healing Relationships with Your Siblings

From “The Emotional Incest Syndrome” by Patricia Love with Jo Robinson.. Exploring the dynamics of covert (emotional or non-sexual but gender-related) incest.

From pages 193 – 194:

The Singular Nature of Sibling Dynamics

[T]here are some dynamics that are peculiar to siblings. First, it may behoove you to examine how your birth order influences your behavior. Just because you were the youngest child doesn't mean that Thanksgiving can never be at your house; the few years between you and older siblings make little difference now that you're adults. Similarly, just because you're the oldest child and the only one in the family with a dining room table that seats twelve doesn't mean you have to be in charge of all family functions – even if you've done so for the past twenty-five years... Everyone may benefit from a change. There's no need to stay locked into a position that is detrimental to you and to others.

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Second, if you have strained relationships with your siblings, your instinct may be to cut yourself off from them. You may have the desire to move across the continent and drastically limit your contact. But because you and your siblings are contemporaries, there is the strong possibility that you will have to deal with one another in the future. 

 You may need to cooperate in the care of an aging parent, for example, or work out details surrounding a family death. Your children may want access to their aunts and uncles, and you may want to play a positive role in the lives of your nieces and nephews. You may even come to depend on a sibling in your old age. Having the courage to initiate a reconciliations now will eliminate conflict further down the road.

Third, brothers and sisters tend to get embroiled in protracted battles about “who is right.” This could be a carryover from the early days when fairness and equal treatment from Mom and Dad were so important and determining who was right and wrong seemed a matter of life and death. Now that you're adults, you have to decide which is more important: being right or being close...

Take a look at the issues that divide your family. Are they worth fighting over? Are they a matter of pride and saving face? Did they have their roots in a previous generation? Are they due to the way your parents treated you, a matter over which you had little control? Could it be time for you to pretend that you're all grown up and let bygones be bygones?

Excerpt from
Dr. Patricia Love's
The Emotional Incest Syndrome:
What to Do When a Parent's Love Rule's Your Life
Bantam Books, 1990

How Love Addiction and Love Avoidance Develops and Affects Perception of Gender

-->From the writings of Pia Mellody on Love Addiction and Love Avoidance (The dynamics of non-sexual incest)

Note: The child who experiences this abnormal parenting will associate the issues with people of the same sex as the parent. If a child experiences neglect and abandonment with a female parent, they likely will develop love addiction in their relationships with women. If the child experiences enmeshment with a female parent, they will be live avoidant with women. It is the same with a male parent (or caregiver). The association need not relate to sex but it carries with it an association with gender.

You can also have a combination of the two issues. I had a parent varied greatly based upon the level of depression they felt and the degree of threat that they felt in the relationship with me. For the most part, I was enmeshed with this parent, but when they were in an emotional fugue and withdrawn, I was neglected. So I have both issues with my parent. The enmeshment was most disturbing, but now that I am older, the abandonment implications have presented themselves (for healing).

Neglect and Abandonment

• Neglect or abandonment by a parent sets up a love addiction.
  
• The abuse is about the parent failing to provide the love and support the child needs.
• The parent is essentially "walled in" and distant.
• The parent is giving priority to other people and other issues as opposed to making the child a priority.
• The parent's behavior covertly shames the child causing the child to believe he/she is worthless and unimportant.
• In adult relationships, the person will see himself/herself as “one down” and the
  
  other person “one up.”
• Because the child's needs are neglected, the child experiences a lot of fear about being able to self-care and make it on his/her own.
  

What a child learns from neglect and abandonment:

• As a result, in adult relationships, this person will believe that he/she cannot ma
  
  ke it alone and needs someone to care for them.
• If this is triggered prior to three years of age, the child will be haunted with a sense of disaster.
• Neglect also produces an internalized sense of worthlessness, a lack of learning about relationships and and lack of learning about self care because of a “shame-existence bind.”
• Shame -existence bind: Their existence requires them to care for self but this requires the consumption of resources and they believe that they are not worthy of them and are ashamed of their God-given human need. The shame-existence bind is one of the more problematic issues to heal from after neglect and abandonment.
  
• The child will spend a lot of time daydreaming, reading and being alone.
  

Adulthood:

• As a result, in adult relationships, this person will also associate any distancing on the part of the partner (or friend, etc.) as a threat to his/her survival.
• All relationships become fear-based as well as shame-based.
  

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Enmeshment:

• Enmeshment established by the parent creates love avoidance in the child.
• Enmeshment happens when a parent is without boundaries and without boundaries in the presence of the child.
  
• The child will get “used” in some way.
• He/she will learn that value comes from taking care of needy people and if he/she does not do that, he/she will feel guilty and believe that being relational is suffocating and abusive.
• The person will base his/her sense of self-esteem on care-taking of needy people.
• This will confuse love with duty.
• This person will be “loving” to others to avoid guilt and will be allergic to being relational or being vulnerable.
  
• Resentments will likely develop from being the caretaker
• The love avoidant develops a capacity for aggression, if they served as a “scapegoat” for the parent with whom they were enmeshed.
  

What a child learns from enmeshment:

• Relationships are all about duty and deadness.
  
• Requires a shutting down of spontaneity.
  
• Identity comes from focus on the needy instead of understanding self.
• Identity and value come from focus on the needs/wants of others instead of own needs/wants.
• Life's purpose is to do what makes others happy rather than on what satisfies self or provides self with happiness.
  

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As an adult:

• This person will need to create a lot of intensity outside of the relationship.
• They do this by “risk-taking,” addictions, extreme sports, risky business style, professions involving heroic care-taking, etc.
• They create intensity to feel alive as opposed to the deadness that they feel in relationships.
• They can become antagonistic or aggressive both inside and outside of relationships, especially if they were “scapegoated.”
  

From Pia Mellody's writings and lectures,

and professional training with "The Meadows" treatment facility.

And from

“Facing Love Addiction”

by Mellody, Miller and Miller

HarperOne, 1992.

The Adustments that the Rest of the Family Makes: Keeping the Dysfunctional Family in Balance

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From “The Emotional Incest Syndrome” by Patricia Love with Jo Robinson.

How Emotional Incest Affects Family Members:

From pages 56 – 72:

In this continuing drama, the actions of one family member elicit reactions from everyone else, and every plot development has implications for the entire group.

In enmeshed families such as the ones I've been describing, the interplay between individuals is greatly exaggerated... “the drama where everyone loses.”

• Blood Ties
• Invasive Parent
• Left Out Child
• Left Out Spouse
• Shadow Parent
• Spouse of the Chosen Child
• Inlaws

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Blood Ties

[Describes a research project demonstrating measurable levels and Free Fatty Acids in the blood regarding how children absorb family tension. Salvador Minuchin's study demonstrated that the enmeshed child's physiology became altered as evidenced by the FFA response, coinciding with child's sustained and persistent anxiety level as well. Children without enmeshment did not demonstrate any physiologic response.]

The Invasive Parent

Viewed from the outside, the Invasive Parent – the one enmeshed with the child – appears to be in an enviable position. As we've seen, the parent gets many of his needs met by the Chosen Child who – unlike a spouse – rarely makes demands, criticizes, or challenges the parent to “relate.” The child merely accepts what is given. If Daddy is a little self-centered or irritable or

hits the bottle once too often – so be it. That's the way Daddy is. The child has no basis for comparison.

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An Invasive Parent who is married also gets to enjoy the convenience of having a spouse. Even though there is some unresolved tension in the marriage – otherwise the parent would not turn to the child – there is a semblance of a relationship. For example, the couple may have sexual relations, share household and parenting responsibilities, and have occasional moments of intimacy. When there is more substance to the marriage, the Invasive Parent appears to be sitting in the catbird seat. He or she basks in the adoration and companionship of a child and reaps many of the rewards of being married as well...

At first, it may look like this man has the best of both worlds. But it must be remembered that he, like all parents who are overly bonded with a child, initially turned to his daughter because of a lack of more suitable companionship. After his divorce from his first wife, he turned to his daughter to help ease his pain and loneliness. And even though living with his daughter seemed to satisfy his needs, it was not fully rewarding to him, or he would not have remarried. Like all

parents who are enmeshed with a child, he had an unsatisfied desire, whether conscious or unconscious, for a more encompassing union with another adult. But when he acted on this desire and married for the second time, he had to contend with his wife's jealously. He was being forced to choose between the two people he loved most in the world. He was sitting in the hot seat, not the catbird seat!...

Besides juggling competing claims from the spouse and the child, the Invasive Parent ultimately faces a greater trial – the loss of the child, for in all but the most ingrained parent-child relationships, there comes a time when the child moves away from the parent. It can happen abruptly or it can happen over time, but either way, the loss is often heartbreaking.

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The Left Out Child

It's a fact of life that parents don't respond to their children equally. They may love each other and each one of the, but they invariably find themselves drawn to one child more than the other. In some families, this natural attraction is nto moderated by compassion or fairness but is acted out as favoritism...Added to these blatant signs of favoritism were tens of thousands of subtle, daily interractions that said to the Left-Out Child: “You are not a priority in my life. You are not as important to me as your brother or sister.”

...It is difficult to maintain your self-esteem when you grow up in a family in which you don't feel prized or valued, where the laurels always go to someone else. When a sibling gets all the attention, you ache for your share of love. You want your special gifts to be celebrated and your weaknesses to be met with compassion... The Left Out Child's goal in life is straightforward: toseek a place in the sun... Some excluded children try to cater to the whims of the parent. They become highly attuned to the parent's needs and mirror the parent's interests. Many years later, they are often the ones who volunetter to take care of the aging mother or father, trying to return to the well in search of life-giving love.

In large families where one of the children is clearly favored, it is often possible to see a number of these coping mechanisms being played out. One Left-Out Child may be a people pleaser, another an overachiever, another a criminal, a fourth a member of a religious cult. Outside observers wonder how the same two parents could produce such diverse offspring. What they don't see is that the children are trying to solve the same family problem – parental favoritism – and that they are following one of the unwritten laws of family dynamics: choose a coping mechanism not preemted by other siblings.

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The Left Out Spouse

Of all the members in the enmeshed family, the Left-Out Spouse, the one relegated to the far outpost of the love triangle, is the most commonly misunderstood. Displaced by a son or daughter, the spouse may feel violently jealous. He or she may have a hard time justifying this anger, however, because there is rarely any one incident between the Invasive Parent and the Chosen Child that is blatantly wrong: the relationship in inappropriate only when viewed as a whole and only when viewed against the backdrop of healthy family dynamics. When the Left-Out Spouse reacts to an isolated incident, the whole thing seems blown out of proportion.

The Shadow Parent

I use the term Shadow Parent to refer not to a discrete role in the family but to a personality type: passive, detached, and noninterfering. Either the Invasive Parent or the Left-Out Spouse can be a Shadow Parent. When the Invasive Parent has a passive personality (as in the example of Cinderella's father), the Chosen Child will have little protection from the scorn of the Left-Out Spouse... If the Left-Out Spouse has a passive personality, there will not be much resistance to the parent-child alliance; a potentially corrective force in the family will be missing.

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The Spouse of the Chosen Child

When the Chosen Child grows up and marries, another person stumbles into the quagmire – the spouse of the Chosen Child. I have a lot of sympathy for a person who marries one of us Chosen Children, because we can be “larger than life.” Our joys and problems appear boundless and overrun the concerns of our spouses, and our crazy mixture of high and low self-esteem can drive them to distraction...

If the Chosen Child was allied with a Critical/Abusive Parent, different marital problems can arise. The feelings of inadequacy and low-self esteem that characterize the Scapegoat Child can be difficult for a partner to deal with. The partner may feel the constant need to shore up the Chosen Child's ego and counteract the early years of abuse and neglect. This is a futile task, however, unless the Chosen Child is willing to examine those old parent-child issues. It takes a concerted effort to erase early messages from a parent.

Another spouse who earns my sympathy is the one who marries a Chosen Child who has reacted against an Invasive Parent by developing an impenetrable barrier to intimacy. Although the barrier was erected to keep out the overbearing parent, it also shuts out the marriage partner.

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In-Laws

If a Chosen Child grows up without fully breaking away from the Invasive Parent, the spouse of the Chosen Child has an additional obstacle to overcome: in-law problems. It is not uncommon for the Invasive Parent to dictate how the newlyweds should run their household, to require frequent phone calls or visits, to encourage financial ties between the families, to insist that the couple live nearby – ideally, in the same house – and to dictate the terms of all family gatherings. These demands are a clear violation of the autonomy of the younger couple. If, in later years, the Invasive Parent moves in with the family of the Chosen Child – which often happens – in-law problems occur daily, if not hourly.

The spouse of the Chosen Child appears to have only two ways to handle the invasive in-law: (1) give in to the demands and become an additional source of support, or (2) treat the Invasive Parent as an intruder, a foreign body to be rejected. If the spouse chooses the first option and joins the ranks, the couple will be absorbed into the family and have little personal freedom. Whenever they step out of line, there will be a price to pay. If the spouse chooses the second option and resists the Invasive Parent – watch out: the temperature will rise. Adding an outsider to the boiling pot turns the family into a pressure cooker.

Sometimes the Chosen Child secretly encourages the battles between the spouse and the Invasive Parent, because on some level, the emancipation feels long overdue. But even so, the parent will rarely blame the Chosen Child for the fracas – it's the son-in-law or the daughter-in-law who's considered the outlaw...

Excerpt from
Dr. Patricia Love's
The Emotional Incest Syndrome:
What to Do When a Parent's Love Rule's Your Life
Bantam Books, 1990

Psychological “Splitting” (and Idealizing Parents)

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.


From pages 193 - 199 [Please Buy This Book!]:


What often happens with children from dysfunctional families is that the integration process gets short-circuited. They do not develop the ability to see that their parents have both good and bad qualities [psychological splitting]. They continue to operate from an unconscious belief that things must be either all good or all bad. As we will see in a moment, this results in either outright rejection of the parents, or – what is far more likely – unhealthy idealization of the parents.



Three Types of Mothers

Typically, when the process of integration has been blocked in a child’s development, we find that the mother in the family was one of three types. (This isn’t meant as an attack on motherhood, by the way – heaven forbid ) But our experience shows it to be true more often than not. [I would also suggest that this role is not limited to mothers but can be applicable to fathers as well.]



1. The Intrusive Mother. She has to be in control at all times, because she is the only one who really knows what is best for everyone.

2. The Abandoning Mother. This kind of mother doesn’t always literally run away from her children – though some do. More common is emotional abandonment, simply neglecting the kids because Mom is too busy with other things, such as her job or friends.

3. The Unpredictable Mother. Sometimes she is warm and nurturing, holding her children and whispering words of love in their ears. At other times – and with no warning – she is cold, indifferent, and critical. Her children grow up in the land of inconsistency. They survive by expecting the unexpected, never sure of what life is going to bring their way next, distrustful of others, and robbed of basic scrutiny.


BLACK AND WHITE

Children raised by one of these kinds of mothers became stuck in their emotional development. The intrusive mother makes all our decisions for us, so we never develop the ability to judge things for ourselves. The abandoning mother and the unpredictable mother make life feel unsafe. But in all these cases, children aren’t able to recognize the harmful effect stemming from the mother’s dysfunctional behavior. The attribute the “badness” they experience in their mother to themselves.
This helps illustrate something called “splitting,” which is one of the earliest defense mechanisms that develops in children. It is more or less the opposite of integration: the inability to see that good and bad qualities can co-exist in the same person...

As we have seen, one of the first things we do in life is to divide reality into all-good and all-bad. If we are able to mature emotionally, we will come to see that life is not so easily categorized. We are albe to integrate seemingly contradictory experiences. When we are prevented from maturing emotionally, we continue to force everything into one of two categories: all-good and all-bad. When our parents are in question, the pressure is almost overwhelming to consider them “all-good” despite their problems.



It’s not hard to see why, when we look at parents through the eyes of a small child:
Adults are bigger.
Adults are smarter.
Parents have power.
Parents can hurt children.

[Make sure that you read this post on “Idealizing Our Family.”]

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

Intergenerational Enmeshment

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.


From pages 120 - 121:


The main thing we saw was a problem with intergenerational boundaries in both families of origin. In each case, the children had become entangled in the parents’ problems: both Pete and Amy found themselves fused with their mothers in an attempt to survive the negative aspects of life with their fathers. As a result, each of them found themselves locked into the patterns they had learned growing up; it was almost impossible for either of them to break away and develop any other style of marriage or family life...

[Following a discussion of real-life examples of a married couple (“Pete” and “Amy”)]

Pete and Amy learned some common lessons from their families of origin. Both of them learned, for example, that Mother is the source of nurture and that Father, as the material provider, is allowed to be emotionally distant most of the time and openly domineering when on the scene. Both also learned very clearly the rule, “We don’t talk about our problems.”

They also learned some lessons that turned out to be contradictory. For example, Pete learned from his upbringing that a marriage and a family could function with very little shared time. Amy, on the other hand, learned from her family that no mater how bad the problems got, you still got together, did things as a family, and acted as if everything was just fine.


From Paul Meier and Frank Minirth in “Free to Forgive: Daily Devotions for Adult Children of Abuse”:

About 85 percent of us end up marrying someone very similar in personality dynamics to our parent of the opposite sex... We continue what we got used to in childhood. (June 21 devotional)

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

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