IRRELATIONSHIP: How we use Dysfunctional Relationships to Hide from Intimacy

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Mark B. Borg. IRRELATIONSHIP: How we use Dysfunctional Relationships to Hide from Intimacy

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Special Praise for Irrelationship

“Irrelationship crosses the frontier of self-help into a new area the authors call ‘self-other help.’ The DREAM Sequence used for recovery from irrelationship is designed for couples to work together and help them reconnect with the wonderful chemistry and emotional connections that initially drew them to one another.”

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John’s reaction and the unease Greta felt afterward are clues to the fragility and costliness of the security binding them. This brief disturbance also illustrates the fragility of a relationship that requires an imitation of love that cannot accommodate spontaneity or fluidity. The willingness to accept this type of tenuous agreement mirrors the delicacy of the early childhood bargain John and Greta made with their parents to manage the uncertainty of the environment into which they were born. The tragic outcome of this pattern is that we accept a false kind of love—love that has no flow, no reciprocity, and no room for empathy or compassion. Equally unsettling, we learn that being taken care of is shaky and unreliable and even expect what we call loving relationships to be a series of crises.

People compelled to seek this kind of delicate relationship have an uncanny ability to find their complementary counterpart. When a prospect is identified, hopeful conversations follow as they assess each other’s commitment to a carefully defined but static irrelationship role. Ironically, their excitement builds if each person starts to feel that the other can be depended upon to avoid the cardinal sin of looking for mutuality, spontaneity, intimacy, and emotional investment.

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