We are consciously aware of the positive attributes that attracted us to our spouse or partner. We thought they were attractive, funny, charming etc. and we for the most part do not consciously consider the negative attributes of the partner during courtship. However, there was something else compelling about the potential partner that was drawing you toward the relationship. This article explores the unconscious process of our negative attraction to our spouse, and the way in which the negative attraction creates an interlocking pathology that often leaves both feeling disillusioned. Understanding negative attraction ultimately sheds light on why marriage is designed for disillusionment, and that the purpose of the disillusionment is to re-tell the untold childhood story of each spouse within the safety of the marriage. Most marriages stall at the fork in road created from these feelings of disillusionment, and never understand the lessons and opportunity built in to this experience.
Interlocking pathology means I hurt you in a specific way that complements the way in which you hurt me so that our hurting has an “aggressor and victim” cycle leading to an endless series of hurtful feelings with no end. I’ve written previously on Freud’s concept of the “repetition compulsion” which he used to describe the way in which undigested pain in our lives resides within us on an unconscious plane. The pain attempts to express itself (as if of its own mind) by provoking us to re-create central pain in our lives where we previously aborted or disallowed a complete grieving process.
(The following case is for illustrative purposes only, and does not reflect an actual case or patient)
For example, imagine a typical case consultation of a couple seeking therapy. Mrs. Smith complains that her husband is neglectful, uncaring, distant and lacks intimacy. Mr. Smith complains his wife is overbearing, critical, hostile, nagging, and that she does not truly love him.
Upon interviewing the couple, a story emerges about each spouses’ childhood that bears an eerie parallel to the specifics of the complaints about each other. Mr. Smith describes at two years of age, his father leaving the home and how embattled he and his mother became. His mother was suffocating and over- involved in his life in a hostile, invading manner. As a teenager he left home for long periods simply to avoid his mother’s intrusiveness and criticism.
Mrs. Smith reports while her parents remained married, her father was an alcoholic, extremely withdrawn and dismissive and her mother played the classic enabler role. She remembers awaking to intense screaming and fighting coming through her parents’ bedroom walls. The marriage motto seemed to be “stay together at all costs,” no matter how bad the marriage or how severe the father’s alcoholism. She reported feeling her father was emotionally unavailable and feeling unwanted by him.
If you listen to each story with regard to the relationship with the parents, some striking parallels emerge. Mr. Smith reports his wife is ‘always on his case,’ feeling criticized by her and fundamentally unwanted and unloved. Mr. Smith is so angry at Mrs. Smith that he refuses intimacy with her, despite desperately wanting connection, because of how unsafe and overbearing it feels for him to be in relationship. Mrs. Smith feels that Mr. Smith does not want her, refuses intimacy, and has numbed to her very existence. Mrs. Smith feels trapped in the marriage and resigned herself to a life of unfulfilled needs.
We frequently change pronouns in the stories we tell ourselves about who has hurt us. In other words, Mr. Smith to some extent replaced “his mother” with “my wife” in how she “intrudes upon me, criticizes me and does not love me safely.” Mrs. Smith also amplifies her experience of her husband insofar as her lingering pain and feelings of rejection from her father color and shape the way she interprets the meaning of her husband’s aloofness.
Freud argued that central (unconscious) pain was unwittingly repeated in our adult lives in an effort to master early pain we experienced during the profound helplessness of childhood. Since resolving our painful feelings and unwanted realities is impossible during childhood, the grief becomes latent and “lies in wait” until there is enough safety and control in our adult lives for a replay of the earlier pain to be enacted in the hope of gaining mastery of these early experiences.
The uncanny ability of each spouse to detect in the other the personality characteristics and patterns that make re-injury by a loved one most likely to occur is striking! This explains the unspoken aspects of attraction, the so-called negative attraction that draws us to pick a mate so suited to hurt us in the unique way that helps erupt old pain.
Marriage in this sense becomes an emotional vehicle in our unending attempts as humans to master old pain. I refer to it as the “Myth of Mastery” in the sense that we cannot resolve early pain by holding our spouse accountable for pain that they have not caused. Each spouse is asking the other to apologize for pain for which they are not responsible – the pain with a capital P. I notice by way of observing divorced friends and relatives that remarry the shocking resemblance of the new spouse to the old. A person’s ability to recreate old pain with a new spouse is eerie.
While there are exceptions, in most cases divorce is the ultimate unconscious attempt to master old pain and to mistakenly attribute old pain to the rejected spouse. Divorce is tempting because it is fed by an illusion of mastery over experiences that cannot be resolved by action. Resolution of pain comes by embracing the helpless reality that we experienced in childhood (and beyond); that feeling pain and allowing ourselves room to grieve fundamentally is an act of letting go of control, and grieving over experiences that cannot be changed.
The process of couples’ therapy primarily involves helping make the connection between old pain and the current state of disillusionment within the marriage. Bearing the disillusionment while making these connections helps couples realize that the intensity and conviction of their feelings of victimization requires some skepticism and perspective. Each can take responsibility for having unknowingly picked a partner so closely resembling the parental figures of the past, and both can be absolved from the fuel of conflict – early, incomplete pain that intertwined itself with the real-world conflict inherent in marriage. If both listen to the other’s childhood stories and appreciate the unique way in which their current behavior mimics each other’s earlier pain, this naturally leads to empathy between the couple. It also makes room for the couple to release each other from having to apologize for the Pain, which removes toxic blame. When toxic blame is transcended, love and intimacy spontaneously arise in a safe, holding environment without direction from the therapist.
January 2, 2010 at 5:59 pm |
Interesting also how “old pain” can manifest itself not only in marriage, but in other relationships.