1:30 Tuesday night. I get a phone call from my friend Aaron. He’s drunk and upset. He’s had a fight with his girlfriend and she’s locked him outside the house. Again. He’s killing time talking to me, hoping she’ll calm down and let him in. He wants sympathy, which I gladly supply. He also wants advice, but no matter what I say, I know damn well that he won’t listen. We’ve been through all of this before.
Aaron’s relationship is crazy. To say his girlfriend is intense would be an understatement. She is a complete looper. Granted, he’s not the easiest guy in the world to get on with, so situations between them tend to escalate very quickly. Whenever I speak to Aaron they are either fighting or having sex. Not just your common or garden shag-session either. I have heard tales of group sex, blood letting, pain, humiliation and dogging. It’s exciting and intense, so despite the fact that Aaron ends up sleeping in the garden on a regular basis, he isn’t about to leave any time soon. She has him pussy-whipped, literally.
I wish I could say that it was unfamiliar territory to me, but sadly that’s not true. In the dark recesses of my past there is a relationship I like to pretend never happened. It started off as a big adventure, but ended with me asking the police for a restraining order. In between that, there had been fights, threats, tears, jealousies, reconciliations, lies, violence and lots of sex.
How do apparently normal, intelligent people get themselves involved in destructive relationships? Before it happened to me, I would have dismissed this kind of behaviour as stupidity. Once a relationship got dull or a boyfriend started making demands, I was happy to extricate myself and be on my merry way. So how the hell did I, of all people, end up like the hapless heroine in a B-grade psychological thriller?
Destructive relationships may be more common than you think. My friend Henri spent four years with a woman who watched his every move, restricted the friends he could have and who constantly accused him of infidelity. Despite this, he wanted to marry her. Hannah’s ex stalked her for a year after they broke up. During their relationship he orchestrated her every day – what she would do, what clothes she would wear and where she was allowed to go. She believed she loved her boyfriend and would do whatever it took to keep him happy. Both Lucinda and Greg had partners that emotionally and physically abused them and yet they too stayed. I could go on and on. Once I started asking, I found that nearly everyone I knew had at least one horror story to tell.
Some psychologists suggest that there is a speaking, love addiction takes two forms; either the addict constantly craves the excitement you feel at the beginning of a relationship and so tends to jump from one romance to the next, or else the addict is obsessed with a particular person despite the destructive nature of the relationship. The love addict is typically a person with low feelings of self-worth and who has experienced early feelings of abandonment by his or her parents.
Since I am not an expert, I can’t dispute this. However, I can say that these causes of love addiction, so called, do not explain my situation, or the experiences of most of my friends. However, in my research one thing struck me as telling. Almost everyone I spoke said that his or her destructive relationship was highly-charged sexually. So is it desire that motivates us to stay in unhealthy relationships?
Relationship experts tell you that sex is vital to happy, long-lasting coupledom. It’s the glue that binds people together. I think it’s possible that this may also be true for people in destructive relationships, though in a somewhat different sense. While sex can be used to strengthen bonds between people, it can be used to create feelings of inadequacy. Sex can be an expression of love, but it can just as easily be used as a weapon.
In my own destructive relationship the sex was intense, kinky and extreme. We fucked in a variety of ways, none of which could have been called ‘making love’. But sex was also used to punish or reward me, depending on my behaviour. Of course, it wasn’t stated as blatantly as that, but that’s exactly what it came down to. Speaking to my friends who have had unhealthy relationships I noticed that, in most cases, one person controlled the sexual relationship and used this as a bargaining tool to get his or her way.
I don’t know if what I experienced can be called love addiction, perhaps I was merely blinded by lust. Despite being sexually experienced, I had never been with someone who used sex to manipulate me. I found all sorts of excuses for my lover’s behaviour, none of which blamed him. At the risk of sounding Freudian, sex is one of our most basic motivations and sexual attachment can form a very strong reason for staying in a relationship.
Of course, I don’t think that’s the whole answer. Unfortunately explaining human behaviour is rarely simple. But I am curious to hear what you think. If anyone has any theories, please log on to hotpress.com and let’s hear it. In the meantime I’ll revert to calling Aaron once a month to find out how he’s coping – and thanking my lucky stars that I’m no longer in his shoes.