The Projection Waltz

A relational pattern that rewrites reality

There’s a particular kind of relationship that can feel electrifying at first and then, later, like shit.

You know in your bones there was tenderness, erotic aliveness, meaning. Then you’re told it was nothing. Or you’re told you misread it. Or you’re cast as the problem for noticing what was plainly there.

You walk away not longing for the person, exactly.

You walk away longing for shared reality.

In my work, I think of this pattern as the Projection Waltz - a repeating sequence in which

1) closeness triggers threat,

2) threat mobilizes defenses,

3) then other person gets recruited into holding feelings that cannot be tolerated by the triggered person.

This isn’t diagnosis. It’s a relational organization - something that happens between people, not simply inside one person.

In other words… a dance.

I l o v e w o r k i n g w i t h c o u p l e s

The intimacy, the comedy, the zen-slap moment when two people realize they’ve been protecting themselves in compatible ways.

I also see how certain loops are impossible to spot from the inside.

From where I sit… the Projection Waltz signs glow neon yellow.

A composite vignette

“A” begins a relationship with “B.”

In the early phase, B is vivid and engaged.

The messages are intimate. The sexual connection is unusually charged. B speaks in language that makes the relationship feel singular.

Then something shifts.

B goes quiet, withdraws - disappears for days. Returns with warmth, then pulls away again. And again. And… again.

When A names the constant whiplash, B denies A the dignity of shared reality. A is “overreacting,” “reading too much into it,” pressuring, misperceiving. The story gets rewritten into something more managable for B.

A stays, because now they’re hooked on the dance. BTW so is B.

The Projection Waltz often leaves people like A not craving reunion quite, but craving confirmation: a clean sentence from the B that says, “Yes. This was real. But I can’t hold it with you.”

Why “waltz”?

A waltz is elegant. Repetitive and predictable and… common. Sorry.

These relationships can feel full of poetry on the surface while, in reality, they are compulsion personified.

Not everyone who initiates this pattern has a personality disorder. Many people who do some version of these steps are doing what human beings do under threat: they protect the self, protect attachment, protect against shame, protect against dependency, loss, longing, etc etc - sometimes by distorting reality rather than tolerating it.

The four turns of the Projection Waltz

1) The catalyst - and the sudden retreat

A catalyst can be anything:

• a request for clarity (lol “what are we?” amirite fellow Millennials?!)

• a moment of closeness

• a perceived slight

• a limit (“can’t talk tonight”)

• uh, merely being seen

For some people, closeness isn’t registered as comfort.

It’s danger.

Which then leads to imminent retreat.

If the feeling could talk, my fantasy it would sound like:

“I can’t bear what I’m feeling - and I don’t know how to stay in contact while I feel it.”

2) The self-protective story blame, dismissal, distortion

After the retreat, comes the story-storm.

It can sound like:

• “You’re misreading things.”

• “You always make things into something they’re not.”

• “You’re too intense/much.”

• “You’re trying to control me.”

• “You’re attacking me.”

This isn’t usually experienced by the person as “lying” per se.

It’s experienced as necessity: a way of preserving their understandings of themselves.

“If I can locate (and then place) the problem in you, I don’t have to face the vulnerable truth in me.”

3) The reversal - you become the container

Then comes the most destabilizing turn for “A”: they get erased. Swallowed up by the story-storm in Turn 2.

“A” becomes a role.

A symbol of pressure, demand, criticism, cruelty, rejection.

In object-relational language: “A” goes from from “good object” to “bad object” like - at lightning speed.

And “B’s” feelings that cannot be held - shame, envy, grief, longing, dependency - are pushed outward and lodged in “A.”

“A” then grapples not only with their feelings, but “B”s too!

This is where projective identification becomes clinically useful as a concept: it isn’t only that something is “projected” - it’s that the projection requires for participation.

“A” is recruited into carrying what the “B” cannot.

“A” metabolizes what “B” cannot because “A” ultimately has the capacity to, whereas “B” can only collapse the space. And deny reality.

4) The Final Turn- dramatic closure and moral certainty

The dance often “ends” (temporarily) with a performance of certainty:

• moral high ground

• dramatic exits

• declarations of clarity

• “I’m done with this conversation” (after provoking it)

• “fuck you” “fuck off” “fuck this” etc etc

And then - inevitably - you hear from “B”: a friendly text, a quiet flirt, a lukewarm apology that contains feeling but not accountability.

The waltz begins again.

How to stop dancing

1) Name the step you’re in

Quietly, to yourself:

• “This is the retreat.”

• “This is the self-protective story.”

• “This is the reversal.”

• “This is the dramatic close.”

Naming interrupts trance. Or thrall.

2) Refuse the role of container

This is hard - especially for people who are empathic, clinically minded, or unusually good at holding complexity.

But here’s the bind:

If you metabolize what they cannot hold, you teach them they don’t have to.

A boundary can sound like: “If we can’t be honest about what’s happening between us, we can’t be in contact.”

3) Don’t process with someone you don’t trust

When the shut-down/defensively certain state is active, explanations don’t land. They don’t accumulate. They won’t “reflect on them later.”

You will leave exhausted, still misunderstood, and more hooked.

Wait for a regulated window - or stop trying to solve it with words.

4) Grieve what you won’t get

For many people, the hardest part is accepting:

“This person can’t give me what I need.”

That grief is real.

And grieving it is often what finally breaks the spell.

If you recognize yourself in the pattern

If you’re reading this, and feel a quiet dread sneaking up: “I’ve done some of this...”

If that’s you, it doesn’t mean you’re bad.

It may mean closeness overwhelms your system and your defenses take over.

The work is to build capacity for:

• shame without collapse

• closeness without threat

• ambivalence without splitting

• conflict without theater

• desire without control

That work is possible - especially in a therapy relationship sturdy enough to tolerate intensity without reenacting it.

And if you’ve been in “A”’s role before, or are there currently: I am sorry. That is painful. And work-through-able.

Oh, one last thing…

The Projection Waltz is not a romance.

It’s a defensive choreography that borrows the language of romance.

If you’ve lived through it, you may feel anger, humiliation, and a bizarre kind of longing - not for the person - but for coherence, dignity, and shared reality.

Those are healthy longings.

Learning to step out of the dance is one way we choose ourselves. Through an insistence on what is real.