Free Child communication in relationships

As a marriage or couples counsellor a common problem one sees is about the Free Child in relationships. In terms of the perceived quality of a relationship or a relationship that is wanted by both parties then these types of transactions must occur at least some of the time.



To understand such a diagram just think of a relationship which you like and enjoy and have a desire to be involved in. It is highly likely you have just identified a relationship in your life that has a significant amount of Free Child transactions between you and the other party.

In the honeymoon stage of a relationship these types of transactions occur quite often. Of course a solid relationship involves much more than just FC to FC transactions but my point here is that if a relationship does not have such communication then it will tend to fall on hard times. If there is very little then the ‘end is nigh’ often.



As a marriage counsellor one often sees couples who present with this type of communication problem, few FC transactions. This often occurs because the Free Child of both parties have ‘left the building’ as they say. The sensitive part of the personality has retreated into hiding for some reason.


Elvis leaving the building



In particular there are two common scenarios where this happens and presents a very real and difficult situation for the couple. This is often presented in marriage counselling and guess what they both involve sex and drugs! Why you may ask, because both sex and drugs often involve a degree of Free Child if not lots of Free Child.

Sex
Level of libido of a couple. If the couple have these combinations then sex is not going to be so much of a problem or at least it is a very good start for the couple not having difficulties in their sexual relationship. Both parties are either:

Low & low
Medium & medium
High & high


If they are either

Low & medium
Medium & high

then there is the potential for some degree of problem. If they are

Low & high

then there is a very real possibility of difficulties.



Why is this so? Because the Free Child is going to be affected. If the male has a high libido and the female has a low libido (which is usually the combination) then they have a significant problem that could contribute to destroying the relationship.

He is going to be asking for sexual contact often (or at least feel the desire to ask often). She is going to want much less. If she says yes when she wants to say no, it wont be long before her FC starts to retreat into the distance. She is having intimate physical sexual contact when she does not want it and the FC is not going to tolerate that for very long at all.

If she says no when she wants to say no (which will be often due to the different levels of libido) then one problem is solved but another is created. Her FC will feel satisfied but his wont be. His FC will feel ‘ripped off’ in some way. If this is occasional it does not matter all that much. But if it is happening most days what will happen after 5, 10 or 15 years? His FC is going to have disappeared in a similar fashion long ago.

A very real and difficult problem for a couple.


Cooperation in the relational

Alcohol and drugs
The most common scenario is the male likes a drink or a smoke and the wife finds him unpleasant or repugnant when he is intoxicated. The wife may say things like:

“He is embarrassing when he has been drinking”
“He snores loudly when he has been drinking”
“It is bad for the kids to see him like that”
“He may drive while intoxicated”

and so forth

So she asks, demands, threatens that he does not drink or use drugs (or significantly reduces the use). If he obliges and stops then her FC needs are met but this creates another problem. His FC will feel ‘ripped off’ in some way. If he continues to drink then his FC needs are meet but her FC will retreat into the distance.

After this occurring for 10 years what is likely to happen? Either one or both FC ego states have disappeared out of the relationship and probably do not even want to come back.

A very real and difficult problem for a couple.

In both these instances there are no winners. No matter which solution you take both parties loose in the long run.

It is best if the couple do not allow it to become such a large issue in the relationship. That’s easy for a bystander to say when not directly involved in it. Also most couples do not realise it is becoming a big issue until it gets there. And as I have said before most couples actually get into couples counselling 6 to 12 months late when the small issues have evolved into the very communication style of the couple. It is best to get to the problem when it is still relationship dystonic not when it has evolved into a relationship syntonic problem.

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Significant others

Zbig makes a good comment in the previous post about what would my wife (or my significant others, as they say in the psychotherapy business) think and feel if they read the post about my client who seems to be developing a strong transference to me that may be romanticised.

This is a good comment because it articulates a very real problem for those in the psychotherapy profession. Over the years I have seen this issue raise itself with a whole variety of therapists many times and it is indeed a difficult circumstance for them and their significant others to deal with.



Sometimes clients develop strong feelings towards their therapists, sometimes positive, sometimes negative, sometimes sexualised and sometimes not. How is the spouse of the therapist meant to deal with this? A difficult question indeed and a very real one.

Is it reasonable for the spouse to feel jealous, threatened, excluded and so forth?
If they feel those things is it reasonable for the spouse to express their concerns to the therapist who is just doing his or her job.?
If they are express how is the therapist meant to respond to the spouse?

As you can see a veritable minefield of potential relationship ruptures (as they are fashionably referred to these days in the psychotherapy business).

However I need to place this in context. The psychology behind the positive transference is by no means exclusive to the counselling relationship. It happens in all areas of life and human relationships.



For instance in the work place. Take something a tad monotonous like the banking industry. There maybe a man who is respected in the banking industry, seen as talented in his field and has some power in the industry. As he goes about his business he will come across various women who know of his reputation. As they get to know each other positive transference feelings will develop in some instances and sometimes they will be strong transference feelings from the less powerful woman to the more powerful man.

This is no different to the psychology of the transference in the therapy setting. Obviously it is not appropriate for the client and therapist to have a relationship but for two people who work in the same industry like banking they can easily have a relationship and many indeed do. But as I said before the psychology behind the relationship is no different than the client therapist relationship. However the point at hand is positive transference feelings from one person to another are not exclusive to the therapy relationship.



However in therapy the feelings can get quite strong in quite a short space of time. Indeed the therapist and therapy setting are a perfect green house for such feelings to grow. Thus the questions cited above have special relevance to therapists and their significant others.

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The suicide relationship

My pommy mate Kahless mentions in her comment on the last post about suicide pacts. A suicide pact is a thing which most people find a really bizarre thing for people to do. Indeed that is one of the reasons why it gets the press coverage it does as my good friend Kahless directs us to here.

But as with so many things like this in psychology if you take a closer look it is not all that weird. It ends up being just a slight modification of normal human behaviour.

I refer to a thing called the suicide relationship. In one instance this can be a relationship where two people make a plan to suicide together and thus we end with what is commonly known as a suicide pact. However there are derivatives of this.

One of the ‘protective’ factors in suicide risk is if the individual has family or other close attachments in their life. Such as person is seen to be at less risk of suicide than the person who has no close relationships. Having close attachments makes for a more psychologically robust person.



However this can be very misleading and when making a suicide risk assessment one needs to enquire deeper into the nature of such relationships. For some people suicide is seen as every persons right to choose. Every person has a right to die when and how they want to. And this view can put up a substantive argument to support itself and it is a view held by a section of the community.

If a suicidal individual has a close attachment with a person who thinks like this then the protective factor in the relationship is not protective at all. In essence you have a suicide pact between two people where only one is suicidal but the psychology of the relationship is not all that different to a suicide pact where both are suicidal.

Now I am not suggesting that this non suicidal party in the relationship is an evil and uncaring person. They may have great affection and love for the suicidal individual. They may have seen their suicidal ‘partner’ go through great angst over a long period of time and there is an argument for the view that people have the right to choose when to die. Ongoing physical pain is no different than ongoing psychological pain.



There is indeed a further variant of this suicide pact relationship. In the relationship just described the non suicidal party ‘advocates’ suicide for the relief of the other. Under some circumstances the non suicidal party advocates suicide for the other so as to gain relief for self. This may seem abhorrent to some and a very selfish act but it is just natural human psychology.

For instance living with a suicidal person is a very emotionally taxing thing to do. It is a very stressful set of circumstances to live under. If a husband has been living with as suicidal wife for a couple of years and he can see that this is not going to change in the near future his own Free Child will want the stress to end and the only realistic way that is going to happen is if she dies. Thus in this way he has entered into a suicide pact with her as one part of his personality will ‘advocate’ for her suicide.

Now before you go away thinking how terrible this all is just ask yourself how you felt when a close loved one to you had a terminal illness and hung on and on for a long period of time. As the time extends the Free Child in everybody gets more and more vocal in wanting the other party to die because it wants the relief. Indeed even with the mother of a terminally ill child has a Free Child ego state that is wanting the child to die so it can have relief. It’s just human nature. How much that want is and how it is expressed consciously or unconsciously will vary from person to person but it will be there.



In doing a suicide risk assessment of someone who has been suicidal for some time then you know their close loved ones to some degree want the person to complete the suicide they keep talking about. Their Free Child has entered into a suicide pact relationship with the suicidal person. All of a sudden the protective nature of the close loved one is not so protective at all!

As we can see the psychology behind the suicide pact is not as weird as it initially seems as is so often the case with these things. Thank you my good friend Kahless for raising this issue.

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Libido and relationship problems

I did a bit of supervision the other day with a therapist who was asking about a couple she was working with.

This couple thought they had a sex problem with what the DSM calls the Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder. This is a significant absence of sexual desire that causes distress. This couple did it about once every couple of months which means statistically they were much less than average and they thought that is was a sign of a failing marriage. Both parties had quite low libidos.

So what is the average? For Australians it is:

18 - 24 years = 3.25 times per week

25 - 34 years = 2.55 times per week

35 - 44 years = 2.00 times per week

45+ years = 1.00 times per week

(OK! Enough with the jokes about doing it 0.25 times.)

I have always wondered how they get these statistics. Is it like a street side interview? There you are walking in a local shopping centre and you are approached by a heavily bespectacled woman, who’s hair is bound tightly back, she is in a white lab coat, carrying a clip board and she asks you how often do you do it?

And once the statistics are obtained how reliable are they? Lets face it guys may tend to exaggerate. When asked how often they do it they may huff and puff a bit, push their chest out and say they get ‘on the job’ everyday.

As we know when men get together and discuss their sexual exploits with the fairer sex they are prone to exaggeration. The general rule of thumb is take what they guy claims happened, divide it by 2 and you are probably some where near the truth. If he says he met a woman in bar last night, took her to his apartment and scored a home run that means he probably got to second base.

However the statistics don’t really mean anything when it comes to an individual couple. If they do it once every couple of months then they are very below the statistical average but what one is really looking for is how equal are their libidos. One is hoping for a relatively similar level of libido between then husband and wife. If their libidos are both low, both medium or both high then they do not have a sex problem at least in terms of desire.

If one has a low libido and one has a high libido then they have a significant relationship problem that can easily cause significant damage to their relationship.

Sex is usually a very Free Child to Free Child transaction. Sex that is good for a relationship is this even though people can have sex in other ego states. However if the desire for sexual activity is very different between husband and wife then they do have a relationship problem. If he has a high libido and she has a low libido then what happens when he requests sex.

If she says ‘yes’ when she wants to say ‘no’, then one problem is solved and another problem is created. His FC feels satisfied and her FC feels hurt. If this happens repetitively then her hurt FC will cause relationship difficulties and thus they both suffer.

If she say ‘no’ when she wants to say ‘no’ then one problem is solved and another problem is created. Her FC feels satisfied and his FC feels hurt. If this happens repetitively then his hurt FC will cause relationship difficulties and thus they both suffer.

When this happens sex can easily get entangled with power, punishment of the other party and so forth and by that time the relationship can start to get into very troubled waters.

So what is meant to happen according to the counselling textbooks? Well try before you buy may be a good idea. If a person is very sexually driven then it might be a good idea to seek a partner who is a little bit similar. Of course that is easier said then done once love gets involved.

As with so many relationship difficulties a bit of compromise on both sides can go along way. Satisfying sex does not have to involve intercourse, which is also a common solution if one party has herpes. So being a bit creative and coming up sexual activity that is reasonably acceptable to both parties such that both FCs can feel OK. Then the damage that could be caused to the relationship can be avoided.

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