Expert: Kriss Mitchell, M.Ed, CRC, CNHP - 1/1/2011

Question
I'm not quite sure if it's a good move asking my question here, as I never used that sort of site before, but 2011 just got there and it started with me being confronted on the confusion I feel about my current relationship. I stumbled upon this site, and said to myself that it wouldn’t hurt asking away…

Long story short, me and my boyfriend have been together for 6 months or so. We do the long-distance thing, I'm in university and he is looking for a job or for an interesting thing to study in. I'm 19, he's 21. Our relationship started when I left my ex (who I, admitedly, still had feelings for) to be with him. I did that for a bunch of reasons: among them, I was depressed in that relationship, and felt I loved my new boyfriend more (we had been friends for about a year and shared a very deep bond already). It was very hard for me to leave my ex: I was afraid of how he’d react, and didn’t know if I should be leaving a relationship that was alright to try building something new with someone else. I decided to do so, however, and when I broke up with my ex, he threw a fit that I will never forget, sobbing, asking me how I could do this to him, and begging me to give him another chance. That left me heartbroken and guilt-ridden for a long time, especially because it probably seemed so sudden for my ex.

At the beginning, my current boyfriend was very supportive. He would worry if I wouldn't give him news, listen to me, comfort me. He would accept it if somehow I wasn't okay or was confused about my emotions. He was very passionnate and loving and even though I was hurt from the events, I had the feeling that this new relationship would be great once everything had calmed down.

However, that changed. Two or three months after my breakup, I was still going through a lot of pain. I'm a very sensible person so I was still sad and feeling guilty. What changed is that suddenly (or so it seemed to me), my new boyfriend wouldn't want to hear about what I was going through. He asked me to completely stop talking about my ex, and started getting frustrated or discouraged when I'd be sad. When I asked what was going on all of a sudden, he said that he wasn't strong enough to hear all that stuff and that I was dragging him down. I stopped talking to him about my problems almost completely, turning to a therapist instead (which has helped me, but not as much as I would have hoped it did…mostly she just listened and commented a little). I was afraid he’d make a depression if I kept having trouble with myself.

Things haven’t changed in the past months. Now, I don't understand our relationship. At all. We don't see each other very often, but when we do, I'm almost systematically disappointed. When we're together, we constantly argue. I often get very upset and eventually cry when he criticizes me too much about the way I do things (such as cooking, interrupting him when he talks, etc.). He usually then gets mad and says he can't say anything without upsetting me. I mean, I've been told many times that I don't take criticsm well. It's a fact, I can't take it, because it hurts me a lot and makes me feel horrible. However, I keep feeling that he's being self-centered because he keeps criticizing even if he knows it's hurting me. As a result, I'm often mad at him, and I don’t know how to act when I’m around him. I don’t know what to say, or do. When I just let myself be natural, he ends up criticizing me. I can’t find any balance between watching my every move and letting go. It’s very frustrating and I’m constantly sad and hurt by his behavior.

Also, when we see each other, he acts like he's bored after just a few hours, even if we haven’t seen each other for weeks. And since I always have missed him for a long time, I often tell him I love him, hold his hand, kiss him, hug him, etc. He, however, hardly ever does. When he says he loves me, it's always a quickly tossed « Love you too ». The contrast with his early behavior in our relationship is enormous. He used to be passionnate, supportive, understanding. Now, he's cold, he criticizes me all the time, and he doesn't want to hear about my problems. He says he does, however : when I look like I’m not okay, he asks what’s going on…but doesn’t really want to hear the answer as he always seems mad when I explain to him what's the matter.

I have become a bit sceptical about this relationship, since I've got a constant feeling that my boyfriend doesn't care a bit about my emotions, yet, when I ask him if he loves me and if he cares about how I feel, he sincerely answers yes. We also sometimes share very sweet moments that make me feel like we’re indeed in love. Those rare moments always keep me from ending our relationship since they give me hope that maybe we’ll get better. I'm just so very confused. I need help to figure out who's fault is it that our relationship isn't going well. If I can sort this out, maybe we’ll be able to make things better…

Answer
Hi Esther,
I'm very glad that you wrote and hope I can help you some with your confusion.  It is always hard to understand when someone's words and actions don't match.  In my opinion, it is always better to go with the actions rather than the words because it is always easier for someone to say something than for them to do something.

In some ways, it sounds as if your new boyfriend was more about the conquest than he is about the existing relationship.  If you look at the history of mankind, men have always been the hunters and there is tendency for them to enjoy the hunt much more than to enjoy the spoils.  When relationships become abusive, it is never a wise choice to stay in them.  If you can't take criticism, you have a couple of choices.  You either get enough healing to be able to withstand a critical nature in someone else or you get out of the relationship.  For you, being connected to someone who is so critical isn't a good fit for you.  It really isn't for anyone and you don't seem to be able to recognize that this isn't a good relationship for you.  You seem to believe that his behavior has something to do with your behavior...more than likely because of his criticism.  The criticism itself tends to make the one being criticized believe that if we just do what the critical person wants, everything will be fine.  The real truth is that you probably will never be able to make this person happy.  He flows in and out of happiness depending on what is going on inside him, rather than depending on changes in your behavior.  Rather than spending a lot of time trying to figure out what is wrong with this relationship and fix it, it probably would be more beneficial to figure out why you want to stay and why you are allowing this fellow to determine what you do with your life, who you are with and how you feel about yourself.

When you work with women, as I have, who have been, are in or are close to someone in an abusive relationship, the question of why it is so hard to leave inevitably comes up.  I thought I would share with you a little bit of technical information that might help answer that question.  The question is not an easy one to answer and to fully understand some of the considerations that go into these decisions you need to understand the concepts of conditioning, addiction and our basic need for love.

Let's start with the relatively easy one....our basic need for love.  In many places throughout scripture we learn that as human beings, we are created for relationship and for love.  Back as far as the story of Adam and Eve we find God saying that it is not good for man to be alone, that he should have a companion.  In more recent times a study was done by a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School that basically showed human beings being happier and healthier if they have love in their life as well as approval from others.   In short, love is crucial to the existence of human beings. It is as necessary to a good quality of life as the air we breathe.

We also know that the withdrawal of love is torturous to the human being.  You can see that very well when you look at children who are disciplined by a parent who ignores them as a form of punishment.  According to Kelly Coutee,

"In early childhood, a parent can provide negative mirroring by being contemptuous of the child or by withdrawing love as punishment. During this developmental phase, fear that the parent will leave if the child is not good enough (abandonment fear) can later cause shame to be experienced in perceived abandonment. "

When we withdraw love from a child they will do almost anything to restore it, which is why uninformed parents find it an effective punishment.

As adults, we are affected the same way, especially if we have grown up with a lack of love and/or acceptance in our lives.  That lack eventually forms a deep seated belief system that effects the way we look at things, people and life until that belief is changed.  If our self esteem is challenged, if we believe that we aren't good enough, if we believe that only this person will love us or we have been made to feel responsible for the good feeling and well being of another person, we will cling to that which we know rather than embrace that which we don't know.  There is a colleague of mine who practices Emotionally Focused Couples therapy and his comment is "women don't leave abusive relationships because the negative attachment that they have is better than the perceived isolation they believe they will have if they leave."  That makes a lot of sense.

The next part of this equation is the idea of conditioning.  Operant conditioning is a type of conditioning where the use of consequences has the effect of modifying behavior.  Abusive relationships use operant conditioning by the abuser to keep the victim controlled.  Resistance is soon worn down as the victim is conditioned to respond to tone of voice, facial looks, physical positions or other things that the abuser might use to control behavior.  In the beginning, those indicators would be followed by action, but after the conditioning has been accomplished, only the threat is necessary.

The last piece of the puzzle comes under the heading of addiction.....gambling addiction to be specific.  Addiction to gambling is not an addiction that is predicated on a substance such as drugs or alcohol.  In substance addiction there is a physiological dependence that the body develops in relation to the substance which then creates symptoms of physical withdrawal when the substance is removed.  Gambling has no such physiological quality.  So why is it one of the most difficult addictions to break?  Because it employs Intermittent Reinforcement.  B.F. Skinner discovered a very interesting concept with intermittent reinforcement in that  behavior that is reinforced intermittently is much more difficult to extinguish than behavior that is reinforced continuously.

Intermittent reinforcement is best described by the example of a slot machine.  Slot machines pay off at intermittent times and in variable amounts.  If you have ever had the experience of interacting with one of these machines, can you remember feeling that you got?  Just imagine.....you pull the handle and 13 coins fall into the tray.  You are excited!  The next three or four pulls of the handle don't result in anything, however the next one results in 5 coins.  You aren't as excited, but you begin to anticipate that within the next few pulls of the handle, you could get a return that is as exciting or better than the first one.  Wow!  The anticipation is exhilarating and you continue to play.  With each pull of the handle your hope increases that the big payoff is just a few pulls of the handle away!  Many individuals can sit at a slot machine for hours and hours with the anticipation of "the big payoff"!

Now with that in mind, remembering how important love is to us and understanding that an abuse victim lives in a very controlled environment, what would happen if the "payoff" was love?  How addicting would it be if that "payoff" came at intermittent times...perhaps one day the abuser does something nice and then it happens again in three days.  Then it happens again in a week.  There's an incident a few days later but then s/he does something nice the next day, then again in ten days and then again in four days.  Imagine too that there are variable amounts of  love/kindness/happiness that range from just a ceasing from abuse to going out to dinner or a bouquet of flowers.  The victim's anticipation for the next "payoff" rises and falls, but s/he is still looking for the next time......s/he lives for the next time.  For all intents and purposes, staying in an abusive relationship is a form of gambling addiction.  The victim is gambling for the big payoff that seldom if ever comes.

Dog trainers understand this kind of reinforcement very well as it is a planned training schedule that works effectively to increase positive behavior in the animals.  Trainers make sure that although there are treats that are given for good behavior or positive reaction, but these treats are given at specific intervals, not each time and not at equal intervals.

Conditioning is a part of how we learn as human beings, but it can either have positive or negative results depending on the scenario.   Intermittent reinforcement  when combined with the giving and withdrawal of love is traumatizing and destructive when combined with an interpersonal relationship.  It results in a skewed connectedness that is on one hand painful, yet on the other hand provides a false hope for change.  In this state, individuals find it very difficult to leave a relationship.  They believe there is hope, yet that hope is built on an addictive pattern of behavior that will only continue to cycle until someone breaks the pattern.  It is not until hope is gone that an individuals feel free of guilt or responsibility to the relationship and often makes the decision to break free.  Add other conditions such as Stockholm Syndrome and/or PTSD and the confusion escalates and the decisions become more difficult and more complicated to make.

Hopefully this has helped to answer the question of why it is so hard to leave a relationship that is abusive.  Hope is a powerful thing, as it should be.  It seems as though you are living for those few sweet moments, but ignoring the majority of the other time spent with this person.  Hopefully, as you have read through this information, you can see what is holding you in this situation and help you make some quality decisions about staying or leaving.

Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance.  Have a blessed New Year and I hope that you find the best answer to your situation.

Blessings, Kriss Mitchell
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