Each of us cultivated a sense of ownership since childhood; a feeling that makes us protective of the things around us, the objects that belong to us, and the people who are close to us. This sense of ownership is somewhat natural but the way we know it is pretty much learned. Being possessive is natural to protect your child, and it’s just as natural to protect your home. However, what is not natural is the special attitude people build in relationships with the people they consider to be “theirs”.
Many consider this topic quite controversial, yet it must be understood. So, let’s see how these relationships are built, how they influence our lives, and how we can avoid them.
Human needs
Generally, when it comes to the human being, I like to start the analysis with the basic features of people, from their fundamental needs and the behaviors arising from these needs. For this reason, many studies start from Maslow’s pyramid. In 1943, the American psychologist tried to explain the vitality of human needs and the way they influence behavior. As a result, he built a pyramid in which he classified human needs from the base to the top (at the base being the immediate/vital needs, and the top being the subsequent needs).
In this way, the psychologist came to the conclusion that people have 5 categories of needs: first of all, we have physiological needs: air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing, and reproduction. Once these needs are guaranteed, we will naturally orient toward the others.
The next category of needs is the one related to safety, which includes personal safety, resources, health, property and job. Some of these needs formed with the development of society, but they are quite related to the first cathegory of needs too. Meaning, when we speak about a job, althought calssified as a secondary type of need, it is the one guaranteeing the first class of needs like safety.
The next category concerns the needs of love and belonging. Each of us was biologically created in such a way that we feel the need to have friends, family, intimacy, the feeling that we are needed, that we are connected, etc. Yet, this category of needs is usually satisfied only after we guaranteed to a certain point the physiological and safety needs. This means that, love and friendship are complex cognitive processes that can only take place if the feeling of fear and the immediate need for survival are overcome. Yet, there are particular situations questioning this aspect.
Another category of needs focuses on esteem. It happens that there are cases in which people have shown that esteem and human dignity is prioritized in spite of phisiological needs. All of us have thiss need to control our own lives, to make our own decisions, to have our merits recognized and so on. Also from this cathegory there is the human need for respect, self-esteem, social status, recognition, power and freedom.
And last but not least, there is the category of needs about self-actualization, self-development. These needs start from the desire of having enough space and opportunity to grow, to be better, to surpass ourselves, to develop. Self-development gives us a sent of meaning, a purpose, and also creates the feeling that things change.
The subconscious and decisions
Each of us is driven subconsciously by simple needs and primarily by the need to survive and multiply, just like all species – it’s how we are built, it’s in our DNA. If we had not been driven by this need, most likely we would have dissapeared long time ago as a species. What this means though? It means that at the base of all our decisions, somewhere behind every thought is fear and the desire to survive and perpetuate the species.
Let’s take as an example normal people who start looking for a boyfriend or girlfriend in adolescence. This desire is influenced by the biological needs. Then comes the desire to have a family and make a child. If we look at each person’s life, logically all the compromises for family life are biologically driven.
I say biologically because it is not something that we consciously think about, that we plan. The desire to have children, for example, is guided by avalanches of hormones, by some major biological changes that make us want a family and do everything in our power for it to happen.
I’ve been observing multiple times relatives or coleagues who very much wanted to have children even though the situation they were in indicated that they were in the most inappropriate time to have a child (whether it was about financial difficulty, instability in the family, natural disasters, wars, etc.). It is that, when you want a family or a child you just want it, as simple as that, no matter the circumstances. But that’s the hormones, that’s DNA, it’s nothing conscious and logical.
How do we become possessive?
We all know the beginning of a relationship in which two people try to get to know each other and eventually make a family. But how do you get from strangers to a relationship in which one dominates the other?
Nobody likesto be told what to do, but there are situations in which we accept that someone’s opinion or word is higher than ours, even though they seem illogical. These situations are when:
- the other is right; proposes better solutions most of the time;
- the other has more resources;
- the other’s opinion is also supported by others;
- when we are sick and we accept that the situation is beyond us;
- when we are threatened.
Let’s see how possessiveness manifests in each of these situations.
Being right or compromise?
Instinctively, each of us knows that being right means winning a dispute. It is something natural that makes us automatically change our behavior, no matter how conscious we are about it, the moment we realize we lost an argument and the other proved to be right we tend not to impose ourselves too much, at least for a while.
What happens in relationships and families starting from this?
Because everyone knows that losing a dispute means admitting that you were not informed enough, or that you were wrong, spouses usually do not admit that they are wrong and argue without discussing logical solutions; at some point it becomes too personal an is only about wining (it is not about families, it is about all human relationships). Naturally, since one of the spouses admits that he was wrong, behaviors instinctively change. If the same thing repeats for several times and the same husband accepts that he was wrong, then a pattern of behavior starts to build in the relationship, a hierarchy of power begins to form, and this is not necessarily good. When the one who has won more the argument becomes the one to decide everything is bad for the relationship balance, for the other husband, for the way other social interactions will develop, etc. What has to be mentioned here is that, being right in a fight does not prove you being smarter. Since 1831, the great German philosopher Artur Schopenhauer clearly outlined 38 methods of manipulating a discussion to be right and win the fight. But he clearly underlined that being right has nothing to do with the truth, but simply with the inability of the opponent to argue his position.
Therefore, spouses are not used and usually avoid admitting they are wrong in order not to give up their right to make decisions. On the other hand, what happens when we admitt we are wrong, or when we just dont have the right words with us, or when we just don’t want to fight? Society shows us that there are multiple families in the situation that after several fights when the same spouse gave up arguing possessive relationships were built. These posesive relationships translate into husbands or wives that do not allow their partners to speak, to express their opinion, to take any decisions, who reserve the right to plan and decide on their own without consulting the other. From here a psychological abuse is born in which the other no longer feels that he belongs to that family, that he is understood, that he is listened to, etc. For this reason, after a while, if things do not change, the spouse who feels that the family is the place where they feel humiliated, unexpected, ignored, etc. will look for other places where he can be listened to and be appreciated. This can finally lead to a broken marriage and divorce.
Although it may seem that a possessive behavior is devoid of aggression, it can violate basic human needs and lead to tragic consequences- people who were part of abusive relationships sometimes end with psychotherapists sessions, some commit suicide, etc. It is all about the damage done to their needs for belonging, love, respect, human dignity, relatedness, etc.
Resources
When we talk about resources, they usually matter from the very beginning of a relationship and simple human interaction. Resources influence the way people think about themselves and those around them. If in a relationship a person who has more financial resources than the other believes that this guarantees the right to decide by himself and treat the other as a property, and the person entering into a relationship with this person accepts such a behavior, then the relationship of possession is created from the very beginning and nothing will change along the way, even worse, in time it can lead to domestic violence.
Why is this happening? Because people build patterns of behavior in relationships with others from the first 2-3 meetings. Everything depends on what we allow eachother in the first several interactions. There were cases where poor women married rich men and were respected, and there were also many cases of poor women marrying rich men (or who thought they were rich) who were treated as property.
Influences
Naturally, if we are 1 to 1 with somebody we tend to retaliate in order to establish a relationship of equality. But if we are one against 2, 3 or more people then we stick our noses in the ground and accept that we are numerically defeated- it’s biological, and hard to overcome. This aspect is crucial in building a healthy relationship in a family. Why?
Beacuse if in addition to the spouses, the members of their families get involved in the relationship things complicate a lot. If both families get involved, then teams are created and they fight against each other. Give this, spouses will never create a good relationship, they will hate each other for puting themselves in the situations they are.
Each of us was taught from childhood to defend our family members. The problem is that we have more memories with the family we come from than with the person we are trying to make a family. Thus, if from the very beginning the family we belong to starts a ‘war’ against the person we want to be with, this war will most probably end with a break up. Those in our family see the person we want to be with and their family as strangers, and vice versa. As a result, everyone will fight to defend the family that is closest to their soul (the one from which they come), and will give up the family they intended to create given the lack of trust, memories, history.
What we must take from here is that people have to accept, just like birds, that their young have left the nest and that they are going to make their own home; we have to trust that we raised and taught our kids so well that they are now able to make the best choice for a spouse.
Health problems
In terms of health problems, we have two types of situations. One in which the sick accept that their thinking is compromised and let the healthy one takes the decisions. And another, in which the sick uses the disease to manipulate and reserve the right to decide. The second is about the spouse ceding the right to decide out of empathy and compassion for the sick one, which brings us to the next criterion for creating a possessive relationship, namely threatening.
Threatening
From the threats category we have a lot of vicious relationships, which are not only about possession, but also about violence, about the need to be with someone regardless of whether that someone wants to be with you or not, etc.
Blackmail by using the state of health is one of the most common methods of manipulating interpersonal relationships. They apply both between spouses, between parents and children, between schoolmates, workmates, etc.
The situation usually goes like this: one is saying he feels bad and invokes that if the other accepts a certain decision or does as he is asked then he/she will feel better. This kind of problematic possessive relationships can be easily observed when consciously and logically we analyze and understand that the decision has nothing to do with the health of the person but with some wishes, personal desires.
This game of manipulation can be taken further by some who say they are sick, or wish they were sick so much that they show symptoms to attract attention, or to get what they want. There are multiple psychological disorders charachterising people that disease symptoms to attract attention, some disorders develop over time due to lack of attention in childhood, others develop in adulthood. Among them we have the Munchausen syndrome, histrionic personality disorder, fictional disorder, Ganser syndrome, severe anxiety, hypochondria, etc.
Psychologists claim that each of us at least once in our lives has pretended to be in pain in order to get a kiss on the forehead from our parents, or to make them buy us a chocolate, etc. However, problems arise if the parents encourage this behavior and does not give the child attention without any special circumstances. Children develop their conscious and emotional behavior up to the age of 18-20 years. If until then they receive attention only when something hurts, then they learn that this is normal and that to get attention they have to be sick, thus they embrace illness.
On the other hand, we have situations where parents hurt their children to get the other spouse’s attention, as he returns to family life only when the child is sick. This usually happens in families with arranged marriages, in families where one spouse spends most of his time at work, etc.
Hypochondria
A problematic disease with a major influence on relationships can be hypochondria. People classified as hypochondriacs are healthy people who think they are sick, or convince themselves that they are sick. Usually, hypochondriacs tend to overestimate mild or non-specific symptoms and classify them as belonging to serious, often rare and unlikely diseases. They learn about the diseases they think they have, they start looking for treatments, and sometimes they can develop real problems from the treatments they take. For example, changing the diet can lead to insufficient vitamins, minerals and nutrients in the body, and respectively to muscular, neurological problems, etc. Others who take pills, supplements, which can cause a series of other symptoms that can mislead doctors into thinking it’s a real problem.
A proof of this is how vitamin supplements can harm us if we are healthy. There is a modern trend to consume supplements for beauty, health, and muscle mass growth. The problem is that people take these supplements without having a health problem, “for improvement” they say. The problem is, however, that these food supplements were intended for people who have a diagnosed problem, therefore every year in the USA, around 23,000 people end up in the emergency room after consuming supplements. Some have cardiovascular palpitations, others dizziness, stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, etc.
Conclusions
The subject of possession in relationships is far from being only about what we discussed above, but it represents a beginning to understand how some interpersonal relationships develop and how two strangers end up in a relationship in which one always decides and the other always remains silent.
Thus we have to understand that our family is to be there for us in the good and the hardest days. Thus, what we will put in to grow this family it will come back to us. So, work on developing a respectful relationship, a healthy family, in which people talk to each other, help each other with love, where everyone has the right to speak, and where things are discussed rather than debated.
And don’t forget, everything must be taken care of from the very beginning. It is not too late to change something along the way, in the sense of improvement, but if your partner has come to treat you like property, most likely he will never change (maybe only for a few days, and then will return back to the ‘old’ normal).
