Should you date a neurotic?

Sadly, I hear this question with enviable regularity, in all sorts of shapes and forms. Sometimes it is that it would be nice to set up a dating agency for people who have been through therapy, for ‘non-neurotics’; sometimes it is how to protect yourself from so-called ‘arseholes’; sometimes it is complaints that there are so many of them... And when yesterday yet another client asked me in conversation how you can spot a neurotic so as not to date one, I realised the article was overdue.

Who are they?

The debate for and against neurotics has in fact been going on for quite some time, and the word itself has turned into almost the same kind of brand as narcissist or psychopath: hardly anyone knows what exactly stands behind it, but everyone knows it is ‘bad’. Or they do know, and out of sheer contrariness they shout that the world rests on neurotics and their impulses alone.

So what sort of creatures are they? According to Labkovsky, they are the ones who get no pleasure out of life. According to Kozlov, a neurotic is a person who himself feels bad about everything. The most politically correct of all was Horney, who wrote a whole book on the subject with all sorts of cautious prescriptions and approaches, such as:

The one essential factor common to all neuroses is anxiety and the defences built up against it. Horney writes that a neurosis cannot always be observed from the outside. Even the neurotic may not be aware that he is suffering. When some signs of neurosis are described, people can often recognise them in someone else while refusing to see them in themselves. Horney also writes that the problems of a neurotic differ from the problems that trouble a normal person in our culture only in degree. My own personal criterion, though:

One relative of mine, for instance, solves extremely complex problems when it comes to programming, but the moment you bring up his problems in every other area, you can spend an hour and a half listening to why those problems cannot be solved and how naive everyone is if that is not obvious to us.

‘Amusing peculiarities’

By and large, entering into a relationship with a neurotic means being ready for the following — let us call them even more politely, ‘amusing peculiarities’ — though possibly not all of them at once.

First of all, neurotics do not love themselves. Here is what follows from that:

1. An endless and, frankly, indiscriminate search for approval.

The approval has to come from you, from mum, from the man on the tram, from the woman at the till, and so on. They will bend over backwards and act against their own interests just to be praised. And they will be mortally offended when there is too little praise, or when you have not needed the thing they have just knocked together for about a hundred years. They were trying for your sake, after all, and now they will never try again, because you are that same ungrateful swine... But you can still give them your approval, so all right then, you get one more chance.

2. Apparent helplessness.

In many ways they are like children. They are afraid to try things, afraid to decide. Sometimes it seems that without you they would not survive. This can show up as wanting to climb onto someone's back and dangle their legs, or as wanting to shift responsibility for their decisions onto you, or as endless dissatisfaction with themselves: with their skills, their approaches, their looks. And sooner or later there comes an attempt to assert themselves at your expense. You decided wrongly for them, so you can answer for it! All you ever do is belittle them! And in general you are a freak, a halfwit, an idiot, a monster who oppresses the poor thing even if all you did was not want to do their work for them.

3. Add any other variations to taste.

Secondly, neurotics stand in their own way and get in the way of their own lives. And here comes the best part. Watch their hands closely: under no circumstances may they admit this to themselves. That is, I am standing in my own way, but I have to convince myself that the one standing in my way is not me! Remember the joke?

The only thing in all of this that I personally admire is how resourceful their brain is. What a mind you have to have to do obviously contradictory things and then keep on giving yourself and everyone around you a logical explanation of why there is no contradiction and never was! If only such a mind were put at the service of the Human Being! But no — in this case the donkey is riding the carter, not the other way round. So then,

What does this mean for a relationship?

1. A huuuge number of excuses and get-outs on any subject. At first glance they are logical. Those heretics who dare to take a second, more critical look will have to survive a storm of emotion and a napalm of assorted defence mechanisms. Whoever withstands that too runs the risk of quite literally getting a frying pan over the head, just to be sure.

2. No fewer accusations, and you will be lucky if the one being accused is not you but the rest of the world. Though I would not get my hopes up. It is a rare unhealthy defence that leaves enough room for two. Sooner or later you will find yourself on the other side of the barricades, and sooner or later — hello, frying pan!

I am deliberately not going into the outward signs of neuroticism here. They exist, and there are plenty of them. It is usually when there is too much of something or too little. And it can be anything at all. But I am not going to lay down absolute standards. Put it down to my being afraid of the frying pan, and I am not shy about admitting it. Besides, the article is not about that.

The article is about how long you are prepared to put up with the ‘amusing peculiarities’ listed above.

So how do you live with it?

From time to time we are all neurotics. Absolutely anyone can be broken. However enlightened a person may be, there is a lock-pick and a crowbar for every one of them. For the Buddha, for the Dalai Lama in his fourteenth reincarnation, and for those ubiquitous prophets Jeff Foster and Osho. Flexibility means always coming back ‘to base’, to your own healthy dynamic, and slowly clearing up the mess you have made. But not everyone can master that art at the first attempt, especially when the brain is using us rather than the other way round. That is why some people can sit in a neurotic dynamic for years.

Another wonderful feature of neurotics is that they manage to ‘dock with each other by their neuroses’. A young woman who does not value herself will constantly meet men who belittle her. A mother who believes it is her duty to bend over backwards for her children will get the kind of children who really will make her do it. And so on.

When you start working on yourself, the world suddenly changes. First, you become able to notice when I myself am standing in my own way and getting in my own way. Second, you start to see it in others. And that is exactly when dating a neurotic becomes particularly hard, because why on earth would you create problems for yourself?

What helps in working on yourself? First and foremost, knowing yourself. I am very fond of the approaches of the S-Theory. They describe not only what we are like in a healthy state, but also exactly how we tend to slide into neuroses, which defences we use and what in particular can knock us off course. All you need for that is to determine your personality type.

And once you have worked through your own hooks, either in proper therapy or in the light version — online workshops and meetings with our counsellors — the chances go up that you will connect with a partner not through your neuroses but through shared goals and the building of something more than simply spending time together.

Everything said above is part of what our Club offers. Do join us!