Monkeys used to be trained by their masters to perform – to do things like dance for onlookers in exchange for money. And in the monkey’s case, dance in exchange for food. Because of this, the phrase dancing monkey is now used when describing someone who performs (and performs hard) to try to get what they desperately want and need or avoid what they are desperate to avoid. In relationships, people can slip into the pattern of desperate performance in order to be loved and avoid abandonment. And this pattern, is the dancing monkey pattern in relationships.
As living beings, we need to feel a sense of empowerment about getting the things we want and need as well as avoiding things that are painful and unwanted. This becomes tricky when we are navigating the land of relationships. We are relationally dependent in many ways, regardless of whether we are children or adults. There are a great many needs that we have which involve other people. If you want to learn more about this, you can watch my video titled: Dependency Needs - The Thing That No One Will Accept They Have. Relationships are the heart of human existence. But this does not mean that people easily align with what we want and need in our relationship with them. We ultimately have no control over what another person chooses to do or not do. We have no control over whether someone will love us and behave as if they do. We also have no control over whether a person will abandon us. But when we desperately want and need to be loved (seeing as how love is the most blissful thing a person can experience in a relationship and even in life) and we desperately want to avoid being abandoned (seeing as how abandonment is the most painful thing a person can experience in a relationship and even in life), it is too tormenting to be powerless relative to this.
The way we gain a sense of control in relationships, where truly there is so much we can’t control (because it involves another person’s free will) is to take 100% responsibility for the relationship and convince ourselves that we can control whether we are loved and whether we are abandoned. That we can do that by being what would entice them to love us and to stay. It is at this point that we enter into a dancing monkey routine in relationships. We perform, desperately doing anything and everything we can to be loved and anything and everything we can to avoid being abandoned.
For example, we do things like: Let go of our hobbies and interests. Suppress our opinions. Adopt their hobbies, interests and opinions, pour energy into making ourselves as attractive as possible, show off our talents, control them, manipulate them, obsess over fixing ourself, warn people about ourself to try to test whether they will or won’t abandon us, figure out their desires and go above and beyond to become what they desire, desperately assess compatibility, try to act easy going, hide our needs, anxiously dive into hours of conversation in order to try to establish security, shower them with affection, words of affirmation, gifts, service and quality time so that they will love us and not leave us, make sure that we stay in their proximity, do shadow work on them, be kind no matter how we are treated, let go of our boundaries, help them, make ourself as entertaining as possible, make them laugh, be overly nice, validate them, suppress, deny and disown parts of ourselves, ask them questions about themselves, victim control dynamics and the list goes on and on. It’s not necessarily that doing many of these things in a relationship is in and of itself wrong. For example, there is nothing wrong with showering a person in physical affection. The problem is that our motive for doing it, is a desperate attempt to be loved and avoid abandonment. So, we are doing this like a desperate dancing monkey as a so that we are loved and so that we don’t get abandoned. So that’s are a really big problem. If you want to learn more about that, you can watch my video titled: If You Want To Be Happy, Don’t Do This!
A great deal of these dancing monkey behaviors are self-abandonment behaviors. They are behaviors where we reject, suppress, deny, disown and do not caretake that aspects of ourselves that we believe will interfere with other people loving us and not abandoning us. As a result, we are no longer loving ourselves. To learn more about this, you can watch my video titled: Do You Abandon Yourself to Not Be Abandoned by Others?
When some of us were young, we came to families where our caregivers did not engage and step into the relationship with us. Families where we were rejected, neglected, turned against, and abandoned emotionally, if not physically as well. Families where we did not feel valued and wanted and loved. We took the blame for this, so as to have a sense of control in an inherently powerless position. We made it about ourselves. And we slipped into the illusion that we could change this terrible situation somehow. By being good enough to be what they want and value. By trying to eradicate and abandon the aspects of ourselves that we feel “made” them reject, neglect, turn against and abandon us. We take this attitude of desperately working for and performing for love so that we aren’t abandoned with us into our adulthood. We live our adult relationships like this as well. We do so only to find that nothing works. We find that people abandon us anyway. And this, usually makes us into an even more high performing dancing monkey. We inevitably will reach a point where we feel like nothing we ever are or ever do, is good enough to make it so that people want us, value us and don’t abandon us. And like something that we don’t see must be really wrong with us to make them do it.
What we don’t realize and will not accept is this: There are plenty of people who do not meet our criteria for a person whom people would want, value and never abandon and yet, they don’t get abandoned. I’m not going to be politically correct here, because it is important to see this through the lens of a person in the dancing monkey routine. There are people who have terrible personalities. There are people who are old. There are people who are needy. There are people who are ugly. There are people who are disabled. There are people who beat up their wives. There are people who are addicts. There are people who are in prison having committed crimes. There are people who are mentally ill. There are people with chronic illnesses and terminal illnesses. There are people who do not consider others. There are people who can’t regulate their emotions at all. There are people who spend their whole life focused on their career rather than their partner. And yet, the people in their life, their partners for example, do not abandon them. Why is this the case? Because abandonment is not actually about how amazing you are or horrible you are to be with. The truth is, you have less power than that. It’s about the other person choosing to be an abandoner in response to whatever. They may have all kinds of excuses, maybe even good ones, for why they made that choice. This conversation we are having right now isn’t about whether it is objectively right for someone to leave a person or not. This is a conversation where you need to become aware that other people in the very same situations as you have found yourself in and even way worse ones, would not choose to abandon. So, how you show up in a relationship is about you. But the choice to abandon is about them. And it isn’t ok to take responsibility for both how you show up and how they show up in the relationship. So many of the people who abandon in relationships, are absolutely incapable of having relationships because, they step out of them. That is their go to response. And that does not work in a relationship. That is an anti-relationship behavior.
When we desperately perform for love and perform to avoid abandonment, we cannot actually attract a person who will value, want and love us. The reason being that the person on the other side, is in love with the performance. This means you can’t ever stop performing. And a big part of you does not feel loved when you are always on edge, having to work your ass off to keep someone interested and keep them from going away. A lot of what we do when we are in this pattern is to put effort into amplifying aspects of ourself that we feel would be desirable. For example, it may be true that we are beautiful. And so, we will amplify those looks and lead with that being what is of value about us in relationships. Or, we may feel like we are smart. So, we are overly demonstrative of our intellect in relationships. This takes serious effort. Also, a lot of what we do when we are in this pattern is to try to change ourself so as to be desirable. And we can’t keep up the act. Underneath this attempt to put effort into pushing certain traits forward and change ourself, is the fact that we feel unlovable. As a result, we don’t put very real things on the surface for someone to see. So how can the person who would love us (and even love those things about us) see us so as to come forward and love us? How can we find someone truly compatible? Some questions to ask yourself if you recognize yourself in this dancing monkey pattern are: What do you do in a relationship in order to be valued, loved and wanted by others? And what do you do in a relationship in order to try to guarantee that you won’t be abandoned? Are these elements of your ‘performance’ part of what you want the exchange to be in the relationship? Are they real? Are they authentic to you? are they painful? Are those things what you want to be valued and loved for? Are you going to drop it? Would you be fine performing in this way forever in the relationship? Does keeping up fill in the blank eventually make you feel unloved by the other person or even more insecure about yourself and the relationship?
The bottom line is, you need to accept that you have no control over whether you are loved by someone or not. And you have no control over whether you are abandoned by someone or not. This, is really hard to accept. You need to stop maintaining the illusion that if you demonstrate to any person that you have enough value and are what they want and give enough, that they will value and love you to the degree that they will not abandon you. When you accept this, even though accepting this is painful, you will stop taking the full onus for how people act towards you in a relationship. You will realize that if a person decides to be an abandoner in a relationship, that is their dysfunction. They could just as easily decide not to be, no matter what you’re doing. You will realize that being authentic is the only genuine way to get real love from someone who values you and whom will not abandon you. As a part of this authenticity, you will decide how you want to show up in a relationship. You will decide what your reasons for doing different things in a relationship are (such as looking nice or cooking for them, or staying up all night to settle an argument so you don’t go to bed angry). This way, the things you do in a relationship are no longer just a “so that” in order to try to get love or avoid abandonment. And this way, you are taking responsibility for your half of a relationship… Being the kind of person you want to be in a relationship. Your way of being in relationships will no longer be a desperate performance. You will no longer be caught in the terrifying, life sucking, exhausting nightmare of being a dancing monkey to get love and avoid abandonment.
