“Treat people like kings and kings like people and you’ll get along with everybody.”
— Muhammad Ali
A friend recently dropped me a note, curious for my take on why romantic breakups takes such a tough emotional toll. There are, I believe, three behavioral nuances that blend to create seasickness between-the-ears following a disrupted romance. These three are: relationship levels, the inborn desire to be loved, and what I call a wide-open window.
Relationship levels. I teach a concept called the relationship funnel, with its basic premise that there are eight distinct and progressively deepening levels of relationships. As a relationship strengthens, it slides down deeper into the funnel. The funnel is symbolic because the number of people in our lives that occupy each of these level decreases as trust and intimacy increases.
The top level of the funnel–casual relationships–accommodates those to whom we do what I call, “Give ’em the chin.” The chin is a nod of recognition but little more. There’s no sharing of information or emotion. A fleeting, cursory hello.
Familiarization takes those casual relationships deeper, to step two, which is cordial. The next level deeper than cordial is professional. Then comes social interactions borne by choice, which create personal relationships.
At each of these levels, our willingness to expand what we seek, are willing to share, and its relevant emotional importance expands. But the number of people we are willing to trade these revelations with diminishes.
Level six is where romantic relationships truly begin, as this is “trusting.” I believe trust is a conscious decision. When a relationship reaches a fork in the road of interpersonal possibility, we have to weigh whether or not we can (or should) trust that person. Trust comes with vulnerability. Sometimes we decide to, sometimes we don’t. Love interests–true lovers, not drunken liaisons of convenience–accelerate here.
Level seven takes trust further, to a deeper, more intimate level, where secrets are revealed and shared. This is a baring of the soul, a chosen vulnerability. It heightens the endorphin release of love and romance but its trade-off the increased emotional vulnerability it creates.
Level eight, the deepest level — the real you — is not as common as it seems. Some people don’t know who they truly are or do everything possible to avoid such confrontation. And if they won’t own it, how can they possibly share it? The tabloids are rife with these stories, to the extent we’re all sick of reading about them. There is, in my opinion, a glass wall for many of us between intimacy and the real us. The real us is 100 percent emotionally exposed. The intimate us is less. Sometimes we protect ourselves by sealing off that difference in between.
Regardless what order we choose to shuffle these eight progressive relationship categories, levels do exist; and the stronger a relationship, the deeper down the list it goes.
Life and love are not as easy as sliding down a staircase bannister from level one to level eight. Romance is far more often a pachinko game of the heart, with emotions ricocheting like the little steel ball off the game’s staggered rows of brads. Nor will a lot us ever have many relationships that thrive at step eight–the real you. Life just doesn’t work that way. Because true love is rare, we internalize and cling to its importance.
Although love is a navigation replete with minefields of vulnerability, it’s a game we keep playing because of a primal need. After our need for safety is met, we strive to achieve physical comfort. Once we’re comfortable, we pursue acceptance and love. Only after we do this do we worry about esteem (“being somebody”). When we achieve that, we chase life’s ultimate reason for being, our destiny. Since the need for acceptance and love is inborn, we pursue it. And keep pursuing it.
The open window I referred to as the third ingredient is the aperture created by the amount of information we willingly share and its emotional importance. When we trust someone so much that virtually everything about us is revealed and out in the open arena for discussion, he or she knows more about us, and what makes us tick, than anyone else.
There is great risk in this, especially if the relationship flames and crashes. Each person walks away from the wreckage knowing his or her partner leaves with “secrets,” some of which may not be flattering. Guilt creates baggage, right? This is why so many damaged people wander around after a break-up. Predictable and understandable, but unattractive to others.
“Love Is a Battlefield” is quote that comes to mind, apropos for this discussion and also the title of a hit song written by Holly Knight and Mike Chapman that, in 1983, gave singer Brooklyn born singer Patricia Mae Andrzejewski, then 30, her biggest career hit. Patricia Mae still earns a good living singing it, under her stage name of Pat Benatar.
So, if the song’s still relevant, there must be something to it.