Projection
▼ If I believe my stories I’ll see clearly.
▲ When I release my stories I finally see clearly.
▼ Other people make me feel a certain way.
▲ I notice when I’m projecting my emotions onto others.
▼ Other people and situations are unacceptable.
▲ I discover my blindspots by noticing who and what I find unacceptable.
The following question is about a romantic partnership, but it can apply to any relationship. For most people, our romantic relationships are the most illuminating in how we’re projecting onto others.
Answering a question from Facebook – “My husband is very quiet (he’s an [Enneagram] 1) and when my cup gets low I need to find a way to remember he loves me.”
Well yes, I hear your desire to have that love come from him. That's a normal human thing to want. To get there, though, you gotta connect and root down into the source of that love from yourself. Connection to your heart is available 24/7 and it's the only thing that can take this weight off of him. I find that unless I'm willing to give myself that thing, other people usually aren’t either.
I’m sure you have heard this a million times, but how do we concretely do this?
First off, let me just specify that what you’re experiencing is abandonment/rejection trauma. I have yet to meet a human that gets off scot-free here. No matter how perfect a family of origin you have, you have your own version of this to work through.
Notice that when we get re-jected we tend to pro-ject. The words come from the same root -ject, to throw away.
With my partner, anytime I want him to provide something for me, I check to see if I'm willing to provide it for myself. This could be anything... quality time, adventure, novelty, gifts, meditation time together, sex, touch, etc.
What is it that even has you feel loved? Get specific. If you don’t know, ask your deepest wisdom to bring you a memory of a time when you felt very loved. What helped you feel that way? What was it about that quality of connection that stands out to you?
Let's unpack an example of when my rejection trauma got activated – I was getting all in a snit because I wanted my partner to buy me sexy lingerie. He wasn't into it for whatever reason (most notably because he was more in the friend zone than I wanted to believe.)
If someone tells you no, respect their boundary. Like… actually respect it by not judging them for setting a boundary. It’s healthy for them to say no.
Neither you nor they may totally even understand their reasons. If you get into a further fight by trying to demand one, you’re just digging further down the hole of making energetic demands your partner might not be up for.
If you get especially reactive to them saying no, you’ve got some part of you that’s needing reparenting. Some wounded part of you needs loving attention. Sorry, this is some bitter medicine.
Here’s where the projections can easily sneak in. They might sound like. “My partner is defective. He doesn’t know how or isn’t capable of showing me love.” I kept an obsessive tape loop of thoughts running. “Why wouldn’t he want to buy me panties? That’s such a fun way to play and flirt. What’s wrong with him? Is he even attracted to me?” Our ego has a nearly limitless laundry list of criticism.
If you find yourself keeping a tit-for-tat tallying up who did more of what, you’re already well deep in this hole. “I give him gifts all the time. Am I in a relationship with someone who isn’t generous?”
Notice how real these stories can seem.
However, when you engage in this judgment, projection, and blame, you are (probably unconsciously) putting an energetic demand on them. When we can hear and respect our partner’s no, we are making demands. I don’t know anyone who responds well to demands. They actually push our partners away. Even if they comply, the mounting resentment will get to a point where it can’t be ignored anymore. If they do everything you ask of them, it will rot your relationship as sure as an iceberg will sink the Titanic. This is the essence of co-dependence.
We often don’t hold ourselves to the same standards as we hold our partners. When we aren’t available to shower our partner 24/7 with love, we understand it’s because we’re doing our best with our limited energy, time, and attention. When our partners fail to be that limitless source of love, we think their character is defective and wonder if we should even be in this relationship. This is a massive source of suffering.
But let’s get back to the sexy lingerie example. I checked to see if that's a thing that’s worthy to need/want in the first place. I decided the lingerie was worthy and gifted myself a pile of orchid silk sweet nothings.
I let him off the hook. I did the work. We talked about it later so he can understand how it is I like to receive love, but it never works to make demands. Maybe one day he buys me lingerie. Maybe he won’t. I’m now in a place where that particular act doesn’t matter so much.
How did it turn out? Well, he was happy to hear about my juicy new sweet nothings, and I got to feel the empowerment that was available from within myself all along.
The funny thing is when I look back at it now, it seems like such a petty thing to get hung up on, but I know at that moment where I was suffering it felt very, very real, and I was very sorry for myself. And now with several months of hindsight, I see he was way more a friend than he was ever a partner. I get it now. It was never gonna happen. I’m still super glad I bought those things for myself even though he will never see them. I see them. I’m proud of myself.
I know in those moments when I was feeling sad, lost, and lonely, I was just trying to get him to demonstrate his love because I wanted him to fill the hole in me. I didn’t have much capacity for sitting with those difficult emotions. Over the past few months, I’ve been weight lifting with the heart connection exercise detailed here. That’s how you hit that bedrock of acceptance, belonging, and love we’re all searching for.
I need to leave this on a sad note.
If you’re having a lot of mismatched needs bubbling up especially petty ones that hurt like hell… there’s probably something you don’t want to say that you’re gonna have to say eventually. I call these the “relationship grenades.” These are the things you know are true for you, but if you said them out loud the relationship might fall apart.
They’re things like – maybe you want something serious, or maybe you think you want kids with them. Or maybe you’re clear that you don’t and fear your partner does. To get through this, you’ll have to be willing and skillful to speak the truth told about what you’re looking for.
Be willing to hear what you don’t want to hear.
Even if it’s painful it’s better than living in an illusion. This is how you realize that some magic castles will only ever live in your fantasy.
You can reach a place where you are just too mismatched to continue. If you think you might be getting to that point, check out Conscious Uncoupling.
But hopefully, you’ll risk saying the scary thing and they will say “yes, I am choosing you. I am choosing to be in this relationship. I may not say yes to everything you ask of me, but I do say yes to you.” Then you can have a good cry-fest knowing a bit more about each other’s tenderest parts.