The Nine Rooms of Happiness: Loving Yourself, Finding Your Purpose, and Getting Over Life's Little Imperfections (10 page)

Sam and Stephanie can get to the bedroom and the kitchen table and try to work on their relationship, but Stephanie also needs to separate more from Elizabeth.

The key process here: You need to learn to separate and become an individual, with your own schedule and priorities and personal growth. This is a three-way Venn diagram, since Elizabeth and Stephanie are very overlapped and Sam has only a sliver of overlap with his wife, and his circle touches the outer line of Elizabeth’s, since they are pals. But the biggest overlap is between the sisters, and until Stephanie stops merging with Elizabeth the marriage doesn’t stand a chance to grow. She has to be a whole circle, apart from her sister, in order to have a healthy and mature relationship with her husband.

It’s possible for Stephanie to be close to her sister
and
her new husband—and anyone else she chooses to be friends with. She can stay connected to her sibling, but not so close that it prevents her from moving forward. In other words, she has to feel married to her husband, not her sister.

Claire is definitely feeling the pinch of being in the Sandwich Generation, living between the children she’s raising and is almost “done” parenting, and her parents, who are, at eighty, just entering the time of their lives when they will need to depend on her as they become more frail. She sees her future as a grim one nursing two ailing parents. It’s coming at her like a runaway train, and she wants to be more independent, especially after fifteen years of being the “supermom.” “It’s like now that I am free to travel and live my own life and explore all these different parts of my personality I’m going to have to hang around and be there for my parents, and I know how selfish this sounds, so I’m not proud of myself for even saying it out loud.”

The problem here is that Claire is suffering from some pretty strong narcissism, since she not only sees her parents as a burden but also as the “future” self that she is trying to avoid. Aging is her Achilles’ heel, and she is looking into a bathroom mirror that is playing tricks on her—when she looks at her mother she sees herself in thirty years.

Claire’s unconscious process, projecting her own aging issues onto them, is preventing her from being the good daughter, since it’s not her parents that she hates, it’s herself, her own future aging self-image. The minute she understands that she is taking this out on them she can start to be nicer and more caring to them, not the petulant or selfish daughter she feels she has become.

“My mother was so beautiful—like Audrey Hepburn—long and lean and chic, and now she’s graying and hunched and wrinkled,” Claire explains. “It’s depressing because I know aging is inevitable, but I wish I could always remember my mother at the height of her beauty, not now as
an old lady.”

The same is true of her dad, who she will always remember walking too fast for her to keep up as he escorted her to school in his spiffy business suit, attaché case in hand. He was so handsome, she says, like Cary Grant, and he’d always tell her funny stories that would make her feel good about herself and their special bond. And now he hobbles, and she laments that all those fun things they did together, like sailing and fishing and jogging, are in the past.

Claire says it’s not only that they are physically aging but that they are also acting like the negative people they always cautioned her not to become. “They act like their own worst selves, like the version of them that isn’t nice or loving, since they are constantly in bad moods.”

Claire needs to understand that her feelings are related to the fact that her parents haven’t taken care of themselves in recent years, and that watching them deteriorate from their former height of health and vitality has been painful. It makes her that much more determined to live healthfully, eat well, and exercise, as if she wants to stop the clock in her own life.

But Catherine points out this isn’t about her. It’s about them and how she can be more helpful and loving and supportive to them. Her attention is so inwardly focused on not aging herself, which is impossible, that she is unable to see that her parents are still wonderful people and appreciate the fact that they continue to have a lot to offer, and life to live, even if they no longer look or act like movie stars. She is mourning the loss of her image of her parents rather than seeing the opportunity to continue to share experiences together.

“I feel like I’m the living version of that movie
On Golden Pond
, where the real relationship problem is with me, as Jane Fonda, and not the crotchety old dad. I need to be a better daughter, a more loving and understanding person, and cut them some slack. They probably don’t even feel well most of the time and yet I rarely think about that.”

Our key process here is to get Claire out of the bathroom and ask her to stop looking in the mirror. She can decide to live in the present and understand that her parents won’t always be around. The trick is to
learn to appreciate the time she has with them now. She needs to get outside herself and remember that it’s not all about her. At least not right now.

Ava is a successful social worker in the guidance office at a high school, a career choice clearly related to the fact that she grew up in a home where everything looked normal, but where she never felt fully secure with her parents, who were sometimes checked out. “They were babies when they had me, right out of college. They smoked pot with their hippie friends and probably weren’t ready to be responsible adults and have a kid when they did. I caught them smoking once, when I was around ten, and I was horrified, not exactly sure what was going on—but knowing it wasn’t right. I remember getting on my bike and going to a neighbor’s house to feel safe and in a structured environment. That may be my biggest memory: catching my parents doing drugs and thinking—
this is not a safe place for me; who’s looking after us kids? I have to take care of myself.
That day, I emotionally left and never came back. It was up to me to make sure my life turned out okay. I never had a curfew. My parents were so lenient that I set my own limits. I feel like I raised myself.

“I had little patience for Eleanor, the annoying little sister in my house, since I thought the most important thing was to get good grades and get into a good college so I could be independent and leave that chaotic
household behind.”

It wasn’t until Ava was a senior in college and Eleanor was a junior in high school that she thought it might be nice to have a relationship with her younger sister. But by then, Ellie had decided Ava didn’t matter to her, never seemed to care about her, and that she was fine without her.

“After college, Ellie and I had a nasty blowup while on a family vacation,” says Ava. “I tried to get her to talk to me, to tell me what she was thinking—anything at all—and she started screaming at me, ‘Why do you care now? You don’t give a shit about me!’ For so many years that had been true, but now I was ready to start caring. But that didn’t mean she was ready.

“She made me grovel for years, trying to win her over, and then I’d get angry because that wasn’t nice and she made me feel guilty for not being there for her all those years. The truth is, we were both so angry at each other, and at our parents for not noticing that their children had no connection to each other.

“Most people would have unhappily gone along as they were, not really trying to make the connection, but once my sister and I finally decided we wanted a better relationship, it was as if we had to have every childhood fight we’d never had, to ‘catch up.’ I felt like we had to be kids again and then finally grow up into the adults we wanted to be,
together
.” That went on for years.

In dealing with her much younger sister, Ava is in the basement, grappling with a childhood that left her feeling anxious. Whether parents drink, gamble, or stay out late, Catherine says, a child can feel like the only adult in the household, and when that happens they become “parentified”—the kid has to act like a parent. That leaves the child feeling insecure, so she overcompensates and tries to help all those around her and be perfect, never needing anything or anyone. “Don’t worry about me” becomes her mantra. When Ava got married and finally opened up emotionally to her husband, she realized one of the things she had been missing was her sibling, the one she had abandoned back when they were kids and that she had “left” emotionally when she found refuge at her friend’s house.

Ava understands why her parents were so checked out—they were reacting to their overbearing parents. Both of them had wanted more freedom growing up, so they gave Ava and Ellie too much of it. The girls, in turn, needed more input, or pinging, from their parents, so they sought it elsewhere—from teachers, neighbors, and finally spouses. Eventually Ava ended up in therapy and became a social worker; she now jokes with her sister, saying, “I had to go to graduate school to learn how to connect with other people the way most people learn at home.”

The unconscious process here for Ava is about guilt that she is feeling for disregarding her sister. Despite the fact that Ava is now ready for a relationship, Ellie is not, and she is acting out by fighting and resisting Ava’s overtures.

They may be in the right room but in the wrong way, and they need to go back in time to their childhood and hash out their conflicts. Fighting can be constructive for them, since it’s a way of connecting and working through their years of not having a relationship. The arguments will continue until they exhaust each other and work through all the bad feelings. Once that happens, they can break the pattern and move ahead in time, to the current day.

The key process to making things better for these two is for them to realize that they are regressing, and that if they want to move ahead they have to begin again as adults and put all these childhood emotions in the past. Close the door on the basement and move into the present part of the house. Something usually happens that jolts siblings into the present day, where they act as adults, at last no longer children themselves.

“What finally got it going for us was the birth of my first baby,” Ava recalls. “I had a great life—a good marriage, a new son, and a wonderful job; and I felt like Ellie needed to be an aunt to this new little person, so I reached out to her again. She’d moved to Santa Fe, and we hadn’t spoken in a while, but my baby meant she
had
to come visit. I called her and basically begged her to fly out and meet her nephew, and it worked. She brought her boyfriend, who said, ‘I am so excited to meet you! I’ve heard so much about you!’ That was the first time it occurred to me that I mattered to her. It took
time and many conversations and blowups to knit our family back together.”

The two sisters finally created a new relationship, and they cemented that bond recently when Ellie suffered a medical emergency and called Ava, who flew to her side.

“The real turning point for us came when she needed me and I was there for her. She had a health scare—she found a tumor and thought it was cancer—and I put her in touch with a doctor and reassured her that she would probably be fine.

Fast-forward several years: Ava now has an amazingly close relationship with her sister. They talk nearly every day. They—and their spouses—spend a lot of time together. Though they live in different parts of the country, they get together often. Ellie is the first person Ava calls when their mother pulls a typical stunt, or her husband is pissing her off. Ava and Ellie are now related…for real.

In the family room, the people there know you the best; which means they know where you’ve come from, but they may not always know where you want to go (or even who you are today). They continue to see you as the “kid sister” or “daughter,” which will always be true, but it’s only part of the picture. You need to let them see you grow and evolve, but that doesn’t mean leaving them behind. You can still be part of the family in a new way, one that reflects your contemporary self. And happier too.

Friends Are the Family You Choose

T
here are many kinds of friends: casual acquaintances you’ve met
through common activities, such as tennis, book clubs, or your kid’s playdates, or through other friends. Another type is the good friend you talk honestly to about personal topics—money and relationships, work and feelings. Then there are the best friends, who know you intimately and love you despite your faults. These are the inner circle, the family that you choose. The impact of friendships on happiness has been well established, since studies have shown people with close and meaningful ties are healthier, happier, and live longer than those without.

Sadly, the number of close friends most of us have is dwindling, from an average of three twenty years ago to just two in recent years. The reason, according to a study done by sociologists at the University of Arizona and Duke, is that many of us are spending too much time at work. Another scary stat: One in four Americans have no close friends, and the friendships we do have these days are shallower, and often maintained online through social networking sites or cell phones, IM-ing, etc. Most of those online “friends” are not really friends—they’re just the familiar faces of people we can’t be bothered to call. So you sit in your house, tapping on keys, and think you are being social, but in fact you are more isolated than ever.

If it were a medical epidemic, the loss of actual (as opposed to virtual) friendships would be a front-page headline. But because it’s subtle and emotional in nature it makes news only in places like Catherine’s office. Still, for women, it has real health implications, especially when it comes to our
happiness. But if friends can help you live longer, isolation has the opposite effect; it is a mental-health hazard.

Friendship is so powerful that even being in a “cluster” of happy people is enough to make you happier, according to twenty years of data from the Framingham Heart Study. In academic circles, this phenomenon is called “social contagion,” and it can get passed around like a viral e-mail joke.

At times your closest friends may have a bigger impact on your happiness than your spouse, which makes sense, since they can bring you joy and distraction even if your spouse may be bringing you down. Catherine points out that the inherent nature of these types of relationships is different, since the spouse is there 24/7 whereas your friends may live many miles away. In other words, you choose to invite your friends over (when you feel like it), but your spouse is there even when neither of you is in a social mood. Which explains why you often have more “fun” with your friends. But don’t confuse fun and frivolity. Friendships are serious business.

Bottom line? Research backs up what we already knew in our hearts: When the events of life turn against you, your female friends are your lifesavers.

Let’s hear from some women whose emotional living rooms are a mess.

Charlotte is a gorgeous redhead with a wide smile who draws friends to her easily, since she is kind and sweet and funny. She proudly describes herself as a good friend. “If I let my friends down, I feel like a bad person.
I become completely consumed and internalize it. Nothing else bothers me as much—missing a credit card payment or having a messy apartment or anything else.”

This “good friend” badge is an issue for her because she has just started seeing a former boyfriend of an old friend of hers, and while they had clearly broken up before Charlotte got involved with him, she feels like it’s a big problem, especially since she recently discovered that her friend still has feelings for this guy. He, on the other hand, told Charlotte it was “
so
over.”

Now Charlotte feels bad because she really likes this guy but wants to come clean with her friend. “When I found out there was more to it on her end than I’d realized, I started to play it over and over in my head and then it became a source of unhappiness. I’ve been thinking: What if this was the love of her life and I ruined her happiness? I’d never do anything to hurt a friend. I’d rather lose the guy than the friend. If someone is upset with me, it’s just too painful.”

Charlotte thinks she is being sensitive and compassionate, but she’s overwrought and it’s interfering with a friendship and even her own self-image as a superfriend. Charlotte is questioning if she is actually the “pillar” of friendship she once thought she was.

The fact is that her family room is connected to her living room. Part of the reason is that Charlotte is an only child, and she creates sisterlike bonds with her friends to fill out her “family,” something she’s done all her life. “I definitely try to build a lot of strong bonds with women. I don’t have a lot of second-tier friends. I only have very close friends.”

Unlike sisters, though, friends can drop you. And Charlotte says she lost a close friend recently, when she blew up over canceled plans. When she thinks about it, she realizes that she precipitated this “blowup,” and it’s not the first time. She says, “I think it’s like some kind of a loyalty test: If I can lose my temper at these people and they stick around, then they are with me forever.” She swears that these confrontations aren’t planned. “You’d never know it to meet me, but I have a really terrible temper, and I always end up losing it with the people I love the most.” She thinks this is a normal way of finding out who loves her.

“Once we get to that point, it’s like I have a ‘no divorce’ policy with these women, and we are going to be friends until we die. I love knowing that I have that strong bond. It’s a great feeling, like growing your family.”

But Charlotte knows her friends are starting to lose their patience with her. She also realizes that it’s inappropriate for a grown woman to act so childishly and to be abusive to her friends.

Her problem is that she wants her friends to be her siblings, and they aren’t. When Charlotte was a child, her parents would scream and yell at each other one minute and would be smiling the next, so Charlotte figures that is a good test of true love: You can act your worst and still have someone love you! But to her closest friends, she is just coming off as a hothead, and she has to change. She’s acting out, instead of saying: Will you be my friend no matter what?

She thinks she is creating siblings, but she is actually reproducing her own upbringing as an only child who was envious of all her friends with sisters. They could fight, but they were always there for each other. Charlotte has to recognize her destructive patterns if she hopes to have friends who will love her—and respect her—forever, as true sister substitutes.

Catherine says that Charlotte is displaying what’s called “transference.” She is putting her friends in the role of missing siblings, and they don’t always like it, especially when she tests their devotion. The unconscious process of melding friends and family sends her back to the family room, which she is trying to populate to make herself feel less alone. To change this destructive behavior, she has to get back to the right room, the living room, where a formality or at least civility will require Charlotte to act more maturely—and appropriately—with her friends. It will save her untold tension, since these “blowups” are not providing the security she wants. Instead, they are a source of stress.

Her pattern of making her friends into her family is not working. Charlotte is not the “great” friend she defines herself as being, since her gal pals can’t understand why she flies off the handle at them. She’s expecting them to inhabit her family room, and needs to understand that they are more comfortable in the role of friend, not sister. Charlotte’s key process is
to draw the Venn diagram and see that she is too overlapped with her friends, who don’t share her need for a surrogate family. If she lets go a little, they will feel less trapped by her neediness and actually want to overlap more, instead of pulling away.

Think of close friendships as you would any healthy relationship: You should complement each other, not complete or try to control each other. This is another case of “connect, don’t control.” The more you try to control people, the less you will connect with them.

The pearl for Charlotte: Controlling isn’t the goal; connecting is.

Mary values her female friends and the fun times they share but feels that she is constantly letting them down. Every time they listen patiently to one of her seemingly endless dramas she is amazed that they truly “get” her and support her and know what she is going through: work triumphs, relationship ups and downs, financial woes, weight issues. She can open up to them about almost anything, and they listen. But when it comes time for her to listen to them, she starts yawning.

She has tried to change, but it’s hard for her, and she wonders: “Why can’t I do this? I simply glaze over. I think about the fact that I’ve already had a kid go through the terrible twos, and I can offer advice, but I’m not that stimulated by hearing stories that resemble what I’ve already lived through. I have to suppress the thought bubble that says,
Been there, done that
. Am I a terrible person? A narcissist? Do I lack empathy?”

Despite this, Mary, a clothing designer living in LA, has kept a couple of close friends for decades; they are like her sisters. They might not even know that Mary feels she’s a bad friend, since she hides her lack of empathy well. In fact she is quick to offer advice when she knows the answer. But when she doesn’t know how to respond, she feels inadequate and checks out. “One friend had a late miscarriage, and her husband blamed her for overexercising. And, since I felt I couldn’t offer any useful advice, other than to be tempted to tell her to leave him, I clammed up. I know she needed me to say something meaningful, but I didn’t know what to say. I’m a great problem solver for things I understand. But when I’m in over my head, I feel I don’t know what to do, like I’m failing to be a good friend. I just want to tell them what to do. And that’s not being a good listener, and that’s what they need.”

Catherine points out that Mary’s obviously very smart and somewhat self-aware, but it’s telling that she always wants to feel like the expert. Her overbearing personality is getting in the way of her friendships. When she has the answer, she likes to give it. When she doesn’t know the answer, she feels insecure and bad about herself, causing her to shut down and pull away from her friend in need. She feels useless, which is the worst feeling she can have. Mary wants to be helpful and needed, so she offers advice almost before it’s even asked for.

We suggest Mary get to the bathroom, look in the mirror, and think about why she needs to be listened to but isn’t able to be a listener herself. She’s overly self-involved, and it may not be because she’s full of herself—it’s likely because she has too little self-esteem. She overcompensates by acting more confident than she feels.

Mary’s lack of empathy goes back to her childhood. When her family moved to Atlanta for her father’s job she felt that no one listened to her request that she be allowed to finish junior high school with her friends. She was very upset and became impervious to hurt. She concluded that showing her strong emotions didn’t get her anywhere, and she had to shut down part of her vulnerability to survive those years.

But now it’s getting her in trouble with friends who need her to be
sympathetic. They have learned not to turn to her for anything deeper than a game of tennis or a movie night, and that is holding her back from intimate and lasting bonds.

To be a good friend, Mary doesn’t have to know the right answer—and she doesn’t have to feel that her friends need advice. They just need to talk, and for her to listen. If she wants to be a better friend, she needs to be quiet and not try to offer advice and “solve” every problem. Nor is it helpful to offer “That happened to me!” Mary needs to understand that to be a good listener you have to work at it. If she has a reaction to a point being made, she has to learn to hold the thought that’s bubbling up. She can start by telling herself it’s not all about her. Most important, it’s about her friend, who she loves. The pearl: It’s not all about you, it’s about you being quiet.

Cyndi says her four girlfriends from college are her best friends. “Three of us live in New York City and hang out a lot. Another girl lives in California, and our fifth friend is back in Atlanta, where she grew up.” The “Fab Five,” as they sometimes refer to themselves, are diligent about getting together at least once a year. They know everything about one another, have been through numerous boyfriend breakups, the divorces of a couple of parents, the suicide of one sibling, as well as the more quotidian experiences of finding jobs, getting into (or rejected from) grad school, and what to wear on a first date.

Currently, however, Cyndi is not enjoying her relationship with Gwen, who lost her job at an investment banking firm a few months ago and is
depressed. She complains endlessly to Cyndi, who has always considered herself a great listener. But all the listening in the world hasn’t helped Gwen, and Cyndi is starting to wonder, What’s the point of trying to help someone who won’t take advice or try to help themselves?