Are you the one who always gives and sacrifices in an intimate relationship? Or does your partner often say:
"How can you do this after all I've done for you?"
If your answer is YES, but you don't understand what kind of psychology is behind these behaviours, then this article is well worth reading.
I. "I've Done So Much, All for You."
While catching up with dramas from different countries, I slowly summed up the characteristics of the dramas in terms of outlining patterns of intimate relationships:
American dramas are the most direct about love. Love or no love will be simple, though sometimes tangled. For example, Ashleya in The Good Wife is freeer with her love for her husband or Will. Either way, there's more respect for what's in your heart, love is love and it's over if you don't.
The typical love in Korean dramas is a prince next to a homely girl swaying left and right, or a girl of noble indignation surrounded by one or several clowns, or gangsters, and then entangled from one to another.
Looking back at our Chinese emotional dramas, there is always a bit of heaviness. I sacrifice myself for you, but you don't know it, so we torture each other. Although in the end it is usually the most innocent person who sacrifices the most that gets the better end of the deal, in the intricate relationship, we always have to go round and round just for the other person to understand what "I" want.
I remember some time ago there was another interesting drama called "Mr. Good", in which Lu Yuan would rather not have the money to pay the loan, had to go to jail, let his best friend to take care of his girlfriend, disappeared for a number of years, he said it's all "for her good". This phrase "for the good of the other person" cancels out all the complaints and puts him on the moral high ground.
I'm wondering why our dramas design the plot like this. Maybe it's to satisfy the narcissism we've always felt, that is, I've become so for you, but I'm greater than that.
II. You Always Owe Me for What I've Done to You.
This reflects the face of our Chinese emotional life from the original to the present. That is, through sacrifice, to prove that one's emotions are genuine. It's hard and sensational, but it also attracts our adequate attention.
Lu Yuan of Mr. Good would rather suffer himself than hide from his girlfriend because he wants to save face and because he feels he is still a man.
Uncovering these masks, what can we see? I think it's the weakness of true self-identity. (Self-identity: refers to the self in the world of one's thoughts)
When a person can't face his own weakness, he or she will project that part of his worthlessness onto the other person. It seems to be for the good of the other person, but in fact, it is a great dislike of oneself. That is, the concept of "I am not worthy of you to be so good to me" is slowly festering in the inner mind. Similarly, they also cast the decision to the other person, "I treat you like this, you always owe me".
This kind of drama is very popular, and it probably does fit the hearts of many people, because many people feel aggrieved in their hearts! Let's imagine how much entanglement and hatred is contained in this aggrievement?
III. Why Should We Sacrifice in Relationships?
Why do we have so many deep emotions in our inner complex?
This may be related to our historical development: from agricultural societies where living in groups and having more people was more advantageous, to the move towards individuality as a separate entity. During this process, we place a high value on connection and intimacy, and we would rather sacrifice than give up in intimate relationships, which is called "entanglement when together".
But why must we sacrifice?
Perhaps one of the key assumptions in our collective subconscious is, "Would you still love me if I didn't sacrifice?"
It's a sad-sounding question. But from a psychoanalytic point of view, it may also reflect how entangled one's relationship with one's mother is.
In our infancy, when we cannot identify who we are, we are closely symbiotic with our mothers.
When the mother smiles, the child is happy. When the mother is angry, the child is unhappy. Slowly, the child will begin to transit from absolute dependence to relative dependence, and will gradually develop ways that are appropriate for getting along with the mother, such as how to make the mother happy? How to get the mother's attention, etc.
And around a mother who is unable to have a sense of her own being, what the child may learn most is to express him or herself in all kinds of distorted ways, such as sacrifice.
In other words, "I only have my existence for the sake of others," which is a low-to-the-dust sense of worthiness, but a controlling force that forces others to pay attention. Also, this is the most powerful form of attraction that can elicit feelings of guilt in a child or those around them.
IV. The Motivation and Results of Self-sacrifice
At its root, the "sacrifice" approach hides a deep sense of powerlessness and deprivation. So, you need to go to others to find the meaning of your existence.
From another angle, it is also a way of connecting. From the age of two, a person needs to be separated and individuated. (Individualisation: the process by which an individual develops his or her own individual psychology apart from the family on which he or she was originally dependent).
However, in many families, when children are born, the wife turns all her attention to the children, and the father cannot bear to be neglected and chooses to stay away.
The increasingly close relationship between mother and child and the laziness of fathers to enter the family system to play a role further encourages the mother-child involvement.
When the child wants to separate, the mother's previous sacrifices will fill the child with too much guilt to separate. In the child's subsequent new relationship, the best way he can connect - or the way he has learnt to connect from his previous experience - is to "sacrifice" - to connect through sacrifice.
But there is a new paradox here. In reality, most "sacrifices" result in more pain for the giver and more "unfair" feelings. Because in the eyes of the sacrificer, others become "defaulters".
V. What Should We Do?
Sacrifice or separation is a choice for everyone in an emotional relationship, and entanglement or abandonment is also an option.
What we need to understand is that behind the "sacrifice" in an intimate relationship, there is a huge "need" for self:
The sacrificer expects others to see that he or she is sacrificing, to pity and emotionally reward him or her, and to truly see how difficult it is for him or her to have to "sacrifice" in order to gain this "connection".
However, the other person in the relationship often responds to the sacrifice with resistance. This is because of the guilt that lurks within him when he accepts to give. So he tends to take more and more to avoid the "imbalance and guilt" that he doesn't want to face.
This highly habitual functioning is hard to stop, and we often can't make changes right away. But, whether you are on the sacrificing side or the taking side, you can always stop for a moment and think about these several questions:
Who are you? Who really determines your worth?
Are you willing to give up the need to fulfil the desires and expectations of others, or the abusive and masochistic needs of others, and reunderstand your connection with the world as the subject of your own life?
I hope you can find your own answers after thinking about it.
