Relationship issues as a path to growth

The porcupine dilemma

One cold winter’s day, a number of porcupines huddled together quite closely in order through their mutual warmth to prevent themselves from being frozen. But they soon felt the effect of their quills on one another, which  made them again move apart. Now when the need for warmth once more brought them together, the drawback of the quills was repeated so that they were tossed between two evils, until they had discovered the proper distance from which they could best tolerate one another. Thus the need for society, which springs from the emptiness and monotony of men’s lives, drive them together, but their many unpleasant and repulsive qualities and insufferable drawbacks once more drive them apart.

The mean distance which they finally discover, and which enables them to endure being together, is politeness and good manners. Whoever does not keep to this, is told in England to “keep his distance”. By virtue thereof, it is true that the need for mutual warmth will be only imperfectly satisfied, but on the other hand, the prick of the quills will not be felt. Yet whoever has a great deal of internal warmth of his own will prefer to keep away from society in order to avoid giving or receiving trouble or annoyance.

The challenges of human intimacy

The porcupine dilemma is a metaphor about the challenges of human intimacy. The concept originated  from the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1851). It entered the realms of psychology after it was discovered by Sigmund Freud. The dilemma suggests that despite goodwill, human intimacy cannot occur without substantial mutual harm, and what results is cautious behaviour and weak relationships.

We can also take this a step further and propose that the closer we become with someone, the more deeply we can hurt each other.

This is proven by all the tragic and great love stories of the world. Where there is deep love there is always deep hurt. As a matter of fact it appears the hurt is a prerequisite for the depth of feelings. Otherwise, people stay on the surface and have a good time. They get along, they share things but there is not the overwhelming deep connection between them. When that is there, it stands to reason that we can be hurt. Our boundaries have been removed and we are completely vulnerable to the interaction - to the relationship self which is made up of two people.

This is also borne out in our knowledge of relationships. When it is not safe within a relationship, we seek attachment. When it is safe, we seek the fight/flight response because we don’t trust safe. So abuse can spark the need for greater intimacy whereas niceness can spark the need for fight/flight. This also answers one of those questions which has sparked confusion over the decades. Why are women attracted to bad boys and relegate the nice men to the status of friendship. It is this to and fro from intimacy to safety which we are living out.

We are also attracted to living out our traumas again for a few reasons. One being that even though it was unsafe, it feels familiar to us. The other is the subconscious drive to re-live our traumas to seek resolution. How can we handle a trauma like that again and gain power over it? How can we finally say No, or assert ourselves, or walk away, or express our feelings. Whatever we were not able to do in the past.

So it is no wonder that not only those closest to us can hurt us the most, but we also choose the people to get closest to us who can hurt us the most.

The Fear of being hurt

There are quite a lot of young women in my practice as patients. They come for anxiety about all sorts of things. I want to live my best life. Will I be able to finish my studies? I have a problem doing things alone. But underneath, most of it is about relationships. Will I ever find the right person for me? Will a relationship last? I don’t want to get hurt like I did in the previous relationship. I can’t trust people. I don’t want to ruin this relationship with my overly emotional behaviour. He’s a bit reserved with me. Is he hiding something? The preoccupation is with finding the right person, in terms of connection with them and their suitability as a partner while retaining a sense of security and control within the relationship.

There are quite a few young men in the practice as well. Their preoccupation is similar. How can I attract the right kind of woman - my type? How can I maintain a sense of control within the relationship but allow myself to fall in love as well? How do I avoid getting hurt?

Avoiding getting hurt appears to be the prime motivator for help in dealing with relationships. In this Avoidance game, all sorts of strategies are used. Playing it cool, being overly hypervigilant, overcontrolling, having someone else to fall back on, trying not to care so much. Self defence strategies which only serve to sabotage the relationship.

In relationships, we can approach from a stance of fear or a stance of love. Most of us approach from a stance of fear. We want what we want but we don’t want to get hurt. We want guarantees before we put our hearts on the line. We want to know that it will end up OK. That we will be loved and cherished forever. We want to know that we won’t get hurt. It’s all about us. Protecting ourselves and our interests.

If we approach from a stance of love, it’s more about the other person. Are we right for them? Can we give them the love and friendship that they want? Will we hurt them in any way? Are we able to love them steadily and with stability.? Can we trust ourselves in this relationship?

All the fears we project into any relationship, or any future relationship, are about us. Are we stable enough to be faithful in this relationship? Will our feelings change? Will we want something different in the future? Are we trustworthy?

All this is covered over and kept suppressed by very intense emotions of attachment which keep the underlying doubt and guilt covered - and all these fears are projected onto the other. So that when things go wrong, they can be attacked and blamed for causing us such unhappiness rather than seeing the flaw within ourselves.

How do we work with this? I often say to people “what you fear in the relationship is what you fear within yourself” It takes a massive change of mind to accept this and to direct the energy within. However, most people who come for help are already partly there. They know the issue is within themselves. They wonder why they attract destructive relationships, or unsatisfying relationships or only temporary relationships. So they want to look within. They want to have their inner workings fixed so they won’t have those problems anymore. They want what we all want - a happy, successful and satisfying relationship. But do they?

Then there are the men and women in relationships which could be considered successful. They’ve got it. They’ve done it. But it’s changed. It’s no longer how it was. Or, it no longer satisfies them. They feel they’ve missed out on the prize - they haven’t won in the relationship stakes. Something is missing. Again, I say to people “whatever is missing in your relationship is what you are not providing. It’s your connection, your interest, your love which is being withheld.”

So if we want to change the pattern of our relationships, we need to change our idea of self. From the needy little self, seeking for specialness and afraid of being hurt to the True Self, already whole and complete and united with all other selves, wishing to extend and share love with someone whose interests are not separate from our own.

When searching for love, it is helpful to change our thinking from what we can get from someone to what we can offer someone. Rather than looking for someone to save us, we can be looking for someone to be of benefit to. In the end, both ends are untrue. We are looking for someone to mutually extend our love with. To recognize ourselves in the other - our True Selves. Knowing that we are the same and One in a larger Oneness that we have suffered by being separated from. That is why the love is not special. Just you and me. It is not exclusive in the sense that within the relationship, our Oneness with the Whole is recognized and our love extends to all -  in a spiritual sense, not in a physical sense because love cannot be extended through the body.

One person is not our entire world nor has the responsibility for providing our happiness. It is the recognition that we are already united to the All and we are sharing it in experiencing it with this person.

The fear of being hurt fades as we don’t hold them responsible for our happiness nor do we blame them for their individual failure in living up to our expectations - as both of us are already whole at the level of truth and what we are acting out is but a dream between us. If the dream fails to be what we want, nothing has changed at the level of reality.

Relationships as a path to growth

Psychology teaches us that falling in love is a collapse of boundaries. That is, another person enters our own little kingdom which has been so separate and therefore so lonely. All of a sudden, there is another person to share this lonely empire. And all is well for awhile. However, the other also has their own little empire where they are the reigning monarch. Before long, the two kingdoms do not agree on everything, the power play begins or one kingdom submits to the other – with resentment. The boundaries snap back around our own little kingdom and we are separate again. We are, after all, with another separate individual who we have to learn to negotiate with if we are to stay in contact. This is where the disillusion sets in. 

Disillusion is a good word which means disappointment that something is not as good as one believed it to be. Or not as good as one’s illusion about it. This means the original was an illusion – you can only have disillusion as the breaking up of an illusion. The illusion was that my little kingdom, with company, could provide for me everything that I desire. This is a false hope from the start as it is based on separation from the whole. Just the two of us against the universe. This stance is unrealistic as it denies the rest of reality and tries to twist reality into serving our own purposes.

In the language of psychology, this is when a relationship has the chance to move from “falling in love” into an actual love which requires much more than an individual satisfaction of our own needs and reflects the binding nature of the whole.