Winning and Losing in Love Relationships

By the time we reach adulthood, most of us have participated in some form of team--athletic, social, religious or work.  We have been exposed to people who place their own ego's above
the success of the team.  Probably the easiest example to consider comes from a sports team.
Think of an athlete, man or woman, who has great stats game after game.  Now imagine that in spite of their performance (or more likely, because of it!) the team loses game after game.
Would any of us, with the perspective of adulthood, call that person a success?  Unlikely.  We might marvel at his or her persistence and talent.  We might also think of him/her as "a ball hog"
or selfish.  Does any of us believe that Kobe Bryant or Mia Hamm would consider themselves successful if they hadn't won championships?  A no-brainer, right?  But here's the thing.  A love relationship is a team of two.  It calls for an even greater commitment to collaboration than other teams because our hearts are so fully engaged.  We are more vulnerable on the "love team" and our childhood hurts are so much more likely to be triggered.  But the core question is the same as on a sports team:  are you a team player or a ball hog?  Do you push for your own victories over your partner as if they were actually the other team...or are you capable of letting go of the need to win in order to serve the greater good of the relationship?  

We know what the answer is for most of us much of the time.  We have a hard time letting go
of having our way or being right. Why?  Because being wrong has such powerful resonance during our early years.  When we are little, we need to be attached to our parents.  It is not a desire.  It is a biologically written need whose goal is to serve our survival and optimal development.  Far too often, when parents correct children they come down hard.  They forget they're dealing with a small fragile being whose brain is nowhere near fully developed.  As children, we immediately fear the loss of love, which is potentially catastrophic for such a genuinely dependent being.  Since our parents tend to react to us in fairly consistent ways, we develop a pattern of adaptations to those moments.  We try hard to be right, to be on their good side.  Some of us fight for it, meaning we cry, flail, object, blame someone or try to talk our way out of a situation.  Some of us flee, meaning we hide within ourselves and physically withdraw from our parents.  Some of us freeze in the moment, become paralyzed and speechless.  Some of us discover it is safer to just submit.  In all these cases, we are feeling a great deal of discomfort because the withdrawal of parental love, even for seconds at a time, is so potentially devastating.  

Fast forward to adulthood and you find yourself and your partner having a difficult time allowing the other to be right.  On an unconscious psychological level, the dynamic is, "If you are right, I am wrong.  If I am right, you are wrong.  Whoever is wrong is going to feel bad.  Someone is coming out as the parent and someone the child."  It's a zero-sum game that parallels the childhood pattern when parents had all the power and we needed them with all our hearts.  So here we are in our twenties, thirties, forties and on, being ball hogs in our relationship so we can avoid feeling that feeling.  Of course, we don't live with a coach in our home to help us run better plays.  We don't have crowds cheering us when we serve the team. But we can gradually learn to get in touch with the deeper feeling that drives this reaction, grieve it and be liberated from the impulse that drives us to create win-lose.  We can do some of this work when we are single, but the deepest work comes when we are in a relationship for there are wounds that are only triggered and therefore available to work on when we actively seek to be in loving connection with another.

We are strange creatures, aren't we?  We long for love.  Then, when we find it (after the 
romantic phase is over) we treat our partner as if he/she is the competition, not a teammate!  We have to defeat the very person who might love us...for fear of feeling unloved.  Once again we see how early patterns can hijack the present and deprive us of the thing we cherish most.