The next section of Gorski's talk is about levels of relationship. He says: "People from dysfunctional families often fail to recognize that healthy relationships can operate on a number of different levels. Problems occur when one person is operating at one level of a relationship and the other person is operating at a different level of relationship." Connected to this idea is the extreme nature of a lot of relationships that people from dysfunctional families get into, which Gorski calls "pain and abandonment." "Most people from dysfunctional families learn early on that they have two relationship options: intense painful involvement or isolation and abandonment. 'I can choose to be totally dysfunctional and intensely involved with a human being until it hurts so bad I can't stand it or I can be so completely alone that I hurt so bad I can't stand it.' Life becomes a vacillation between painful loneliness and painful involvement."
So a few words on that pattern, which is certainly true for me at various times and to varying degrees, although somewhat less so after two years of CoDA. Primarily, at this point, what comes up for me regarding this black and white situation of loneliness or enmeshment is that I miss a lot of cues, or misread things. Since involvement is totally consuming for me, I misinterpret when people are interested in a much less intense connection. And since I feel like the way to protect myself is isolation, I miss chances for new, looser connections with people on a variety of levels. More on that in a minute, around Gorski's idea of "levels" of relationship.
Another aspect to this extremism is that, in a kind of Hegelian dialectic (oooh fancy), every involvement contains a seed of terror in it, because I expect to be abandoned and to suffer, and a lot of alone time contains a seed of terror in it, because I expect I will never be involved again if I stay alone. No intimacy, from this perspective, exists on any solid ground, because it is always either a terrible risk or an agonizing lack. Much as Bill W outlines on page 53 of the 12 and 12, there is no chance for a legitimate meeting of another separate person within this extreme context. I am quite glad that I no longer exist in such a stark place, while recognizing of course that there is more growth for me around these extremes. Probably in the triage of early recovery in CoDA, the very first thing I experienced was an amelioration of this black and white world. When it kicks in again now it is instantly recognizable and I know right away that I need to get into self care around it.
Here are Gorski's levels of relationship with a paraphrase of their chief features:
1. Superficial involvement: casual interaction, no investment and no commitment, temporary associations, situational interactions.
2. Companionship: this is where the activity is more important than the person. For example, when I want to go to a movie but want someone to go with me, so I ask. If they say they don't want to go to a movie, I'm not likely to change my plans- because the activity is more important than the other person.
3. Friendship: the person is more important than the activity. The association of two people for the purpose of mutual support and enjoyment of each other, as Gorski puts it.
4. Romantic love: "This is a friendship in which there is shared passion, sensuality and sexuality." I found this definition of his to be nice and clear, very rational, and rather idealistic, but whatever.
I am not very good at companionship, really. I have been okay at superficial relationships, such as with colleagues with whom I rarely interact, or people on a rafting trip, or on an airplane. I am fairly skilled at conversation and small talk, although I sometimes have the habit, less often now, of immediately taking the conversation someplace heavy and over-sharing. But companionship is an area where I lack skill, for the most part. In fact, when I read his description that the activity is more important than the person, I felt a sense of moral qualm. That is selfish and unfair, I thought. So one way I fail at companionship is I pretend it's friendship, I pretend to be more interested in the person than the activity, and I "compromise" a lot more often than I probably could.
Friendship is truly hit or miss for me. I recognized about ten years ago that the hardest part about breaking up with romantic partners was missing their friendship. I didn't even realize how much I valued the friendship, for many years. My sexual frustration, boredom, emotional dishonesty and other destructive tendencies with romantic partners made it seem like the friendship wasn't really that important. It's also instructive to see that many of my long term partnerships became all about companionship, almost exclusively. It's interesting how partnerships have gone from romantic, to friendship, to companionship and even to superficial relating, over time. Like housemates. Barely even excited to see each other, if not flat out dreading it and avoiding. It has felt like it is a long, long road back to romantic partners, once that companionship or superficial relating has settled in. Well, not just a long way- but you can't get back to there from here.
Gorski's definition of romantic love seems "healthy" to me but I must admit I have not experienced it as reflected in hsi definition for long periods of time. Of course this is where so much dysfunctional learned behavior arises for me. But I also feel like his definition is altogether too simple and pat. The evangelical nature of a lot of this family system stuff, rearing its head again. He also has some quiet strands of moralism underpinning some of his thinking here, especially in regard to sex with people other than romantic partners. The endless and everpresent emphasis on heteronormative monogamy in a context of commitment is a huge part of so much recovery literature. I reject it flat out. The default assumption that this is the goal of relationship recovery anoys me, as does the unexamined axiom that being able to sustain a "healthy long term committed monogamous relationship" is the pinnacle of sanity and skill and the key to happiness. I guess a lot of people get into relationship recovery because this is what they want and they suffer from being unable to do it. This was not my motive.
However, when I think about many of my social interactions and romantic relationships, it occurs to me there are areas of glaring lack of discernment and skill. For example, I do not have many friends. Currently, all of my recovery people are companions, in the sense that recovery is more important than they are. I do a lot of superficial interaction on social media, but there's a pull in some of that toward a "deeper connection." I think some of the women I have ended up in long term relationships with just wanted a sexual companion, where sex was more important than I was, and I misread them. I think this was true for me as well, many times. I guess this is when I have felt used, or they have felt used- meaning, one or the other of us thought we were romantic partners, but we were not, authentically. I have been friends with a lot of women, but there are many ways I have expected more from that friendship, on an emotional level, than was reasonable. Many other patterns come to mind in regard to what I'll call "misleveling" of the nature of relationships.
This misleveling of course can occur within a long term relationship as well, where on a given evening, for example, what a person wants is companionship and what the other person wants is friendship or romance, etc. One of the common patterns in the last year or so with A was that she wanted friendship/romance and I was withdrawing, not even really wanting companionship. What level of a relationship is it when you don't even want to be there at times? Normal and natural I would say, something all of us seem to experience, as long as re-connection and communication is still possible. But my extremism has often kicked in, where any separation feels like abandonment and leads to over-protective isolation, sometimes under the same roof. The housemate situation again.
The idea of finding levels between total isolation and extreme involvement appeals to me, of course, and my recovery community has offered a lot of experiences along those lines. I'll be reflecting on exactly what kinds and levels of relationship I am truly most interested in and if I am not experiencing that, why not? And if I am, to what degree and in what ways?
The idea that we have a choice of how to relate with others, at what level, and for what purposes is honestly new to me.
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