To Love Well, You Have to Sometimes Feel Inadequate
A sure way to improve your marriage is to admit that you don't know what the hell you're doing when it comes to making an intimate relationship work. Say it right now, out loud:
"I don't know what the hell I'm doing; I don't know how to make intimate relationships work!"
There, doesn't that feel better?
When It Comes to Love, Inadequacy is Your Friend
A stab of inadequacy motivates you to do something that will make you feel more adequate. The inadequacy you felt when you first heard your infant give out an intensely distressed cry (that unmistakable and unbearable, "Wahhh!!!") provided a powerful motivation to help, which was the only way you could feel adequate. If you had suppressed or tried to avoid that terribly uncomfortable feeling or, worse, blamed it on the distressed child, you would not have felt the same urge to provide effective care. Studies of primates show that the typically hysterical response of mothers and infants when they are separated is completely eliminated after shots of morphine, which numb the distress and, presumably, the underlying urge to connect and give care. With their feelings of inadequacy numbed by drugs, addicted human mothers are likely to neglect or abandon their newborns. But once the mother is sober and the sense of inadequacy is allowed to motivate care giving, she once again nurtures her child or tries to find the one she lost to addiction.
How Do I Love You?
Like parenting, adult relationships require considerable on the job training. To make them work, we must tolerate feeling inadequate long enough for it to motivate behavior meant to improve, appreciate, connect, or protect. Because we're all different, loving behavior will look a little different in each couple. Everyone has to learn how to sustain love for his or her specific partner, not a generalized ideal or a description in a relationship book. The most loving thing you can say to your lover is, "Show me how to love you."
If You Don't Let It Work for You, It'll Work against You
When we do not use our feelings of inadequacy as motivation to love better, they become barriers to loving at all. Arguments between intimates invariably point out all the ways in which the other seems inadequate, which is really piling on, since he/she feels that way already. Eventually the partners view each other as opponents. This allows them to justify their failures of compassion, while they demand of each other:
"Just get over yourself and meet my needs!"
The mutual failure of compassion leads to the mistaken belief that they know how to make a love relationship work: simply get your partner to do what you want.
While men and women share this arrogance and are equally willing to use criticism and put downs to manipulate each other, women seem to have a harder time admitting to their inadequacy about love relationships, in part because of their superiority in other kinds of relationships.
Research shows that women, by and large, are better than men at same sex friendships. In general, they have closer, deeper, longer-lasting, and more resilient relationships with other women than men have with other men. Women are also a bit better at relationships with children. But they are no better than men at relationships with the opposite sex. This is partly because they try to do the things that work with other women and expect their husbands to respond like their girlfriends or like some relationship book says they should respond. Of course, this invokes his shame, which comes with built-in attack/withdraw defenses. His well-honed shame-defenses invoke her fear of harm or isolation, which drives more attempts to make him see what he's doing wrong, which redoubles his shame-defenses and her fearful responses, until they just have to get away from each other.
How to Make It Better
First, both parties must admit that they don't know how to do a love relationship.
Second, ask your partner how to love him or her, and let her/him know how to love you.
Third, pre-arrange a strategy for conflict. Non-verbal gestures work best for the parties to communicate that they understand their mutual feelings of inadequacy. Attempts to translate feelings of vulnerability into words in the midst of an argument is likely to backfire; driven by different vulnerabilities, the partners will give different meanings to what is said.
For example, the phrase, "I feel inadequate," is likely to be interpreted as an accusation ("You're failing me!") by the emotionally-flooded, shame-based partner. To the hyper-vigilant, fear-based partner, the same phrase is likely to mean, "He doesn't get me and won't be there for me."
Rather than trying to translate complex emotional experience into words, try giving some gesture a symbolic meaning on which you agree beforehand, something like: "I think we're both feeling inadequate; I know I am. I don't want to feel that way, and I don't want you to feel that way, either. How can we show that we care for each other and that we'll be there for each other?" As long as it has this pre-arranged symbolic meaning, any gesture will effectively communicate a desire to connect, e.g., reaching out your hand in a conciliatory way or opening both arms to offer embrace.
Connected, you can negotiate about problems to find the best solutions for both of you. As long as you remain disconnected, you'll fight over the pain of disconnection, while fooling yourselves that the hurtful emotion is about your disagreement.
Let feelings of inadequacy do their job. If you do, they will motivate connection and then quickly resolve in the experience of core value. They will help you learn how to love your partner and reveal to your partner how to love you.
