How Madonna and Guy Have Fallen Victim to The Greatest Cause of Stress in Life: Relationships

(photo: www.charlotteobserver.com)

Madonna and Guy Ritchie have announced their divorce after much denial. The Daily Mirror gleefully claims to be ahead of the 'competition' in knowing that they were about to break up. But what is there to be smug about when any relationship breaks? The pain is probably even more because everything is played out on the public stage, robbing them of the privacy other members of the public take for granted. So the couple are likely to focus, initially, on how they are a perceived than on the real issues they need to sort out. There will now follow a severe time of stress for them, especially where young children are involved - and there are three in this case.

Stress affects everyone to some degree, but severe stress is a feeling of being unable to cope and is a reaction to excessive demands and pressures made upon the individual. It is most likely to be maintained by a feeling of personal rejection, insignificance and worthlessness. If it was an amicable mutual split, then the stress won't be too much.However, if one of them wanted the split more than the other, that's where the main problem will lie: dealing with that sense of rejection, and that could be pretty stressful. Stress robs you of your good looks, your disposition, your health, your youthfulness, and can even take your life. It is particularly unpleasant and harmful when pressures build up or are prolonged indefinitely; when we are unable to control the demands placed upon us, when we are constantly anxious, and when support is not there when we need it.

Most of the focus has been on reducing stress in the workplace. However, what has escaped everyone’s notice is the lethal level of stress caused by simply moving between relationships, especially where the desire for a break is not mutual, or where one is stuck in a relationship which makes one or both parties feel impotent, unhappy or simply miserable. These situations occur on a regular basis, often taken for granted as a necessary part of life, yet causing incalculable emotional damage in their wake.


Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
With many relationships lasting only between six months and a year, most people can expect some additional resulting trauma on at least three to four occasions in their lifetime. These are problems which most people try to avoid without ever quite succeeding, because the mere notion of expecting relationships to fail ensures that they do, in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Stress from a break-up is thus the worst kind of stress because it contains personal rejection, momentary insecurity and loss of status/esteem for at least one party, not to mention the financial costs which may be attached. Yet it has been underestimated in its effects and overlooked by government provisions.

When we feel rejected, controlled or unappreciated, everything else in our lives pales into insignificance because we lose our sense of belonging, joy and worth. This affects whatever we do until we feel better. Bereavement of any kind and moving house might come top of the list of any stress-inducing activities, but being stuck in an unwanted relationship, which affects at least 20 per cent of couples, or being momentarily rejected by a partner, should go right to the top of that list because of the ongoing consequences they have for everyone involved.

Madonna and Guy are going to need all the emotional support they can have over the next few months because being a celebrity does not make them immune from the effects of a break-up. In fact, that actually makes them more exposed to its consequences as they come under increasing scrutiny.

How Ambitious Are You?

Four hundred years ago, Sir Walter Raleigh, British explorer extraordinaire, successful courtier and poet, fancied by Queen Elizabeth the 1st, suffered a crisis of conscience. He loved the Queen and she liked him too, but not being royal caused him much anguish regarding any kind of romantic liaison between them.

In a moment of whimsy and heartache, he used his diamond ring to etch the following lovesick statement on his window pane: "Fain (willingly) would I climb, yet fear I to fall." The Queen, seeming a little impatient with his dithering and obvious lack of confidence, wrote underneath, "If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all"!

Much closer to our own age, nearly 120 years ago, another poet, Scotsman Robert Browning, was more forthright: "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"

These two examples illustrated a marked difference in the degree of love ambition the two men possessed. Despite his great courage elsewhere as an adventurer, Raleigh felt inadequate because all he could see was the possibility of failing, not the thrill of the chase or the glory of winning. Browning's ambition was boundless, without false barriers, and gave him love and immortality.

Your reaction to the title of this article is likely to depend upon your gender. In our modern times ambition is an ambiguous concept which lends itself easily to contrasting gender applications and sexist malice. For example, men seem more comfortable in accepting ambition as a natural and expected part of their life. Ambition is considered an essential ingredient for the dominant male in his quest for success. He is likely to be seen as a rising star and potential high achiever; one to watch and nurture. A woman similarly endowed is often regarded as 'pushy', 'aggressive' or 'butch', words that are not exactly complimentary and are deliberately meant to imply an absence of the more 'softer' feminine traits.

Negative Labels

For women, too much ambition is perceived as a negative attribute, suggesting notions of self-fulfilment and importance way above their 'station' in their bid to compete with men. In view of this perspective, many females are often labelled 'ambitious' and 'very intelligent' at unsuccessful interviews, the words suddenly assuming a derogatory nuance because of their female context.

This attitude could have much to do with the general understanding of the word itself. Ambition is often confused with the need for power, but that is only one small aspect of it. Ambition is actually tied to realising the extent of our capabilities while coming to terms with our innermost desires. Personal potential cannot be achieved by doing nothing and hanging back. We have to constantly go forward, testing ourselves to the limit at every opportunity, pushing against individual boundaries, to ensure complete self-fulfilment.

Much frustration is caused by people who are ignorant of their own potential and, for numerous reasons, are secretly afraid to find out. Like Raleigh, they are too hung up on that possible failure instead of concentrating on the experience itself and the gains to be had. In this way, their growth is stunted from the very beginning. Others might give an air of nonchalance, and contemptuous disdain for their ambitions, while masking secret, unfulfilled, frustrating desires.

At some point, we have all come in contact with the seemingly quiet type who gets on with his or her job and wishes for nothing else, outwardly disdaining material things or promotion, emphasising how 'happy' they are in what they are doing and need nothing else. Or they might detach themselves from ambitious goals. Such people appear to have no need to join the rat race, having rejected the cultural and societal norms around them. Instead, they keep their distance from anything which even hints at advancement for its own sake.

Well, that's what we are supposed to see, but look again closely because there is no such free spirit.