To top it off, he had the distorted but firmly planted idea that he ought to have sex every single night of his life, or at least, once per day. This was not just a pleasant fantasy for Arnold, but something he took very seriously. He felt some-thing was wrong with him and his girlfriend if this daily sex bout did not take place. It was no wonder that he was coming to see me because his girlfriend had finally left him—he had driven her crazy with his excessive demands and rituals!

He was so obsessed with his own need to prove his manhood that he could not possibly appreciate how his girlfriend might feel if she were tired of this compul­sive ritual, or for some reason, didn’t feel like making love. Without daily sex, Arnold believed another opportunity for The Perfect Day had been ruined. And, when his girlfriend tried to meet his demands, did he just have sex and enjoy it? Oh, no! He had to make sure he was a “long distance runner” in bed as well as out on the road.

By looking at the unconscious motivations for some of Arnold's very high expectations of himself and his need to do everything to the extreme, he was slowly able to modify some of his obsessive all-or-nothing thinking as well as alter some of his daily patterns. He began to question his motivation more and slowly became aware of how self-centered and self-obsessed he had become. He won­dered whether he was capable of really loving a woman. He wondered whether he was able to really care for anyone in his life.

He began to see how little regard he had for other people, how little their needs mattered to him, and how he had oppressed and dominated those close to him by trying to get them to live up to his perfectionistic standards. He began to realize that underneath all of the accomplishment and boasting was a part of him that felt very unsure, insecure, empty, and that, as smart as he was, he didn't know much about his own mind. He had worked hard to escape his literally “dirt poor” background (he claimed the floors of his childhood home had been dirt) and he was never going to quit striving. He began to understand that he was caught in the perfection trap, where “good enough” is never enough.

Because he was earning a lot of money from writing books, and because he was used to having his way, it was not easy for him to cope when his girlfriend left him for another, less demanding and more accepting man. He could not believe that anyone could ever want to leave him and his very comfortable life-style. If there was any leaving to be done, he wanted to be the one doing it, not his part­ner! He experienced loneliness and anxiety that couldn’t be extinguished even by all his compulsive activity. In therapy, he allowed himself to admit how out of control he felt and to express his fear in tears of suffering.

Arnold had the intelligence to understand that he could not continue his oblivi­ousness to the needs of others if he wished to be fulfilled. As a result of psy­chotherapy, he began to be less demanding and critical of his children, slow down his usual hectic pace, and seriously sought to understand the psychological dynam­ics that were creating his need for perfectionistic thinking and behavior. He began to accept the limitations of others instead of ridiculing them, and he slowly began to ease up on himself and allow for things not to have to be perfect in order to be acceptable.

Arnold represents both the positive (striving for excellence) and negative (the trap of perfectionism) ends of the polarity of our desire to be the best that we may be. He illustrates what happens when we fall over the razor’s edge from one to the other.

One of the values woven into the fabric of our Western world is the pursuit of excellence. Our competitive culture teaches us that we should strive to be the “best.” It is this pursuit of excellence that accounts for our highest individual and collective accomplishments in science, the creative arts, technology, sports, busi­ness, and human relationships. It is this same pursuit of excellence that pushes us to surpass ourselves, to always want more for ourselves in our quest for individual happiness and personal satisfaction. We all want to actualize our highest potential, to be the best that we may be.

As we grow up, something curious happens—we get confused along the way. What began as the pursuit of excellence becomes the pursuit of perfection. Most of the time, we don’t even know that we’ve taken a wrong turn. The path that pursuing perfection takes us down is a perilous and unending one, fraught with the persistent danger of losing our fragile sense of self-worth.

The quest for perfection is guaranteed to lead to frustration, false pride, self-disgust, anger, regret, resentment, envy, and jealousy that may become all-con­suming. What we ultimately discover as we pursue this path, is that it’s impossible to come out ahead. It’s impossible because, for the perfectionist, what should be seen as “good enough” is instead viewed as never enough. And it’s impossible because the belief that we may become perfect in our behavior is a common falsehood. It simply can’t be accomplished.

This essay is adapted from my book, When Good Enough is Never Enough: Escaping the Perfection Trap (Tarcher/Putnam, 1992).

© 2007 Steven Hendlin, Ph.D.

Steven Hendlin, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in Newport Beach, California
who has been in private practice for 30 years. Formerly a columnist for TheStreet.com for 74 consecutive weeks, he currently writes the “Shrink Rap” column for COAST Magazine. Dr. Hendlin is the author of four books and hundreds of professional and popular articles, reviews, and columns.

Visit him at www.hendlin.net. He is pleased to receive your comments and questions for publication in his Backspace column at baney@yahoo. com, but please remember that he is unable to provide personal counseling or psychotherapy through the mail.