People, Places, and Things

He came to therapy at a point in his life when he was shattered by his marriage breaking down in bitter court battles and betrayals. Sensing that he was likely to keep repeating this disastrous pattern, he made the decision not to jump right back into the dating pool, and instead he made a steadfast commitment to understanding and breaking the cycle of abusive relationships.

He had been working hard to understand and heal the patterns from his childhood that he had repeated in all of his adult relationships. He had made substantial progress due to his courage in facing his fears and disclosing his darkest failures and shame in therapy. He had come to see that he had been coping with his pain by placing his faith, his hope of relief, in substances and other things, believing they would deliver him from his pain. This insight empowered him to resist self-harming behaviors and to wean off addictions.

He had begun dating a woman that seemed to share his values and many of his interests. He had worked to express his needs with her. He was living out a different idea of relationship, one that was more about collaborating for mutual contentment, not simply pleasing the other person at one’s own expense. However, this woman was now heading in a different direction, starting to tack away from the relationship.

The breach in the new relationship was devastating to him. When the rift started, it threatened to trigger all of his old habits. Because of the work he had done prior to this relationship, that wobbly period did not last very long. He had learned to be aware of uncomfortable feelings and to settle his body and mind in order to observe them and to ride them out, rather than to be swept away by them. Like a patient parent soothing a child throwing a tantrum, he could love himself in the middle of the storm and reassure himself that these dark feelings would pass.

This session was occurring just after that internal storm. He was still hurting, but he had successfully avoided engaging in old patterns of behavior that may have temporarily distracted him from his pain but would have initiated a cycle of shame. In this place of being present with his grief—a new, unfamiliar place for him—he was feeling deep despair. This was partly over the loss of the relationship, but even more, it was despair over sensing he had been making a similar kind of error.

Having overcome his former addictions to things, he was shocked to discover that being broken in life had also led him to invest his faith in relief from pain, his hope in deliverance from suffering, into other people.

The act of loving another person brings us into intimate connection with them. Our feelings naturally coalesce around the relationship. We come to attribute our mood that day to the ups and downs of the other person.

We ask questions, to ourselves and out loud, and we stake our contentment on the answers: Can I count on you? What is the status of our relationship? Where is this relationship going?

It is human nature to ask these questions. Our error lies in the shift from being fully present with the other person to making them the center of our world. As we place them up on an altar inside of us, we move beyond experiencing joy in being close with them. We begin to depend on them as our source of meaning in life.

The problem with making this shift is that we are all just human beings. There is no possible way we can perfectly meet all of another person’s needs at all times. As much as we love our partners and strive to be good mates, there will inevitably be days when we are tired, or grumpy, or preoccupied with our own concerns. The dynamic of needing another person to fulfill us puts a strain on the energy available within the relationship and sets up the potential for conflict and power struggles.

Recovery programs warn about the perils of seeking our meaning in “people, places, and things.” Material goods lose their luster and break down. Our bodies become inured to physical sensations, and the novelty wears off. The new location that starts as a grand adventure is soon carved up by the routine patterns of daily life. Even the best people can have off days and will, at times, disappoint and frustrate us.

In the depths of his anguish, the young man on the couch had come to understand that healing his past and living out his destiny meant he had to stop looking to the transient nature of people, places, and things for fulfillment. When there seems to be nothing left to depend on, we have to look beyond the surface appearance of the world and connect with something more essential and eternal. On that day, he took the first steps on his spiritual journey.

That is exactly what human beings are made to do. On every level, from the genetic content of our cells to our spiritual yearning, we are made in the image and likeness of love, health, peace, goodness, justice, and mercy. We will find that eternal source of meaning when we stop looking at worldly counterfeits and seek the perfect, inexhaustible source that was always inside of us.