Editor’s Note: You may have heard Eric interview relationship coach Blair Glaser on Planet Waves FM a few weeks ago; today we’re featuring a post from her blog and would love to see your responses in the comments section below. — Amanda
Can you imagine what it must have been like to be in a committed relationship 100 years ago?
First of all, unless you were really brave or duplicitous, your options were limited to marriage with the opposite sex. The word “boundaries” was not yet a household term; women’s feelings were also know as “hysteria,” and it was taboo to have an open conversation about sex (well, that one can still be pretty difficult for some).
Phew. Sure glad we don’t live in that time. Clearly, that relationship model stopped working a few decades before the feminist revolution gleefully upended it.
Like most institutions going through revolutionary change, marriage — or at least the committed relationship — has catapulted in the opposite direction. Due to the popularity of personal growth prophets and relationship gurus such as Oprah, John Grey, Dr. Phil and Gay Hendricks, people in relationships no longer need to be shackled by gender roles, shame and silence; they are instead encouraged to pursue the love they want and deserve. Those who are invested in deep and authentic love relationships can openly discuss boundaries, feelings, triggers, and all sorts of issues, and in the absence of traditional role models and societal expectations, many choose to base their relationships on personal or spiritual growth.
In 1979, psychologist Alice Miller published her seminal book The Drama of the Gifted Child, about sensitive children who were narcissistically wounded by parents who neglected them emotionally, treated them with contempt or co-opted their dreams. Miller prescribes therapy as the way out of the stark loneliness and depression of the now-adult child, in order to help him recover his true self from the false persona he developed to meet the needs of his parents.