Psychology Questions and Answers: Self-Handicapping

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Cora wrote:

I am a junior at the local university. I have been in a relationship with my boyfriend for one year. Although I have known his sister for several years now, I did not know him previous to the month before we started dating. I had never spoken with him previous to our meeting/recognizing each other on campus.

Right away we hit things off. We were inseparable. And very much in love. We have really grown close. In the beginning he was so into our relationship. He made such an effort to get involved with my family. And they accepted him as if he were their own. After about the eighth month of our relationship we started fooling around, but have decided to save ourselves for marriage. I am a virgin. He is not. Of course after we started messing around we have found ourselves doing everything but penetration. But we are still waiting. Although by this time I really don't understand the point. But I am prepared to wait.

Now for the last month we have taken this intimacy out. As we thought it would be best. Mainly I wanted to stop because he is pissing me off all the time. He is always grumpy. He now hates my mother, because they have differing points of view. Over the last 4 months I feel as though I am always the one who is showing the love and affection and encouragement. We fight all the time about pointless little things. He is always complaining about money and I know he is on his own. He lives with a roommate. Works 36 hours a week at the hospital, and goes to school for 12 hours. So I know he has a lot on his plate. Now we rarely go out. I told him we don’t have to have money to do things. We could spend time together at my house or something to that effect. But he never wants to do anything. Then he calls me at the end of the night and goes on and on about how much he misses me and how he loves me so much and how he needs me. When I ask how he spent the evening he will say, he and his roommate rented a movie and ordered a pizza. When, earlier that day he’d said he had too much homework to do to get together. I am beginning to feel like he doesn’t love me to the extent that he used to. He never comes up with sweet things to do for me anymore. He used to leave me “just because I love you” things all the time. Now I am the only one surprising him with dinner after work, notes on his car, voicemail, etc. I feel so discouraged. He speaks one thing and does another. I know he doesn’t have a lot of time but I am just scared that we are fading. I know it is not that he has someone else in mind. But it just doesn’t add up. Now I feel like I almost want to try and push him away when he does call because of all the waiting I have been doing and crap I have put up with. I find myself thinking of what it would be like to be single again and go on fun dates and really be shown love again. He keeps telling me that I am just not showing him the patience that I once did. But I am not a normally pushy person. It is just that when I am around him all he talks about is how stressed he is and I am starting to be stressed with both of our burdens. Its killing me and I want what we once had. I love him and have dreamed of marrying a person like him but I just don’t know how I can spend the rest of my life with someone who just worries his life away. I am a really busy person too, but I don’t just waste all my time in a constant panic about what tomorrow will bring. I love, hate, want, need, push away, care for him. I live in a world where worry is the next best thing to having sex.

Thanks, Cora

Dr. Einhorn replied:

Thank you for this question. Two follow-up questions: 1. Have you spoken with your boyfriend about your impressions and concerns? 2. Can you explain what you mean by “Self-handicapping” (which was the subject of your email)?

Cora replied:

Thanks for replying. But the answers I was looking for are no longer needed. We broke up the night before last. Although he keeps texting me and calling. He keeps calling me honey. And it is making everything feel false. I want to move on. Yet I don't. But I think there is someone who could possibly be better for me. We broke up because he wanted to date until after he got out of medical school and he hasn’t even started yet! So I told him I was not going to follow him around for 7 to 8 years. I can’t believe he didn’t even consult what I thought. He just made the decision for the both of us.

I was so unsure about breaking up, but when he kept saying that he wasn’t the same person that I fell in love with & he wouldn’t say why. Then he finally broke down and told me that he has been drinking the last few weeks; that assured me that it was the right thing to do. But it is so hard because I really love him. Unless I am just in love with love. His dad is an alcoholic and so I can’t see things getting better. If he turns back to drinking when he is so stressed as an undergraduate who knows how he will be when he becomes a doctor. I am just so sad. Last night and today I have been contemplating whether we should be done for good or just go on a break. I don’t want to be alone. And I really don’t want to have to experience all those awkward first date moments with a different guy. Am making the right decision or just being irrational?

Thanks, Cora

Dr. Einhorn replied:

Thank you for this update. Before I reply, can you describe what you meant by "self-handicapping?" It's not clear who is self-handicapping--you or your (former) boyfriend--or how. And it would help--especially you--if you were clearer about that. It seems to be one of those impressions that has a perceptive foundation but which needs to be made more explicit, described more clearly, to become really useful.

Cora replied:

Self-handicapping: In the weeks leading up to our breakup, I was beginning to feel the distance between us so I started to get a little less sensitive to all the crap he was coming up with. Thus I think now that I was just setting myself up for failure.

Thanks, Cora

Dr. Einhorn’s discussion:

This is one of my favorite Q and A dialogs, because Cora’s concept of “self-handicapping” is so pithy and relevant for herself and all of us. But it also saddens me that, having come up with such a useful concept, she only seems to apply it in a superficial way.

We are almost all “self-handicapping.” I like this phrase so much that I’ve begun using it in conversation. Most of the time, it is our own obstacles, habits and limitations that get in our own way. Most of the time, there is information available to us which would help us to progress; which we ignore. Most of the time, when I do therapy or consultation, I am helping people who are “self-handicapping” to see how they are preventing their progress, and see how information already available to them can help them to find their next step forward. And that is how it is for me when I am in therapy. That’s why we often respond to useful therapeutic interpretations by feeling that we know them already. We do know them already-- but haven’t been able to make use of the knowledge, can’t put it into practice, because we haven’t been conscious enough of it; because of our self-handicapping.

As her emails go along, Cora seems to become more able to acknowledge the problems in her relationship, but she doesn’t seem to be able to increase her understanding of them. When she writes, “We fight all the time about pointless little things,” Cora tells us something important. When a couple have conflicts in which their emotions are out of proportion to the subject, it’s an indication that there is an issue or issues which they are avoiding but need to address. Cora’s emails don’t indicate that they ever had an honest conversation. Instead, after becoming increasingly frustrated with their problems, she decided to end the relationship. She may or may not be right about that, but an important opportunity for her and her boyfriend to learn, by having that honest conversation, appears to have been missed.

Cora’s statement, “...unless I am just in love with love,” might be another window into her state of mind. Although she says she loves her boyfriend, Cora emphasizes the courtship and relationship-maintaining aspects of it--initial attraction, early positive dating, little endearments that keep the bonding going. All of that is important, but personal information about herself and her boyfriend is almost entirely absent from her description. This is key to understanding the issues in her relationship and to obtaining the potential benefit of the idea of “self-handicapping.”

If Cora were seeing me for consultation or therapy, this is an area I would want to focus much more on. What kind of individuals are she and her boyfriend, by background and temperament? What are their expectations and goals for themselves and their relationship? What are their values, where do their values come from, and how do they mesh and conflict? What are their stories, and what is their story? There’s very little of that in Cora’s description of her problem.

So, although Cora knows, at some level, that she’s been handicapping herself, her understanding doesn’t appear to go deep enough for her to learn what she might about herself, her boyfriend, and their relationship. At the end of our dialog, she defines self-handicapping as meaning simply that she “got less sensitive to all the crap he was coming up with,” which she equates with “setting myself up for failure.” It’s almost painful to see how close Cora gets to being able to increase her understanding of herself and others, only to miss it by retreating into superficial thinking. I want to say, “Look again, Cora. Don’t give up. You’re really onto something here that can help you learn a great deal, if you can only hold onto it and use it.”

Having a concept as potentially important and useful as “self-handicapping,” and only understanding it as pulling away instead of applying it for self-understanding, is like having a good dictionary and using it for a doorstop.

Cora can extend her perception of herself, her (perhaps by now ex-) boyfriend, and human nature, by applying the concept of “self-handicapping” more deeply, by identifying how both she and her boyfriend handicapped themselves in various ways and at various points in their relationship. An experienced therapist could help her in this process of retrospective reflection. It’s worth doing.

For past questions and columns, go to the archive.