We want to think of sibling relationships as being close and harmonious. Don’t we call a close friend a ‘sister’ or a ‘brother’? In sad fact, those friends may be closer to the ideal of the ‘brotherly’ relationship than our actual siblings.

For example, an accomplished woman with a PhD feels small and inconsequential because her brother was brought up as the family ‘hero’. He continues to rub his financial success in her face, and she hates him for it.

Another woman has supported her family financially for years, but her sister is known as the ‘good one’. No matter how hard she tries, she still feels as an ‘outsider’.

A brother and a sister, both successful and with loving families of their own, stop speaking to one another for years, after an apparently minor difference.

Research suggests that 33 — 45 per cent of adults say their relationship with a sibling is ‘distant’ or ‘rivalrous’.

Too close for love

It’s difficult to forge and maintain a close relationship. I work with many couples who struggle mightily to establish an ‘eye-to-eye’ [an I-to-I] bond. Spouse and spouse, parent and adult child, brother and sister all have similar problems. The underlying question is “How can I be my full self and also be fully with you?”

The process of growing up as human starts with, we assume, a sense of not-knowing—not knowing what our eyes are seeing, not knowing what our ears are hearing, not knowing how to manage our limbs. We feel safe only when, in mother’s arms, we smell her known smell, hear her known heartbeat. Then we are ‘at one’ with her. The famous psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott is quoted as saying, “There is no such thing as a baby—only a mother-and-baby together.” Perhaps the Garden of Eden is a metaphor for that blissful oneness. When baby becomes a toddler, she starts to be a separate person, capable of relationship.

Oneness is not a relationship. Relationship takes two. Two hearts may beat as one when lovers first meet, but only up until that moment when they recognise that they are NOT the same. And that’s when an adult relationship actually starts.

Conflict develops around what we call ‘merging’. When people are very, very close emotionally, it can feel wonderful—like mother and baby, like being in love—or it can feel stifling. Any difference between people demands some space. Rage is one way of trying to create more space for oneself. Not speaking to one another gives the illusion of separateness.

Identical twins often demonstrate the extremes of love/hate, or merger/distance. There was the duo of elderly ladies I used to see walking in the neighbourhood, dressed, quaffed, made up exactly alike. They chose to merge and be ‘as one’.  In contrast, I know two identical brothers who can’t stand being in the same city with one another. When I met them, they looked very different, having spent several years in different parts of the world. As they had time together, they started looking more and more alike, dressing more alike, sporting the same kind of facial hair. As they seemed to become more ‘the same’, the fights escalated. Mutual friends ‘belonged’ to one or the other. One was accused of following the other, wherever he set himself up. Eventually, they came to the conclusion that they really could not share a city, even as large a city as New York. Too close can sometimes only be solved by physical distance.

Growing together and separately

Siblings are our firsts. Our first friends, our first enemies, our first rivals, even our first marriage partners. They grow together, and they grow separately. How they grow up affects what kind of adult relationships they can have.

There’s bound to be competition between/among them [also known as sibling rivalry]. There’s no mother in the world who can treat all her children equally all the time. No matter how skilled she may be in divvying up the soda into equal parts, there is no such thing as real equality. [Too much effort put into trying to be fair has its own problems.] So there is always a certain amount of strife among the kids for mom’s attention, and dad’s, and even one another’s. When Mom and Dad are under the kind of stress that most modern parents are, the supply of attention is at a premium, and the competition can get more intense.

This, in itself, is neither bad nor good. It’s more important how the competition is handled—is it acknowledged, with empathy, or is it judged, denied, or ignored? If one of the latter, it is more likely that hostilities will grow as the children grow, and eventually strain the relationships of adult sibs. Grievances get stored up, until at a tipping point, they break apart.

Of course, parents who actively show favouritism add fuel to the situation.

So do family roles. All families have roles; it’s a kind of division of labour. Individuals accept ownership of different parts of the whole, the family system. The more functional the family, the more elastic the roles; the less functional [the more merged], the more rigid the roles become. When roles are extreme, they lock siblings into being ‘the smart one’, ‘the pretty one’, ‘the funny one’, ‘the sad one’… Rigid roles create a kind of interlocking blocks: they can’t get apart from one another, but neither can they share with one another. Fights happen when people are too close to one another to be able to breathe.

Getting back together

There was a time when we had a more physical need of our families. Siblings learned to ‘get along’ in order to keep the family farm running, or to care for the younger and the older generations. These days, it’s easy for a family to be spread across the continent, if not around the world. Distance is an easy fix for rivalry. But we cannot actually leave our families behind. They live in our psyches. Angry splits weaken both parties. Each ends up missing a piece of themselves. Reconciliation strengthens both. So, it’s a good idea to try to make peace with your families.

But that can be pretty difficult. If you are in a relationship of interlocking, rigid roles, the first thing you have to do is to find a way to get unlocked. Let in some air. This can be done by becoming more aware of yourself—rather than by trying to ‘take care’ of the other. If I am the ‘talented one’ and you are the ‘beautiful one’, you must find your talent, and I, my own beauty.

If you would like to try to reconnect with a sibling, it can probably be done. Studies of older siblings indicate that some 80 per cent of them over 60 can claim close relationships with one another.

While it always takes two to tango, you can take steps on your own to increase your chances.

Start with yourself

Think first about yourself. Think about what you are looking for. Do you want to rekindle some of the good things of your past? What are you missing without this person in your life?

Think about your own life. Are you healthy? Are you generally happy, with supportive people around you? Will you be able to approach this other person from a place of well-being?

Talk with others about your wish to reconnect. Talk with your present family, talk with your close friends. Make room for their opinions and reactions, while remembering that the actual choice is yours.

Make room for forgiveness. Whatever happened in the past may have come from a sense of lack, of ‘not enough love to go around’. Your sister may have suffered in her own way as much as you did, in yours.

Let go of resentment. No one gets a ‘do-over’ of past hurts and mistakes. Resentments only poison the person collecting them.

Clearing the mine field, together When you feel strong, healthy, happy, ready to jump into the deep end of the pool, step into the shallow end, instead. Do something simple. Make a ‘coffee date’ with your sibling [probably better to leave alcohol out of it!] and keep your conversation on a social level. Pretend you’re a scientist, gathering information about both yourself and them.

At this point, it’s vital to make lots of room for all your own emotions, while containing them for later examination. Be prepared to accept whatever results come.

Once you’ve made contact, if it has gone well, you can begin to think about talking about more serious things. Sharing happy memories is a good place to start. “Remember when…” lets you share what you agree on, and this is an opportunity to notice how you may remember things differently.

When the difficult subjects come up—and they will, even if you’ve both agreed to keep things light—take a moment to make even MORE room inside. Give your sibling the benefit of the doubt; their memories come through the lenses of their experience, which is different from your own. After all, this is the past we’re talking about. You’ve both already survived it. This is a time to carefully practise using ‘I’ rather than ‘you’ statements. Tell your sinling, “I felt this way,” rather than “you did that.”

When talking about those subjects that have divided you, keep in mind that what you’re doing is clearing a mine field, together. Walk carefully, move slowly, treat the past gently—or it will blow up in your face. When the bomb is defused, you can both heave a sigh of relief.

But remember, it may be awhile before all the mines have been cleared. Defusing them takes patience, skill, and practice.

Healing the rift is a difficult process. It’s good to remember that the ‘prize’ is a new connection with someone who has actually known you all, or almost all, of your life. As we get older, that prize is, in fact, priceless.

This was first published in the November 2013 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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“You might assume I got jealous, but I really didn’t. What happened was, Steve complained about her—he didn’t like the feel of her skin; he didn’t like her smell. At that time, I thought he and I were being considerate of her by telling her that I was jealous and that I ‘couldn’t take it’. Now I suspect he was just a coward—I’ve known him a lot longer now, and I know that he likes me to do the heavy lifting. Anyway, what started out looking like a great idea wasn’t so great anymore. Susie and I had the ‘our friendship is more important than anything else’ conversation, but within the year, I’d lost my best friend.”

As I listen to Anna, I recognise many mistakes that today’s couples in open relationships might make but her story also highlights both, the excitement and the pitfalls of such intimate relationships.

Once upon a time…

Plural relationships have been a fact of life throughout history. In the Bible, Abraham and Sarah had a kind of open marriage: when Sarah assumed she was too old to give Abraham a son, she offered her handmaiden, Hagar, so that Abraham’s line could continue. This was a fairly common situation in their culture. And we know how that turned out.

There is a biological directive to ‘be fruitful and multiply’. For thousands of years, the best way to keep the family group and the tribe healthy and strong was to mix the gene pool. It’s only relatively recently that monogamy has become law.

Today, the institution of marriage is in flux. Is a marriage strictly between one man and one woman? [In some regions, the question even demands the partners be of the same race.] Or do we broaden its scope to accept marriage between same-sex couples, or marriages that include more than two people? I suggest we define today’s marriage as a contract of commitment among a small number of people, with the goal of forming and maintaining a family.

And here is where modern open relationships split off from historical plural marriages. Today’s open relationships are primarily about the adults involved in them, not the community, not particularly the family. They’re about adults looking for the fulfillment of desires—and I make that plural, because there’s more than sexual desire involved.

This differentiation is important. There are two kinds of groupings, with different sets of needs. Families with children need to be somewhat hierarchical: children need bigger, wiser [we hope], more powerful individuals to protect and teach them how to be in the world. They have equal human rights but cannot be equal partners. Open relationships among adults are ideally democratic. They focus less on the business of family and more on individual adults’ needs and development.

What men [and women] want…

Human beings require a balance of structure and freedom, between safety and excitement. Structure offers a sense of confidence, realistic expectation, and safety. Freedom brings risk, danger, and excitement. Too much of the first, and we become deadened. Too much of the second, and we could become just dead.

Many marriage therapists believe that feeling ‘safe’ with a partner will not only allow love and companionship to grow, but also encourage good sex. While this may be true for some couples, there are many who feel ‘close’ to one another, love each other dearly, work well together toward common goals, but don’t have sex.

Keeping the spark alive…

“The original primordial fire of eroticism is sexuality; it raises the red flame of eroticism, which in turn raises and feeds another flame, tremulous and blue. It is the flame of love and eroticism. The double flame of life.” [Octavio Paz, The Double Flame]

Delicious. Who wouldn’t want THIS?

When you meet a special person, your entire self is involved—mind, body, and soul. There’s no other experience quite like it. Nothing is more important than being with the lover, touching, feeling, smelling, and talking into the wee hours of the night.

What a thrill. You want it to go on forever.

You want to own it.

You want to get married and live happily ever after.

Marriage vows bring safety and reliability. Some fortunate couples get to enjoy a balance of safety and thrill awhile longer. But safety is the opposite of risk and excitement. How often have we heard, “The minute we got married, he/she changed”? What happened to that erotic flame? Now that you’re married, now that you “have” one another, desire wanes.

The principles of desire

The principles of desire are: You want what you can’t have; you can’t want what you have.

Open relationships try to balance these principles. In every one that lasts for any length of time, there are agreed-upon rules and expectations of behaviour. If these commitments are well thought out, there is a safe ‘base’ for the group. If the individual members are self-aware and self-contained, they create a group ‘play space’ where each of them can take risks.

An open relationship can be exciting and joyous. It’s a wonderful feeling that there’s enough love to go around for everybody. The freedom to explore one’s own sexual longings goes a long way towards self-acceptance. But there are hazards, as well. For example, the ideal that everyone in the group is supposed to be happy and satisfied cannot exist in nature. In order for any relationship to live and grow, there has to be room for ‘darker’ feelings. Most married couples begin struggling with these when they start to face their differences. One temptation of ‘opening’ a relationship is to try to distract from these struggles by adding someone from outside—that new member is just perfect, knows you like you know yourself. But what happens when that “new person” is no longer new? Now there are three, or four, or more people in conflict.

It’s important to remember that ‘conflict’ is not synonymous with ‘bad’. We learn and grow as individuals through the conflicts in our relationships. It is precisely these conflicts that lead us to say, “Marriage is a people-growing machine.” It’s fully possible for people involved in open relationships to benefit similarly. But it’s not easy.

Mission possible or impossible?

I believe that it benefits us to reframe coming-together-in-love multiple relationships. They are not marriages according to our definition of marriage: a contract of commitment among a small number of people, with the goal of forming and maintaining a family. Trying to fit them into that framework is a bit like eating your cake and still expecting to have it tomorrow.

I strongly believe that people need physical connection. I believe that our needs are not all the same. I believe in experimentation and exploration and I am happy that groups of people manage to come together and form strong, intimate bonds.

I also believe that children need reliable authority figures to support them. In Anna’s case above, her children also suffered the loss of Susie, who had been something of a surrogate mother to them. I’ve seen too many people who grew up around ill-defined parenting to ignore the importance of a strong mother-function and father-function.

In the 21^st century, we don’t have to worry about not having enough people to keep the human race going. In fact, it’s more the opposite. Open relationships among adults who are not particularly eager to procreate can be a vital new way for people to be ‘together-in-love’.

Make no mistake: if you enter into an open relationship in the hope of spicing up a deadened life [or in the hope of ‘fixing’ any feeling], it will probably end in tears. Adding more elements to a troubled relationship will make it more complicated, not less. But if you are willing to contend with the dangers of intimacy, and grow yourself up [in contrast to growing up offspring], who knows what wonders you might create?

This was first published in the July 2013 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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You discover your partner has had an affair. Do you:

1. Scream at him, and tell him he is a terrible person?
2. Tell your friends, to relieve yourself of the pressure of the hurt?
3. Regularly check his phone, emails or browser history?
4. Put your rage into your collection of resentments?

You’re single, and your best friend has just met the man of her dreams. Do you:

1. Listen to her enthuse, while sobbing inside?
2. Warn her that love can be blind?
3. Talk about the freedom of being single?
4. Say something critical of her or him?

If you said, “None of the above,” I’m not sure I believe you. Jealousy and envy are painful emotions, and when we act them out, we’re trying to get some relief. Of course, none of these behaviours actually provide that relief.

We use the two words pretty much interchangeably. They are in reality two distinct emotions, each with their own spectrum of usefulness to destruction. Simply put, jealousy refers to feelings of impending loss of something you have [your partner’s love, perhaps], and envy refers to the desire for something someone else has. They are both aspects, and sometimes dysfunctions, of desire.

Jealousy

We’re taught that jealousy is bad and the idea that it might have a positive function is often overlooked.

Also read » Jealousy is the shadow of sex

St. Augustine says, “He that is not jealous is not in love.” When in love, you have a proprietary interest in your partner. And when you’re fairly certain in your relationship, you can confidently say to a rival: “You can’t have her; she’s mine! Mine, mine, mine!” I remember the pleasure and warmth I felt towards a man standing up to his rival in just that way. His desire for his partner was vibrantly alive in that moment.

When you and your spouse have been married for a period of time, and your original desire has waned [as Esther Perel likes to say, “You can’t desire what you have.”], sometimes a drop of jealousy can remind you that you’re not completely safe. There can be a threat—and in that moment, desire is once again alight. Jealousy can remind us of the value of what we have.

But… at the other end of the spectrum, jealousy is dangerous, and can kill a relationship. When jealousy turns into a real fear of losing the attachment, it’s like being too hungry for too long. Desire turns to malignant jealousy, and one can become seriously destructive. The literary example of this is the story of Othello and Desdemona: He believed she had betrayed him, and he was overcome with jealous rage. Murderous rage. Powerful stuff for grand opera, but not the way you or I want to live.

It’s important to know that the first pang of jealousy is a warning signal: look to your marriage! Something may not be right between you and your lover. Slacking off not recommended.

Then it’s tempting to look outside for the danger. Outside ourselves, or outside our relationship. The other woman or man might be the problem. Or our partner is actually untrustworthy, faithless and has wrecked our life. When our relationship is threatened, our self-worth is threatened right along with it. “She is bad, cheating on me, but I must be worthless, or she wouldn’t do it.”

Sadly, the more suspicious you become of your partner, the worse you feel about yourself. Very, very sticky.

When a person, or a relationship, is stuck, and all the energy is burnt up within the dynamic, help has to come from an unexpected direction.

Also read » For enriching relaltionships

Imagine if you took that initial signal and used it to remember how wonderful your beloved really is? Let yourself evoke how wonderful your desire for her feels? What if, instead of attacking, you told him how much he means to you? Undoubtedly, that would feel better to him; think about how it would feel to you.

Calm yourself and let yourself remember the ways you enjoy one another. You do have a choice where you put your focus: If you focus on ‘wrong,’ you will get misery, and if you focus on ‘right,’ you’re most likely to be reassured.

Alongside this, reassure yourself of your own worth. Evoke memories of feeling valuable.

Your feelings of jealousy are the ‘right’ feelings. They’re put there to remind you to come back to consciousness of the value of your relationship and the two people in it.

Envy

Envy is also based in desire. It’s not one of the seven deadly sins and it can be a wonderfully motivating force. Simply wanting what someone else has, is the basis for the success of many people and businesses. Van de Ven, Zeelenberg and Pieters of Tilurg University, the Netherlands, did some fascinating studies on ‘benign envy,’ contrasting it with admiration.

Benign envy, also termed as hero envy, is the desire for what someone else has. Many successful people talk about being influenced by successful individuals. Like benign jealousy, it sparks attention. If you see something your neighbour has, it’s fine to want to get some for yourself.

Of course, there’s a ‘but’ here. Impatience and/or grandiosity can create too much frustration. If you take Albert Einstein or Mother Teresa as your hero, it’s likely you won’t be able to live up to their obvious accomplishments. If you must have that thing, or that trait tomorrow, you’re likely to be disappointed. Disappointment can lead to a feeling of despair, and all that is left is to give up. You may fall into the passive position of ‘Hero Worship’ and/or admonish yourself to be ‘too realistic.’ Neither one is particularly productive.

When envy becomes malignant, it says,“If I can’t have it, no one should be able to have or enjoy it.” This leads to destruction, perhaps of the desired thing, perhaps of the person who has it, or both.

We’ve just gone through a process, as a society, that simply reeks of malignant envy. I’m talking about so-called negative campaigning, which not only hurts the opponent but also devalues the goal. We end up with the sense that there are few, if any, responsive, high-minded leaders. And even our sense of their positions is tainted. Being the President doesn’t feel like such a dream.

As an aside, I became sold on a local candidate, who spent none of her budget maligning her opponent, but simply ran on her own record. She used her desire for the office to fuel her contact with her constituency, and pave the way for future success. [She won the election.] As with jealousy, the focus on the value of both, the desired object and the self, relieves the malignant pressure.

Now what?

Also read »
The power of thoughts

Jealousy and envy are part of human nature. It’s pointless to try not to feel them; you may as well try not to think of an elephant. At base, they’re signals to action. The primary choice is what kind of action. Malignant jealousy and envy are behaviours, things that people do when they can’t contain the feelings. As feelings, even malignant jealousy and envy are simply desire that is too threatened, or has gone on too long without release. Desire contaminated with fear or rage. The pain of malignant jealousy or envy is the pain of fear and rage.

All this sounds very good, but there’s another important piece. Much of what I describe goes on ‘under the radar.’ After all, fear and rage live in our ‘lizard brain’ [the most primitive part of the brain, where the fight/flight reaction originates]. Most people who describe their experience of malignant envy or jealousy feel taken over by them.
It can happen to anyone; we all have that lizard brain. The difference between a person who is overcome by those feelings and a person who can contain and use her feelings to advantage is a combination of training and awareness. A meditation practice trains the primitive brain to become more centred and contained. Psychotherapy, especially with a practitioner who doesn’t seek quick fixes, can be invaluable. A therapist who does not fear her own jealousy and envy can serve as a support for the client’s growing self-containment.

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