The central point of the first “Love Letter to the Anxiously Attached” was this: anxious attachers are wired up to have stronger feelings (sooner) and to bond deeper (faster) in the beginning of a new relationship. They also tend to rush into lots and lots of intimacy, which means that the need for consistency and security is probably going to come online sooner for them than it will for their lover — which is likely going to be more than that person (or the relationship) are ready for.
A lot of these responses are baked into the nervous system, so it really isn’t a matter of stopping it from happening. Rather, it’s about learning to maintain a degree of mindfulness while it is happening — just enough so that you can make different kinds of choices. I call it “Sobriety in the Spike.”
The “Spike” is that initial stage of relationship where you can’t stop thinking about them, where you’re willing the time to pass until you can see them again, where being with them is the most intoxicatingly pleasurable thing you can possibly imagine. It’s a surge of hormones and neurotransmitters that are doing precisely what they were evolutionarily designed to do. Thing is, the Spike isn’t “like” drugs, it IS drugs, and there are some highly predictable ways that they will distort your perception of reality and compel you do all kinds of things you wouldn’t ordinarily do.
So “Sobriety” is the simple but difficult task of maintaining enough perspective so that you can make the kinds of choices that lead to grounded, sustainable, long-lived relationship (instead of the intoxicating but ultimately unsustainable whirlwind of romance that leaves us bewildered and shattered when it ends).
There are three parts to this article: first, you’ll read about the classic reality distortions we experience under the influence of the Spike. Next, you’ll get the full picture of what it looks like a) when we lose our Sobriety in the Spike, versus b) when we do manage to keep our wits about us when we get dosed by love. And finally, you’ll be introduced to what I call “The Two Transformations,” two critical passages that we must navigate with Sobriety in order to build a deep, real, and lasting partnership.
So let’s start with the classic reality distortions of the Spike:
~ “I’m experiencing the halo effect.”
When we see a few obviously positive traits in our new lover, we tend to leap to the assumption that the rest of their personality is similarly stellar. If we’ve seen real kindness or real wisdom, for example, we go ahead and assume that they also possess honesty, integrity, compassion, and so on. We create an entire “halo” of goodness out of a few scraps of evidence.
Once again, you probably can’t stop this from happening, but the perspective granted by Sobriety will help you remember that they also posses a shadow, full of all kinds of messy stuff from their past and family lineage — just like you. And you actually can’t see any of that right now because you’re both on the intense, feel-good drugs of the Spike.
~ “I’m amplifying and generalizing.”
Amplifying is simply our tendency in the Spike to magnify our perception of their good qualities. If they demonstrate kindness or good humor on the first date, we’re likely to feel that they’re so kind or so funny (you know you’ve done it). The Spike makes us all glow like pink roses at dawn, so they’re just going to seem a lot more of everything.
Generalizing is our tendency to assume that if they display good qualities now, then they will continue to display them across time and contexts. We assume that they simply are kind and funny, at all times and in all situations, and we forget that they are just as capable of meanness, dishonesty, and so on.
The key point to remember here is that there are bits and pieces of your wonderful new person that you simply are not going to see until life (or the relationship itself) places some very real pressure on them. Falling in love with someone new is kind of like Survivor: you’ve been dropped onto the beach of a beautiful tropical island, and it may seem lovely from here, but you have no map, you don’t speak the language, and you have no idea what kinds of creatures might be lurking in the forest.
In 2016, Alain de Botton wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times entitled Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person, and in spite of the many newsworthy events of that year, that piece was read more often than just about anything else. We marry the “wrong” person, he says, because “we seem normal only to those who don’t know us very well. In a wiser, more self-aware society than our own, a standard question on any early dinner date would be: ‘And how are you crazy?’”
~ “I’m creating an avatar.”
In the beginning stages of relationship, your brain is furiously at work building up an inner “working model” of who this person is, what they’re like, what you can and can’t expect from them, what the combination of you + them is likely to equal, and what it all means for you and your identity. This is the “avatar,” and in the beginning, what you’re seeing is a lot more avatar and a lot less who they actually are.
It’s also important to recognize the incredibly distorting power of desire. You really want them to be the person you think they are because of what that would give to you. And out of that strong desire, your brain becomes even more likely to delete or distort the bits of data that contradict the avatar.
Sobriety here helps you to remember that the avatar is wildly incomplete. It’s not “wrong,” per se, but it is such an infinitesimal fraction of who they are that it cannot be taken as the full picture. Sometimes there’s a temptation to think, “Oh, we just instantly recognized one another and it’s like we’ve been best friends for decades. We’ve totally been partners in a past life.” That’s the Spike, my friend. Specifically, that’s the avatar.
When de Botton was interviewed on the “On Being” podcast, he offered up the refreshingly pessimistic view that human beings are challenging to live with — every last one of them. We don’t see this coming because we’ve all been programmed to expect that our beloved really is the lovely princess or the dashing prince. These expectations set us up for disappointment, sure, but even more-so, they are often also the cause of relationship breakdown. De Botton suggests that we re-evaluate our standards and consider what a gift it might be, after all, to find “the not overly wrong person.”
Sobriety = Better Choices
Now let’s turn our attention to the kinds of choices we’re likely to make when we succumb to the reality distortions of the Spike and lose our Sobriety:
Allowing one hangout to lead to the next without much (or any) time in between, until you’re spending the majority of your free time together
Sliding into the language of “we/us/our,” “boyfriend/girlfriend/partner,” and “love”
Neglecting your friends, self-care, work, etc.
Deleting or distorting those little moments where you actually feel turned off by them; ignoring the experience outright or making up a quick rationalization and moving on
Withholding those experiences of ambivalence when they come up so that you can avoid a potentially uncomfortable conversation and go on having a good time
Going straight to sex or climax (the most potent way to intensify the effects of the Spike)
Entering into explicit romantic or sexual exclusivity really fast
Building them up in your head as a larger-than-life, super-human, ultra-perfect human, lover, and partner
Making big life moves like taking long trips, moving houses, taking or declining job opportunities you wouldn’t otherwise, etc.
Prematurely braiding your lives together by spending holidays together, meeting family, sharing big resources, embedding into one another’s friend groups, etc.
Making big declarations (even if only to yourself) about what the future with this person entails
Ignoring the concern or warnings of your friends, or the reflections they’re offering that you don’t want to hear
And if you can hang onto even a little bit more Sobriety in the Spike, here are the kinds of choices you’re more likely to be able to make:
Letting there be a day or two between communications sometimes
Allowing a few days pass between in-person hangouts; if spending time with them is kind of like getting drunk, then allowing a few days to pass is like letting yourself sober up so you can reflect on things with a clearer head
Putting attention on how you feel directly after spending time with them, and also how you feel in the 1–2 days after spending time with them; being willing to acknowledge if something doesn’t feel good or right, even if you don’t know what that is at all
Actually paying attention to those little moments where you feel turned off; you don’t have to leap to the opposite conclusion (all bad vs. all good), just hold those experiences in an inner space of curiosity and not-yet-fully-knowing
Speaking directly about those moments of ambivalence as they come up in real time, with the willingness to face the reality that the conversation might be uncomfortable and you don’t know where it might end up
Holding off on sex and climax until at least a couple of weeks have passed and you’ve had a good handful of hangouts (the Spike can be at its most intense in the very first days or weeks, so you might be surprised by what you see, feel, and think if you give yourself a moment to get through that period without the amplifying effect of sex)
Giving plenty of time before declaring romantic or sexual exclusivity; even if neither of you are seeing anyone else in reality, entering into an explicit agreement with one another also has an amplifying effect
Holding back a bit on the impulse to “gush” about them to others, because what you’re primarily doing there is reinforcing the distortion of the halo effect, amplification, generalization, and the avatar
Maintaining the majority of the life-flow you would be having if you hadn’t met them: trips you had planned, time spent with friends and family and on your own self-care and personal and professional pursuits, etc. (even though you probably won’t want to!)
Checking in frequently with close friends who can hold you accountable and point out where you might be getting hypnotized by the Spike and heading towards unwise choices
The Two Transformations
Maintaining our Sobriety in the Spike means we’re more likely to make choices from that second list. And when we make those kinds of choices, we are more likely to navigate our way successfully through The Two Transformations.
The first transformation is from initial infatuation to real love. A general time frame for this transformation is at least six months up to a year. That surge of intoxicating chemicals needs to subside before your mind is clear enough to register a real and undistorted image of them — and this will take longer than you probably think it does. If the “love” is based on a rosy, incomplete, partially distorted image of them… then it isn’t real love yet.
If we get swept up by the intoxication of the Spike, believing that we have love when all we really have is infatuation, we’re likely to rush things and try to make things be what we want them to be instead of registering what they actually are — and all of that can crush a relationship that could otherwise have been something good.
This Transformation is really about replacing your avatar, bit by bit, with real data from real experiences with your person over time. It’s relatively easy to feel love for the avatar, shiny and idealized image that it is. It is far harder (and takes a lot longer) to really love a real human being. And the primary test comes when you finally see them melt down under stress, or when you come up against your first serious conflict in the relationship. If you can find ways to love them there, if you’re asking yourself, “How can I be a good partner to them as they have this experience,” even when you’re feeling turned off, disappointed, triggered, or pissed… then we’re getting into the territory of real love.
Real love is like a mighty tree: it started out as a tiny seed, and required lots and lots of time, effort, and resources in order to grow into what it is now. You could build a dope treehouse in a fully grown tree, but if you tried to build it in a sapling, you might wind up killing it :-(
The second transformation is from a relationship into a partnership. This can take several years, and in truth, partner-ing is a complex skill that we can practice and improve at our whole lives long. Partnership is what you have when you know that person inside and out, when you understand their shortcomings and where those shortcomings really come from, when you know how to support them in their challenges (and when you know how to tolerate them in their challenges as well) — and when they know how to do all of that for you too. And yes, a big part of this Transformation is the falling away of those bits of rose-colored fantasy you had in the beginning. It’s when you know in a deep way what life with them is really signing you up for; when you can take a sober look at who they are in their full humanity, and say “yes” to partnering with all of it.
Partnerships can do things that relationships can’t. Relationships are still forming, so they don’t have the same ground, foundation, or roots that fully matured partnerships do, they don’ have the same capacity, resources, or resilience. And if you ask a relationship to do something that only a partnership can do, that’s likely going to be a rough road for you.
Though there could never be a cut and dry, concrete distinction between these two concepts, here are some illustrations to give you a sense of the difference:
Relationships get a dog… partnerships make a baby
Relationships go on trips… partnerships take multi-month voyages
Relationships help you get through unexpected disappointments… partnerships help you care for your ailing parents
Relationships take you on a romantic weekend getaway or surprise you with that fancy gadget you’ve been wanting… partnerships will hold you up financially if you need to go back to school or start your own business
Relationships get to know your family… partnerships become your family
Relationships are still assessing your shortcomings… partnerships have made the choice to accept them fully (and are invested in learning how to partner around those shortcomings)
