Marriage Is Not for Sissies: Courage, Projection, and Projective Identification

It’s 1994 and my wife and I are getting married. The guests are invited to share thoughts and feelings about our union. My mother stands up and says, among other things: “Marriage is not for sissies.” This says a lot because my parents’ marriage was good. If a good marriage takes work, I hate to think what it takes to make a difficult one to work. But I’ll do it anyway.

I think it takes courage.

The courage to say you’re wrong. The courage to say you’re right. The courage to take chances in communication, generosity and vulnerability.

And most of all, the courage to objectively look at what’s happening emotionally inside of us.

After all, the word courage comes from the French word for heart, coeur.

In this post I’ll look at two aspects of relationships that take courage to manage. They both have to do with the transfer of psychological material between us and other people. The first is what we put onto them (projection), the second is what we put into them (projective identification).

These operate like radio signals. You can’t see them, but they’re definitely there.

Let me explain.

Projection

Projection occurs when you imagine that someone else is having a feeling or thought that’s really yours. Just like the projection camera at a movie house. There’s really just a blank screen in front, but, with the help of projection, we imagine the most delightful and the most dreadful dramas there.

It’s the same thing in relationships. From the moment the image of someone shows up on a dating app, you’ve concocted a whole story about them in your head that makes you swipe left or right. You really know next to nothing, but you feel like you know everything.

This can occur in real life situations as well. Whether it be at a bar or a silent meditation retreat (the infamous “Vipassana romance” or VR for short), or even someone on your work team you’ve “known” for years.

In all these cases projection supplies most of your data.

The courage needed here is to consider that your fantasies about them, blissful or repulsive, may say more about you than them. We often project things about ourselves that we are not aware of, our shadow side.

So, when I imagine that my wife is going to be upset with me for spending money on something I love, that could be my own fear of squandering, and my own self-judgment for being such a spendthrift. This happened recently when I wanted to sign up for a jazz workshop that was going to cost a lot of money. She was actually very supportive of it. The judgment was all mine.

Projection had some adaptive purpose in our evolution. When you don’t know something about someone, but you need to know about them to know if they’re trustworthy, you fill in the blanks with what seems likely to you. But nature isn’t perfect and you might just fill in those blanks with your own stuff because that’s what’s available to you.

That’s doesn’t mean it’s accurate. It’s just the only material you have.

For example, people who are obsessive-compulsive may project their own perspectives on onto another person they don’t know well: “She seems like a reasonable person. Of course she would keep the label side of all the spices turned toward the front so that you can identify them easily. I’ll swipe right.” Then, eventually, you find out other people have other ideas about organizing spice cabinets.

Or, they project their shadow side, the parts of them that are either hidden or forbidden: “I can tell he’s a sloppy loafer who doesn’t wax his floors nearly often enough. I’ll swipe left.” Too bad you passed him up. Turns out he’s OCP, too.

Projection is an inevitable part of life, and projections can persist in a relationship for decades. But with courage we can learn to question the projection and own what we have projected onto the other person. Then we get to know the real person and start a real relationship.

Instead, sometimes we take it a step further and we get them to feel or act out the thing we project onto them.

Projective Identification

Here’s where things get fun. Or complicated. Or dangerous. Depending on your perspective. Sometimes we not only imagine something about someone that isn’t accurate, we may actually get them to experience the thing we project onto them. We project it into them.

Have you ever had the feeling that being around a particular person left you feeling filled with feelings that weren’t yours? That maybe the other person somehow stuffed those hot-as-habaneros emotions into you while they stood by cool-as-a-cucumber?

Psychology has a name for this: projective identification. It’s what happens when one person either can’t or won’t accept that they have a certain feeling and they manage to get someone else to feel it for them.

To project means to send out. To identify means to take on as part of us. So, one person sends out the feeling and the other takes it on. Thus, projective identification.

Projective Identification as Emotional Broadcasting

Picture a radio station. The DJ plays a song, let’s just say, Misty, for example. Radio waves travel all around, broadcasting into bedrooms everywhere. And voila, lots of people suddenly start feeling as helpless as kittens up a tree.

I like this metaphor, because it’s similar to projective identification in that even though you can’t see radio waves, they are very real and they have an impact. But like many other things in this blog, it’s imperfect. Unlike the DJ sitting in the radio station plotting emotional manipulation, when we broadcast via projective identification we do it unwittingly.

If your roomie Chester is not comfortable with his anger because he misread his Buddhist parents, thinking it was bad to be angry, he’ll unconsciously find a way to get you to feel it for him. He might do things to get you to feel angry, like show up late all the time, lose the iPods you loaned him, or eat all of the lentil salad you put in the fridge for tomorrow’s lunch. Or he might just broadcast it subtly and psychically as he sits there on the couch. Are you cool with that?

I didn’t think so.

While most of the situations I’ll describe in this post occur when the projector is not aware of their feelings, it can also happen that they may be well aware that they are upset, but are unable to communicate it with words, so they try to get you to experience it so that you understand them. Not that it works out that way.

And from the other end, do you have the courage to consider that you are the one doing the projecting, that you are making Chester feel uncomfortable because you aren’t owning your depression?

Warning: Danger Ahead

This is a very dangerous concept. We should need a license to use it.  I mean it. It may seem that it gives us the right to blame other people for our feelings and actions, which is something I highly recommend against. Blame can get you very, very stuck.

In fact, therapists, people who do (or should) have a license had started to use the concept of projective identification to understand what they were feeling when with some of their clients.

“I wasn’t feeling sad until the client walked into the room. And while they hadn’t said they felt sad, they sure did look like it. Maybe it’s too much for them to feel now and I’m feeling it for them.”

At times this has been a very useful diagnostic tool. But we’ve had to cool it with that because it makes it too easy to blame the client for our own personal struggles. Even though we do have licenses.

“I’m feeling angry, and I’m not an angry person so it must be the patient’s anger that they are afraid of acknowledging.” Maybe. Maybe not.

It’s also dangerous in that it might lead us to imagine we can read minds. Not exactly.

But still, this process does happen and it can help to cautiously consider that it might be happening in a given circumstance. We’ll get to the actionable part at the end of this post, but for now remember that it’s very important to check these things out with the other person rather than assume they’re filling you with their vile, unwanted emotions.

Cars are dangerous too. We just need to learn to drive them carefully.

The Science Behind Projective Identification

This concept does not arise out of some fanciful and magical notion of osmosis therapists dreamed up while doing psylocibin at their annual migration to Cape Cod. It’s a real thing.

Projective identification is a process of implicit communication between the unconscious systems of two people. It’s a reciprocal right brain to right brain process that goes on far more often than we would like to think.

It was originally a psychoanalytic concept but neurobiologists rescued it from the waste bin of theories that didn’t win a popularity contest.

A research psychologist named Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues at the University of Parma in Italy were studying motor neurons in the premotor cortex of macaque monkeys in the early 1990s when a funny thing happened on the way to their conclusion.

They discovered mirror neurons. They noticed that certain neurons fire not only when an individual performs an action. The same neurons also fire when they observe someone else performing that action.

That’s why monkeys typically have subscriptions to multiple streaming services. At least Netflix, Hulu and ESPN.  They crave vicarious gratification.

When we see others doing or feeling something, we may experience the same thing because our brain has evolved so that we pick this stuff up. It was helpful to have a sense of what others in your tribe were feeling.

The projector unconsciously induces matching states in the recipient, who then identifies with those states, as if they were his or her own feelings. This works through implicit, nonverbal channels, including limbic structures (amygdala, insula) and the right hemisphere, which processes emotion and social signals.

When the projector communicates distress or unwanted feelings through tone, posture, and micro-expressions, it activates the recipient’s limbic system.

The way it often works in humans is that when we can’t process or metabolize an affect internally, we may unwittingly “export” it to someone else for safe keeping.

Projective Identification in Your Relationships

The only way some people know to communicate is by getting the other person to experience their feelings through projective identification. They may never have learned from their family how to do it with words. Or, simply saying what they feel might be forbidden. Or, they might be as oblivious to their feelings as the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway is to a Billie Eilish song. (Expressways do not have mirror neurons. Not even the beloved BQE.)

They may have no idea what they’re feeling and are hoping you’ll figure it out for them.

So, if your partner isn’t adept at processing their emotions, they may conveniently and unconsciously upload them to you since you’re obviously better at that sort of thing. This is not done consciously. But it is done compulsively, by that I mean they have a really hard time stopping it.

Or, you may have a hard time not uploading your feelings to them.

Couples are interconnected and closed systems. Paraphrasing your high school physics teacher, energy doesn’t completely disappear, it just changes form or location. The same goes for emotion. What can’t manifest in one person flows into the other.

Let’s change the metaphor from radio signals to plumbing. Psychological plumbing. Like when it floods and the sewerage system backs up and your toilet overflows. Sorry to be so graphic. I had pledged to myself never to use bathroom humor, but this metaphor is too apt to pass up just because I made up a rigid rule about earthy things. Anyway, I use the metaphor because emotional flooding can also cause people to project their emotions into those they love and hold dear.

There are instances where we can see how the abandoned feelings get provoked in the other person by the other person saying certain things or acting certain ways. It can also be far more subtle, in which that person does very little to cause the other person to receive the abandoned feelings. It’s more subtle things like tone, posture and micro-expressions I mentioned. Your unconscious picks up all sorts of detritus that other people are trying to toss out. To your brain, it’s all potentially useful information.

Your husband comes home from work clearly upset, but he doesn’t say or do anything to express it. Yet you can feel that he’s upset about the presentation he gave that went south. He’s flooded with feelings about career and financial implications, and you’re feeling them for him.

Now, imagine what can happen when both partners are projecting and identifying. Misunderstandings multiply exponentially and you’ve got a rotten plumbing mess on your hands.

Examples of Projective Identification in Obsessive-Compulsive Couples

Let’s take some common scenarios of projective identification in couples in which at least one of the two is obsessive-compulsive. Again, in some cases one partner is actively, though unconsciously, projecting into the other person through their behavior. In other cases the intensity of their feelings can cross human boundaries via more subtle cues. Often both can happen at the same time.

Vulnerable, Powerless, Inadequate, Insecure or Anxious

Let’s say the partner with OCPD can’t tolerate feeling vulnerable. They’ve been wildly successful in avoiding it through control, over-working, pleasing or perfecting their entire life. Or least they thought they were. Anyway, they want to keep it that way so they might get you to feel the vulnerability for them by behaving as if they have all the control, power, or answers, and you have little to none. Or they might work their tush off to make all the money and thereby take all the control, leaving you dependent on them.

Then you’re left holding the vulnerability.

Unhealthy obsessive-compulsives usually function in a way to cover over what they feel are inadequacies, felt shortcomings in virtue or competence.

So if you happen to be around as they work overtime to repress their feelings of insecurity you might find yourself feeling like a slacker.

But this can go the other way as well. Once they get a diagnosis, the compulsive partner can be made to feel that they are the vulnerable one if the undiagnosed partner presents as pure as the driven snow, when, really, they’re at least as scared inside as the diagnosed partner but can’t admit it.

I’ve seen this reversal too many times for it not to be part of a larger pattern. The undiagnosed partner isn’t comfortable feeling vulnerable so they distance themselves from the diagnosed partner, who then feels it for them.

Bad Boy or Bad Girl

The compulsive partner’s commitment to being ultra-virtuous to compensate for their fear of guilt or shame can make the other partner feel lousy as well. The OCPD partner may achieve this with critical words or righteous behavior.

For instance, they would never, ever, use AI because of its environmental impact. And they let you know it. Even though you only use it occasionally, you feel like a cheater for asking ChatGPT to find out how dangerous your mother’s medical condition is.

Stupid

One way that some people with OCPD exercise control and compensate for insecurity is by presenting as if they are completely reasonable and ostentatiously knowledgeable. Whether or not they are is irrelevant. Well, actually, it is relevant because they might pose as if they know everything because deep down they feel they know nothing. Which is why they feel they need to be so convincing. But it can still make their partner feel like they’re wearing the class dunce cap.

Depressed

Simply having an OCPD partner can make you feel glum. That’s bad enough. But if their depression is masked through work, productivity and achievements, you may be the one to carry it for them.

OCPD-related depression can be a side effect of being controlling, workaholic, people pleasing or so obsessive you can’t get anything done. But being depressed may not fit in with their image of themselves, so they may not want to acknowledge it. In effect they are asking, “Would you hold this feeling for me?”

Urgency

If the OCPD partner is more obsessive than compulsive, that is, they think more than they do, they may procrastinate a lot. This can drive the other partner crazy. It’s very frustrating to watch someone you love become passive and not accomplish what they want to because their perfectionism gets in the way. Most obsessive-compulsives feel a constant and deep sense of urgency. Some act on it, others avoid it. When they avoid it, the non-OCPD partner feels the urgency while the obsessive partner whittles away the time planning the next great Lord-of-the-Rings-like film trilogy.

What to Do About Projective Identification

What ever happened to the noble idea that no-one can make you feel anything? I like the idea, but I think it would be more accurate to say that no-one can keep making you feel anything. It’s hard not to have an immediate response in these situations, but it takes complicity to maintain it. And now that you’ve read this post, you have options.

Couples therapy is probably the most effective way to take an x-ray and make visible the psychological radio signals or underlying plumbing. Ideally the therapist catches it happening in the session and checks in with the potential projector to see if they might be feeling something like what their partner is feeling. That way the potential projector can try to feel the feeling themselves rather than getting their partner to feel it by projecting it.

Meanwhile, here are some things you can do on your own to clear the air of unwanted radio signals and flush out the plumbing. They all require courage.

1. Don’t presume your innocence. Don’t assume the projection can’t start with you. Whether you are the diagnosed partner or not, be willing to do some soul searching and see if what your partner seems to be feeling originates with you. Here again, that could be on an obvious level (one of you hogs all the control to make the other feel their vulnerability) or a subtle unconscious level (one of you has the feeling but can’t own it and the other person feels it.)

 

If you’re certain you aren’t doing the projecting, think again. Certainty can be a sign that we’re wrong.

 

2. Own your feelings. Observe what your partner is feeling and try to feel into that yourself. Ask yourself what you might be distancing yourself from and acknowledge it. What’s so disturbing about the feeling that you want to avoid it? Even if it seems there is nothing you can do to change the feeling, you can at least learn to own it, rather give it to someone else, like a bad flu.

 

3. Check out your role with your partner and speak the unspeakable. Ask your partner if there is anything you do that leaves them feeling uncomfortable. Is there a way to use words to communicate what it is you need to communicate? Like, “I’m drowning!” or “I feel terrible about myself,” or “I’m really worried about money.”

 

 

If, on the other hand, you believe you are the recipient of projections:

 

4. Check out your partner’s feelings. Ask your partner about their feelings to see if they might be out of touch with them. Don’t blame or accuse. Check it out. “I’ve been feeling kind of down lately. Have you been?” “How are you feeling about the conference you’re going to be running?” “What’s it like to be going back to visit your parents’ house?” “That is disturbing. I’ve been wondering if I’ve been feeling that with you (or for you).”

Strike while the iron is cold. Address it when things aren’t tense.

 

5. Mine the material. Consider empathically that maybe there was something you needed to learn about your partner, roommate, or boss, and this was the only way they could express it. But don’t hold onto it. It’s information, not a straight jacket you have to wear.

 

6. Look for holes. Are there any openings in you where their issues could worm their way into you? Maybe you have less intense feelings of insecurity, anger, or anxiety, but they are significant enough for your partner’s feelings to activate them in you. Or, to revert to our previous metaphor, are there places in you that resonate sympathetically with the issues they are broadcasting to you?

 

7. Take a load off. With awareness comes choice. If you suspect that you’ve been carrying a feeling the other person handed to you, develop an image of returning it to them. “Thanks for sharing, but this is yours and I’m returning it to you. It’s not good for either one of us for me to carry it.”

 

8. Change the Channel. If someone has been broadcasting something you don’t want to have blasted into your psyche, develop an image of changing the channel. Tune into something more satisfying. Maybe Taylor Swift’s Mine, Frank Sinatra’s My Way, or Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror– instead of Misty.

 

If none of these are possible or effective, you may need to create some space between the two of you so that you don’t get infected by their feelings.

But remember, this is a dangerous concept. If it’s used to blame, you’ve defeated the purpose. The purpose is to understand yourself, integrate any repressed feelings consciously, and thereby protect others from unintegrated psychic material. Or, to protect yourself by setting good boundaries.

Don’t be a sissy. Have courage and look inside.

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If you are interested in how to navigate in a couple with one person that has OCPD, you may want to read my post about How to Get Along with a Partner Who Has Obsessive-Compulsive Personality. Interestingly, it is the most read of all the 100+ posts on this blog.

And don’t forget, most of the posts on this blog are also available in audio format on the podcast.