When we’re imprisoned, it’s the damaging messages that stick.
“But there’s another message I hear in your story,” I told her. “That you’re a woman of strength. Once you were that scared, lonely girl standing on the street with your suitcases. Many times you could have died, and you didn’t. Now look at you. Out of something you didn’t want, you made something good. You’re good.”
Believing at a fundamental level that she wasn’t worthy of love, Marina had chosen a partner and patterns of behavior that reinforced this belief. I often see this dynamic in military marriages. When it’s only a matter of time before you’ll have to deploy or move and start your life anew, it’s hard to trust that someone will really stick with you through the distance and disruption. One way to cope with the fear of how much it will hurt to be apart—or the fear that someone will leave us or be unfaithful—is to avoid being close. Marina had married a man who charmed her into feeling safe and adored, only to use their relationship as a punching bag. He was carrying his own pain into the relationship—and his method of coping with his unresolved emotional business, to rage and blame, just reinforced Marina’s internalized message that to love is to be hurt and abandoned.
“Perhaps you’re both using the fighting to fight intimacy,” I said. “So let’s look at your pattern.”
Many couples have a three-step dance, a cycle of conflict they keep repeating. Step one is frustration. It’s left to fester, and pretty soon they move on to step two: fighting. They yell or rage until they’re tired, and fall into step three: making up. (Never have sex after a fight. It just reinforces the fighting!) Making up seems like the end of the conflict, but it’s really a continuation of the cycle. The initial frustration hasn’t been resolved. You’ve just set yourselves up for another go-round.
I wanted to give Marina some tools to help her stop the dance at step one. What were the frustration triggers that kept launching them into the same imprisoning dance?
“You’re either contributing to the relationship or you’re contaminating it,” I said. “How do each of you contaminate the marriage?”
“When I want to have a discussion with him—express a feeling or bring something up—he’s afraid of being guilty, that something’s his fault.” His preferred defense was offense—to turn the tables and attack Marina with blame and criticism.
“And what’s your part in it?” I asked.
“I try to explain myself. Or I say, ‘Stop,’ and he explodes and starts kicking or throwing or smashing something.”
I gave her an assignment, a detour to get them off the path they kept choosing. “The next time he tells you you’re wrong, your answer is ‘You’re right.’ He can’t fight with that. And you’re not lying, because everybody makes mistakes; anybody could improve. Just say, ‘Yes, you’re right.’ ”
If we deny an accusation, we’re still accepting blame. We’re taking responsibility for something that isn’t ours.
“The next time he’s angry, ask yourself, ‘Whose problem is it?’ Unless you caused the problem, you’re not responsible when he tries to put the monkey on your back. Give the monkey back. Say, ‘Sounds like you’re in a tough position. Sounds like you’re mad about that.’ When he tries to make his feelings about you, give the feeling back to him. It’s his feeling to face and you hope he’ll let go. When you step into the ring, he’s looking at you, not at his feeling. Stop rescuing him.”
When Marina and I spoke a few weeks later, she said the de-escalation tools were working. Their fights had radically diminished.
“But I have so much resentment against him,” she said. This time, it wasn’t his anger she wanted to talk about. It was her own. “In my mind, I make him responsible for everything.”
“So do the opposite,” I said. “Thank him.”
She stared at me, eyebrows raised in surprise.
“You choose your attitude. So thank him. And thank your parents, too. They’re helping you become a very good survivor.”
“And just ignore what happened? Leave out what they did?”
“Make peace with it.”
Many of us didn’t have the loving and caring parents we desired and deserved. Maybe they were preoccupied, angry, worried, depressed. Maybe we were born at the wrong time, in a season of friction or loss or financial strain. Maybe our caregivers were dealing with their own trauma, and they weren’t always responsive to our needs for attention and affection. Maybe they didn’t pick us up and say, “We always wanted a child just like you.”
“You’re grieving over the parents you never had,” I told Marina. “And you can grieve over the husband you don’t have.”
Grief helps us face and ultimately release what happened or didn’t happen. And it opens up space to see what is and choose where we go from here.
“Would you like to be married to you?” I asked.
She gave me a confused look.
“What do you like about you?”
She was silent, her brow creased as though taken aback, or maybe she was just searching for the words.
She began hesitantly, but her voice became fuller as she spoke. Her eyes brightened and a flush rose in her cheeks.
“I like that I care about other people,” she said. “I like that I have passion—that I love climbing high. I like that I don’t give up.”
“Write it down, honey,” I said. “Carry those words in your purse.”
Taking an honest inventory is so important. It’s easy to reach for critiques of others and ourselves, to focus on wrongs and complaints. But all of us are good. We choose what we focus on.
“What’s good about your husband?” I asked.
She paused, squinting slightly, as though trying to see into the distance. “He cares,” she said. “Even though he is like he is, I know he cares about me. And he’s working hard. I injured my shoulder, and he helped me. There are times when he supports me.”
“Are you stronger with him, or without him?”
Only you can decide if a
