Pulling Apart the Ties that Bind
Disclaimer and Reference Piece
Before I begin this journey into my own experiences around Marriage, Commitment, Infidelity and Separation, it is extremely important to underscore it all with the fact that I am a very safe, supportive, loving, kind and accepting man. So these experiences MUST be altered to suit each individual person’s dynamic.
There is an infinite number of variations to the way different relationships intertwine and operate. These can be human specific as well as time and circumstance specific. But the MASSIVE underscore here is that if you are in an unsafe, volatile and abusive situation, then please seek alternate views and expert advice as I can’t speak from that perspective. And I hope you find peace and a safe resolution to those nightmarish circumstances.
I reinforce that these are my experiences and in no way substitute for real life therapy or situationally specific advice.
This is about the temptations and mental dynamics that play out when a peaceful, balanced, deeply respectful and loving partnership is handed up for something seemingly better.
The Meaty Bits
Interpersonal Relationships… the never-ending challenges that can be as constructive as they are destructive and as warm as they can be cold.
The main dynamic I’d like to cover is that of the Long Term Marriage style of relationship as that is where my experience is bedded.
The beginning is all jam packed full of promises, dopamine, forever’s and bold statements of longevity, Nesting, kids and long term investments. But really, they are commitments made amidst a barrage of brain chemicals, excitement and unknowns. What are we actually promising? We are promising that we love the other person so much that ‘No Matter What’ it is that comes along to tempt us later on, we will ignore it and stay true to the course we’ve set out on. But we don’t know what those temptations are, what they will transport themselves in/on, or ride beside as a legion of support that sparkles and glitters when all around you seems conquered, dull and mundane. It is a promise with an unknown quantity or limit.
My experience tells that if your home base is so well and truly catered for, that the human condition tells us that there are ‘Better’ situations we could find ourselves in. As Esther Perel said in her book, *The State of Affairs*, “We are often not looking to be happy, We’re looking to be happier”. It’s completely natural for humans to grow complacent with the things that they’ve had or been able to take for granted for a substantial amount of time. The attraction of the ‘Affair’, or other person, comes from the things that are not satisfied in the current situation. These could quite simply be 1 or 2 things, even if everything else is completely taken care of.
So you’re a remarkable, seamless, dedicated provider who works tirelessly to make sure that everything your family needs is taken care of. You have a warm loving home, you are saving and spending your spare money on renovating this family home so that it is more liveable and comfortable. And you’ve been doing this for over a decade… You choose jobs to be in roles that offer more family time so the other person in the relationship has a chance to chase and follow their dreams as well. After all, it’s both of your collective ‘YOLO”… There have been times when the kids were young that everything fell on you to be the provider. As the Dynamic shifts and the kids become less dependent, there needs to be space for both of you to peruse career aspirations, so the adjustment is never rigidly set in favour of one or the other… (Wage inequality does offer significant hurdles to this situation… which is a shame and has a strong impact unfortunately).
The Home Fires are burning, there’s good food on the table, investment houses, bike rides on the weekends and comfort, a whole lotta love, laughter and stability. But there is this one unsatisfied desire. This could be one of a Bazillion things, but it is unsatisfied…
There is the weakness in the Castle Wall…
If you’re lucky and surrounded by actual real respectful friends (male or female), who genuinely care for your well-being without self-seeded desires, they might offer a way to satiate that unmet need without destabilising the infinite parts of your life that are happy and beautifully catered for. But all it takes is for there to be someone with their own unmet needs, or attraction, or blinkered self-serving desires, to create a massive risk gap. One is open enough to speak of the needs that are not met… The other burrows down on those unmet needs and presents themselves as the solution.
Boom…!
There is the juncture between a solution to a single (or small segment of) unmet need/needs and the massive ecosystem of all the things taken for granted… and the wide eyed, emotionally open/naïve/time weakened human with a fuzzy headspace that brings a lack of logical foresight, finds themselves on a perilous chasm’s edge.
The desire for even a small chance to satisfy all the things unknown and desired, create the brain chemicals that are almost impossible for all the loving peace and harmony chemicals to compete with. This is where the ability to step back and evaluate from above the madness that is about to ensue, is the make or break. Emotional Maturity here is critical but so often lacking or ignored. These temptations come most often from those who are already within the walls of self-defence. They are the seemingly safe ‘friends’. Therefore, the friends we choose are far more crucial to our overall mental health, safety and overall well-being, than knowing how to defend ourselves from our enemies will ever be. It only takes one self-centred, self-serving, inside the drawbridge person to devastate a life and a loving family.
The Deconstruction Instability Switch
During the deconstruction phase of the relationship, the ‘mental crazy period’ is carried by different sides of the break up, at different times.
While the ‘pulling away’ partner is in a state of uphoria, the other tries to keep everything together while in a state of panic. The chaos is almost entirely borne by the one being abandoned…
But once that step has been taken and the bond is broken, and the ‘outside threat’ is seemingly successful in the infiltration into the ‘bond that tied’, the chaos for the person of interest begins.
All the support and infrastructure network that held the vast majority of life together falls apart, then the glaring reality of the fragile mono faceted connection with the ‘solution to the narrow unmet need’ becomes very apparent. The pressure on the new union is MASSIVE.
Not only does the newly formed partnership need to live up to everything it promised in the shiny ‘solution’ phase, but it also has to now cope with all the real life shit that was previously not loaded onto it. This could be kids, mortgages, groceries, personal illness, life logistics, aging parents care, split homes, ex-partner interactions and the natural highs and lows of life. All the things the grounded partner had in the bag as being committed for the long haul now become added to the backpack of the ‘fresh’ and ‘sparkly’ new person… then one would hope they are up to the task and have more substance than just the ‘fun stage’… The risk is MASSIVE but is rarely assessed logically by either of the participants in the initial interaction/honeymoon phase.
This ‘New’ Person must not only offer a solution to the initial problem, but they must now offer all the support and couple cohesion that the previous dissolved partnership(s) had sorted. And do they care for the other’s kids the way the last partner did? Or is their interest mono focused? More often the initial attraction had no vision or acceptance of the overall circumstance that came with the object of desire. They had barely even considered the other person’s kids or over all life situation when they were flirting in the office at work.
(I must reiterate here that in some cases, the new partner will care more than the last one did. If there was abuse in any of the previous situations, then this does NOT apply and please do not read into this as some reason to stay in an abusive situation… seek help and get out when and if safe to do so).
There is a right and a wrong way to break up, and swinging from one partner, directly to the next is perilous. But I understand the attraction to this path forward.
There is FEAR, so much fear… in being alone
There is fear that sitting in a room with one’s self will truthfully reveal all the things you blamed on the ex-partner, had something to do with you, either by the bystander dynamic or the active participant. There is the fear that the next partnership you end up in will be worse than the one you’re trying to better. There is the fear of being alone forever. Finding the next bus and booking a seat seems to offer some surety and security that there is at least a known way forward…
BUT
After sharing a decade + of time together, experienced so many varied and wonderful/terrible experiences together, a ‘swing to the next vine’ style break up is extremely disrespectful… to both partners…
It’s disrespectful to the ‘person being left’ because of all they did through both the happy and sad times, the easy and the brutal times, the scarce and the bountiful times… the commitment, love and support offered… there has been a lot of water under the bridge and a cold shoulder to those many deeply connected couple experiences is a surface action that ignores all the fingers that grip on below the surface. And those fingers will grip on whether you ignore them or not. They will bite later.
It’s disrespectful to yourself too because you have not given yourself the chance and the time to decompress from one deeply loving, entwined, and dynamically connected ecosystem, before attempting to put roots down in the next garden. There is a lot to process, untangle, and pay respects to, before your roots are ready to bed down again. There needs to be a time to rebalance, restabilise, find out who you’ve become after so much time. If you don’t take this time, you’ll be trying to break the ties that bind at the same time as you’re attempting to become entangled with another… can you see the dangerous position you’ve just willingly landed yourself in?
I believe, in the case of a balanced and loving relationship, that if this ‘new solution’ person never arrived on the scene, pressed their agenda and presented as being available, then the ‘big breakup’ would never even be considered. OR alternate solutions to the ‘unmet need’ would be explored such as ‘plutonic business partnerships’ and the like.
Fresh Start
So it’s scary to begin again, but it’s even more scary to live out your only life bathing in mediocrity… The Challenge is to weigh up the Benefits VS Cost with a level head at a time when one is swimming in a sea of hormones, dopamine, and physical attraction to the new and shiny. It’s virtually impossible actually. Add to the melting pot our modern generation’s Entitled, Consumerist, Throw away mindset and means of living, and there is not much to turn the mind toward gratitude for the current relationship, no matter how truly amazing it might actually be.
It’s the duck in the bag VS the seemingly huge duck in the reeds just out of sight…
In Mid-Life, this is the biggest challenge we face. We don’t NEED each other to survive the way people did 1 or 2 generations ago. We have money, we can get by, there is support. While we are no where close to where we need to be in terms of equality, there is not the same gross amount of stigma toward women working and choosing their own destiny the way there was 50 years ago. There are options, often too many of them for both sexes.
I m ust be clear here. Even though I was devastated by my ex leaving me for another man, it was NEVER about ownership. I never owned her, and she didn’t own me.
It hurt like hell, but I will forever defend her right to choose the course of her own life, down to my very last breath.
If you find yourself in a situation where you are treated like a belonging and/or guilted into staying with manipulative tactics, this piece of writing does not apply to you…
In Summary
Choose your friends carefully… many will present as having your best interest at heart, but are in fact only offering themselves as a solution to the problem you’ve communicated as a way to press their own agenda.
Long term healthy relationships require constant investment and reaffirmation. Red flags include things you do that you know the other (*non controlling or abusive) person wouldn’t like to hear about. Making decisions that affect the family unit without open communication. White Lies to ‘Soften the Blow’. Or just blatant lies…
Remember that there has been significant personal investment from both parties into a long term partnership and if you really feel that you want to explore a different path in a way that includes separation, then the respectful thing to do is to be honest about it. It might be hard news to deliver. But the hurt from the discovery of deceit and betrayal is far far worse… There is a way to leave a long term relationship with all respect left in tact, and it involves a lot of transparent honesty.
And if you find yourself in the honoured position of being held in confidence during the decision making process of someone choosing one’s future path in life, be decent enough to hold that person’s overall life situation above your whimsical desires for a chance encounter with someone who would be otherwise ‘off the menu’…
Take time, give space, move slow and rationally. And if you’re wondering how to separate from your partner the ‘loving way’, simply ask yourself if the way you’re considering taking is respectful. Love = Respect.
When all is said and done, your life is yours and yours alone. Be proud of the way you lived it. No one else has to agree with you. Being strong enough to remove yourself from a relationship respectfully, ends up benefiting everyone. To stay and betray yourself is a tragedy. But to be enticed away from a wholesome and beautiful relationship by a short term fix, is a greater tragedy still.
Joey x
