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Authors: Leslie Becker-Phelps
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you once he sees the “real” you. Or you might feel upset by your partner seeming to not really care about you. Write down in detail the theme(s) that you play out, and hold on to this to use in the exercise “Revealing Your Invisible Known” in the next chapter.
Confirming How You See Others
Just as people unconsciously use confirmation bias to self-verify how worthy or unworthy they feel, they also use it to maintain their sense of how emotionally available or unavailable their partners (as well as others) are.
Clearly, people who are preconditioned to think that others won’t be there for them will tend to see their partners as emotionally unavailable. So they see themselves as essentially alone, and they protect themselves by being self-reliant. What’s less obvious—and seemingly paradoxical—is that you can similarly experience yourself as alone when you believe that others
are
generally emotionally available. This is likely to happen when you have doubts about whether you are worthy of love, leaving you to think that those available others ultimately will reject
you
. So although you might think positively of your partner at the beginning of your relationship, these perceptions will probably turn negative over time, as you find ways to confirm that he really isn’t there for you after all.
Because of your preconceptions about your partner’s unavailability to you, you are likely to think that a problematic behavior on your partner’s part is due to a personality trait that won’t change, rather than the influence of a situation or context. For instance, if your partner doesn’t call from his job one day, you might jump to the conclusion that it’s due to a lack of caring, or even to a more malicious intent of playing with your emotions—as opposed to the possibility that he was particularly busy at work. The more anxiously attached you are, the more likely this will happen when you are in a bad mood. This will happen less when you are feeling good or are basically happy in your relationship. By contrast, if you have a highly avoidant partner, he will think this way even when he is feeling emotionally stable and your relationship is going well.
The bias toward seeing others as emotionally unavailable creates “blind spots.” You simply don’t “see” how you maintain your belief that your partner is unavailable. Just as with self-verification, your bias does this through selective attention, selective memory, and selective interpretation—but this time, it’s more about the other person.
Closed-Loop Relationships
Every time Dick sees Jane around the house, he ridicules her.
Every time Jane sees Dick, she tries to avoid him.
Dick stokes his feelings of superiority by ridiculing Jane.
Jane’s avoidance reinforces Dick’s feelings of superiority.
Every time Jane sees Dick, she tries to avoid him.
Every time Dick sees Jane, he ridicules her.
Jane stokes her feelings of inferiority by avoiding Dick.
Dick’s ridicule reinforces Jane’s feelings of inferiority.
Partners maintain a balance between them that they both resist changing, even when the relationship is strained. Each person reinforces his or her own self-view by behaving in a way consistent with it. This behavior also elicits responses from the other partner that confirm this self-perception. With such feedback “proving” what they already “know” about themselves, people again act in line with their self-perceptions…it’s a closed loop.
In a bizarre way, the above pattern of interaction gives both Dick
and
Jane a sense of safety—they know what to expect from themselves and each other, and how to respond. This predictability provides a comfort even for Jane—how much harder would it be for her if Dick was sometimes really nice and other times nasty? And imagine how confusing and uncomfortable it would be for Jane—even if it also felt good—if Dick treated her consistently well when she deeply believed that
Confirming How You See Others
Just as people unconsciously use confirmation bias to self-verify how worthy or unworthy they feel, they also use it to maintain their sense of how emotionally available or unavailable their partners (as well as others) are.
Clearly, people who are preconditioned to think that others won’t be there for them will tend to see their partners as emotionally unavailable. So they see themselves as essentially alone, and they protect themselves by being self-reliant. What’s less obvious—and seemingly paradoxical—is that you can similarly experience yourself as alone when you believe that others
are
generally emotionally available. This is likely to happen when you have doubts about whether you are worthy of love, leaving you to think that those available others ultimately will reject
you
. So although you might think positively of your partner at the beginning of your relationship, these perceptions will probably turn negative over time, as you find ways to confirm that he really isn’t there for you after all.
Because of your preconceptions about your partner’s unavailability to you, you are likely to think that a problematic behavior on your partner’s part is due to a personality trait that won’t change, rather than the influence of a situation or context. For instance, if your partner doesn’t call from his job one day, you might jump to the conclusion that it’s due to a lack of caring, or even to a more malicious intent of playing with your emotions—as opposed to the possibility that he was particularly busy at work. The more anxiously attached you are, the more likely this will happen when you are in a bad mood. This will happen less when you are feeling good or are basically happy in your relationship. By contrast, if you have a highly avoidant partner, he will think this way even when he is feeling emotionally stable and your relationship is going well.
The bias toward seeing others as emotionally unavailable creates “blind spots.” You simply don’t “see” how you maintain your belief that your partner is unavailable. Just as with self-verification, your bias does this through selective attention, selective memory, and selective interpretation—but this time, it’s more about the other person.
Closed-Loop Relationships
Every time Dick sees Jane around the house, he ridicules her.
Every time Jane sees Dick, she tries to avoid him.
Dick stokes his feelings of superiority by ridiculing Jane.
Jane’s avoidance reinforces Dick’s feelings of superiority.
Every time Jane sees Dick, she tries to avoid him.
Every time Dick sees Jane, he ridicules her.
Jane stokes her feelings of inferiority by avoiding Dick.
Dick’s ridicule reinforces Jane’s feelings of inferiority.
Partners maintain a balance between them that they both resist changing, even when the relationship is strained. Each person reinforces his or her own self-view by behaving in a way consistent with it. This behavior also elicits responses from the other partner that confirm this self-perception. With such feedback “proving” what they already “know” about themselves, people again act in line with their self-perceptions…it’s a closed loop.
In a bizarre way, the above pattern of interaction gives both Dick
and
Jane a sense of safety—they know what to expect from themselves and each other, and how to respond. This predictability provides a comfort even for Jane—how much harder would it be for her if Dick was sometimes really nice and other times nasty? And imagine how confusing and uncomfortable it would be for Jane—even if it also felt good—if Dick treated her consistently well when she deeply believed that
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