Shared Anxieties – Unconscious Collusion in Gay Relationships

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Perturbing the Relationship & Disturbing the Fear.

If this working hypothesis is accurate as a way to explain how a couple is behaving toward each other, then making the unconscious conscious (helping both partners become aware of their shared anxieties/defences) and supporting the couple in finding ways to help them alleviate their shared anxieties is an effective treatment for a couple-in-conflict.

With new information about how the couple’s relationship “system” is working, will come more choice (and more responsibility) for managing changes in the relationship.

Some couples do not want change; it’s a scary thing. They will do all they can to achieve stalemate time and again.  No matter how horrible the stalemate is, it can be more familiar – and hence more comforting – than the possibility of change.

Both partners may have to make some changes in the way they think of their partner:-

• “Hoping that he will rescue me” has to change into, perhaps, “He is just as afraid as I am”.
• “He’s out to get me, just like my father did” has to change into, perhaps, “Although his behaviour can be familiar, he’s not my father and so we can respond to experiences differently”.
• “It’s always him who starts trouble” has to changed into, perhaps, “we collude together in making trouble for ourselves”.

In effect, we’re talking about helping each partner take back their own projection onto their partner (“he will rescue me”) and transforming it away from a hopeful fantasy into something more realistic and manageable … that each partner is the rescuer of themselves, and with this thought both partners might begin to be supportive of each other’s rescuing in a more realistic way.

Such change can be quite sad – who really wants to live knowing that their knight in shining armour is a fantasy.

Change is a loss as well as a gain. But when fantasy (or just plain “hope”) is getting in the way of happiness, then death to the hope must be brought, in order to allow realistic happiness to grown.

This can be the unpleasant-but-purposeful-job of the couple counsellor.

Final thought…

Every human being brings baggage with them into any new relationship.  

Some of the more fortunate ones of us will find a partner who either knows how to help us unpack it, or will learn how to unpack it as we do too…

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