Psychological Love Life Defenses: 5. Changing the Person You Love
The last two psychological love life defenses I will analyze in this series of posts are, changing your partner and misrepresentation. These two are a bit more creative than the other love life defenses I’ve discussed so far. But not necessarily in a way that helps preserve and develop the feeling of love.
There are two ways to try to change your love partner. You can substitute one love partner for another or you can try to change the person you are in love with. In this post, we’ll talk about both forms. Substituting one person for another is simple enough. When you have a problem with one love partner, their are plenty more fish in the sea, you simply find another. The underlying implication is, there is always someone better out there, and the person doing the substituting has the illusory belief that 100% compatibility (or close to it) is a realizable goal.
The reality is, changing love partners one for another will inevitably result in a superficial love life. Depth in love is only possible as a consequence of commitment. What that means is, you don’t run away from the person you’ve fallen in love with when times get tough. You stick it out, seeking mutual solutions for the problems that arise in your love relationship. Of course, the reward you get for doing so is deeper emotional intimacy with the person you’ve fallen in love with. You can’t beat that. The problem is tolerating the emotional difficulties that arise without reacting to them as though they are intolerable and unsolvable.
Related to this notion of substitutable love partners is the polyamorous love life that has gotten some attention these days. Polyamorous meaning, you are conducting a love life with multiple love partners at the same time. The obvious defensive function of this type of love life is not so obvious to people who practice it. Instead, its virtues as free loving are exalted. Obviously, if I am “loving” (notice I did not say in love with) more than one person at the same time the loss of depth in those relationships due to the absence of commitment will be significant. A polyamorous lover has the “freedom” to defensivly move around among several lovers depending on the experience he or she is having with any one of them. Point is, we end up at the same place, a defensive effort to avoid love life hurt and the vulnerability of emotional intimacy by substituting people to love. The experience of “being in love” with one person and growing that love in a mutual fashion is something different altogether.
How about when you try to change the person you are in love with? I have a bit of personal experience with this particular love life defensive behavior in my own love life history. I lived as a parentified child taking care of my depressed mother’s emotional struggles by being her secret confidant. Taking care of sufferring women became a specialty of mine until I was able to do some work in that area of my psyche in my own psychotherapy. Before the change, I had a pretty disappointing love life. I always found “women in need” and tried to help them change themselves in the course of the relationship. I’m proud to say, I never succeeded in changing a single person. I tried however. You can think of it as unconsciously replicating what I did with Mom over and over again with the women I was meeting during my single years, and ignoring the deeper issue involving the absence of emotional intomacy in my own life.
In summary, I have never met a single person who has told me they successfully changed a person they were in a love relationship with. The fact is, people change themselves. Real change is always a matter of personal motivation, not because someone else wants you too. Trying and failing to change the person you are in love with always raises the question, is this someone you can accept as they are? If the answer is yes, you have to practice acceptance. If the answer is no, you leave and find someone whose faults you can live with. When you stop trying to change people in your love life, it’s such a relief. Its much less work and strain accepting someone or looking for what you really need in your love life.
Comments welcome…
Dr. Thomas Jordan, clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, psychological disability consultant, speaker, and author of the award-winning book, Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life. Presentations and telehealth Love Life Consultations available upon request. Contact: 212-875-0154 or drtomjordan@lovelifelearningcenter.com for inquiries. Visit my speaker page at lovelifelearningcenter.com/speaker
