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When Three's a Crowd

How to Create Healthy Mature Bonds and Fight Triangles

People are often surprised when they consider how their adult relationships bear uncanny similarities to the ones with their parents, or their parents’ relationship with each other. Our relationship with our original family sets the stage for what we become as individuals and what kind of personal, as well as business connections, we create. In every family we operate within three dimensions: a personal relationship with our self, a relationship with one other person, and emotional relationships that are threesomes. Ideally, we should have a separate and individual connection with each of our parents and siblings, and they in turn with each other.

We develop emotionally, psychologically, and sexually in great part, as a consequence of how we react to our parents and how they react to us. Because our emotional and physiological wellbeing as children depended on gaining safety and security from our parents, we perceived them as very powerful and their relationship to us was naturally of immense importance. It continues to be of great importance once we reach adulthood, yet is no longer a matter of life and death as it was during childhood.

Additionally, what we experienced serves as a template for how people interact.The degree of our parents' maturity determined how involved and enmeshed we became in their relationship. The more sound their relationship, the safer we felt as children. Our parents’ successful marriage alleviated our need to become over-involved in their life as a way to insure our continued security. Regardless of our experience in our original family, we are all capable of repair through true understanding of underlying emotional processes and patterns – occasionally with the help of psychotherapy, assisting the healing of old wounds, and the adoption of functional behavior.

A few years ago a couple came in to see me with their eight year old son referred by their pediatrician because she could not find any physiological reasons to explain why the boy was depressed and mute. His parents were equally perplexed. He initially refused to speak. I gave him crayons and paper and told him he didn't have to talk if he didn't want.

His parents told me of their frustration with him. As the session progressed he became quite busy drawing. He drew a suspension bridge that uncannily resembled the George Washington Bridge connecting New York and New Jersey, with cockeyed stanchions. The suspension cables were wiggles, people and cars were hanging upside down in the air, it was a very dangerous looking scene. I said to him, "That looks very interesting. What are you drawing?" He told me, "Well, this bridge is going to fall down. These two sides are going to crash into the river and break because there is an earthquake and all the people are falling into the water and they're all going to get killed. All the cars are going to get smashed up and explode when they hit the rocks."

I turned to the parents and suggested that perhaps they should tell their son the truth. The father took the boy in his lap and said, "Jeffrey I want you to know that your mother and I are not happy together and we are thinking about getting divorced. We are not sure, but we’ve been talking about it a little. We love you and we don’t want to hurt you." Jeffrey replied, "I know." Kids are not sufficiently credited for how much they really know of what’s going on in their family.

This little boy was extraordinarily wise and in touch with the pulse of the family. His drawing was an excellent depiction of how the parental relationship affects a child's sense of security and safety and how a triangle is created. To the extent that the two stanchions of your parents' marriage were solid, you felt safe as a child. On the other hand, if the marriage was shaky you probably felt afraid and insecure. Marital stress between parents raises a child’s own stress level because everyone in the family is connected, and children are dependent on their parents for their survival. When the marriage is in turmoil, than the container for the child’s world is unsteady, and the ground is like an earthquake where the question of survival is uncertain.

There is an unconscious emotional process at work that assures the child of its ongoing welfare. When stress in the parents’ marriage is too high and they develop a distant relationship with each other that threatens to tear them apart, children often volunteer to be the go between their parents. This could happen in a variety of ways.

Murray Bowen, one of the originators of Family Therapy made a great many impressive contributions to our understanding of family dynamics and differentiation or separation. The concept of the triangle is crucial, as it aids our ability to understand what is at work when relationships don’t function well, and how to have more healthy relationships. According to McGoldrick and Gerson,

"The formation of triangles in families involves two people bringing (triangling) a third (person, symptom, or thing) into their relationship. This usually serves the function of lessening difficulties in the initial dyad (twosome.)

Taking another look at the above example of the couple with the eight year old, it becomes clearer how a triangle functions. The parents' struggle with each other was temporarily discarded in the interest of helping their son who developed a symptom. A triangle is a mathematical component that is made up of three angles or points of focus and three lines that connect them. If you think of each point as a person, and each line as the relationship between two people, you can see how these three people are intrinsically connected in a kind of dance. The dance is an emotional centering around the problem between two of the people in the triangle. When the problem is not addressed in this way, it loses some of its negative energy and seems somehow resolved when something else becomes a distraction.

Moreover, three people or a threesome, as differentiated from a triangle, can be involved in a healthy relationship. It’s not the fact that there are three, but how the third leg of the threesome can be used to avoid the problem in the twosome that signifies the location of a dysfunctional emotional process, the triangle. There are hundreds of triangles in every family. It’s not essential to stay out of all of them. It is only when there is an emotional difficulty in relationships that it becomes significant and when it becomes a repetitive theme.

Odd as it may seem, it is not a problem to be in a triangle, but rather to stay in one once it’s identified. Furthermore, another feature of triangles is that they shift constantly, and that one can be a member of many triangles at the same time. All members of a triangle equally contribute to the maintenance of the triangle that cannot persevere without the active collaboration of all of its participants. Every triangle is defined around a precise concern during a particular space and time.

The third leg of the triangle can be a child or parent, or another person outside of the family such as an affair, an ex, or a boss, a symptom such as depression or a sudden inexplicable illness like anorexia, or an issue such as cleanliness or time spent together or apart, or an object such as alcohol or golf. In each case, the triangulated thing becomes an emotional focus for one or both of the others, and interferes with the well-being of the dyad.

Regardless of the choice, what had been a two-person problem and relationship becomes a three-person dysfunctional triangular process that is an attempt to save the dyad. It is always an imperfect solution that causes pain and conflict to every member of the triangle – albeit not always openly or even consciously expressed, but never addresses the real problem and doesn’t solve anything.

It is also possible for:
"...two family members ...(to) gang up against a third, who is in this case labeled 'villain.' It is the collusion of the two in relation to the third that is the defining characteristic of a triangle"

An excellent example of this type of triangle is in the Robins family, where Franklin allied with his mother, Lynn, against his alcoholic father, Michael. Here we have two linked triangles. The first triangle is that between the couple in the marriage and the alcohol problem; the second triangle that was created in an effort to resolve the first triangular issue was the inclusion of Franklin. This served to stabilize the parents' marriage, in that it allowed for their stress to be decreased by the addition of yet another person/object, Franklin/alcohol, into their relationship.

Franklin functioned as mother's emotional husband because his father was unavailable – the parents had developed a distance that was first taken up by the alcohol, and now by their son. As such he often protected his mother, or his siblings from the harshness of his father. A child depends on his parents for emotional and physical survival – so much so that he may even be willing to consciously or unconsciously sacrifice his own mental wellbeing for his parents.

When a child involves herself in her parents' marriage by taking sides or by taking on the role of marriage counselor or caretaker, a triangular relationship forms and threatens to become a lifelong habit. The patterns and events that exist in one generation can be found in subsequent and previous ones as well. Looking backwards and forwards the function of history repeating itself can be observed. This is what happens in families.

"...When tension develops between two parents, they may resolve it by joining together to focus on their child. Regardless of the specific emotional pattern displayed (anger, love, clinging dependency), it is the joining together of the two people in relation to a third that defines triangular relationships."

Some people unlike Michael have no intimate connection with either of their parents – they may in fact be hostile. Just because a family member is missing, doesn’t preclude them from being part of the triangle. A triangulation can occur in this way when a man, for example, who is cut off from his father still carries him inside, and is affected in all of his other relationships by that cutoff. The cutoff becomes the third leg of the triangle.

Cutoffs are always very serious symptoms of dysfunctionality and inevitably damage all participants—they never solve anything. Other families with similar dynamics result in overly close connections between parents, children and siblings. These types of attachments do not permit children when they reach adulthood to establish the necessary separation to emotionally leave their original family, find a partner and begin a family of their own. Eleena Garza exemplifies such a situation.

At thirty-four Eleena had resigned herself to a life of loneliness and disenchantment. She was perplexed as to what was missing that obstructed her from having a loving relationship with a man she respected and with whom she could see herself married with children. When Eleena came to see me she was in a goin' nowhere relationship with a man she did not even like, who did not meet her needs, but whom she feared letting go since she felt hopeless about finding a replacement. Over the years there were a handful of dates and one other boyfriend who lasted three months.

As we worked together Eleena and I uncovered one of the major obstacles that stood in her way, her loving attachment to her mother. Eleena's parents were extremely distant and disenchanted with each other, yet for various reasons maintained their marriage. Eleena and her mother were best friends – enjoying closeness, friendship and a loving connection which had seemed to be totally benign. Eleena was always supported and buffered by her mother's love and felt completely indebted to this woman. They were each other's primary intimate partner.

In fact, Eleena often filled her father's shoes when he didn't want to join his wife for a celebratory occasion. Eleena escorted her mother to holiday dinners and weddings; when he wasn't emotionally available to support his wife during her own mother’s illness, Eleena accompanied her to the hospital daily and eventually assisted her in making funeral arrangements while her father stayed home or just tagged along. Eleena and her parents were participating in a triangle whereby Eleena and her mother were allied together, while the father was in an outsider position.

Initially, Eleena was shocked when she considered that there was a possibility that something was wrong with having such a loving connection with one's mother. She soon learned that it was wonderful that she and her mother felt close toward one another, yet being her mother's substitute husband was another matter – that was a poisonous dysfunctional closeness, overcloseness, that may have met her mother’s needs, but certainly not hers. After all, her mother already had the luxury of marriage and a child and now it was Eleena's turn. In order to be able to move on with her own life, have her own children and her own family, Eleena had to resign from her job as mother's husband and best friend thus creating the likelihood that there would be emotional space for a man to become her husband and best friend.

It took a long time for Eleena to overcome her guilt in viewing her mother as someone who had been consuming her intimacy-energy, perhaps even manipulating her daughter to be her personal ally, holding on to her tightly, and in this way standing in the way of Eleena’s right to get married. Eleena once said, "I can remember when I was little how mother would come and talk to me about how mad she was at my father... she'd cry and I'd comfort her. I learned to feel responsible for her happiness and simply accepted my father's ineffectiveness as my poor mother’s lot in life. I have always felt that my mother needed me, and that she would be so hurt, and fall apart if I were to do something to displease her, or abandon her."

Eleena once worriedly said to me, "but my father is so self-centered, he's a fat couch- potato and TV addict, what will mother do if she can no longer count on me?" She was anxious that her mother would be lonely.

Eleena eventually understood that her mother was a grown-up and had to fend for herself. She also addressed her fear that mother would be angry and reject her for not doing what she wanted her to do, but realized that she had a right to her own life and started moving away emotionally, just a little bit at a time, and was able to overcome her guilt about making room for herself.

After a while Eleena recognized that she and her parents were participating in a triangle where Eleena was the leg that helped hold the marriage together in its eternal state of dissatisfaction. She didn’t need to continue to participate in the triangle or be responsible for her mother’s wellbeing. Additionally, she realized that she was mature enough to tolerate her mother’s displeasure because when you live your own life, it isn’t a popularity contest.

“Last week I had a date with a man I met through work,” Eleena told me. “Mother called me the next morning at about 6:30 demanding to know where I had been the night before since she had called me several times and I was not at home. I told her I was out with someone. She was furious with me for not letting her know in advance that I would be out for the evening – what if there had been an emergency? I stood my ground with her and did not apologize, nor gave her further details – after all, I didn't do anything wrong, I’m not fourteen, I’m thirty-four. Had she not been so disapproving, I’d have gladly shared more details, but with this attitude of her, I finally recognized how manipulative she was, and how much our relationship had stood in my way of getting seriously involved with someone else."

"It's not that Mom is bad," I reminded her, "it's that she is still doing the work of a mommy for a little person, and hasn't accommodated to having an adult daughter."

Eleena said, "I also began to see how mother's taking care of me and giving me so much, too much actually, had taken its toll. I’m truly resigning from the triangle with my parents." It took time for Eleena and her mother to learn how to have a healthier adult relationship (and eventually Eleena’s relationship with her father miraculously improved, and miraculously her other survived and was especially thrilled when her grandchildren arrived,) that made room for Eleena to be an adult in her own right and to have a life of her own, which could perhaps include a husband of her own.

I learned secrets about parents (that children don’t usually get to know) from some of the mothers and fathers whose adult children I treated, or who came to see me on their own. They say, “Even though I sometimes seem intimidating to my children, I’m a only flesh and blood vulnerable being who adores my son, and frankly need him much more than he needs me… I’ll do anything to have her in my life, even if it means sharing her with another, and having less of her… I sometimes forget that he’s an adult, and treat him like a child… My higher self wants what’s best for her, even if I unconsciously sabotage her… I am an adult and despite what I sometimes communicate, I can take care of myself, and my own dysfunctional relationships, even if I don’t seem to want to… My best self wants what’s best for him and I am humble enough to know the truth, which is that no one knows what’s best for them better than their own self… Sometimes I wish she would just tell me “no” because I hate myself for being manipulative… I would like to be a good parent and let my chickadee soar into the sky, but of course he needs to flap his own wings to get there. “

The more troubled the family, the more rigid this pattern of triangles can become. This is the hallmark of a triangle – it is static over time, and creates a closed system. To the extent that you have to be your parents’ son or daughter, you are less likely to become someone else's significant other and have a healthy adult relationship.

Leonard Poon wanted nothing more then to find the right man, marry and have children. In his first significant relationship, his boyfriend Brandon refused to accept his loyalty to his mother. Leonard felt glad to be rid of him, after all, his mother was alone, in her 60's and wasn't going to live forever. She needed to be with him every weekend. He thought that his next boyfriend, Jason, was equally unloving because he raged at him when Leonard spent just a couple of hours each evening speaking to his mother on the telephone. During our first session, he asked me, 'what's wrong with that?'"

I personally remember an incident that occurred when I was a young mother, in which I pleaded with my mother not to buy my four-year-old son a bicycle. I explained to her that my husband and I would prefer to be the ones to give him his first two-wheeler. My mother, a highly dominating and controlling woman, arrived for my son's birthday with my father and a shiny red bike. For the first time in my life I found the courage to stand up to her and insisted she take back the gift. After a moment of utter shock at my supposed disrespectful attitude toward her, she and my father left.

My mother wouldn't talk to me for the next six months – it was the power struggle to end all power struggles. It sent me into psychotherapy for the first time (and eventually showed me the path to a healing profession that was to be my calling for the rest of my life.) I was fighting for my independence with her. But my father also refused to talk to me during those months, and I remember feeling horrendously sad when he insisted, "I can't be disloyal to your mother." There were two triangles going on simultaneously. First, there was my mother’s attempt to triangulate between my husband and I; Second, my father sided with my mother against me.

Ideally, of course, parents ought to be able to act like responsible adults at all times and raise children who are permitted to become stable and self-sufficient adults. Were this a perfect world, generation after generation of admirable citizens would thus be spawned. One of life's limitations, however, is that only some diamonds are flawless and most parents are not. Actually, if it took as long to create a person as it does a diamond, then perhaps we'd have a far better chance of bringing up impeccable children. Reality dictates however, that we tend to repeat the patterns of the past. Therefore, if the status quo continues we can expect that our style of parenting will be no better, and perhaps worse, than that of our parents.

Healthy communication between people in relationships normally occurs one on one. As a Family Therapist who studied the dynamics of healthy and dysfunctional interactions between intimates, I know that when people communicate with each other directly, their relationships can be close and emotionally healthy. On the other hand, people have the tendency to triangulate – pull in a third person or issue when tension increases between the two. The stress of my relationship with my mother triangulated my father.
Interestingly, triangulation doesn’t stop in the family. The greater our tendency to triangulate, the more likely it is that we do so in all of our relationships – both socially and in business. Once we learn to step back and stop this destructive emotional polka, we are in a much better position to create healthy connections throughout the spectrum of our life.

"... healthy development involves differentiating to the point where one can function independently in each relationship and not automatically fall into a certain pattern of relating to one person because of that person's relationship with another person. When there is high tension in a system (family), it is common for two people to join in relating to a third to relieve stress. Differentiation means reaching the point where one relates on an individualized basis rather than on the basis of the relationship that person has to someone else. Thus, a daughter would be able to have a close relationship with her mother, even if her father, with whom she was also close, was in conflict with her mother."

The affair is of course the most commonly known triangle, and has classically involved a marital pair and the mistress. Variations on this theme are: A marital pair (gay or straight) and the wife’s lover; the heterosexual marital pair and a same sex lover for either one; the marital pair and the romantic non-sexual “friend;” the marital pair and the internet, be it over involvement, chat rooms, or pornography with same or opposite sex titillation; the couple and the ex-husband or ex-wife or ex-lover, especially when you think you’ve ended a relationship and it’s still there, beware that you may be fooling yourself, and that you are using the “divorce” as a third leg.

In each case the dynamics follow a certain pattern, where conflictual emotional issues in the primary couple go underground, and the resolution takes the format of adding a third leg to the marriage which in a strange way stabilizes and allows it to continue indefinitely as it is – a two legged stool can teeter-totter unless well-balanced, whereas a three legged stool is steady, withstanding ruts and bumps more easily. Despite its benefits of protecting the dyad from unpleasant, difficult emotions, the long-range effect of an illicit relationship is always destructive to all three parties involved.

Julia was convinced that her friendship with Max was not a big deal, and was askance when I suggested that she was having an affair with him. “All we do is meet for lunch, talk about how much we care for each other, hold hands under the table. That’s it. I’ve never gone to bed with him, it is certainly not an affair. And besides,” she added vociferously, “no one knows about it, so who can it hurt?” I asked her what effect it has had on her marriage and she said, “None.” But then added, “when I’m with my husband I do find myself thinking about Max, and when we make love I’m really with Max, but fantasy is good for a marriage, isn’t it?”

What Julia was really having is called a Romantic Affair and although it doesn’t include intercourse, it clearly suggests sexual feelings and/or actions. I asked her if the intimacy in her marriage has improved since her relationship with Max began. “If anything, we are better friends now, I’m not so angry with him anymore for working too much, or going to sleep too early,” said Julia “but insofar as intimacy goes, no, there really isn’t any, but it’s okay, I’m not unhappy.” What’s okay is that Julia and her husband have taken the pressure off from dealing with their marital problems by triangulating Julia’s affair into their marriage.

Ross wasn’t angry at his wife anymore. While she and her mother, who lives with them, spend every evening in the kitchen talking and baking, Ross no longer fumes since he’s begun watching pornography on the internet and jerking off alone instead of making love with his too busy wife; he is considering responding to some of the chat room invitations that he’s had.

Lillian is wondering why she isn’t getting remarried after ten years in the single’s world, while her ex-husband has already had three wives. They laugh about it sometimes when they talk about their dumb luck. “Maybe we should have stayed married,” he’d say to her, “I really miss you.” “Are you kidding,” she’d say, “we fought non-stop for twleve years, we’re much better off this way. At least now we can be friends.” Sounds benign, doesn’t it? But it’s not. Even though Lillian and her ex are divorced, their emotional ties are as sturdy as oak tree roots, and were never cut when the marriage ended—they’re getting their intimacy needs met in full. Is it any wonder that neither has formed a lasting intimate relationship with another person since their divorce?
“It doesn’t interfere, I just feel connected and loved, not in love, by my ex, why should I give that up?” whined Lillian whenever a man she was with complained about the shadow of her ex.

George, the new man in her life, convinced Lillian to reconsider her position when he told her, “I feel hurt that you are compartmentalizing and hiding a part of yourself from me, and it makes me feel jealous that you are emotionally invested in another man, spending time with him the way you spend time with me. I need to feel special, your one and only, and I’m upset that I have to share those parts of you.”

When Julia continued to refuse to end her former marriage, and even became angry with George for asking her to change herself for him, claiming her right to have friends who supported and nurtured her, George took a stand. “You’ll have to make a choice. You can live in the past and have this safety net, or me. I will not share you with another man.” Julia was troubled, and cried tears of grief at the prospect of finally cutting the marital chords that were choking her. When she realized that holding onto her ex was a triangle process that was truly damaging her present and future happiness, and was a remnant of her unfinished grief process over her dead marriage, she rallied. George and Julia have been happily coupled for over a year now. Their intimacy has deepened as they’ve floated on their sailboat of exclusivity.

Once an adult recognizes the patterns and rules that have imprisoned him, he can begin to take charge and find another source for safety and security from within, while embarking on the process of differentiating from his parents or their substitutes. Only then can he begin to behave as a responsible grown up who can move out into the world confident that he can take care of himself, safe from within, and share life with someone else.

Valerie Dixon recognized the loyalty conflict in which she was caught between her parents. Single and thirty-eight she was still busily mediating between them, spending enormous amounts of time and energy thinking about them, talking about them and being with them. Valerie's father, John, was forever complaining to her about her mother's latest escapade that cost him aggravation and money. Valerie was as busy as a one armed paper hanger functioning as mother's confidant when Pearl needed to vent her rage at John, assisting both parents in dealing with her brother, Leonard, talking to him when he didn’t get along with his parents, and always “helping” everyone to do the right thing.

The three of them were busily conducting John and Pearl's marriage, while Valerie bemoaned the fact that there weren't any decent men in America.
When we began working together I complimented Valerie on her incredible love for her parents – that she would go down in the Guinness Book of Records for being the most loving daughter in History. After all, how many other children would so willingly sacrifice their own happiness and marriage potential, for the sake of helping parents to keep theirs.

"I am not sacrificing myself," she wailed, "I would love to get married, just find me an available man! My parents need me though, and somehow they just don't seem able to get along without me."

I wondered along with Valerie whether this was really true. Would her parents be able to get along without her?

Valerie reluctantly admitted, "well you know, I do worry, what if my husband were to hate my mother? What if he objected to my spending a lot of time on the phone with my father? It would really be a problem. Or what if he turned out to be the kind of man who might be jealous of my parents. I just don't know who there would be for my mother and father to turn to. They would kill each other if left to their own devices."

"I guess your parents wouldn't be able to get along without you." I said, "You probably have no choice other than to stay single." Valerie was caught in my logic. We examined the triangular nature of her involvement with her parents and noted in her genogram (a family tree of sorts) how that phenomenon was repeated from one generation to the next.

We saw that in each generation there was one child, the youngest, who never married and remained available to the parents who in each generation had a highly conflictual or distant relationship.

This may explain why Valerie was still single, and that if she were to continue on the track she was on, would remain so, and triangulate with her parents until they both died. Further examination of the genogram reveals that in Pearl's family of origin, a younger sister, Angel, remained permanently in conflict with her mother, Gloria, and lovingly allied with her father, Lawrence. Pearl, meanwhile was able to leave home and marry, yet the legacy of triangulation was brought to yet another generation.

Angel is still single at 60 and is considered the family mean-spirited spinster – now enraged with her parents who divided their assets between herself and Pearl; they should have left everything to her considering she sacrificed her life to take care of them until the bitter end, she reasoned. A slightly different theme allowed Valerie's father, John and his older sister, Diane, to leave home and marry, while his youngest sibling, Joseph, was forever his parents' focus of attention as he failed miserably in every business and social endeavor – he was a compulsive gambler and went through all his parents' money before they died.

Valerie began to understand how she too was caught in the web of pattern repetition. Her brother Leonard who was always removed from the emotional fray had somehow managed to escape the family – he never returned home after college, got married, and kept his distance from all of them. This cutoff, however, may be related to the marital problems between Leonard and his wife.

Our work soon took a new turn. We began with a plan for Valerie to get out from between her parents. She agreed to the following steps that eventually resulted in her de-triangulating (getting out of the middle.) This was the hardest thing Valerie ever did – she persevered and never gave up. Three years after the plan was put into effect she also met and married a very nice man, and at the age of forty-three Valerie became a mother.


THE DE-TRIANGULATION PLAN:

The telephone task: This is a fool-proof technique that sounds much easier than it is, yet is the most important step of this process. I cannot emphasize enough how significant this task is and I guarantee that your maturity level will climb sky high, once you accomplish it. Once a week call your mother. Once a week call your father. You must always speak to only one parent at a time. This means no more three-way telephone conversations. This means that you will need to have separate conversations with your mother and with your father, at different times. Don’t cut corners. DO NOT CHOOSE TIMES WHEN YOU EXPECT ONLY ONE OF THEM HOME. The skill-building lies in the challenge of standing up for the potential conflict. Please expect to make mistakes in carrying out this task initially, but don't give up! It will be very difficult, but incredibly worthwhile.

When Rick put this plan into effect he found the telephone task to be a killer. Initially, his biggest fear was that each of his parents would feel his disloyalty. He worried that his mother would wonder what he was talking to his father about, and vice-versa, and feel left out. We spent a great deal of time preparing him for this by recognizing one important truth which he had never known: Every child is entitled to have a separate and loving relationship with each of his parents. It’s okay if his mother feels left out. She is supposed to be left out. This made sense to Rick. This is what Rick did.

One. He began by arranging for a private meeting (on the same day) with each of his parents, where he told them of his decision to only speak to them separately on the phone. He explained that when they were all three on the phone he often got upset because they began to bicker or otherwise talk to each other. Even when they promised not to do that anymore, he held his ground and asked that when he speaks to one parent, that the other not be in the room or be allowed to interrupt or talk to the other parent. Neither parent seemed particularly disturbed by his announcement and dismissed this as "another one of your stupid ideas."

Two. Rick had to decide which parent he wanted to speak with the next time that he called. He decided to call his mother on Tuesday and his father on Friday.

Three. On Tuesday, if mother picked up the phone he would talk to her, but if father picked up the phone he would merely say to him, "Hello, Dad. I called to speak to mother, would you please put her on?" The same applied to Friday if mother picked up the phone. If his mother tried to have a conversation with him instead of just handing the phone to his father he was to say, "Mom, I'll be talking to you on another day, please put Dad on now." If she still refused, he would HANG UP! Under no circumstances was Rick to avoid this part of the task by calling his father at his office, or his mother when he knew she’d be alone. Surviving the conflict was an integral part of the task.

Four. After he spoke to one parent he would hang up, even if the other got on the phone or the first parent suggested a conversation with the other. Rick’s parents hung on tightly to him when he made that first Tuesday call. Mother answered the phone and at the end of their conversation she said, "Here's Dad he wants to talk to you too." Rick hung up as he heard his voice.

Five. While Rick was to be talking to one parent on the phone, he was prepared for the possibility that his parents might start a conversation with each other. One time this occurred while Rick was on the phone with his father, when his mother began to talk to his father about something. Rick said, "Dad, since you want to speak to mother right now I'll hang up and talk to you next week. Good bye."

The Telephone Task is the best gift you can lavish upon yourself. It also extends to face-to-face interactions with both parents and others in your life. It is not that you need to avoid group conversations or threesomes which are a happy part of life, but that you want to develop healthy relationships that can only occur one on one.

When people are upset about something and communicate directly with each other, they have a good chance of finding solutions and working through their problems. On the other hand we all have the tendency to triangulate – pull in a third person or issue or jump in and volunteer, when tension increases between any two individuals. This serves to deflect attention from the real problem (which may be very uncomfortable and frightening to confront) and to focus on something different and possibly less painful, which temporarily appears to solve or deflect the problem. If you learned to communicate by pulling in a third issue or person in your family of origin, you will almost certainly repeat this emotional process with your intimate partner.


Health Family Dynamics include a boundary around the mom and dad, this is the white picket fence that expresses their team spirit – the team is made up of two equal partners where each has authority over their children, who naturally have less power by virtue of being younger and in the care of the adults.

Another boundary surrounds the mother and each child – indicating the existence of a separate relationship between them that excludes other members of the family. Please imagine that such boundaries also exist around every other dyad (two people) in the family, in other words, mother and each child, father and each child.

This second boundary expresses the appropriateness for each family pair to have a separate relationship from all others, where they can have private interactions without interference from other family members. By focusing on the mother/son boundary we can see how these operate. Assuming son expresses anger at his mother in the presence of other family members, the boundary that is an imaginary line, asserts this pair's need and right to interact without interference from others family members. In this way they can resolve a given issue and have a full relationship – which consists of both positive and negative emotions and interactions. To the degree that others interfere in a pair's interaction, that pair is deprived of the full range of possibilities that go along with closeness and intimacy.

Many years ago when my stepdaughter Gina was fifteen and we began to build what has become a wonderful relationship, we butted heads over her cigarette smoking. I remember a day when I returned home to find heaping ashtrays of offensive dead butts. "Gina," I complained, "we had an agreement now that I stopped smoking, that you would empty the ashtray after you use it and not let it pile up... I'm really offended by the foul odor and am disappointed with you. You broke your promise to me!"

No sooner had these words left my mouth then my husband came flying out of another room and yelled at me, "Rita, stop attacking my daughter! What is going on here?"

"Harvey," I responded, "if you want me to develop a good relationship with Gina you have to stay out of the way and give us the room to be mad at each other as well as loving toward each other."

"Dad," Gina jumped in, "go back to your room!"

Proving to me why I fell in love with him, my husband broke into a warm smile, gave us each a big hug and left without saying a word. What he had attempted was to jump into a triangle between himself, Gina and I – in this way: 1) he got in the middle of an interaction that had nothing to do with him, 2) he sided with one of us against the other, and, 3) tried to interfere with our ability to solve our own problem with each other. Had we not stopped him this could have become an ongoing pattern, and Gina and I could have been deprived of developing the loving friendship we enjoy.

Have I convinced you? Would you like to significantly improve your relationships and increase the possibility of getting yourself happily attached to a significant other? I guarantee that you can do it by changing this one thing:

BECOME A TRIANGLE BUSTER!

What To Do?
1) Stay out of the middle of someone else's problem.
2) Don’t let someone else jump into the middle of your problem with another.
3) Deal directly with something that repeatedly bothers you.
4) When you are upset with your partner, talk about it with her, rather than with someone else.
5) Develop the ability to confront and challenge others.

Early on in Jewel Gilbert and Terry Fiorello’s marriage, they had to confront issues related to their respective parents and siblings. One in particular stands out in my mind. Jewel’s twenty year-old brother, Harry, wanted to transfer from The University of Michigan and come East. During one of their phone conversations in September, Jewel offered that Harry could live with her and Terry. Later she told her girlfriend, "You know honey, I was talking to Harry earlier, and we decided that he is going to come live with us for about a year starting in January when the new term begins."

Terry was mortified upon hearing the news. Their cramped apartment was often a source of tension for them and the thought of another person, a young man at that, seemed to Terry like a nightmare. But she also understood Jewel’s desire to help out her brother – Jewel was ten years older then her brother, and since their parents’ deaths was like a mother to Harry. What really upset Terry was that she was Jewel’s wife and would be deeply affected by such a change, and yet Jewel did not consult with her, she merely told her what she and Harry decided.

In fact, Jewel had triangulated with Harry, leaving Terry out in the cold. Terry was livid! She felt devalued, ignored, overlooked and isolated. However, she said nothing because Terry feared that her anger would overcome her, and that disagreeing with Jewel would bring things between them to a head. Terry was a smart cookie, she knew a triangle when it hit her on the head like a two by four, yet allowed it to continue. She felt certain that Jewel would choose Harry over her.

Without thinking it through, Terry shoved her feelings under the rug.
Two months later, around Thanksgiving, Jewel confronted Terry, "Something is very wrong between us. I don't know what's going on, but you haven't been home more than one evening a week these last couple of months. In addition, we haven't had any intimacy during this period. You are different, you've changed. You used to be warm and loving, but lately you seem cold, aloof – not the Terry I married. I miss you! What's up?"

"Jewel, you are absolutely right," responded her wife, "there is something very wrong between us. I haven't realized that I've been doing those things, you know, kind of distancing from you this way. But I have been very upset with you and yet have been fearful of talking about it. I fear that it could very well end our relationship. So I got busier with work and friends and shut off, I guess. Thanks for bringing it up, it's really been eating at me. But I think we'll need quite a lot of time to work it out. Could we make a date to speak about this Friday evening so we have the entire weekend to talk about things?”

Jewel agreed and Friday turned out to be the worst night of their life. They fought, they yelled, they threatened. Terry slept on the couch, and they stopped speaking. By Saturday afternoon they began to talk about things more reasonably. By Sunday they resolved to remain together and came to a new understanding. Jewel recognized her failure in making such an important decision without consulting Terry, who she had feared would prevent her from helping her brother.

There is always a moment like this, where a twosome recognizes the need to address an issue, yet defers it, or avoids it altogether, out of fear of conflict. That fear engineers the future formation of a triangle. Once consulted, she was willing to help Jewel with a solution. Since their living space was in fact too tight to accommodate another adult, Terry offered that they move to larger quarters where there would be a room for Harry. Jewel felt they could not afford to do that but suggested an alternative –they can help Harry to find alternate housing close by and he could visit on some weekends. This seemed like a viable solution to them. Both women had become Triangle Busters, confronting unpleasantness and thereby meeting the challenge of intimacy head-on.

The most important thing to remember about triangles is that there is always the potential for them.

When conflict or discomfort or over-closeness between two people occurs, be on guard for the development of a triangle, because a third person or issue or object is likely to be used to avoid the real problem in the twosome. The real problem is often the lack of individual definition in one person.

When this becomes a repetitive pattern, and the three people (or the two with an object or issue) become the predictable way that people interact, then there is no doubt of the presence of a dysfunctional triangle where the emotionality of each person is reactive to the whole group.

In a healthy system, there is no repetition. People move in and out of closeness and distance. Conflicts are confronted and resolved. Triangles, on the other hand, are an emotional avoidance mechanism intended to create fortitude without change. As long as they operate, Triangles prevent the resolution of emotional problems. When they are eliminated, it is possible to develop a true comprehension of the emptiness in the person and the personal relationship and the potential for healing can begin.

 

For a happier life, call to learn more about how Relationship Therapy works. Ask questions about EMDR Trauma/Loss Therapy and Hypnotherapy. For a free telephone consultation or appointment email Dr Rita emailemail or call (212) 532-0032.

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