I was reminded of this story by an exchange with a friend today.
Dealing with the end of an intense romantic relationship is painful, regardless of the terms on which that relationship took place. Whether an unrequited obsession or a marriage, the adjustment to life without that one other person on whom you were so focused for so long is very difficult. And especially when we’ve had a hard time seeing a lover’s flaws, recovery may call for a period where we zero in on nothing but those shortcomings.
The story:
Many years ago, during one of my intermittent attempts to get sober, I went into analysis. Yeah, old school Freudian analysis, four days a week for an hour at a time. My psychiatrist, who had gone through the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute, had me on the couch in his Pasadena office for nearly two years. My grandmother footed the bill. But when we made the family decision to put me through the famed Freudian process, it was my mother who told me about a dear friend of hers — another psychiatrist — whose own daughter had gone into analysis (with another doctor, of course, not her mother.) My mother’s friend had told her daughter, “Boopsie, at some point during this process you will realize that you hate me. Don’t worry, the hate won’t last. But it’s a necessary stage in analysis.”
“Don’t be silly, Mom, the day could never come when I’d hate you!”, Boopsie replied.
Six months later, the phone rang. When my mother’s friend answered, she heard her daughter’s voice: “Mom”, Boopsie said, “I just want you to know… it’s that day. I hate you.” Click.
Several weeks later, of course, the phone rang again. “Mom, I just want you to know, I don’t hate you anymore”, Boopsie announced with pride. Her mother laughed with her, and they cried together.
And yeah, I went through the same thing with my own mother.
But it’s not just Freudian analysis with its high price tag that produces this process of progressing from idealization to angry contempt and then on to loving acceptance. It’s also part of a good breakup, as I discovered not long after I began the analytic journey.
As I’ve often written, early on in my teaching career I went through a period where I dated and slept with many of my students. Though all these relationships were consensual, at least in the legal sense, they were also deeply unethical. And while some were one-night stands, some lasted on-and-off for months, and in a couple of cases, over a year. One of the latter relationships was with a young woman named Tanya, whom I slept with on and off from late 1996 to early 1998. I was a complete jerk to Tanya, not only because our relationship had started when I was her professor, but also because she was someone who wanted an exclusive romantic relationship with me, something I had neither the willingness nor the ability to give at that turbulent and self-absorbed point in my life. As far as I was concerned, Tanya and I were “friends with benefits”. And yet my conscience wasn’t so drugged and numbed that it didn’t know damn well I was taking advantage of her feelings for me.
Finally, in early 1998, Tanya told me that it was too painful to continue to sleep with me when I could give her nothing more than sex, affection and conversation. If I couldn’t commit, she told me, she’d need to stop seeing me altogether. She also told me she was starting therapy, and was excited about where that would take her. Since I was, at this point, on dear Dr. Levine’s couch Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons, I was all about therapy, and told Tanya I was excited for her.
I remembered my mother’s story, and shared it with Tanya. And at the end, I said, “You know, sometime soon you’re gonna wake up one day and realize you hate me. And because this isn’t a mother-child relationship, I’m not sure you’ll ever stop hating me.” (Yes, I was that narcissistic — until I got sober, so intensely focused on how I appeared in the minds and imaginations of others.) Tanya protested: “Hugo, I love you. I’m in love with you. I want to stop being in love with you because it hurts me. But I couldn’t ever hate you.”
I shook my head. “You will, you will. And you’ll have a right to.”
Six months or so later, I nearly died (and nearly killed others) as a result of my own drug and booze-induced stupidity. After getting out of the hospital, I got sober. I took a vow of celibacy, went to various Twelve Step meetings every night, and — briefly — took Dr. Levine to an astonishing five days a week. Only a few weeks clean, and still very fragile, I got a call from Tanya, whom I hadn’t heard from in months.
Her voice was cold, clipped, deathly calm. “I just wanted you to know you were right. I hate you now. I hate your fucking guts. You’re a selfish prick,and I don’t know what I ever saw in you. I’m over you, asshole.”
I took a deep breath and started to shake. I was so fearful of relapse. Now I was the one teary-eyed while Tanya was the one with icy clarity. I knew better than to try to explain myself. “Um, uh, thank you. Thank you for calling.” The last bit came out more like a question. Tanya finished the chat: “Don’t ever call me. I don’t want to hear from you or speak to you, ever.” She hung up. I hadn’t had the chance to tell her that everything was changing in my life, that I was getting clean and clear, that I was celibate. I hadn’t had the chance to say I was sorry. I just stood there in the kitchen of my little condo, staring at the phone, feeling the awful recognition of how much pain I’d caused someone else. And then I picked up the phone and called my sponsor.
About a year later, I saw Tanya on the street. I saw her first as we walked in opposite directions on Colorado Boulevard in Old Town Pasadena. I pretended to examine a store window, hoping she’d pass me by. No chance. Tanya recognized me at once. She came up to me, and I braced myself, but her words and tone were different. “Hey, Hugo”, she said. “How are you?” “Great”, I stammered. “You?” Tanya told me her life was terrific. She had a boyfriend, and was in her last semester at Cal State Los Angeles.
We made a little bit of small talk, and then she said: “Hugo, I’m sorry I was so harsh with you last summer. I never thought I could hate you, and then I did. And once I started hating you, I didn’t think I’d ever stop hating you. But then that stopped too. And now, it just is. I don’t hate you, I don’t really feel much of anything for you. I hope you’re okay, and I wish you well, and that’s all there is.”
I’d already started the amends process, slowly tracking down the various people whom I’d wronged in my years of drinking and using and acting out sexually. I’d held off on Tanya because she’d told me not to contact her. But now, with her standing in front of me, I figured this was my moment. But before I’d finished my first halting sentence, Tanya held up her hand. “No, no. I don’t need to hear it”, she said, shaking her head. “I had my part, you had yours. It’s over, it’s done.” She smiled, and did the only reasonable thing she could do: she held our her hand. I shook it, we nodded, smiled, and each headed our separate ways. I haven’t seen her since.
Should Tanya have listened to my amends? It wasn’t her job to make it easy for me, as it wasn’t her job to tell me she didn’t hate me anymore. I didn’t get a chance to ask for forgiveness, nor did she indicate whether or not she forgave me. What she was clear on was that the love was gone and the hate as well, and she was at peace and wished me well. She’d finished her process, at least the part that involved me, and she’d needed to tell me that. I was glad she did.
Theologians and others often remark that the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. Hate and love are opposite sides of the same coin, twinned emotions. And when we’ve loved someone the way a small child loves a parent, or the way an obsessed lover loves someone who loves her (or him) less, our healing and growth often require we spend some time opening ourselves to hate. In the case of a parent and child, the end result is, one hopes, an eventual strengthening of the bond on a whole new level. With an ex-lover, it’s different. Abusive love or unrequited love can be so painful that it leaves a great wound. The wound bleeds and bleeds until the love stops, and until the gash is cauterized by hate. Hate, like obsession, burns too hot to be healthy for long. But jeepers, sometimes we really need that burn. I’ve needed it in short bursts in my own life, as Tanya did in hers.
So yeah, I’m just repeating what someone famous for wisdom said some 2500 years ago. But old truisms sometimes benefit from modern illustrations.
Great story, especially from my perspective as someone who knew who “Tanya” was.
Boopsie is a made-up name, though, right?
Very thoughtful.
I think in our culture we sometimes don’t give rage its place, so it gets acted out instead of correctly understood (including its source, such as a relationship with a parent), processed and used to help us define what we want or don’t want and get clarity on whether certain relationships are good or bad for us.
This is part of why we end up having to do therapy in the first place, to uncover rage that is not allowed its expression and validated in childhood.
I am a fan of long-term psychotherapy (I can’t tell from this if Hugo felt it was good or not) because I think it really does give us access to buried parts of ourselves we need to function. It also makes us much better parents, and helps us make much wiser choices about becoming parents.
One caution I’d give to others going through this process: it is easier to get angry at an abusive parent than a neglectful one. My case is the opposite of many people’s – my mother was completely dead emotionally and was neglectful; my father was a bit more alive emotionally but was abusive. I have trouble with directing most of my rage at my father because there was no one there to get mad at in my mother. (I suspect for many people, the mother is easier to get mad at, which the father is neglectful or vacant and not as easy a target). I have found you really have to get at your anger at “vacancy” as much “abuse” in order to really self-actualize.
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Yes, Alexa, Boopsie is a made-up name. And yes, “Tanya” was one of those who did not view a relationship with me at all positively, unlike our mutual friend.
Hopeful, I too am a big fan of psychotherapy. I’m hesitant to recommend it to all because of its monumental expense and because it was only part of the three-legged stool of my recovery: the other two legs being a Twelve Step program and a return to spiritual practice.
And yes to your comment about “vacancy” and “abuse.” Amen.
“I think in our culture we sometimes don’t give rage its place,”
Yes. We play it for laughs mostly rather than respecting it.
I think I’ve mostly come through the hatred and rage, and I’m definitely enjoying the peaceful shore on the other side.
I’ve also learned to pay very close attention in those moments when bits of that rage come bubbling back up. It’s a remarkably good indicator that something is NOT RIGHT about the situation; in my case, usually that means there is something manipulative or abusive at play. Rage doesn’t give me good tools for dealing with that, but it sure does wake me up and make me pay attention — an essential first step in making sure I never let anyone treat me that way again. It is not a pleasant feeling, but I’ve learned to see it as a fierce and faithful protector, and to trust its occasional presence in my life.
Therapy has been helpful, but I can’t stand Freudianism, either in the form of hellishly expensive dissection by a professional or moronic comments by a college counselor [the latter learned to cut that stuff out.] Or in the litcrit, etc., that passes for intellectual thought nowadays and in the 70′s–don’t get me started.
A couple of counselors who did have a clue helped me some with family issues–but the second one was useless when it came to workplace problems and ADD. And she didn’t know it, and she could not help me find a way to find someone who *could* help. Things are better now, but one must keep a wary eye even with a good therapist, as there will always be something they don’t know about. And they might not realize it.
That said, though, the sequence of trust, hate/rage when I realized just how vilely my trust had been betrayed, and an eventual detente, worked out itself out without much professional help. “Love” is still a tainted word I can never feel really comfortable with, but I get along pretty well with my parents now.
One of the less clueful counselors–in training, I must admit–asked me “Is there a purpose for your anger?” I could only say something to the effect that it was a result, not a cause. But Sarah Jane has about nailed it, it is a warning function and the start of a defense, rather like a fever is for the body.
As for declarations of hate, though…I don’t know. And I think a person ought to get a chance to make amends…but there’s some from my past who I wouldn’t trust within a hundred yards of me, still.
And a few others whom I would avoid (if they were in this region), from shame at my own shortcomings, though I think most of those weren’t so serious as the sort of things described here.
What a thoughtful post. Thanks for sharing–it gives me the opportunity to think more about my own anger and rage. Mine gets directed not at my parents but at, I suppose, my religious parentage, so to speak. I grew up in a very conservative religious setting which included very specific and limiting ideas about gender. Among other things, it was bad to express negative emotions, especially for women, double especially for anger. The message I internalized was not to express any anger, to not even THINK or FEEL any anger. Having grown and changed in many ways, including my religious convictions, has resulted in me allowing myself to feel all my feelings, and sometimes the out and out rage takes me aback. I think some of it surely has to be making up for 2 decades worth of anger backlog, but the intensity of it overwhelms and, frankly, sometimes scares me.
I also don’t know what to do about it. I mean, I recognize what things make me so angry and why, and I’ve made changes in my life that honor that anger: changing denominations, embracing feminism, trying to find my voice and using it without fear. But, I still wonder what the point of it is, especially since I don’t always feel free to give it full vent. I live and work in a context of Christians from many different backgrounds and don’t want me venting my spleen to cause its own harm, and plus many of those I’m with just don’t care as much about it, so why belabor the point? Moreover, at yet a more fundamental level I’m still ambivalent about the whole point and usefulness of my rage. It’s a true and rational reaction, true, but why is it preferable to a disagreement and rejection that lacks rage? And I remember that James advises us to be slow to anger, since it doesn’t produce the kind of righteousness that God desires. So I’m left feeling rage and anger, considering it valid and wishing to honor it, but then not having a clue what to do about it. Sigh…
Three things occurred to me reading this great post:
1. I thought the title said “cattery of hate”, and was like “Wow, Hugo really really really hates cats.”
2. You must have been a hell of a heartbreaker back in your day. Sometimes I wonder, and maybe you’ve blogged about this, how do you handle not getting the kind of constant sexual validation you were getting back then?
3. Yes, yes, yes. Anger is such a crucial part of healing. It’s how I set boundaries to drive people out who don’t belong in my heart.
Although it doesn’t need to be said, I definitely want to throw in that rage is a touchy emotion because it doesn’t necessarily lead to closure. The worry is bitterness developing as a result of it. Rage leading to disaffection leading to bitterness is problematic and certainly endemic in modern culture. Pretty much anytime you see bitter partisanship, you can account it to unresolved rage settling into bitterness.
I don’t really know what the trick is to guiding it away from bitterness, though. Anyone else have thoughts about this?
KatMarie, I find that anger and rage function mostly as signposts: Look here! This is important! Once I’m paying attention, their usefulness is pretty much up, and I try to move on to a more productive mindset before deciding what I’ll do about the situation. Some days, of course, that happens more easily than others.
KatMarie (and Afndale)-
I liked your thoughts and I suspect I’m in somewhat a similar place.
The only thing I’d add is that I’ve found that when my rage finds its mark psychologically it has a very different feel than when it is more diffused or displaced, or when it is inchoate or partially suppressed (the suppression often coming from parental or other introjects, like the religious conformity you describe).
Anfdale’s point about bitterness is true. I think finding the “mark” for rage or anger actually prevents/ameliorates bitterness, though, as bitterness may instead derive from anger that has not yet found its mark.
I find I have an awful lot of rage and even giving myself permission to feel angry is, ironically, about the only thing that helps me relax. Once I move further into trying to articulate what’s on my mind as I’m angry (like through journaling), I often then move into fear and insecurity and pain of loss, usually having to do with underlying feelings I had as a child but could not tolerate feeling at the time.
It is hard but worthwhile work, I think, as eventually it seems one moves to much better self control and even feelings of well-being. It’s also a big help in relationships because you get rid of associations (like I have tended to fear and distrust all men in the way I feared my father).
I’ll probably never forgive my parents, but I may come to terms with what happened. I suspect the outcome is usually indifference, as Hugo notes, rather than love. But that then frees you up for reciprocal love if you can find it, I suspect.
Thank you for the transparency, Hugo — I don’t think I’ve EVER heard a man speak so candidly and air his transgressions so honestly. There’s something healing for me (as a female who has participated in many trysts with narcissists) in hearing this. I’ve heard men boast of their exploits plenty, which is salt in the wounds of scorned women. But never this accountability and acknowledgement….and recognition that using people is shit behavior. This is amending.
Rage, anger – sometimes I find that I don’t even realize how hurt I am by a sustained behavior until there’s a blow-up, confrontation, and even apology. And on the spot, I’ll accept the apology, but then resent having done so. (“Why did I accept the apology and give them a hug when they acknowledged their shit behavior? They have hurt me for months and months, and I let them off the hook.”) When in reality, I am hurt, angry, raging at them and myself for allowing it (enduring it for too long and being exhausted by “longsuffering”) and I need time to feel my own anger, rage and hurt. I hate them for their repeated shitty treatment of me. I hate me for being silent in the name of longsuffering.
But where does rage veer into punishment? Because I feel rage, but when I want to punish another and make them suffer now, too, I feel rage isn’t just a “venting” into the great abyss. They should be made to suffer — to know what it feels like to be on the other end of what they doled out. They should get it back.
I find it very hard to separate rage and desires for retribution or vengeance…..ruminating and imagining really letting them have it verbally, giving them the coldness and heartlessness they gave me.
When someone apologizes, you say “thank you”, and you don’t necessarily have to say anything more; wait for their next move maybe? You don’t just let it lie there on barren ground, you do say thanks, but you don’t say “oh that’s all right” unless it is. How you go about saying “now don’t do that to anyone else”, etc. is not something I have figured out yet.
I would be less interested in making the offender suffer than in getting them to make it up to me somehow for what they did. Thing is, some things can’t be really made up for, and vengeance is a limited option–killing them isn’t legal and the courts are already stuffed with lawsuits. If I found that the sea or the bottle had after all claimed some of them I would not shed any tears.
After heeding the warning-signal of anger, one has to find a way to cure the infection of bitterness. It can really tangle up one’s thoughts and waste one’s time. If indifference is the result, as Hopeful says, that at least frees the mind for constructive pursuits. Finding a good counselor can help, as is reading the right kind of helpful matter–but I don’t have a reading list to hand.
My question is this: how did you handle it with your mother during the period that you intensly hated her? Did you two talk?
Freddie says:
“I find it very hard to separate rage and desires for retribution or vengeance…..ruminating and imagining really letting them have it verbally, giving them the coldness and heartlessness they gave me.”
I agree with you. I don’t think they can really be separated, and trying to suppress the desire for retribution or vengeance can actually make you act it out subconsciously even on another person (in the worst case an innocent or dependent person, like a child) so it causes more problems I think to suppress than to allow the thought.
What has helped me is imagining the revenge and articulating it in a journal, or in a drawing or with a therapist. With practice I hope it will just become something that comes up in my mind at the time that I don’t act out without thinking. I hope with even more practice, I can get so I can have the thought, but then engage in the process of thinking through how to handle myself with the person.
I think we need this desire for revenge because in certain cases, like if we are being physically attacked or raped, we need to be able to form the will to fight off the attack.
Very skilled police, military or security officers often talk about this process in how they learn to manage their behavior and to know when to counter-attack or to try other means, such as assertiveness, empathic dialogue, etc.
FWC, I never intensely hated my mom. I’ve never intensely hated anyone; hate doesn’t come easily to me, but that may be because, in my life, I’ve been astoundingly blessed. The short bursts I describe in my last paragraph were short indeed, and probably not all that intense.
To reverse the famous line from Lear, I have sinned far more than I’ve been sinned against. My parents were far from perfect, I’ve known some meanness to be directed my way, and so forth — but I never had done to me what I did to others.
I went though a brief and intense period of resentment at my mother, but even then, we talked through it civilly. My mom and I are both Geminis, both talkers by trade. We processed it fast. I didn’t have the “Boopsie” moment with my own mother.
“Although it doesn’t need to be said, I definitely want to throw in that rage is a touchy emotion because it doesn’t necessarily lead to closure.”
Quite true and that’s not its real purpose. Rage rips things open. Then the work of real closure can begin. But you have to clean the wound first.
…Ah-hah. Yeah, rage and break-ups. I had to go through my own period of intense loathing and bitter hatred of my ex-husband after I left, just to keep myself on course and not crumple in a heap and try to crawl back into that smoldering crater of a marriage. I got over it, eventually, although sometimes when I have to tell the story over again, a bit of it leaks out.
I eventually ended up giving him the same councel, that he’d probably have to hate me too for a good long while, just to stay a little sane, before he learned how to do anything else. It isn’t my place to worry about him anymore, but I can’t help wondering if he’ll ever figure out how to pull that trick of turning it into acceptance instead of just smoldering into bitterness.
I’m with Angiportus, I can’t stand freudrian psychoanalytic theory, and I really don’t believe that “everyone” needs therapy. Certainly, a lot do, but some of us actually are equiped with the tools for self-analysis that may just make long-term therapy at best superfluous and a monumental financial drain at worst.
When I was a teen in high school, I had a breath seething pit of rage that I carried around with me– I’m still not entirely certain of the whys, but I’ve figured out enough to lay it to rest anyway.
“Hopeful, I too am a big fan of psychotherapy. I’m hesitant to recommend it to all because of its monumental expense and because it was only part of the three-legged stool of my recovery: the other two legs being a Twelve Step program and a return to spiritual practice.”
I am very pro-psychotherapy (not pro-Freud) as there are few people I know whose character flaws and deficiencies wouldn’t greatly benefit from intervention from mental health professionals. I encourage most people to avail themselves of counseling. The trouble is that despite my framing that they consider seeking help–professional counseling (usually stated with kindness and sensitivity) is almost always met with angry responses, especially from people who have the habit of trying to burden me with their problems and issues.
As to expense–many counselors offer sliding scales for fees. Not everyone has to committ to a lifetime of analysis, even if they would desperately benefit from it.
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