Not pregnant yet? You bet!

– We love too much if to love means to suffer.

– We love too much, if we justify his bad temper, insensitivity and rudeness by the fact that he had difficult childhood and try to take on a role of his therapist.

– We love too much if we don’t like a lot about his character, his values and deeds, but we make our peace with them and think: I should be more attractive and loving and he will change for me.

– We love too much, if love threatens our wellbeing and, possibly, even our health and security.

The feelings that many women fascinated by men mistake for love and passion are, if fact, fear. If love boarders on obsession, this means fear of either being alone, or being unloved, or being unworthy, or losing support (emotional, financial, etc.).

The “love too much” phenomenon (psychologists call it love addiction) is a peculiar combination of thoughts, feelings and behaviour that unconsciously recreate the atmosphere of the parents’ family. I insist on the word “unconsciously”, because many people tend to answer the question about how their childhood was by “happy”. People say this, because this is where their psychological defense mechanisms step in, their task being to guard us from traumatic memories, they are displacement, suppression, denial, etc. But if one goes emotionally to this child sate in the course of a psychotherapy sessions, one will discover logical recurrent dynamics which is called in psychology “Karpman-Burn’s drama triangle”:

The Victim – The Rescuer – The Persecutor

The essence of the model is in the following example: if one lives with a father who is an alcoholic, one regularly participates in a drama with three roles – thevictim, the rescuer, the persecutor. The drunk father acts like a persecutor towards the mother, she starts acting like a victim, so, to survive the horror, humiliation, desperation, indignation, shame the child start rescuing the situation, the mother and himself/herself. Next morning, when the father is hung over and, thus, becomes a victim, the mother acts like a persecutor, and the child feels pity towards the father. The child constantly feels humiliated and ashamed of his parents’ unworthy behavior, so he/she starts rescuing his family’s reputation. He does not invite his/her friends to prevent them from seeing the ugly scenes. Over the years a girl gets used to putting a good face on, gets used to hiding their feelings both from other and from herself. This is why she is convinced she had a “happy” childhood.

How many times did we feel this way as children? How many times did we swear that it won’t be this way when it comes to us. We search for a partner who in no way reminds us of our aggressive and unjust father. We find a soft nice guy, even a bit silly, who needs just a little push in the right direction. Why, he does not drink! He is our hero! So we drag on this immature, dependent, but grown-up person, who is angry as we tell him how to live. He is not an alcoholic (although he can become one), it turns out it does not matter. He can have other both chemical and non-chemical addictions – drugs, work, risky sports, gambling, computers or credits, etc. But even that is not the sad part, the sad part is that you tied your life with an immature person who needs to be controlled and revolts against it.

And here we are, in our own family, running circles, “victim – rescuer – persecutor” triangles to be more precise. Undertaking the role of a rescuer gives a woman suffering of a victim she is used to, and superiority of a persecutor she needs. It is clear, that both need help, but it is so tempting to wait for a partner to make the first step!

The majority of my clients do not finish the book, saying it’s not about them. Those who do agree with their love addiction “diagnosis” lose interest in the book as they approach Chapter 10 which describes the way to healing, 10-steps program for helping oneself.

It’s easy for me to understand why my client drop this book before finishing it. Let’s compare this work of spirit and work of body: every one of us knows that to be in a good shape one needs to exercise every day. Does each of us really do it? This requires “investing” in one’s health that will pay off later. But we want to see the results immediately! The same happens with investing in one’s spiritual growth. This is hard work and you won’t see the results for a long time, if ever. Is it possible to see the connection between infertility and depending on your husband? The connection is metaphorical: if you don’t invest in your own productivity you become infertile.

What should women “who love too much” do? Essentially, stop saving their husbands and use the energy for being creative and productive. Here are the ten steps[18 - Robin Norwood, Women Who Love Too Much.]:

– Ask for help.

– Make healing yourself your number one job.

– Find a supporting group of peers who understand you.

– Dedicate time to your spiritual growth on a daily basis.

– Stop controlling your partner and manipulating him.

– Learnt not to be involved in games.

– Boldly look at your problems and shortcomings.

– Develop the qualities you need.

– Become selfish in a healthy way.

– Share your story and your knowledge with others.

I would like to end this commentary with Marilyn Murray’s characteristic of a true marriage;. According to her, it is a partnership that gives both partners an opportunity to become what God intended them to be, not the kind where one “becomes” and the other rots[19 - Marilyn Murrey, Prisoner if Another War: A Remarkable Journey of Healing From Childhood Trauma.].

“Receive the package earlier”

The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents.

    Carl Young

A pretty woman of twenty-nine sighed after another participant’s session on the subject of IVF and told that she was no stranger to IVF. She had done it three times – still no results, i.e. she got pregnant twice, but the labor started as early as half term, even the ring did not prevent this from happening. Kseniya lost her baby twice at 20 week of pregnancy.

Kseniya had been married for ten years, and her husband wanted her to give birth as soon as possible. He said his mother needed a grandchild, so he hurried his wife to become a mother. I was not surprised that the interested person in the baby being born, the customer so to say, was the mother-in-law; I had already got used to such misperceptions in my customers. I was more surprised, however, that Kseniya got married so early. Why, nowadays young people are not in a hurry to tie themselves in marriage when they are twenty, they study, make careers, get experience. Kseniya explained that her father thought the only way to have sex was to married. Otherwise, others would have thought that his daughter was a tramp.

I was outraged by this answer. In my imagination I saw two puppet-masters ruling over the life of the young family. On the one hand, there was the mother-in-law trying to fill her own empty life using the young people, on the other hand, there was the father and his ambitions his daughter had to satisfy by giving up her own life experience.

The night before Kseniya saw a dream about two monkeys:

My husband and I are in an exotic country. He surprised me with renting to chimpanzees of the opposite sex.

He went away with the female, and I was alone in my room with the male who was making sexual advances towards me. I was shocked and disgusted at the monkey for sexual harassment, at my husband who rented the monkeys, at the tourists who use this kind of services, at animal trainers for teaching monkeys to do this. I was wondering if my husband knew what he bought into.

Besides being disgusted I was ashamed to be a part of this. Then my disgust gave way to acute pity towards the monkey. I understood that it is but a mindless victim who was taught to entertain tourists.

I was amazed by Kseniya’s dreams. The symbols were so clear that you couldn’t but envy the way her subconscious giving its messages to her in such a way. I asked Kseniya to voice the monkey in the first person to realize what aspect of her life was encoded in the image of the chimpanzee. Here is what she said: “I am a monkey, a mindless victim of people who taught me to satisfy their carnal needs. And this is how I live, and this is the essence of my existence”. When I asked what this was about, Kseniya honestly told that being a mother was not her choice, it was a wish of her family.

We met at a different workshop in two months. The night between the first day of the three-days workshop and the second one Kseniya dreamt another dream. She told about it in the group:

I’m queuing at the post office, everybody crowds and shoves their notices at the post-officer. And I need to pick up a package. At this point, the officer whispers quietly into my ear: “I’ll tell you a secret: you must have received this package earlier. But I was not the one to tell you this!” I stood there lost and surprised and thought: “So, what am I supposed to do? File a complaint?”

– Kseniya, how does this dream remind you of your life? Who lied to you and what this was about?

– I remembered my first man. I met him when I was seventeen, he was older than me. In a month he told me he was married and he had a child. He was just leaving his wife when he met me. My parents forbade me from seeing him, they told it would end badly. So it did in three months – we ran a woman down.

– You? Who was driving?

– He was. But I was sitting right next to him.

– So why did you say we instead of he.

– Because it sort of happened because of me.

– How was that?

– He was not himself. The day before he insisted I packed my stuff and moved out of my parents’. I got scared and came without my stuff. He got angry and said he would drive me back if I was not able decide; he got me into the car and drove. He was going over the speed limit and ran down a woman who was crossing the street.

Kseniya hid her face and cried.

– What is going on with you?

– It pains me! I didn’t know she was dead at first, I was hoping she was alive… That his wife taught me what I should say as a witness. I lied that I didn’t know him, because if I told I was his girlfriend, I wouldn’t be able to witness and it that case he wouldn’t have had any witnesses at all.

– What were you supposed to say?

– That the woman threw herself under the car! But that was not true, I saw her, I cried to him, but he drove so fast!