Healing Early Heartbreak

Witnessing his or her parents in conflict breaks a child’s heart. But the tentacles of its effects reach far into the future of that child when he or she grows up. I saw this in my practice but it was brought home to me most poignantly when I recently revisited my memories of an icon of the 1960’s.

“Where Have You Gone Joe Namath?” I had just looked up at the magazine rack of the local coffee shop where I was enjoying an iced-coffee on a hot August day. There was the face of Joe Namath on the cover of Sports Illustrated. After all these years, there was the famous football star and notorious playboy: Broadway Joe.

Set against the dramatic backdrop of the football stadium at night, the cover photo forever freezes this moment in time. Wearing his white New York Jets’ jersey, Joe stands before us with dark, tousled hair and piercing blue eyes. He is the quarterback: the quintessential hero of our youth. Loved by all the girls. Envied by all the guys. Tall. Dark. And, despite his protruding proboscis, he is handsome in a rugged, unorthodox way. Just as Clark Gable, the early king of Hollywood had elephant ears that were dwarfed by his charm, so Namath’s nose is nullified by his magical presence.

The article was an excerpt from a biography of Broadway Joe entitled Namath written by Mark Kriegel. I found Kriegel’s comments very insightful. Kriegel suggested that he had more than broken bones: Joe had his heart broken early in life.

Kriegel described how Joe was open about all his physical injuries. “He’d talk about the broken bones. But never the broken heart,, the original wound.” Namath revealed to Kriegel one of his earliest and most vivid memories: “I can remember as a three- or four-year-old, to this day, hearing them [his mother and father] downstairs, talking or arguing about something? I was upstairs and I came to the top of the steps and I was crying because I was scared.”

Very astutely, Kriegel speculates on Joe’s personal emotional history: “Perhaps the fear was in his bones, something from his own father’s boyhood lodged in the marrow, the knowledge that separation is inevitable. Families fracture. You can get left behind.”

When Joe was in seventh grade his father left. Kriegel quoted one of Joe’s closest friends Jack (Hoot Owl) Hicks. Regarding the day Namath’s father left, Hicks said: “He [Joe] told me that was the saddest day of his life.”

As I read this, I could see the childhood origin of Broadway Joe’s highly publicized womanizing. I could also see the unconscious fear underlying his not marrying until he was forty. The child whose heart is broken may grow up to be a heartbreaker. Afraid of being abandoned, he or she abandons first. Such was the case with Robert until he came to therapy and finally confronted the pain of his personal emotional history.

Robert began, “After the breakup of my most recent relationship, I had a thought that I felt uncomfortable admitting. I imagined saying to all the women I had loved and left: ‘I’m glad I broke your heart the way mine was broken.’ Robert continued, "I was confused because I was not talking about any female I had loved as an adult or adolescent breaking my heart.” Robert didn’t realize it but he was talking about some distant childhood experience that was hidden in the hazy fog of memory. He was talking about something from his early life.

Robert then related how upset he was at dropping off his little boy, Chip. Chip was now seven years old. Chip was from Robert’s first marriage. Since leaving when Chip was a year old, Robert had gone through the next three marriages in less than six years. Robert described how hard it was every time he dropped off Chip and drove away. Dropping him off after this past weekend, Robert told me he just pulled over to the side of the road and sobbed.

I encouraged him to return in his memory to that moment and to picture the empty passenger seat where Chip had been sitting before Robert dropped him off. He began: “I hate it that I have to be apart from you. And that’s because I’d love it if we could be together. I hate it that I left you and your mother. And that’s because I’d have loved it if I would have stayed.” Robert was filled with regret.

Sensing Robert was identifying with Chip’s feelings of being left, I asked him to imagine himself in Chip’s place. I asked him to use the shift your focus and energy and look through techniques and speak as if he were Chip. Imagining himself in Chip’s place and speaking to himself as Chip’s father, Robert said: “I hate it that you left and I don’t get to see you as other kids get to see their dad. And that’s because I’d love it if you lived with Mommy and me. I hate it that I have to leave you at the end of our weekends together. And that’s because I love you and miss you so much.”

While he was feeling the words that he was saying as Chip, I asked Robert to imagine his little seven-year-old self sitting in the passenger seat of his car. Now repeat what you said as Chip only now do it as yourself speaking to your father. Robert’s eyes filled with tears. His father had left when he was three years old and he never saw him again. Leaving Chip after weekend visits was stirring up his early feelings of being abandoned by his father.

Similar to Joe Namath’s memory at the top of the stairs, Robert remembered witnessing his parents arguing. He remembered how terrified he felt. On the one hand, it broke Robert’s heart as it does so many children to see the two people they love and adore unable to handle the stress of conflict. On the other hand, it broke Robert’s heart that his father left. As so often happens, victim grows up to become victimizer.

• Today: Do you have a memory of your parents arguing? How did you feel? Visualize both your parents sitting in two separate empty chairs. Give voice to what the child you once were felt and would have loved instead. Write a letter to your parents expressing how it made you feel to see them fight. Be sure to express what you would have loved them to do instead of arguing. [Portions of above taken from Love Conquers Stress www.drsrj.com].