Irrelationship: How we use Dysfunctional Relationships to Hide from Intimacy

by Mark B. Borg Jr., Grant H Brenner, Daniel Berry

No matter how committed two people are to being together, why can't they get away from feeling like something is missing?
In this important and transformative guide, three experienced practitioners identify the widespread dysfunctional dynamic they call "irrelationship," a psychological defense system two people create together to protect themselves from the fear and anxiety of real intimacy in a relationship. Drawing on their wide clinical and life experience, the authors look at the behavioral "song-and-dance" routines repeatedly performed by couples in irrelationships. Readers will find a valuable framework for understanding their challenges with action-oriented tools to help them navigate their way to fulfilling relationships. Mark B. Borg, Jr., PhD,  is a community psychologist and psychoanalyst, and a supervisor of psychotherapy at the William Alanson White Institute. Grant H. Brenner, MD , is a board-certified psychiatrist in private practice, specializing in treating mood and anxiety disorders and the complex problems that may arise in adulthood from childhood trauma and loss. Daniel Berry, RN, MHA , has practiced as a Registered Nurse in New York City since 1987 and has worked for almost two decades in community-based programs.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Relationships

288 pages, Paperback

First published September 28, 2015

About the author

Mark B. Borg, Jr., Ph.D. is a community psychologist and psychoanalyst, founding partner of The Community Consulting Group, and a supervisor of psychotherapy at the William Alanson White Institute. He has written extensively about the intersection of psychoanalysis and community crisis intervention. He is in private practice in New York City. Dr. Borg attended graduate school at the California School of Professional Psychology, where he earned both his MA and PhD in a dual-track program in clinical and community psychology. While there, Dr. Borg served on a four-year community empowerment project that was developed in South Central Los Angeles in the wake of the 1992 riots. Also at that time, he conducted individual and group psychotherapy at the AIDS Services Foundation in Orange County, California.

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I've known Dr. Brenner for over 20 years. Full-est disclosure: I didn't just read Irrelationship, which he co-authored, to support a friend, but because the content is all too relevant. In the wake of my divorce, I was forced to wonder at the paradox of my closest relationship, which ostensibly existed for the sake of intimacy, having somehow become not merely distant but actively hostile without my having much of a clue as to why. It was a crucial question (particularly if I ever hoped to foster intimacy with more success) and an inordinately elusive one. The authors' effort to "brand" their insights with catchphrases (like the title itself) and snappy acronyms is a little off-putting. But they gave me a highly useful vocabulary for thinking and talking about my relational life and its tendency to break down. Every day I have occasions to think about the pertinence and helpfulness of their diagnostic and prescriptive language: whether we're talking about their description of Performers and Audiences and our "song-and-dance routines," or their concept of "brainlock" and how it forms (and how it deforms us, and, for that matter, how it can be reformed), or the use of the DREAM Sequence to revise or heal these relationships haunted by our destructive patterns. The DREAM Sequence is the centerpiece of the book - its power is not that it is somehow radically innovative or induces a paradigm shift of cosmic proportions. It is a codification of insights that will strike most readers with greater or lesser degrees of familiarity. But by bringing these insights into a particular framework and sequence, the authors have rendered them freshly applicable. That's the power of this book: by effective rhetoric and communication, and by powerful, illustrative examples drawn from clinical practice, it puts tools in the reader's hands for attaining a new understanding of his or her own situation... and changing that situation. What every self-help book would like to do, Irrelationship really does.

[Lynndal Daniels · Rating 4 out of 5]

How early experiences effect our adult relationships...

Nice take on how early attachment issues lead to dysfunctional "irrelationships" with an action plan on how to break out of the dysfunctional patterns.

[M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the premise of this book was interesting, I prefer to read books where the authors use actual analytic vocabulary as opposed to "user friendly" phrases. I also get distracted by the use of acronyms to describe theories. However, I did appreciate the basic content.

[Dani · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars because I appreciate the theory and the perspective it gives so I’d like to promote it. Honestly, I’d take out at least one star because of some repetitions but this is not so important actually.