Do you know the stereotype of the super successful, self-centered CEO with a great career and tons of money? That’s me, though I’m now semi-retired. I’ve been divorced four times, and I’ve always “traded” for a better model. I never really loved any of them. I had a very difficult childhood; my father died when I was young and my mother was mentally ill and abusive. I was homeless on and off for six years until I was placed in foster care. I got full scholarships to good schools and was making over a million dollars by the time I was 35. However, I’ve never been good at connecting with people. I exploit their insecurities, manipulating them through fear of rejection or humiliation.
My current girlfriend is pretty much immune to that. But recently, some traumatic things happened to me. I wanted to go with her on a business trip that would take me near a city where I was once homeless. When I started having panic attacks, she said she’d protect me. One day, I would have laughed at her for saying that, but this time she made me feel safe enough to go. Last night, when some problem kept her at her desk late, instead of calling her, I started walking around the neighborhood, looking for her and feeling unbearably desperate. And when she leaves, I don’t sleep because I feel so anxious. Would it be better not to care about anyone at all?
No! Yes, you left behind a lot of human debris. But the better role model you need is a better role model for yourself. It’s a shame you didn’t spend any of your earnings on some therapy to help you wrestle with the legacy of abuse and neglect. Such an early experience can make someone question their deepest worth as a human being and sabotage the pursuit of love. You still have a fear of rejection backed up by a sense of unworthiness, and that’s likely the source of the panic you describe in various situations.
Your friend seems like a good person and you know her as someone special. But in the long run, you can’t give her responsibility for your inner well-being, and you can’t rely on your “best models” to make you eventually feel good enough. She can’t wave a magic wand to make the fear/unworthiness evaporate, so when she’s not with you, the panic comes back with a vengeance, the panic that makes you ramble irrationally around your neighborhood, the panic that keeps you up at night when she’s away. Only you can remove the fear. Each of us has this responsibility for ourselves; when we delegate it to others, we often end up despising them—and they despise us. It’s a fact of life that handing over responsibility for our inner self to a partner erodes the relationship; over time, partners come to resent the responsibility.
In the long run, we expect a certain level of equality in self-responsibility. You alone must find a way to deal with the panic that can flare up in moments that sum up very threatening early life experiences. Bad things happened to you as a child, none of which were your fault, but which had a profound impact on your sense of self. Not having a stable attachment, protection, or home is a betrayal in childhood. It’s terrifying for anyone, let alone a child. No amount of money can eliminate the panic system that has been indelibly sensitized by those terrifying experiences. But a good course of therapy can help you ease the terror that still comes to the surface when you feel unprotected. Since there was nothing at stake before in a relationship to force you to confront your own unworthiness and inner helplessness, you are now in an ideal position to examine deeply held beliefs and feelings about yourself that have their roots in your past. You will likely need some help doing this, as it will be painful before it is triumphant. But a good therapist will also tune you into your tremendous survival skills.
