February 10, 2008

Lay down on the couch, the doctor is in. Today’s topic…psychotherapy…and the way we fuck with each other’s minds both in relationships and in counseling.

There is a lot of information about mental and emotional health available online. I took my previous knowledge, and experience and searched out some psychological terms to describe what just happened in my life….and Jonathan’s. It’s not that hard to self-assess.

Jonathan and I often had talks about marriage, divorce, family and life decisions. He came back and told me later how right I was about everything. I’ve lived through so many different situations, both in childhood and my adult life and so I have a wider perspective than most people. I see things they very often don’t see. So I’d share my insights with him. He learned a lot from me and I from him. Unfortunately, my insights served to push him away.

Here’s my own self-analysis of the situation…

There is talk in the world of psychology about transference and displacement of feeling. It happens subconsciously so we aren’t really aware of what’s going on. With hindsight analysis we can see things more clearly. Transference refers to the phenomenon of attributing attitudes or behaviors to a new person in your life that were really attached to someone in your past. In effect, you can punish a new partner for things an old partner did to you without realizing you are doing it. (like my feeling that any new man is just going to abandon me as all the others have done) Being overly possessive can be from your past of being cheated on and have nothing to do with the current relationship. At least this is how I understand it to work.

Displacement is the more appropriate term for what happened with Jonathan and I. From the Wikipedia definition:

displacement is a subconscious defense mechanism whereby the mind redirects affects from an object felt to be dangerous or unacceptable to an object felt to be safe or acceptable

This is what I think happened. Jonathan truly fell in love with me but he was continually paranoid about his wife finding out. He viewed our relationship as dangerous and unacceptable in his moral mind center, regardless of what the feelings really were. So he then displaced those feelings onto a safe person, the person he should feel this for…his wife. Now he thinks he is in love with her for the first time ever. My question, if he fell in love with her for the first time ever, after falling in love with me, how likely is it that those feelings were simply displaced?

His shrink (I’m using the word he uses to describe her) sees it the other way round and I’m so pissed about the manipulation in the field of psychotherapy and couples counseling. She has told him that it was good he met me because if he hadn’t he might never have discovered how much he feels for his wife. I don’t know what psychological theory this goes with but it seems wrong to me to say that to someone. It seems the kind of thinking that privileges marriage above personal growth or happiness. It seems backwards to the idea of healing the person. She’s just trying to keep the marriage together regardless of the health of that relationship. They aren’t exploring the idea of displacement and in this case they should be. What may happen is they get back together only to have things fall apart again because the feelings were temporary.

This shrink sees our relationship as an affair. I don’t see it that way because he had already mentally checked out of his marriage and was making preparations for divorce before we began to see each other in a romantic light. Putting it in the context of an affair is convenient in this case since an affair can be explained away more easily than the complicated truth of this relationship. It can make things seems like they are backwards, like the displacement went the other way ’round.

Then there are the ideas of projection and counter-projection. Also from Wikipedia…

projection is a psychological defense mechanism whereby one “projects” one’s own undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings onto someone else.

When addressing psychological trauma the defense mechanism is sometimes counter-projection, including an obsession to continue and remain in a recurring trauma-causing situation and the compulsive obsession with the perceived perpetrator of the trauma or its projection.

Counter-projection is the operative one this time. He’s choosing to stay in a recurring trauma-causing relationship and now feels obsessed with the perpetrator.

Their relationship and it’s abusive tone goes both ways, though. He is part of the dysfunction. There are things I know that he has projected onto her. I don’t pretend that she is in any way innocent of wrong doing. Their relationship is extremely complex and I only know a fraction of it. Ultimately I think they will stay together and beat each other up mentally, physically and emotionally forever. I’m not sure any shrink it up to the task of unravelling the strings of their dysfunction.

Then there’s the scapegoat…me. I’m being blamed for the trouble in their relationship. If he hadn’t had the affair he never would have left her. He never would have loved her either. This seems to be the idea his shrink has. Hmm…that I can have so much power and yet be so unimportant is odd, isn’t it?

rationalization is the process of constructing a logical justification for a belief, decision, action or lack thereof that was originally arrived at through a different mental process.

Jonathan and his shrink are rationalizing away our relationship. They are constructing a different meaning out of it than really existed. What really happened is he was in a bad marriage and ready to leave. I had already left my marriage. We met at a time we were both open to new experiences and both needing love and connection. We discovered in each other a whole world of things missing in our lives before, a deeper connection than existed in previous relationships, a synchronicity. We connect on so many levels, as parents, as writers, as intellectual thinkers, as starving artists, as lovers, as dreamers. We aren’t the same, but similar beings. We’ve taught each other so much. We can carry on a conversation for hours and still have so much more to say. And most of all…we respected each other. If his shrink could see the man he is with me versus the man is he with her, she might change her mind about the advice she’s giving.

Anyway, today was a day to vent intellectually about how the world is full of small-minded people that think certain things are the only right way to be. A marriage is supposed to be happy and stay together even if it isn’t happy. That’s an outdated notion. For centuries people have lived with the idea that happiness comes after death and this life is for living according to a larger plan, happy or not. Well, I don’t know what happens after death, I don’t have a strong belief in this great afterlife, and even if I did I don’t think I would buy into the notion of living a shit life in the hopes that after I die I’ll be happy. That seems to be a way to live that will lead to thoughts of suicide.

I can only guarantee that I have this life…this one life. If I find out later that I get another one…whoooppeeeee. But for now, I’m doing what makes me happy. It made me happy to be with Jonathan. Sad as you may see this, I was happy being with him the night of revenge sex. He talked fondly of the night of our first kiss right in front of his friends. He played an amazing song that reminds him of me. I know he carries beautiful memories of us, as I do. I just wish he had been strong enough to see past the bullshit in his marriage and get out. I don’t see him every being truly happy and that pains me. I know what we could have had. Life is beautiful when you’re truly in love.

But this is a day of moving on. I just wanted to revisit some issues in a more intellectual way instead of just emotionally. I wanted to reason it out and see if the theories matched my thoughts…they do. I feel justified in my thinking. This is all part of the process of healing for me and preparing myself for some future…far far into the future…relationship. I think there will be a psychological testing process in dating me in the future. Can you have my number? Sure…after you answer these questions, please…

Just me…Marissa

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