What about the expectation that each of us is going to find our one true love, our soul mate, and live happily every after?
It doesn't work that way. People come across relatively few potential partners whom they choose and who, in turn, choose them. Often we end up with those who are not necessarily high-level preferences. For example, people often choose each other based on compensatory defenses to make up for inadequacies or personality deficiencies in themselves. An aggressive person will tend to be attracted to a passive, submissive person and an individual who is parental will choose a child-like person. But they can eventually come to resent and even hate the very qualities that they sought. It is true that "opposites attract," but also true that "opposites may eventually repel."
People have a certain core emptiness that can never be filled by finding another. If we are looking for a person to fill our needs, we're certainly not going to find them. No one can fill a deep emptiness in ourselves. We can never extract from our partners what was missing in our early lives.
It is my opinion that relationships based on similarities and mutuality are more likely to succeed than relationships based on compensations for deficiencies. What we can do is work toward developing our own independence in life, achieve greater emotional maturity and relate to each other as autonomous adults.
What should we look for in our personal relationships?
There are a number of key characteristics that people should look for in a potential mate: 1) nondefensiveness, i.e., openness to feedback and other issues without reacting with aggression or avoidance; 2) honesty and integrity; 3) respect for the other person's boundaries, priorities and goals separate from oneself; 4) a person who is physically affectionate and comfortable with the sexual role; 5) a person who is empathic and understanding.
They should try to avoid people who possess toxic personal qualities such as manifestations of superiority and vanity, people who are controlling, domineering or overly submissive, hostile or rejecting, and especially individuals who indicate addictive personality characteristics.
Do you consider it tragic that so many relationships fail?
No, it can very often be a positive sign when a relationship ends. People grow at different rates and one person may outgrow his or her partner and choose to go on. The marriage or the couple is an abstraction: it is the individuals who matter.
In "Fear of Intimacy," I argue that it is absurd to serve an abstraction, to place primary value on any social institution, whether it be the couple or family, without considering the well-being of the individual men, women and children.
What about the idea that people should stay in marriages for the sake of the children?
The battleground at home often has an even more destructive effect on the children than the termination of the relationship. Generally there are problems but, assuming that both parents are sensitive to their children's needs and well-being, workable solutions can be found that minimize the damage.
You make a strong case in your writing for individual human rights in relationships, an issue often overlooked in other books on relationships.
Yes, very often people injure, intrude and manipulate each other in ways that violate their human rights. Couples manipulate and deceive each other. Dishonesty fractures a person's sense of reality, which causes anxiety and leads to actual symptom formation. Mixed messages are a fundamental causative influence on mental illness. This is a significant moral issue because of the damage it causes. People can successfully intimidate and imprison one another through these manipulations and forms of control, but they inevitably damage themselves and the other person.
Besides deception, what else would you consider a powerful violation of human rights?
Domination, such as aggressive power plays; violation of each other's boundaries -- talking for each other; coldness or rejection; and verbal or physical abuse. A manipulation that is often overlooked is the tyranny of weakness -- controlling the other by falling apart (suicide threats being the most extreme example).
What about the subject of sexuality in our culture? You've mentioned R.D. Laing's quip that the bedroom is the most dangerous room in the house.
Social mores represent the pooling of our individual defenses. Social attitudes today damage nearly every adult in their sexual development. Our suppressive culture, in which people learn early in life to be ashamed of masturbation and to be self-conscious about their naked bodies, has serious repercussions. These cultural prerogatives can be considered an institutionalized form of sexual abuse in that they limit each person's potential satisfaction and security in his/her sexual relationships.
Sexual attraction and responses are as natural as eating. There is no inherent shame in the body. For example, in Europe many women go topless on the beaches. They feel totally at ease. No one is leaping around or grabbing anyone, there's no increase in rape, men are not walking around with giant erections and there's no sign of chaos. It's just part of a pretty scene. It feels good. It looks good. It's natural.
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