The betrayal bond : breaking free of exploitive relationships

166 Pages·1997·1.88 MB·English

by  Patrick J. Carnes

The
Betrayal
Bond
Breaking Free
of Exploitive Relationships
Patrick J. Carnes, Ph.D.
Health Communications, Inc.
Deerfield Beach, Florida
www.hcibooks.com
“Tain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness If I Do”
Words and Music by Porter Grainger and Everett Robbins
©1922, 1949, 1960 by MCA MUSIC PUBLISHING, A Division of
UNIVERSAL STUDIOS INC.
Copyright renewed
International Copyright Secured
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Carnes, Patrick, date.
The betrayal bond : breaking free of exploitive relationships / Patrick J. Carnes.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-1-55874-526-1 (trade paper)
ISBN-10: 1-55874-526-2 (trade paper)
1. Relationship addiction. 2. Betrayal—Psychological aspects.
3. Psychological abuse. 4. Exploitation—Psychological aspects.
5. Victims—Psychology. I. Title.
RC552.R44C37 1997
97-35071
616.86—dc21
CIP
© 1997 Patrick J. Carnes
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the written permission
of the publisher.
HCI, its logos and marks are trademarks of Health Communications, Inc.
Publisher: Health Communications, Inc.
3201 S.W. 15th Street
Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442-8190
R-06-07
This book is dedicated to
Howard Williams and Norman Sprinthall.
I carry their voices with me.
For information on therapists in your local area, please call 800-632-3697. For information
on workshops, conferences and retreats with Dr. Carnes, please call 800-621-4062, or write
The Meadows, 1655 N. Tegner St., Wickenburg, AZ 85390. For information on audio- and
videotapes as well as other publications by Dr. Carnes, call 800-955-9853, or write New
Freedom Publications, P.O. Box 3345, Wickenburg, AZ 85358.
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
How This Book Came to Be
Introduction: Why Read This Book?
1. What Trauma Does to People
2. Trauma Bonds and Their Allies
3. What Does Betrayal Do to Relationships?
4. What Makes Trauma Bonds Stronger?
5. What Is the Path of Awareness?
6. What Is the Path of Action?
7. Further Steps on the Path to Recovery
8. What Are the Risks of Recovery?
Appendix: Resources
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Figures
1.1 Impact of abuse
3.1 Warmth and intention
3.2 Organizational incest–I
3.3 Organizational incest–II
4.1 Intensity vs. intimacy
4.2 Abuse inventory
4.3 The Karpman triangle
4.4 Commonalities for victim, victimizer and rescuer
5.1 Role of trauma in a life crisis
5.2 Awareness of victimization consciousness
5.3 Abuse and addiction populations
6.1 Trauma bond recovery paths
Acknowledgments
There are many to thank. Pat Mellody, Pia Mellody and the entire Meadows staff, for their
continuous support for my writing and research. I especially wish to thank Maureen Canning, Ray
Early, Elizabeth Ewins, Peter Vincent and Lynda Grange. As primary counselors they helped hone the
exercises used in this book. Without Kathy Kelley’s support and office skills, this manuscript may
have never become manageable. As always, Linda Holman Bentley and the staff of the Phoenix Public
Library helped immensely. I relied on two experts, Nancy Hopkins and Jennifer Schneider, M.D.,
whose careful reading of the manuscript helped fill the gaps.
The Health Communications staff experienced a delay in the publishing process because of my
transition to The Meadows. They were gracious and understanding in spite of the problems the delay
caused. I appreciate the hard work of Bill Chickering, Matthew Diener and Christine Belleris in
shaping and editing the manuscript. I will forever be indebted to Gary Seidler, for he has encouraged
my writing, my speaking and my professional work. I am grateful for his faith in me.
I have a group of friends who watched over the birth of this book. Known as the Woman Lake
Gang, they are Ann and Fred Foresman, Phyllis and Lennie Brooks, Skip and Sandy Reiter, and Leslie
Myers. Their care meant a lot. My wife, Suzanne, walked every step of the way in the making of this
book. It is a lucky man who has a wise woman for a spouse.
Finally, I wish to thank the people whose stories appear in these pages. My hope is that their
voices become like a chorus for a new understanding of betrayal.
How This Book
Came to Be
This book started in 1974. I was in graduate school and I was in love. There was one problem,
however. The woman I was in love with was compulsive sexually, acting out with other men. I was
putting her through school and trying to be understanding about her behavior. I was totally crazy with
the relationship. We went through cycles of agony; I’d discover her behavior, there would be
forgiveness and a passionate reconciliation, then I’d make another discovery and the cycle would
begin all over again.
I was working on my doctorate. I had two wonderful advisors in Howard Williams and Norman
Sprinthall. The gifts they gave me in my life are uncountable, but none was more important than the
day they sat me down and expressed concern about my relationship. I was just on the verge of another
passionate reconciliation. Norman Sprinthall looked at me and said, “You remind me of Charlie
Brown and Lucy Van Pelt with the football.” He was referring to Lucy’s constant effort to get Charlie
Brown to kick the football, which she always jerked away at the last minute. I immediately got the
point. Then he added, “There is a cure for this, you know.” Pausing for emphasis, he concluded: “No
more football!” As far as my personal growth was concerned, it was the most important thing said to
me in graduate school.
That conversation opened the door to understanding a part of myself that took a couple of decades
to appreciate fully. If it is like other periods of growth in my life, there is more learning still to come.
Over time I learned that I bonded with people who were very hurtful to me and remained loyal to
them despite betrayal and exploitation. This pattern of insane loyalty affected my professional and
business relationships, my friendships, my finances and my intimate relationships. In my counseling
work I saw my pattern of behavior repeated in others. In my research I documented how that
happened for people. Gradually a map emerged for me about what the problem was and how to
survive and eventually overcome it.
The problem is called betrayal bonding. Betrayal intensifies pathologically the human trait of
bonding deeply in the presence of danger or fear. Writing a book about it became a challenge. First,
professionals who work with trauma or post traumatic stress found very similar things to what
addiction professionals found. Yet both fields were largely unaware of the other. Even worse, they
used different language to describe what they knew. Within the trauma field there were those who
worked with object relations that expanded our understanding of how traumatized persons operated
out of a damaged relationship template. Yet their insights were outside of mainstream trauma
research. Addiction professionals were also seeing compulsive relationships that had all the
characteristics of addictive disorders. These relationships, however, were so enmeshed in addictions
and compulsive behaviors that they would get lost in the general consequences of the addictions
themselves. Professionals knew that there was often a traumatic history in all addictions but were
unclear about how that affected these compulsive relationships.
Finally, family and marriage researchers offered an extremely helpful understanding of the systems
operating in these relationships. The challenge was how to integrate all of that complex insight into a
map most people could understand. Professionals will find a conceptual audit trail in the notes and in
the bibliography at the end.
The other part of my motivation to write this book came out of a six-year research project that
followed over 1,000 recovering sex addicts and their families. The results of that work were
published in a book called Don’t Call It Love. In that book I reported the stages that trauma victims
went through in developing the consciousness to change their lives. As researchers we found it very
laborious, tedious work, but the learning was important in that it increased the level of understanding
for all those who have experienced betrayal. It is core to this book.
Sometimes I have been accused of writing books that are painful to read at some points. A number
of times I have been introduced to audiences in which the person making the introduction makes the
observation that my book, The Gentle Path, should be called “The Brutal Path.” Everyone laughs,
including me. We laugh out of identification because we know that to grow and change require
courage, honesty and effort. I have also had people tell me Out of the Shadows was at first painful to
read. I believe this book on the betrayal bond may also present similar challenges to some readers.
Yet I also profoundly believe that books can be transformative. At times I think we professionals
only believe that insight comes through therapy, support groups and intervention. All three are
important tools, perhaps even indispensable. However, people reading a book in seclusion will admit
realities they are not ready to acknowledge to a group or therapist. I wished to write a book that
would serve as a map for people seeking some base in reality about their destructive relationships.
Such an effort requires an author to join with the reader to map out the emotional landscape. I start
with the open letter to the reader that follows.
Every book I have written started with the desire to create what I needed for myself. This book is
what I wished I had in 1974.
I dedicate this book to Norman Sprinthall and Howie Williams, with thanks for all their efforts on
my behalf.