ABSTRACT
Knowing and being known in relationships necessarily begins with risking vulnerability, and continues by becoming open to empathy, culminating in unbidden, uncontrolled emotional investment. But what if we have unconscious defenses in place designed to protect us from risk of intimacy? Popular culture suggests we should be experts at growing romantic relationships; yet many people seek therapy complaining of repeated relationship failures—often, seemingly, for the same reason. What is gained by repeating such “mistakes”? Many people unconsciously create such relationships as hiding places from intimacy in a state the authors call “irrelationship.” This chapter defines the concept of irrelationship and follows a couple as they work through how irrelationship protects them from mutual emotional investment and the anxiety such investment generates. Irrelationship is not viewed as pathological, but as a mechanism couples use to protect themselves from awareness of the vulnerability associated with loving another person. Irrelationship does this by creating and enforcing compulsive caretaking routines that are enactments of dissociated Not-Me states, which the authors refer to as Not-We states—states that ultimately result in isolation and loneliness for both partners.
