Toxic Parents (41 page)

Bob was 40, working as a sales representative for a clothing manufacturer. He told Laura he had been divorced the year before. Within the first month of their relationship, he and Laura moved in together and he began to talk about getting married. When he introduced her to his two young children, they all hit it off immediately. Bob’s obvious devotion to his children made Laura feel even closer to him.

Jackie and Mark’s romance started out as a blind date. It became a serious involvement that very first night. As Jackie described it to me:

I opened my door and saw this incredibly handsome man standing there. He just smiled at me. The first words out of his mouth were, “Can I use your phone?” I blinked and said yes, and he walked over to the phone and called the guy who had introduced us and said, “John, you were right. She’s everything you said she was.” That was only the beginning of the evening!

Jackie was a petite, vicacious 30-year-old when she and Mark met. She was working as a teacher in an elementary school, supporting her two children from a previous marriage, while trying to get her doctorate. Mark was 38 and had recently run for public office. Jackie remembered seeing his picture on billboards around town. She was very impressed with him and extremely flattered by his attentions to her.

We were having dinner with John, who had introduced us, and his wife. She turned to me and said, “I know you two have just met but I’ve never seen two people look so right together.” Then she took my hand and said, “You are going to marry this man.” Mark nodded and said to me, “Pay attention to what she’s saying. She’s a very smart girl.” Then he whispered to me, “You’ve got a problem and his name is Mark.” I laughed and replied “Why, are you going to be around for a while?” “I certainly am,” he said. Then, when he took me home that night, we were sitting in the car in front of my house and he kissed me and said, “I know this sounds crazy, but I’m in love with you.” Now
that’s
romantic.

The next morning, when he called me, I told him that I wouldn’t hold him to anything he’d said the night before. His response was, “I’ll repeat every word of it right now.”

Jackie felt like she was on a magic carpet from that evening on. Mark’s falling in love with her so quickly completely swept her off her feet.

We All Love Romance

Romance makes you feel wonderful. Your emotions and your sexual feelings are at fever pitch, and in the beginning the intensity can be truly overwhelming. The relationship can affect you like a euphoric drug; being on “cloud nine” is the way many people describe it. The body, in fact, is producing a tremendous number of chemicals that contribute to the “wonderful glow” people talk about.

The fantasy, of course, is that we’re going to feel like that forever. We’ve been told all our lives that romantic love has magical powers to make us whole and happy as women. Literature, TV, and movies help to reinforce this belief. The paradox is that even the most destructive misogynistic relationship starts out filled with just this kind of excitement and expectation. Yet despite the good feelings experienced in the beginning, by the time Rosalind came in to see me she was a nervous wreck, and her previously thriving antiques business was on the verge of bankruptcy; Laura, the former account executive, became so demoralized that she was sure she was incapable of ever holding another job; and Jackie—who had successfully juggled teaching, graduate school, and raising two young children—found herself breaking down and sobbing over minor incidents. What had happened to the beautiful, exciting romance that had marked the beginnings of these relationships? Why were the women so hurt and disillusioned?

Whirlwind Courtships

I believe that when a romance moves as swiftly as these did, there’s an underlying sense of danger in the air. The danger may actually add to the excitement and stimulation of the affair. When I ride my horse, a trot is very pleasant but not particularly interesting; the thrill lies in the gallop. Part of that thrill is the knowledge that something unexpected might happen—I might get thrown; I might get hurt. It’s the same sense of thrill and danger we all experienced as children when we rode the roller-coaster. It’s fast, it’s exciting, and it feels risky.

Once the element of sexual intimacy has been added, the speed and intensity of the emotions becomes even greater. You don’t go through the normal progression of discovery with your new lover because there has not been enough time. Your new partner has many qualities that are going to affect your life—qualities that cannot be seen immediately. It takes time for both partners to develop the openness, trust, and honesty that are needed for a solid relationship. A whirlwind courtship, thrilling as it may be, tends to provide only pseudo-intimacy, which is then mistaken for genuine closeness.

Romantic Blinders

In order to see who our new partner truly is, the relationship has to move more slowly. It takes time to see others realistically so that we can recognize and accept both their virtues and their shortcomings. In a whirlwind courtship the emotional currents are so swift and strong that they overwhelm both partners’ perceptions. Anything that interferes with the picture of the new love as “ideal” is ignored or blocked out. It’s as if both partners are wearing blinders. We become intensely focused on how the other person is making us
feel
rather than on who the other person really is. The logic goes: since he makes me
feel
wonderful, he must
be
wonderful.

Laura and Bob were swept up by the spellbinding chemistry they felt between them in their first meetings. This chemistry had very little to do with who each of them was as a person. The rapture that Laura described related not to Bob’s character but to his eyes, the way he moved, and how he ordered wine in the restaurant. Never did she say, “He was a decent, honest man.” Bob was fulfilling for her the role of the perfect romantic lover, and both of them were caught up in the seduction and infatuation of the moment.

The first indication Laura had that there might be trouble came soon after she and Bob had begun living together.

We were out together and he said, “I have something to tell you. I’m not divorced yet.” I nearly fell off my chair, because by that time we were making wedding plans! He said, “I
felt
divorced, so I really didn’t think it made that much difference.” I was so shocked I couldn’t talk. I just kept staring at him. Then he told me the divorce was in the works and he was taking care of it and I shouldn’t worry. I realized that he’d lied to me from the beginning—I mean, he’d given me dates and all that sort of thing—but it just didn’t seem that important then. Then, the important thing wasn’t that he had lied but that he actually was getting the divorce.

Bob’s deceptiveness should have been a warning to Laura that she needed to take a closer look at him, but she didn’t
want
to see. She wanted to believe that Bob was the man of her dreams.

Jackie also received an early warning. In the beginning of her relationship with Mark, he told her a great deal about himself and his attitudes toward women, but his information was cloaked in flattery, so Jackie had not been alerted by it.

He told me that all the other women he’d been involved with only wanted to know, “What can
you
give me?” But what he found so special about me was that I was interested in what I could give to him. He said it was as if I had been born, shaped, and existed only to take care of him. All the other women had been taking and taking, all gimme gimme gimme, there for the good times but running from the bad ones. I was different.

Jackie could have heard that Mark lumped all women together and categorized them as greedy, selfish, and untrustworthy. But she chose instead to see his statements as further proof that she was the special one who would make his life better.

A warning that there might be trouble ahead came early for Rosalind, too, but she failed to notice the signal for what it was.

That first date, when he came over to my apartment for dinner, we went to bed together. He had a lot of trouble in that department, staying hard. It was disappointing, but I told myself that a lot of men have trouble like that with someone new and it didn’t mean anything. Then the next morning we made love again and it was a little better, but still I could see that he had problems. I figured I could help him overcome this, and I told myself that sex wasn’t that important. What was so overpowering to me about Jim was how close I felt to him and how much he responded to me as a person.

Rosalind did what so many of us do: she ignored everything that did not fit into her romantic picture. Jim made her feel so good about herself that she discounted what turned out to be a long-term sexual problem that seriously affected their relationship.

Without realizing it, many women divide the emotional landscape of their relationships into a
foreground
and a
background
. In the foreground are all the wonderful characteristics that the man possesses. These are the traits that are focused on, maximized, and idealized. Any hint of trouble gets pushed into the background as unimportant.

An extreme example of foreground and background manipulation is the case of the woman who falls in love with a convicted murderer. She will tell you he is the most wonderful man in the world. No one understands him but her. The murder has fallen into the “unimportant” background while the murderer’s surface charm takes center stage.

The phrases people use to describe this process in the early stages of a romantic relationship are very telling:

• I just
couldn’t see
his faults.

• I chose
not to look
at his problems.

• I just
shut my eyes
and hoped it would be different for us.

• I must have been
blind
not to see it before.

It’s easy
not to see
clues about someone’s past relationships, problems, and irresponsibilities when that person makes you feel terrific. Blinders serve the function of eliminating from your vision any information that might cloud or spoil your romantic picture.

Desperation and Fusion

Another recurring theme in the early stages of a misogynistic relationship is the sense of underlying desperation in both partners, each of whom has a frantic need to bind the other person to him.

Mark told me, “The reason I came on so strong to Jackie was that I was afraid I would lose her if I didn’t.” In Mark’s statement there is more than just love for Jackie: there is a sense of panic. He added:

On our second date I just laid it all out. I told her what kind of life I wanted and I told her we were going to get married. I asked her if she was seeing anybody else, and when she said she was I told her to end it because she wouldn’t be able to see anyone else but me now. I knew this was it and I wanted her to believe it too.

In Jackie’s eyes, Mark’s intensity was proof of his willingness to commit fully to their relationship.

Laura experienced a different sort of desperation. Her thirty-fifth birthday was two months away when she met Bob, and her traditional Italian family was putting a great deal of pressure on her to marry and have children. When Bob began pushing for marriage during the first month of their relationship, she was not only flattered but relieved.

A casual observer of these whirlwind relationships might say: “What’s the rush?” Obviously, when people meet, fall in love, move in together, and start making wedding plans all within a few weeks, what is going on is more than just two people caring about and wanting to be with each other.

What these people are experiencing is a heightened, almost unbearable need to melt into or “fuse” with the other person as quickly as possible. The separate sense of self becomes secondary to the relationship. They begin to feel each other’s feelings. Every change of mood is contagious. Often, work, friendships and other activities fall by the wayside. A tremendous amount of energy now goes into loving, being loved, gaining approval, and psychologically melting into one another.

It is this need for instant oneness that appears to be the major force propelling these relationships forward.

Rescuing

Rescuing is another important ingredient in the “Crazy Glue” of misogynistic relationships. It creates a particular bond that makes a woman feel both needed and heroic.

Much of Jackie’s excitement early in her relationship with Mark came from the abundance of maternal emotions she felt for him. She was going to provide for him what no one else had, and her love would make up for all the hardships in his life. He would become the successful, responsible man that she knew was there underneath. She explained:

The second time I saw him he told me all about his financial situation, and I was so flattered that he was being so honest about it that I made it all right with myself that he was 38 years old and didn’t have a job. After all, he’d just run for office, and
someone
has to lose an election. He painted such a glorious picture of his future prospects, and he was so suave and charming and winning that I was sure, with just a little help from me, he’d be all right in no time. I decided that I was going to provide him with the love and support he needed to get back on his feet.

Jackie believed that she would magically transform Mark through the power of her love. For many women, this belief is a very strong aphrodisiac. It enables a woman to see herself as a goddess, an earth-mother, and a healer. Her love can cure him, whether his problem is financial, drug or alcohol abuse, or unsatisfactory prior relationships. By giving, helping, and providing, she also creates an illusion of power and strength for herself. There is a sense of heroism in this for her: she becomes ennobled through rescuing, because with her help he will become a different man.