Detachment and Disappointment

When the people we love can’t be the people we need them to be.

“Blood is thicker than water.” What does that mean exactly? It seems to convey a sense that family ties – those formed from the merging of biological cells – have a certain significance over the ties that we form through circumstance and choice with friends, lovers and colleagues. It suggests a sort of privilege, one that commands loyalty over and above the others.

What we are talking about here are expectations and entitlements; what we feel bound to offer our parents, our siblings and our children and what we seek in return. It is what our hopes are built on. But what of capacities and resources? What about when we look to our family to help us through a crisis, to make sense of something difficult that has happened to us, or to repair a relationship between us that has broken down? What happens when they are unable to provide us with the safety net that we both need and expect?

It is a difficult moment to find ourselves at. There is pain, disappointment and confusion.

 

The importance of our attachment relationships

Our attachment figures – those with whom we form a bond, who take care of us and allow us to take care of them – are the bedrock of our existence as a social being in the world. They are what anchor us. They acknowledge our presence, our pain and our joy in the world. They validate our experiences, many of them shared with each other. And by sensing and responding to our needs they provide an important regulatory function. And that remains true beyond childhood and into adulthood.

 

And the pain of their absence

We are learning more and more about the lifelong impacts of early childhood experiences where there is chaos and trauma, where the child’s needs are unattended to, ignored, violated. For those infants who have a chaotic or traumatised childhood, there is a vast gulf between what they need and what they get. It can lead to delayed development, chronic health problems, a fragmented sense of self and acute difficulties forming relationships.

But even when the parenting is “good enough” (to borrow that lovely phrase from Donald Winnicott, which continues to be a lifeline for anxious and harassed parents), attachment relationships can get tested and stretched. I want to reflect on what happens then, what challenges this presents us with and what sense we might make of it.

 

When there is a shock to the system

Bereavements, relationship breakdowns, ill health and other difficult life events are well known testers of the limits and bounds of our relational support system. Suddenly we have needs and emotions that we may not have expressed before. We need someone to sit with us in our pain, we need to be listened to – really listened to. We are distraught, we are angry, we are bitter, we are inconsolable. In those times, being changed requires others to relate to us differently. It requires the relationship to change and that may not be possible. How can they now be something they may never have been for us before?

 

When we change – and so do our needs

In our family, in our work and social communities we often acquire particular roles that become an important part of how people see us and relate to us. We may be the Organiser, the one who galvanises people into action and gets things going. We may be the Fun One who provides the gaiety, injects humour, makes light of things. We may be the Helper, the one who jumps into action or slips in quietly when there is a problem to be solved or advice is needed. Or we may be the Counsellor, always ready to listen, empathise and observe. I’m sure you can recognise yourself in one of these characters.

But what happens when we need to be different – when we are tired or depleted and can’t stir others into action, when we are hit by a crisis of our own and need someone else’s shoulder to cry on? This can often disturb the particular balance on which these relationships are founded. Trying to break out of these roles, even temporarily, can cause confusion and resistance, even if it is not a conscious response. Others want to helpful but it’s not the way this thing between us has gone and they may need time to respond. And in the gap in between we feel neglected and missed.

 

When they change – and so do their capacities

Whilst we still need in adulthood what we sought from our attachment figures in childhood, our paths through life can diverge dramatically. We choose partners, careers, we have children (or not), we find faiths (or lose them). All of which produce subtle – or dramatic – changes to our sense of self from which we relate to others in the world. And that may include those closest to us. In the enduring relationships of our lives we can be the same but different with each other, there is flex and tolerance for the shifts in our identities. That is what we hope for, but it is not always the case.

 

When the thing that bind us together is the thing that pushes us apart

Relationships produce ruptures, that is an inevitable consequence of being primarily social beings. But if the rupture is with the person we rely on for support, when we come face-to-face with each other’s pain, then we are at an impasse. Here familial privilege becomes necessity – they are the only ones who can truly resolve with us what has broken between us. In an ideal world we can express our emotions with each other, talk about how we have been hurt, reach a better understanding of our mutual impact on each other (for better and for worse). And we often can, but not always.

In our social relationships we can spread the load a bit more. Just as we have roles within our own friendship groups, other people perform particular roles for us – there’s the one we go to when we want hard nosed practical advice, the one we go to when we need to let our hair down and lift our spirits, and the one we go to when we want someone to just listen to our sob story. Usually our friends are some combination of all of these, occasionally we find them all gloriously rolled into one.

But I think it is often difficult to accept that with our family, particularly when we hit a crisis and we need them to dig as deep into their emotional wells as we are having to do ourselves. What is it about the blood that makes it thicker than water? Why do we think that the ties borne out of a shared biology will, in the final reckoning, hold us?

I believe much of it comes down to our sense of shared experience and what that creates within and between us. Who else will really get my story than those that have played a major part in it? But while we share experiences, our individual responses are different. They are shaped by temperament and how our own individual psyche makes sense of what happens to us. Our coping strategies can be as variable as the colour of our eyes, the shade of our hair, the length of our limbs.

 

So what now?

When this failure happens, we are often left with a myriad of emotions, many of which will echo those of our early years: sadness, disappointment, anger, rejection, abandonment, despair. If we cannot find a way of communicating our needs and resolving the mismatch then we need to adjust to a new relationship. Or at least a relationship informed by a new experience, that of having sought but not found. This is a loss, to be acknowledged, borne and accepted. Whilst it is hopefully not the end of the relationship, it is the end of the relationship we had hoped for. But also the start of something we can both manage. We may find a relationship bound by what we share now for example – our passions and hobbies, our experiences as parents – and this can bring new opportunities. And once the disappointment has subsided, our acceptance can bring relief  as we close that gap between what we expect and what we get.