How Family History Affects Your Relationship: An Archaeological Dig into Your Past
The Story of Joan and Steve
Joan: You never spend time with me. After work, you come home, eat dinner and then head to the basement to watch ESPN. I ask you to come upstairs when I go to sleep and you say, "Be there in a minute," but I am usually asleep before you get into bed. I feel so alone every night.
Steve: Don't you understand that after I have worked all day managing a department of 15 women, I need some space, some downtime to be alone and just escape from the stress at work?
Joan: Why can't you do that with me? I am not one of the women you supervise, I'm your wife.
Steve: I don't know. Your feelings are so intense and I feel smothered. It's not about you; I just need some "me" time. Alone.
Joan: It's always about you. I feel abandoned every night; doesn't that matter to you?
Therapist: The two of you, like many couples, keep getting stuck in the same place. There is a theme or a repetition here that I am seeing week after week: Joan, you want more connection and emotional intimacy with Steve; when you don't receive it, you feel he has left you. Steve, you need more space, more emotional distance. I also sense you are overwhelmed by Joan's feelings; when she needs you, you run.
Joan: You've hit the nail on the head. This could be fixed easily if he would just spend more time with me.
Steve: Or if you would leave me alone.
Therapist: When it looks like there's a quick fix, but it isn't happening, we have to look deeper. Let's take a look at your family histories and see what we find...
The Value of the Archaeological Dig
"Archaeology is our voyage to the past, where we discover who we were and therefore who we are." Camille Paglia
Why does man (and woman) look back? When an archaeologist locates a previously unknown settlement, he/she may spend years excavating, collecting, studying and analyzing artifacts and relics to glimpse a reasonable picture of the past. The study of history helps us see how societies sustained themselves, why some survived and others collapsed. It helps us avoid the mistakes of our ancestors and emulate their successes.
The Archaeological Dig in Therapy
"History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are." David McCullough
Why do therapists look back? How could your family history so long ago possibly have an impact on your relationship? Some would say, "Ridiculous."
Take Joan and Steve. The therapist learns that Joan grew up in a family where her parents were always in conflict. After a fight, her father would walk out. Later she found out that her father left to cool off and go for a drive, but in her young, impressionable years all Joan knew was that dad left. Each time this happened she felt more and more anxious and worried that he wouldn't come back. When she was 11, her worst fear came true.
Joan: My dad left that evening and I just had a bad feeling. Later that night we got the call from the hospital. My dad had died from a heart attack.
Joan sobbed and Steve got up to give her a hug.
Therapist: Maybe that is why you feel so strongly about Steve "leaving" you every night, like your dad.
Joan: Yes, it does have that same feeling. I never connected the two.
Therapist: Joan, often the strong feelings we experience with our partner are so strong because they are triggering uncomfortable feelings we had in the past; And we don't recognize this. We attribute our present strong, uneasy feelings to our partner, when the strength of those feelings really comes from the past.
Joan: Interesting. How does knowing that help?
Therapist: It helps by being able to separate the old feelings from the present ones. It's important for you to remember that Steve needing space does not mean he is "leaving" you. It means he needs individual time. Steve, you can help Joan by connecting with her before you go watch TV; it can be a gesture as small as a hug, a kiss, an "I love you. I will be up so we can go to bed together at 10."
Joan: Wow, I feel a lot lighter after talking about that.
Hearing Steve's history, the therapist learned that when Steve was eight years old, his father left for another woman. His father divorced his mother and a year later married the "other woman." When his father and new wife had children, Steve's father stopped coming around. He had "another family."
Steve: My mother was devastated and had to raise me and my sister alone. I remember when she told me at eight years old that I was now "the man of the house." I felt I had to take care of her; she needed me. I would sit and watch TV with her every night to keep her company. I did that until I turned 13.
Therapist: What happened then?
Steve: I started feeling smothered, like she was holding me back. I felt like I needed to get away. I was overwhelmed by her neediness. She looked sad every time I left to go out with my friends.
Therapist: It's interesting, Steve, that you would marry a woman who needs a lot of emotional closeness from you and feels abandoned when you need space; sort of like your mother.
Steve: Wow, I can see that. It does feel like Joan needs too much from me and I pull away.
Therapist: The fact that you two are together is no accident. Our "baggage" from childhood, whether you realize it or not, unconsciously affects how we perceive our relationships. We tend to choose a partner with whom we can replay the themes from childhood that were never resolved.
Steve (laughing): You mean I married my mother?
Therapist: Not exactly. In psychology, there is a phenomenon called the "Repetition Compulsion." It means we have a drive to repeat patterns or traumas from childhood in our adult lives. Unconsciously, we put ourselves in the same position and create the same feelings we had in our original childhood experience. We replay the same story, hit up against the same roadblock and get stuck in the same place over and over.
Joan: Are you saying I created this pattern with Steve and set him up to abandon me over and over?
Therapist: You got it; unconsciously of course.
Joan: It actually does have that same feeling.
Steve: And Joan does feel like my smothering mom that I had to get away from.
Therapist: Yes. You two have tremendous insight.
Joan: Why does this happen?
Therapist: Recreating painful, but "familiar" childhood patterns in our present relationship is our unconscious attempt to repair the damage and master our feelings about it.
Steve: So we are trying to fix it using our partner. But that doesn't work, right?
Therapist: Yes, we carry the pain from our childhood into our adult relationship and our partner unknowingly becomes the image of the one who will heal all that, love us unconditionally and protect us from being hurt. He or she is linked to our deep and unconscious baggage. When he or she inevitably wounds us, we experience feelings of rejection, anger and sadness - and we are back in our old "comfort zone," coping with the pain in the manner we learned as children.
Joan: So, what can we do?
Therapist: Just what you are doing now: an archaeological dig into the past, excavating and studying the artifacts of your family history to gain understanding and insight. Making the unconscious "baggage" conscious leads to greater knowledge about why you are the way you are.
Joan: How does this help?
Therapist: Digging into our past helps us figure out how much of our hurt belongs to our present situation with our partner and how much of it is our old pain. The more we are able to understand and identify these "hurt" triggers, the better we are able to make sense of our strong feelings. In turn, being conscious of our history lowers our anxiety and allows us to more easily resolve our present hurts with our partner. An archaeological dig will free you from the chronic pain and break the self-defeating, repetitive cycle.
The Power of Then
Thornton Wilder believed that "the Past is not dead," in fact, he wrote, "the Past isn't even Past."
Our past, if you think about it, is who we are. Who or what else can we really be - a self no less reflective of a precise stacking and most intricate interweaving of all the events of our life - beginning even before "Day One" of our life.
We truly flatter ourselves if we feel we can actually "move on and beyond these events," or that we can just chose to "forget about them." According to the burgeoning field of Brain Science and the new uses of interventions such as functional MRIs and PET scans, past events and life experiences are not only carefully and exhaustively inventoried in our feelings, but remain active. They are physiologically alive and well, and forever asserting themselves in feelings, thinking and decision making. Even more so when we try to repress them. And what makes us even more vulnerable, is that we are substantially unaware that this process is even going on.
Our only real choice here is to bring this material up to consciousness, painful and fearful though it may be, and not to "move on" from it, but to chose to move into and through it with courage and expanded awareness, lest our unconscious past control us.
"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again." Maya Angelou
Your Choice
Will you choose to be courageous enough to confront your fears, your sadness and your pain and bring your history to consciousness, so you can work with it to fashion the journey you want take in your life, and in your relationship?
If you answered "yes," you are ready to undertake your "Archaeological Dig."
Your Archaeological Dig
Here is our way of conducting an archaeological dig so you will not have to repeat your past:
- Unearth - Dig up your history consciously and embrace it.
- Understand - Or "stand under" it and observe the information you learn about your family history.
- Unravel - Undo the knots; think about and analyze the meaning of what you found and in what ways it blocks you.
- Unlock - Free yourself from the past; take turns sharing your story with your partner, exploring it together and helping one another carry each other's baggage.
"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
George Santayana
How was your dig? Have you discussed it with your partner?