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Video: If You Are Being Used In A Relationship - Relationships, Reviews
The series "Flesh and Bones", USA, 2015
“Once upon a time there was a Plush Rabbit. He was loved, but treated like a toy. He was tired and worn out, and dreamed of feeling alive, not made of plush …”This is the favorite fairy tale of the ballerina Claire Robins (Sarah Hay). She dreams of being truly loved and feeling alive. But for those around her, she remains a "toy": her father sees her as a convenient assistant and cook, her brother is an object of desire, the head of the ballet troupe is a successful project, the sponsor of the troupe is another beautiful body.
During 8 episodes of the film, the viewer sees Claire growing up and changing. Arriving in New York as a young provincial woman, having received the nickname "Bambi" for her naivety, she gradually learns to value herself, protect herself, becomes more realistic, feels her own strength and gains faith in herself. Therefore, the story of the ballerina Claire ended better than the tale of the Plush Rabbit: she fell in love with herself and felt like a living woman, not a “plush rabbit”. Only growing up and accepting herself could help her. In the first episode, we see an infantile girl in her 20s sleeping in an embrace with children's books. At the end of the series, this is an adult sexy woman, the star of the troupe.
We suggest watching a movie together and asking yourself important psychological questions about your own life
Important questions about life
Question 1. What place do you occupy in the family?
In some families, in relation to children, they build not subjective, but object relationships: they see not a living person with a rich inner world and various needs, but an inanimate object that must perform a certain function, serving the needs of the parent.
In the Robins family, this is exactly the case: a disabled father openly uses Claire and her brother Brian as orderlies and servants. Even when he was healthy, he did not have warm feelings for his children, we see from the family video. As adults, they find the strength to leave their father. But many children all their lives remain "servants" for their parents, satisfying, if not their material, then emotional needs.
Question 2. Do you listen to your body? Paying attention to his needs?
A common type of object relationship is the use of children as a narcissistic extension. Children satisfy the ambitions, unfulfilled desires of their parents, and do not live their own lives. Such an example is also presented in the series: neighbor Claire exhausts herself with training and hunger, begins to lose her eyesight, and the mother demands results from her daughter: she paid for the dancing lessons!
If the people around treat the child objectively, he himself begins to treat himself and his body as an inanimate object. Another example from the series is the fading star of the troupe, the beautiful Kira (Irina Dvovenko). The mature age for ballet and injuries do not allow her to continue her career, but she wants to - at any cost, even at the cost of her health. Kira neglects treatment, abuses stress, wears out her body, just to maintain star status. Her own body for her is a tool to achieve the goal. She is ready to take risks, fraught with injury, and give up for the medication she needs.
Question 3. Do you trust your feelings? Is there love in your relationship with your partner?
The series presents curious types of characters and reveals the relationship between them. So, the head of the troupe Paul (Ben Daniels) suffers from loneliness and lack of love. He was an adopted child, unloved, and, having abandoned reciprocal love in childhood, does not let love into his adult relationship. Work and power become for him a surrogate for love: he, a socially successful hero of glossy publications, has no one to celebrate the holidays with. Paul desperately needs love, but when he is really loved, he offends the loved one and repels. This is a good example of how a person can make important choices from their neurotic rather than healthy part. Alas, not all choices are made right …
What if you, like Claire, recognized yourself in the Plush Rabbit, were in a situation of use in the past, or even are in them in the present? And how do you recognize use in your life?
Usage and Object Relationships
- 1. You lose yourself, you cease to be aware of your feelings, desires, goals.
- 2. You are guided by other people's desires and adjust to them.
- 3. Perhaps your relationship seems nice from the outside, but for some reason you feel a loss of energy, your mood spoils.
- 4. You simultaneously feel the super-significance of your partner and your own worthlessness.
- 5. In a relationship, only the needs of your partner are met, not yours.
- 6. The partner interacts with his projection, and not with you in the present. At the same time, he doesn't even try to recognize you.
- 7. You get the feeling that they see in you a kind of toy, and not a living person.
- 8. You yourself begin to treat yourself as a “toy”, “thing”.
- 9. The partner does not give you the right to your own feelings, desires, different from his interests.
- 10. Exchange in a relationship is one-sided: you only give, the partner only takes.
How to get out of the relationship in which you are being used?
- 1. Get yourself back. Change your attitude towards yourself: pay attention to your feelings, needs, desires, sensations. Treat them with respect. Remember what the flight attendant teaches us on the plane: first put on an oxygen mask on yourself, then help your neighbor. Likewise, in life you need to learn to take care of yourself with love, only then can you truly love others and take care of them.
- 2. Legalize, that is, talk openly with your partner: what is happening between you, why you are unhappy and what you want to change.
- 3. Allow time to rebuild the interaction and clarify whether the partner is ready to change something or exactly what the object relationship of use is. And depending on that, make a decision: Are you willing to stay in an unhealthy relationship?
