Harmonious relationships are like a sea knot – they hold tightly and are easily untied, child psychiatrist Marcel Rufo is convinced. We should not take this tragically: having lost what was dear to us, we can return to ourselves and truly feel our own uniqueness.
Professor Marcel Rufo (Marcel Rufo) is one of the most famous child psychiatrists in France. For three decades he headed the research center at the Sainte-Marguerite clinic in Marseille, and since December 2004, he has been running the teenagers’ house (La Maison des adolescents) in Paris, where boys and girls aged 11-19 can receive professional medical and psychological assistance. He is the author of several books about teen-parent relationships, including the bestseller Let Me Go! (“De’tache-moi” by Anne Carrière, 2003), in which he sets out his view on the issue of parting with grown children.
Psychologies: In your books you talk about life as a series of partings. If so, why don’t we develop immunity and each new breakup, no matter how long it may be, still hurts us?
Marcel Rufo: Parting, we suffer not so much from the realization of what we have actually lost, but from the collapse of our own illusions. The origins of this are in the primary, uterine connection with the mother. It inevitably ends, and all our lives after that we strive for relationships that are just as reliable, durable and comfortable. But, alas, we are not given to experience this nirvana again. Sometimes we may have a deceptive feeling that we have found this kind of harmony in a couple, and then the desire to reproduce those uterine relationships weakens for a while, as if we had taken a sedative. And only when parting, we understand that at first we acquired, and then lost, not at all what we were looking for initially. Therefore, we have to endlessly replay the game again, continuing to look for strong “archaic” connections that will finally give us a sense of security and peace.
It turns out that this kind of suffering is our destiny for life. How do children deal with them? Sometimes it seems that they experience crisis situations – for example, the divorce of their parents – much easier than adults …
MR: This is not entirely true. It’s not that they suffer less, but that other moments are key for them. For example, many adults are surprised that the classic children’s divorce questions do not seem to touch on the essence of what is happening. You might think that the child is only interested in some stupid details: “Wouldn’t mom be scared to be alone in the dark, at night?” or “How will dad iron his shirts?” At the same time, dad may well iron shirts better than mom and grandmother combined, and mom can even turn out to be a national security agent with a service weapon not a belt. But in terms of relationships in a couple, children are big conservatives, their ideas about gender roles within the family are more than traditional. And this is not only normal, but also very important for their development: in order to gain the ability to rebuild, the child must first form as a person, and here the process of his identification with his parents plays a huge role. When a family breaks up, the familiar system of relationships collapses, and through their seemingly naive questions, children rebuild their picture of the world that has swayed during the divorce of their parents, looking for familiar and understandable landmarks in an unusual landscape.
Is it possible to say that some children experience the separation of their parents more acutely than others?
MR: Boys and girls, endowed with a vivid imagination, often idealize their parents and their relationship, and therefore are especially acutely experiencing a collision with harsh reality. In addition, children who are deprived of caress and feel abandoned too early turn out to be very vulnerable when their parents divorce – for them, parting with dad or mom becomes a repetition of the original trauma. Of course, one should not reduce the mental life of children to a mechanical repetition of infantile sorrows, however, a child for whom the first separation from his mother (and then all subsequent ones – in adolescence, at the beginning of adulthood, etc.) passed normally and painlessly, in In the future, he is less afraid of being abandoned.
When two people decide to break up, it means that there is no other choice. And yet, how we would like to protect our children from suffering …
MR: Parents very often come to me by the hand with a child and say: “We are going to get a divorce, but we don’t want our baby to suffer.” To this I answer them: “Let’s wait until he really starts to suffer. Then we’ll think about it, but for now I can’t help you!” In our time, when we put comfort above all else, many are waiting for psychologists to prescribe some kind of universal vaccine against suffering. However, the psychologist’s role is to intervene when something goes wrong, not when all is well and there is hope that it will continue to be so.
There are situations in which divorce seems to be the lesser evil. For example, if parents constantly quarrel…
MR: When I was little, my parents constantly cursed and I ran away to neighbors and acquaintances to wait out their scandals. For me it was completely normal – I’m used to this lifestyle. Actually, I say this to show that from the point of view of a child, quarrels are not much more dangerous than parting. He knows that they are an integral part of the relationship, and he adapts to them.
When it comes to divorce, can understanding the reason for it help a child come to terms with it?
MR: Hardly. When I ask a child if he knows why his parents broke up, it is logical to expect that he will immediately turn to his father or mother with the question: “Is it true, why? ..” But this never happens: the reason for what happened to the child, as a rule, , not interesting. It is much more important for him to cope with the problem that has fallen on him, to get used to the new situation. It is this question that worries him in the first place. The personality of a child is formed against the backdrop of overcoming difficulties, and not in an ideal family atmosphere, when parents constantly kiss in front of forever young grandparents. Moreover, I think that such “ideal parents” cause very real harm to the child. With their own impeccability, they seem to deny that real life, where there is death, hatred, fear, loneliness … Oddly enough, a feeling of insecurity can sometimes give a child strength. Yes, and an adult too: only by understanding why he feels so defenseless, a person will be able to take a step forward.
In other words, can a breakup be beneficial?
MR: Parting always causes us suffering – be it the first separation from the mother, leaving the family, breaking up with a loved one, a serious discord with a brother or sister (such things are by no means uncommon), the death of a loved one … But at the same time, suffering, we grow up.
Why do we sometimes take long years to be free from attachment to someone?
MR: It always takes time to break the connection – and it does not matter whether it is a relationship of friendship, love or professional. And it is quite possible that the great anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss was wrong: at the heart of human relationships is not the taboo on incest, but our age-old desire to make connections, the strength of which we are never completely sure.
So, eternal love does not exist?
MR: Применительно к отношениям между любящими людьми слово «вечность» означает быть вместе всегда – даже после смерти. Некоторые настаивают на том, чтобы их даже похоронили вместе – таково, например, было желание моих родителей. Хотя мне часто представляется, что и там, в ином мире, они медленно дрейфуют, как лодки без весел на реке – то удаляясь друг от друга, то сближаясь, чтобы вновь разойтись…
How do you know if you’ve dealt with a breakup?
MR: Oh, you can’t go wrong on this one. When you stop constantly thinking about who you broke up with. When the face of the woman you loved ceases to appear in your imagination every day. When the baby stops yearning for his father who left the family for days on end. When an adult – like me, for example – stops thinking about his dead parents every day …
When can you say: “I forgot someone who was once dear to me”?
MR: I would not say “forgotten”, but “separated from him”. To really break up means to admit that “mom and dad are two separate people”, that “the ex-husband is now living his own life”, and not to suffer from these thoughts. This happens, as a rule, simply: one morning you wake up and realize that the absence of this person in your life no longer hurts you.
Perhaps this is what it means to “break up forever”?
MR: I don’t really like this expression. In my opinion, it is impossible to part with something forever. The most we can hope for is that over time we will suffer less. The one who has loved feels the consequences of this love all his life. Therefore, I believe that jealousy is a natural reaction when we part with our loved ones. And it does not matter who is jealous of whom – the one who was left, or the one who left himself. Jealousy is a kind of tribute to the departed love.
But, if we continue to be jealous, doesn’t that mean we’re still in love?
MR: Love cannot be cured like a disease! Love always leaves a wound in our soul. And, even if the pain subsides over time, it does not disappear forever. If one morning we suddenly feel that the absence of a loved one does not cause us the same suffering, this does not mean that we have completely coped with this feeling.
How is a breakup different from a breakup?
MR: Imagine a tendon rupture – it happens unexpectedly and painfully. And if the surgeon cuts the ligament, then the planned operation will be done with extreme caution. This is the difference: separation implies a future restoration, and a breakup is associated with destruction, pain, trauma. But any breakup, no matter how painful we experience it, is a great opportunity to finally become ourselves. Otherwise, why do we admire so much people who go on a solo voyage across the ocean?
Sometimes we keep some things in memory of people who have left our lives. Are we not reopening old wounds?
MR: No, because for us these things do not refer to the present, but only to the past. Thanks to them, each of us constantly returns to the past, reconciling, getting used to it. Do not confuse memories and regret. For example, I have a photograph where we are taken with my parents – I am four years old there. I often take it out, and it reminds me of dear and close people. I grieve for a heavy and ancient, like the world, loss, but this is a bright, if I may say so, positive grief. Unlike memories, regret is always negative—it is inseparable from feelings of shame (“I should have told them this,” “I shouldn’t have done that”). So things to remember are our true life and a great way to keep in our souls what was really important to us.
And finally, what characterizes a good relationship, a stable connection for you?
MR: Do you know what a gazebo marine knot is? With it, in a strong storm, sailors tie themselves to gear for insurance. The point is that it holds tightly, but at the same time it is easily untied – literally with one touch. When the wind subsides, simply pulling on the rope will instantly untie the knot and allow it to be tied elsewhere. Life is a series of such attachments and detachments, and the relationship in a couple can be described as follows: “Mom tied me up, then let me go, and now I want you to bind me!” In my opinion, a good bond should be like a bow knot – hold tight for as long as it is needed, and be easily untied when the hour of parting comes.