Saturday, November 29, 2008

I Promise I Will Be Faithful: No You Won’t

Now why can’t some men and women keep that promise? Well there are many reasons but if we ignore the imprint then we are forced to look at the present for all the answers; whereas the current situation may provide only a few elements.

So what does that mean, the imprint? It means, say, for a man, that he needed love from his mother but all he got was indifference. That lack is imprinted, sealed by the unfulfilled need permanently. It lies on a lower strata so that no matter how loving the girlfriend is, he needs more. Why? Because the nagging, “I am not loved” lies below, agitating him to go elsewhere. And he will become known as a womanizer because he needs to seduce many women, all for the same ending, more infidelity. That, “I am not loved,” drives him every day.

With a woman who was never wanted by her father; that is, who left her feeling unwanted because he was so bound up in his own pain, she is a “sucker” for anyone who really shows he wants her. That need, “I am not wanted,” drives her and makes her give in immediately when a man looks at her and says he finds her beautiful. And yet, no matter how much a man wants her, she needs to seek out other men because “I am not wanted” continually drives her. She needs constant reassurance and assuaging.

A promise is a top level cortical expression; never a match for a deep-lying survival force. How do we know? Because when patients feel that need in all of its agony, they no longer have to promise anything; their body will do it for them. And when we see the huge amount of pain/force involved in experiencing the feeling we know how big a motivator it is.

None of this is conscious. The old need remains pristine pure but the person is never aware of it. The “promise to be faithful” sits on top of, “I can’t be faithful until my mother loves me.” After a sexual encounter, there is that nagging feeling of malaise, not being satisfied. And the person won’t be until he or she feels the real need in its exact early context. Every so-called fulfillment, every affair, after the time of the critical emotional window when need had to be fulfilled is, by definition, a symbolic fulfillment. That is why it is not really satisfying. Remember, that need in the first months of life meant survival as an intact human being. It had to be gated and repressed. Meanwhile, the feeling/need circulates in a sort of reverberating circuit seeking connection and never making it. If it were not symbolic, then one love affair should be satisfying.

That is why all compulsive behavior has to be repeated time and again. It doesn’t matter if its food, pain-killers or sex. Need dominates. It is a way of papering over pain. And because it is a temporary palliative, like a tranquilizer, it has to be done ad infinitum. Of course there are any number of other reasons. But many marital guide books cover those. It is just the imprint that is missing.

5 comments:

  1. As a person with BPD (self-diagnosed) and former primal patient I am interested in recent studies using oxytocin nasal spray treatment to (artificially) kick start a reconnection with the world. Liquid trust. You describe different scenarios in this post where trust is betrayed, each party acting out their own hidden needs, relationship be damned. I wonder if there isn't some "seeking out an oxytocin fix" component in common for the act outs?

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  2. wWhat it seems to me is that all of us are constantly trying to normalize. We take tranquilizers to boost serotonin when we lack enough of it and you may be right that we need an oxytocin fix from time to time. Good work. dr. janov

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  3. I do agree on the comparison with tranquilisers because some of us are in a constant need of stimulation, in need of different things ,and need to change.However,marital infidelity and lack of marital love does not make a great comparison.True,unfulfilled love can make a person be on the constant quest for this unfulfilled need.But that does not explain cases of infidelity where people had a loving atmospher while growing up.
    Dr.Pramod Mennen
    Homeopathy Physician

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  4. your statement about a girl/woman's falling for anyone who gives her some attention due to lack of love from her father grows old fast. Or maybe that is how women were purposely raised so to make them subservient as many in our society just see them as objects and not even actual people. As evidenced by whatever country it is that after the husband dies the women used to sit themselves on a pile of sticks and light them to perish.

    ReplyDelete

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Bailey Endowed Chair of Animal Well Being Science
Washington State University

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K.J.S. Anand, MBBS, D. Phil, FAACP, FCCM, FRCPCH, Professor of Pediatrics, Anesthesiology, Anatomy & Neurobiology, Senior Scholar, Center for Excellence in Faith and Health, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare System


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Editor