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societyeconpoli · 4 months

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A Problem with Modern Romantic Relationships

Introduction: this is about heterosexual romantic relationships, in the setting of a predominantly heterosexual society. It is not antagonistic to non-heterosexuality, it was written by me, for me, and shared for anyone struggling to understand adult relationships. Warning, there are mentions of thoughts of serious self-harm.

I never had a successful, committed, long term, romantic relationship modeled to me. Not my parents, not my grandparents, not neighbors, aunts, uncles, parent’s friends, no one. So, I as a young adult wondered what is a relationship such as I described above? What does it look like, how do I get into one, all of it. I went on a journey of information discovery that was long, varied and at times had me questioning my continued existence on this earth because of the ways people spoke of what I am and am not, what they perceived that I am supposed to be, and all my shortcomings by their simplistic and often contradictory, confusing, and unrealistic standards. I am a straight heterosexual woman.

A little background about me, first. I was born and raised in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon cult in Utah and Arizona. They practiced polygamy, arranged marriages, and preached that one man spoke for God, dictating several aspects of the individual lives of people in the community. We did not have much access to information outside the church or cult. I had a rough childhood, leading to some trauma that I have begun to confront and heal from. The following is part of my healing journey, and the things I learned about myself and all of us, out here, not in a religious cult.

I tend to isolate myself and not go out among people because of my trauma. I stay at home whenever possible, and keep myself distracted when working and at home, listening to informational videos on YouTube, and watching movies and TV shows. In the past I did go out and interact with people at bars while under the influence of alcohol, but recently I have not done that for a few personal reasons. Some of the first information I encountered on YouTube on this journey was what is often called the “Red Pill” or “Manosphere” content. I listened to people like Fresh & Fit, Rollo Tomassi, Better Bachelor, Kevin Samuels, and other similar content creators. Because of my naivety, I easily believed what they said. Also, it went along nicely with things I had been taught in childhood about my “place” as a woman. They said that women are supposed to be stay at home mothers, raise children, and that is what gives a woman worth and value. According to them, men are logical, and women are emotional and that is how it is supposed to be. They say that emotional men are weak and that a logical woman is not natural. They said that a woman’s place is to be the helper to a man, their husband, helping him to fulfill his goals, while carrying on his legacy. At the time, I was one of the least emoting people I have ever met, because of my trauma. The ways I just didn’t measure up to what those men said women are supposed to be and my traumatized feelings of little self-worth had me passively contemplating suicide. Very passively, I have enough curiosity of what life might be all about to never have seriously considered it.

So, I gradually started leaving the information behind that gave me such pain. I listened to other content creators, hours upon hours of content of commentary and conversations about different dating situations, and adult committed relationships. Gradually I came across Dr. John Gottman who is a mathematician turned studier of relationships. He developed a system to predict with over 90% accuracy if a couple would remain together or separate. A key measure is bids for connection, or when your partner does something to get your attention, like points something out. And, how often the partner connects fully or partially with the other. So, looking at what is being pointed out and engaging with the partner in conversation about it, or at least acknowledging that you heard them speak. Another key concept is positive and negative interaction ratios. A lasting relationship has a ratio of 5/1 positive to negative interactions. He and others authored a book called 8 dates which is a guide to 8 topics of conversation to talk about and understand what yourself and your partner think of them and life. It is supposed to help in negotiating life with your partner. Dr. john Gottman’s YouTube work and books are amazing resources for understanding how to maintain committed relationships. Anyway, all this still did not tell me how to form a healthy relationship, still, something was missing in me.

In this journey, I came across an anthropologist named Helen Fisher who found that there are four main styles of thinking among humans. Testosterone driven, estrogen driven, dopamine driven, and serotonin driven. She says that we all use all four brain chemicals, but some are more dominant and others are less so in different individuals and this is what makes personality. Some people are more testosterone dominant, like being logical, problem solvers, and emotionally contained. She said very often these are men, but some women also have testosterone dominance, it is perfectly normal and natural. There is nothing inherently wrong with a person being testosterone dominant just because they can also carry and deliver babies. Some people, men and women are estrogen dominant, having people centered brains, and have the ability to see the big picture, or how things are connected and interconnected. Some people’s brains are more driven by dopamine, they need new and novel experiences. Others thrive on serotonin, they need order, they need to know exactly what is next. Helen fisher found that estrogen and testosterone are attracted to each other, and that dopamine people like to hang out with other dopamine people and serotonin people like other orderly, serotonin types. So, opposites attract, testosterone and estrogen and similarities attract dopamine and serotonin. When I listened to talks she gave, which can be found on YouTube if you search her name, I did not test myself against the criteria. I have since learned that I am very testosterone dominant with a very close second being estrogen, and the next most dominant is dopamine. Serotonin fights for its place in my head, and I am learning to incorporate it into my life and thinking processes.

The above still did not fulfill the need I had to know how to form a relationship, what my place would be in it, and what a long term, romantic relationship between a man and woman is. Finally, I went to college, at nearly 24. I met a man who is so much of who I could be. He was an instructor, and before going to college, I remember thinking that if I was not raised like I was and if whatever is wrong with me wasn’t wrong with me, I could be a college professor. I’d listened to enough of them on YouTube to know that with education and the something I was missing, that I could be that. From working with children in a daycare, some of whom had autism, I wondered if I had autism. I sometimes get very overstimulated, I am terrible with people, not really understanding them, and I don’t communicate well. Also, I have never worked well with people because I just don’t know how. I get obsessions, transient obsessions, but obsession none the less, with projects, or people. I remember being a child and standing at the edge of a group wishing I knew whatever all the other kids knew that were talking and playing and having fun. Sometimes I could join in a little, awkwardly, but usually I just didn’t know what to do, literally. Now, as an adult, I don’t know when to “pass the ball,” I don’t listen well to others in teamwork settings, because I have such ridged thought patterns and usually think there is no way my idea could be wrong or that I don’t know it all. I’m changing, learning to be more flexible in though, I hope.

Back to the instructor. I got a massive crush on him. And, because of my low self-esteem and general dislike of some parts of myself, I had thoughts questioning why anyone, particularly he, would ever want to spend time with or look at or like someone like me. This was so painful, and the recognition that he is what I could be if I wasn’t defective, however I am, made me jealous. The depths of the pain that I felt is indescribable. I sobbed and hurt so much that I thought my heart would break and never heal. The pain of feeling as unlovable as I did and still sometimes do was overwhelming. The thought of not being enough or being too much for him, someone I recognized myself in so much and fell so hard for had me questioning if it was worth it to continue existing. I became passively suicidal again. So, I went looking, very seriously, for how I am messed up. What happened to me because of being raised in a cult and my parents abandoning me. Here’s a surprise, my parents abandoned me and my siblings at the behest of the church or cult that they and we were born and raised in.

I went to YouTube, my main hiding place, to look. I started with a search for co-dependency because that was a term I’d come across on YouTube, that I vaguely understood and identified with. I found a few different content creators who came so close to having the information I needed. It was just out of reach. I kept looking, searching, and finally found Jesus. Not for real, but it feels like the second coming of Jesus. The content creator is called Tim Fletcher. He is a trauma and addiction counselor. He speaks extensively about complex trauma and its effects on human development and how traumatized people come to misunderstand how to be with themselves, with other people, and with life. Complex trauma is what happens in the brain when there is so much pain that literal parts of our personalities detach from the rest, and don’t develop along with the others. I’d found it, I’d found the part of me that was missing. The part I recognized in that instructor. The something I knew I should be but just am not, yet. It is this estrogen driven part of my personality, my emotions, my ability to feel and understand my feelings and to communicate to others how I feel in a straightforward and productive way. I realized that I had, since babyhood, stuffed my feelings down, never expressing them, and to relive the tension of them in my body, I masturbated. I have been masturbating to relieve emotional tension since I was 2 years old! I had never allowed myself to feel big negative emotions. I’d always justified others bad behavior toward me with feelings that I must deserve it somehow. My mom said I didn’t throw tantrums at 2 or beyond and I never remember becoming angry at things that definitely should have made me angry as a child. I’d never felt jealousy until I met the man mentioned above. I didn’t recognize it for the feeling it was when I felt it. I had to analyze it to comprehend that I was feeling jealousy.

I’d learned emotional co-dependency as I’d grown up. Which is “reading” other people’s emotions and moods, and adjusting my behavior accordingly, never doing things to upset them and never expressing my own negative feelings to them, in a straightforward and productive way, about their behavior toward me. In fact, my most dominant thought patterns, the emotionally contained testosterone driven ones, had taken the lead and I’d become manipulative. But, because I never felt my own emotions, I didn’t have the ability to understand other’s big emotions. I never had a filter between my thoughts and what came out of my mouth, because I didn’t have the ability to feel how my words might make another person feel. I am a bitch, not purposefully, but, as a natural consequence of my trauma. As I got older, I realized that what I said often made others uncomfortable, so I isolated even more. I remember being easily hurt by things others said to me, little things. Also, I was somewhat simplistic, so I said things, perfectly seriously, and people thought I was joking so they laughed at it, I felt like they were laughing at me. It hurt so I isolated even more.

I think that many boys, with testosterone dominant brains, are traumatized at varying stages of their emotional development. They are taught to stuff their emotions, being told that boys don’t cry, until their emotions get so intense that they explode in anger. Then, they are not taught how to deal with that properly. According to Tim Fletcher, one should never solve a problem while in one’s feelings. One should feel their feelings, process them, do things to get them out, like move the body, calm down, then when the emotions are felt and gone, solve the problem, fix whatever is wrong that caused the negative emotions. Sometimes there is nothing to fix, sometimes we’re told “no” and need to feel, understand and process our feelings about it but can do nothing about it and that is called a boundary. To illustrate, when a child’s parent tells them no more cookies and the child gets upset and cries, the feelings are valid, the crying is good, it is a sad situation, but it is still a no. The best thing to do is hug the child, stay with them, let them know that it’s okay to be sad, help them calm down with touch and rocking and other soothing behaviors. To get back to the main point, some boys never learn to understand their own feelings, instead, processing them in unhealthy ways like I did. I’ve heard a mom who talks to several moms of toddler boys that say that their toddlers boys are very interested in stimulating their own genitals, which I think is not developmentally appropriate for that age, and may be the beginnings of processing their emotions in that unhealthy way. Maybe because of the tendency that Helen Fisher saw in testosterone driven brains to be emotionally contained, many boys’ emotions aren’t even noticed, and they slowly get more emotionally unsettled by little things over and over, unexpressed, and undealt with, until they get so big and intense that they have to come out, and they seem to come out of nowhere. Perhaps it is so incomprehensible to people around them when they’ve been seemingly “good” or quiet for so long, then react hugely to the smallest thing. This reaction causes the emotions to be mishandled, the boys are shamed for expressing themselves in ways that seem inappropriate for the seemingly small difficulty they are having, and boys slowly learn in all these different ways that expressing how they feel about circumstances and the behavior of others toward them is unacceptable. So, they stop, they become emotionally immature. Indeed, I have heard women complain online about their “toddler husbands” grown men that act on their feelings because they were never taught how to control themselves while feeling their perfectly natural feelings.

I sometimes wonder if these so called “toddler husbands” are, like me, just starting to relax enough to let themselves feel and understand their emotions. Perhaps after getting married, they are finally comfortable enough with another person to feel that their feelings might be accepted and validated, so they, in their lack of understanding, just go with their feelings, doing or not doing as their feelings dictate. Dishes need done? An adult who is emotionally mature might do them, even if they do not feel like it, but an emotionally immature adult, or “toddler adult” wouldn’t because they don’t feel like it. They haven’t let themselves feel too much, so don’t know to control themselves despite their feelings.

According to Tim Fletcher, when someone is traumatized out of a part of their personality, it causes shame about that part of themselves, so they need external validation about it to remain somewhat mentally stable. Healthy, not traumatized adults should not feel this shame. They should know themselves, and like or at least accept themselves for who they are. They should understand their own strengths and weaknesses and be humble and willing to listen to and learn from others. They should not feel that they are better than others or worse than others. In fact, it is unhealthy to compare ourselves to and measure and judge ourselves against others. Be you, love you for who you are, you are unique and no one else can be you.

So, what does all this have to do with the modern divide between men and women in the dating a relationships sphere? Everything. Recently, after my brain started using its estrogen thought processes, I started to see how it is all connected. The “Manosphere,” “Red Pill” content mentioned above is a somewhat simplistic view of traditional relationships. And from all I have been able to learn of traditional 50’s middle- and upper-class heterosexual, romantic relationships, they seem to be very emotionally co-dependent, as well as materially co-dependent. They were emotionally co-dependent because boys were socialized, in my opinion and probably everyone who understands complex trauma, they were traumatized out of understanding their feelings and communicating their own emotions in healthy ways, so, women learned how to not upset men, they learned to read them, and be very careful to never say how they felt about their husbands behavior if it would upset him. They learned to manipulate, walk on eggshells. They did not have much freedom to take care of themselves economically. For women, specifically those that Manosphere and Red Pill refer to, middle and upper-class white women, wife was a job, being a wife was stability. Wives became mamas to their emotionally immature husbands and to their kids. They were house slaves in many households, popping out babies, working from dawn til dusk, and some were even on cocaine, or so I’ve been told.

According to Tim Fletcher, adult humans are supposed to be able to solve about 95% of our own problems. Problems like validation, which is supposed to come from inside, from a knowledge that you matter as much as anyone else, and from an understanding of yourself and loving and accepting yourself for who you are. We are supposed to learn in childhood and as teens how to solve our interpersonal problems and conflicts. We are supposed to be taught personal care and self-care, such as preparing simple meals and doing our own laundry. We are supposed to be able to provide for our physical needs like food, shelter and transportation, within fair societies. And, most importantly, we are supposed to learn to feel and understand our emotions, but not act on what our feelings tell us to do. We are supposed to learn to calm ourselves down, in healthy ways, and to rationally solve the problems that caused feelings to arise in us. For women, we are not supposed to sit around, stagnating, like the princess in a fairy tale until prince charming comes along and saves us from the big bad world, and from our own bad feelings. This is a fantasy we have been sold in the modern world and look where it's gotten us. And for men, a woman is not supposed to become your wife, then take care of you as your mother would. If a man and woman, or any two consenting adults, choose to form a long-term relationship with each other, that does not mean that their individuality ends. They still will do things separately, and healthy men and women will be okay with their partner doing as they wish because they will have the stability within themselves to know that they do not own their partner and that they will be okay and can take care of themselves without their partner. And if their partner decides to leave the relationship, they will not take it personally, as if it was a failing on their part that they could not keep the partner, because, it is not, you tried, hopefully, they tried, and it did not work out.

Our modern society teaches us from our most tender years that we are not good enough in some ways, and in other ways, we are often told that we’re so good that we begin to think the excellence makes us better than others, or more deserving of life’s goods than they are. These messages leave holes in us, spaces that we try to fill with external validation in adulthood. Often, we try to be “good enough” by being everything that we were raised to think makes us good enough to be cared for. For women, this often means working ourselves to the bone for many children. We can feel that if we aren’t doing for others, almost constantly, that we’ll never be enough. For men, it is often told to them that they will be loved and cared about by others if they can provide a luxurious or high-status life for a wife and children. When, in reality, you have inherent value just because you are a person. You and I, if we were raised in more fair, human centered systems, would perhaps feel that we are enough, and that we will be okay if not everyone likes us, and we will be okay if we are not above everyone else. It is okay to be you, in fact, it is relaxing and fun to be you, or at least, I think it is relaxing and fun to be me, without constantly looking to be better than others, to be the center of attention, to be liked by everyone.

This is what, I think, caused the change, and disconnect. Women were not well educated, they did not have freedom, they had to cater to the whims of traumatized men. Then, the tides turned, women had enough of their role as caterers, they fought for their rights to be treated as the adults that we are. Women became educated, more and more. We were allowed to solve our own economic problems. According to Helen Fisher, estrogen driven brain functions, which are what makes a person expressive, are primarily dominant in women. So, women develop their ability to feel and express quite naturally, and we were beginning to really develop our problem solving and logic. Many of us, also, aren’t taught how to express ourselves to others in healthy ways, we learn to manipulate still, but we no longer have to put up with bad behavior from men just to survive. We are succeeding, and men are falling behind.

So, the divide is that women’s logic is developing, and we are free agents, but men and boys are still being told that boys don’t cry. Women have it all, seemingly, the best of both worlds, but men are being left behind in the way that so many people have been left behind, learning to feel, understand and express our emotions in healthy ways.

It is not healthy to “read” the emotions of another and change our behavior to not upset them. That stops you from feeling and understanding your own feelings. It is healthy to feel hurt by something a friend does toward you, feel the hurt, feel the pain, understand what you didn’t like, get the feeling out of your body by movement, then, approach your friend calmly and let them know kindly that their words or actions caused you hurt and could they not do or say that toward you. Remembering, if they do it again, that people take a few reminders to encode things in their long-term memory, so say it a few times, and if the behavior still doesn’t change, then, be stable enough in your own sense of self and love yourself enough to walk away from the pain and stop the relationship.

What happens if you don’t tell your friend that their behavior causes you hurt and your friend does not know how to “read” your emotions? They don’t know, so they can’t change their behavior. They keep doing the bad behavior. You get resentful, and you unintentionally do things you know they don’t like, and they get resentful, you keep pushing each other’s buttons and pushing each other away, until, poof, no more friendship. Make conflict and learn to resolve the conflict. Conflict avoidance and not conflict and resolution, is what ends relationships.

I’ve said a lot here and would like to add a little more. In my recent journey to get to the bottom of my own bad behavior toward others, I’ve noticed that I have to dig through layers and layers of thought processes before I understand what I felt that prompted my bad behavior. It is a long learning process for us newbie adults, be patient with yourself if you are going to go on this journey. Don’t stop yourself from feeling, and most importantly, don’t criticize yourself harshly for the mistakes you make. I’m trying to not criticize myself and feel hopeless because of the people I’ve unintentionally pushed away in my learning process. It is painful, but worth it, do it for you. If you’d like better explanations, check out Tim Fletcher on YouTube.

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