When Other People Are Projects

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Most of us in relationships want to make them better, and are willing work to make that happen. Ironically, some people try so hard to make relationships better that it makes the other party uneasy. When pushed too far, it can trigger the beginning of the end of a relationship. Deep down, no one really wants to be anyone else's project. The more excitement around “intimacy potential” a new relationship may seem to have, the more delicate the balance will be between maintaining a comfortable level of interest and a sensible reserve. Among other things, this requires practicing remaining mindful of how much each partner is giving and receiving, so that neither feels in danger of being depleted or overwhelmed.

A common issue in new relationships is that one party feels driven to “manage” the connection to ensure that the relationship develops along lines that feel good to him or her. The other partner is then pressed into a role in which he or she’s expected to accept passively, and even gratefully, whatever is done “for” him or her, without making meaningful contributions to the relationship. This can become a chronic state in which one party apparently calls all the shots on how they relate. The authors call this adaptation “irrelationship.” Irrelationship is deceptive, however: While it appears to be a one-way street in which one party is dominating the other, it’s actually a joint psychological defense in which both parties are attempting to make the relationship “better” by taking on mutual caretaking roles, performer and audience, which ultimately thwart each other’s caretaking.

The performer devises a “helping” routine to meet the audience’s “needs” in a way that leaves no room for fault-finding — nor, more importantly, for collaboration. Equally avoidant, the audience, meanwhile, avoids genuine reciprocity by acting as if the performer’s caretaking routine is “just what the doctor ordered.” Paradoxically, both of these roles are, in fact, caretaking routines designed to protect both parties from the anxiety that develops around the self-disclosure, vulnerability, and empathetic connection that are essential to intimate relationships.

An irrelationship routine is a means by which each party attempts to make the other person “better,” but leaves each person feeling isolated and lonely, though they won’t understand why. In fact, people who have slept in the same bed for years can be deeply invested in a caretaking routine that keeps them safe from the vulnerability that comes with sharing true feelings and needs with one another. However, if they become conscious of and able to acknowledge to themselves and one another those feelings of “apartness” and the frustration created in them, that’s the first step in building a new foundation of sharing — of transitioning from “you” and “me” to “we” and “us.” Studies show that healthy couples build intimacy using language that researchers call we-talk[1] — “we this” and “we that,” rather than “you this” and “me that.”

Use of the first-person plural pronouns (“we-talk”) is a marker of healthy interdependence and effective communication between partners. This allows partners to work toward bettering their relationship together.

A healthy, conscious commitment to building a dynamic of giving and receiving, loving and being loved, is what the authors call relationship sanity. One of relationship sanity’s most vital tools is the unconditional commitment to use “we-talk” to build intimacy, the “us-ness” of a relationship. The self-disclosure this implies naturally exposes rough spots, but these are rough spots that almost always represent issues which have been in place, but unacknowledged, for a long time. As they become more adept at exposing feelings and needs, couples find themselves able to navigate even the worst rough spots, ultimately making things better through a collaborative process that creates a sense of genuine ownership of their relationship by both parties.