Glad to see you started a new thread. I was typing this one but didn’t want to clutter HD’s either since it will lock up soon.
OK, in response to some other comments on differentiation feeling cold, here is why I think it can be, at least to me. When I think of compassion, empathy, sympathy, I think of a two way street, one where I give those things but I also EXPECT to receive. Giving is altruistic and out of concern for the other, but the getting is always somewhere in the back of my mind, and I think in the back of everyone’s mind.
Take lil for example (not meaning to pick on you lil). She has given and given, tried to see her bf in a positive light, understand his pain, empathize with him, yet she receives very little back. That one way flow is souring the relationship and could eventually doom it (I assume). Altruism is a requirement for an R, but so is the knowledge that you will ALSO receive. So IMO, this kind of selfishness is very much a part of the equation. You have to watch out for yourself.
Now that says to me that my feelings are very important in maintaining the connection in the R. I cannot maintain a relationship without feeling this connection. I need to know that my partner is not only reception to receiving my altruism, but that she is also ready to give me her altruism, for my own selfish needs. I want to feel that I have some degree of connection and influence over her, that I can call up her altruism if I need it, as a security blanket of sorts, and I want to know that she will come to me to provide a security blanket for her. It comforts me to know that she has a need for me and that I can provide for that need (a la Dieda).
One way to explain why I think this is important to me is to take the extreme opposite as example. Say my W is a cyborg (only theoretically speaking, ignoring any real life similarities, LOL!). Like a computer, her actions are all intellectual and determined strictly by decision. She gives me empathy and stays with me because she so chooses. No other reason than that, which is exactly the goal of differentiation, right? You do what you want because you choose to, not because you have to, are obligated to, are shamed to, etc.
But with my past, I have been conditioned to learn that the decision of today will not be the decision of tomorrow. My mother would be all sweet and kind one day, doing things for me, showing concern, and then the next day she could be ticked off over something, go into a rage, then decide to cut off whatever support she had offered earlier. Her decision, though emotionally fueled, was still a decision. She could choose to turn on or off support on a whim, and so any relationship with her purely out of choice was dangerous. Although I allowed myself to make an emotional connection with her, she did not respect the sanctity of that connection and used it as a weapon against me.
Ironically the one thing that did hold us together was the emotional bond, the same thing that drove her to take such crazy actions/reactions in the first place. The tie of the emotional connection is what kept us coming back together even when the relationship had been severed. The emotional tug or the fusion was the one thing I COULD count on, even though the timing of when we reconciled was uncertain. Fusion brought a level of certainty.
So in a relationship now, the absence of this emotional bond feels unsafe. I do not trust the free will of the other person to always choose to be with me, especially my W. She has used the emotional connection as a weapon, just as my mother did. But I know there is an emotional tug, a certain amount of fusion that will endure through many arguments before it weakens beyond repair. I can count on that fusion to hold the relationship together to a certain degree, barring a more “healthy” arrangement.
Maybe someday we will be more developed to where there is no fusion and we are both comfortable knowing that we both stay in the M out of choice and that choice will remain in place well into the future, thereby giving certainty to overcome fears of abandonment. But as I have stated before, I doubt I will ever get there and I have NEVER seen anyone who is really differentiated. I think everyone has an emotional connection that strongly influences and usually overrides our choice to stay or go. Only until that emotional connection has wither and died will the decision to leave a bad R rise to the top and turn into action. I’ve never seen anyone do this in any other way.
