Chapter 5 THE POWER STRUGGLE
I can't live either without you or with you.
—OVID
WHEN DOES ROMANTIC love end and the power struggle begin? For most couples, there is a noticeable change about the time they make a commitment to stay together. Once they say,"Let's get engaged," or “Let's get married," or “Let's not see anyone else for a while," the playful, inviting dance of courtship draws to a close, and they begin to want more than the hope of feeling joyfully connected and fully alive—which is responsible for the euphoria of romantic love—they want the reality as well. Their partners now must satisfy a hierarchy of expectations, some of them conscious, but most hidden from their awareness.
What are some of the conscious expectations? In traditional male-female partnerships, many of them are parental messages reinforced by cultural stereotypes. For example, a man may expect his new bride to do most of the housework, cook the meals, shop for groceries, wash the clothes, arrange most of the social events, be the family nurse, and buy everyday household items. In addition to these traditional roles, he has expectations that are specific to his upbringing. On Sundays, for example, he may expect his wife to cook a special breakfast and then join him on a leisurely stroll in the park. This is the way his parents spent their Sundays together, and the day wouldn't feel “right" unless it echoed these dominant chords.
Meanwhile, his wife has an equally long and sometimes conflicting set of expectations. In addition to wanting her husband to be responsible for most of the “manly" chores, she may expect him to help with the cooking, shopping, and laundry as well. Like many women today, she may also want him to play a significant role in raising the children. Or she may be a hedge fund CEO and anticipates a reversal of traditional roles.
Then she, too, has expectations that reflect her childhood history. An ideal weekend for her might include going to their house of worship and then having an elaborate dinner with members of their extended families. Since neither of them discussed all these expectations in advance, they can be the source of ongoing tension.
Far more important than these conscious or semiconscious expectations, however, are the unconscious ones people bring into the relationship. The primary expectation is that their partners are going to love and care for them the way their parents never did. Their partners are going to help satisfy their unmet childhood needs and nurture them in a consistent and loving way.
These are the same expectations that fueled the excitement of romantic love, but now there is less desire to reciprocate. After all, people don't get involved in a love relationship to satisfy their partner's needs—they do so to further their own psychological and emotional well-being. Once a relationship seems secure, a switch is triggered deep in the old brain that activates their latent childhood wishes. It is as if the wounded child within takes over. Says the child,"I've been good enough long enough to ensure that this person is going to stay around for a while. It's time for the payoff." So the two partners take a big step back from each other and wait for the dividends to start rolling in. Primarily, they are seeking to free themselves of the self-absorbed anxiety that whispers deep inside.
The change may be abrupt or gradual, but at some point, they wake up to discover that their needs are not being met. They have many of the same anxieties and feelings of ruptured connection that they had before they fell in love. Confused and disappointed, they become less affectionate. Now there are fewer back rubs, fewer love notes, and less lovemaking. They stop looking for excuses to spend time together and begin to spend more time at work, visiting friends, or exploring the internet. It's as if they've migrated to a colder climate.
WHY HAVE YOU CHANGED?
THERE'S ANOTHER RUDE awakening. At some point in their relationships, many couples discover that a personality trait they once valued in their partners is beginning to annoy them. A man finds that his wife's conservative nature—one of the primary reasons he was attracted to her—is now making her seem staid and prudish. A woman discovers that her partner's tendency to be quiet and withdrawn—a trait she once thought was an indication of his spiritual nature—is making her feel lonely and isolated. A man finds his partner's outgoing personality—once so refreshing—is now making him feel invaded. A woman discovers that her husband's logical nature—which initially complemented her emotional side—has now made him into an unfeeling robot.
What is the explanation for these disturbing reversals? If you will recall, in our desire to be connected and as complete and perfect as we were in infancy, we chose partners who made up for the parts of our being that were split off in childhood. We found someone who compensated for our lack of creativity or inability to think or to feel or our repressed sexuality. Through union with our partners, we felt connected to a hidden part of ourselves. At first, this arrangement seemed to work. But as time passed, our partners' complementary traits began to stir up feelings and attributes in us that were still taboo.
To see how this drama plays out in real life, let's continue with the story of John, the successful businessman from the previous chapter who was spending time with Patricia but desperately wanted to be with Cheryl. John came in for a therapy session one day in an ebullient mood. This time, he didn't spend the customary fifteen minutes talking about his software business; he plunged right in with his good news. Cheryl, in a rare, conciliatory gesture, had decided to let him move in with her for a six-month trial period. This was the answer to his dreams.
John's euphoria lasted several months, during which time he decided that he no longer needed to come for counseling. (As is true for most therapeutic clients, he had little interest in working on his issues as long as he was happy.) One day, he called and asked for an appointment. When he came in, he reported that he and Cheryl were having difficulties once again. One of the things he mentioned was that Cheryl's vibrant personality was beginning to grate on him. He could tolerate her “emotional excesses" (as he now described them) when she directed them at others—for example, when she was berating a clerk or talking excitedly with a girlfriend—but when she beamed her high-voltage emotions at him, he had a fleeting sensation of panic. “I feel like my brain is about to short-circuit," he said.
The reason John was feeling so anxious around Cheryl was that she was beginning to stir his own repressed anger. At first, being around her had given him the comforting illusion that he was in touch with his feelings. But after a time, her free emotional state stimulated his own feelings to such a degree that they threatened to emerge. His superego, the part of his brain that was carrying out his mother's injunction against anger, sent out frantic error messages warning him to keep his repression intact. John tried to reduce his anxiety by dampening Cheryl's personality: “For God's sake, Cheryl! Don't be so emotional! You're behaving like an idiot." And “Calm down, and then talk to me. I can't understand a word that you're saying." The very character trait that had once been so seductive to him was now perceived by his old brain as a threat to his existence.
In a similar way, there probably came a time in your relationship when you began to wish that your partner was less sexy or silly or spontaneous—somehow less whole—because these qualities called forth repressed qualities in you and your lost self was threatening to make an unscheduled reappearance. When it did, it ran headlong into the internal police force that had severed those self-parts in the first place, and you were filled with anxiety. This was such an unpleasant experience that you might have tried to repress your partner the same way your caregivers repressed you. In an effort to protect your existence, you were trying to diminish your partner's reality.
Your growing discomfort with your partner's complementary traits was only part of the rapidly brewing storm. Your partner's negative traits, the ones that you had resolutely denied during the romantic phase of your relationship, are beginning to come into focus. Suddenly, your partner's chronic depression or drinking problem or lack of responsibility are painfully evident. This gives you the sickening realization that your partner has the potential to turn your vibrant world, filled with wonder and joyful connecting, back into a dismal, ruptured experience, repeating what had happened to you in childhood.
A GLIMPSE AT A PAINFUL REALITY
I (HARVILLE) MADE this painful discovery early on in my first marriage—in fact, on the second day of our honeymoon. My new bride and I were spending a week on an island off the shores of southern Georgia. We were walking along the beach. I was poking through piles of driftwood, and my wife was down by the water, two or three hundred feet in front of me, head down, totally absorbed in the task of looking for shells. I happened to glance up and saw her silhouetted against the rising sun. To this day, I can remember exactly what she looked like. She had her back to me. She was wearing black shorts and a red top. Her shoulder-length blond hair was blowing in the wind. As I gazed at her, I noticed a droop to her shoulders. At that instant, I felt a jolt of anxiety. This was immediately followed by the sinking realization that I had married the wrong person. It was a strong feeling—I had to check an impulse to run back to the car and drive away. While I was standing there transfixed, my wife turned to me, waved, and smiled. I felt as though she had awakened me from a nightmare. I waved back and hurried up to meet her.
It was as if a veil had been lifted for a moment and then dropped back down. It took me years to figure out what had happened. The connection was finally made one day while I was in therapy. My therapist was guiding me through a regression exercise, an exercise that is designed to take people back to their childhood. Suddenly, I recalled an event that had happened to me when I was only a few years old. I was playing on the floor in the kitchen. I visualized my mother busy at the stove with her back to me. This must have been a typical scene, because I was her ninth child, and she probably spent four or five hours a day cooking and cleaning in the kitchen. I could see my mother's back quite clearly. She was standing at the stove wearing a print dress, and she had apron strings tied around her waist. Her shoulders sagged, and her head was cast down.
As an adult viewing this long-ago scene, I was flooded with the awareness that she didn't have any physical or emotional energy for me. My father had died only a few months before from a head injury, and she was left alone with her grief, very little money, and nine children to care for. I was too young to be aware of the nature of her difficulties, of course. All I knew is that I wanted more love and affection. In my adult mind, I could see that she had been so overwhelmed by tragedy that she had little to give me. This was a new discovery for me. Until that point in my therapy, I had thought my recurring anxiety was due to the fact that both my parents had died by the time I was six years old. But during that therapy session, I learned that my feelings of abandonment had started much earlier.
Still in my regressed state, I called to my mother, but she would not answer. I sat in the psychiatrist's office and cried in deep pain. Then I had a second revelation. I suddenly realized what had happened to me that day on my honeymoon. When I had seen my wife so far away from me, so absorbed in herself, and with the same slump to her shoulders, I had had the eerie premonition that my marriage was going to be a repetition of my early days with a depressed mother. The emptiness of my early days was going to continue. It had been too much for me to absorb, and I had quickly drawn the curtain.
At some point, most people discover that something about their partner awakens strong memories of childhood pain. Sometimes the parallels are obvious. A young woman with abusive parents, for example, may discover a violent streak in her boyfriend. A man with alcoholic parents may find himself married to an incipient alcoholic or drug addict. A woman who grew up with an unfaithful father may discover that her partner is having an affair.
But we have observed that the similarities between parents and partners are often subtler. This was the case for Bernard and Kathryn, who had been married for twenty-eight years. Bernard was a manager of a public utility; Kathryn was going back to school to get a degree in counseling. They had three children and one grandchild.
One evening as they walked into the office for their weekly appointment, they both looked downtrodden and defeated. It was obvious that they recently had one of the “core" scenes, a fight that they had had over and over again during the last twenty years of their marriage in countless subtle variations. Most couples have such a core scene, a fight they have so many times that they know their parts by heart.
They said that their most recent fight had taken place while they were decorating the house for Christmas. Bernard had been characteristically quiet, absorbed in his own thoughts, and Kathryn had been issuing orders. All three of their children and their spouses were coming to stay for the holidays, and Kathryn wanted the house to look clean and festive. Bernard dutifully performed whatever task was asked of him and went on pondering his own thoughts. After an hour or so, his silence became deafening to Kathryn, and she tried to involve him in a conversation about their children. He volunteered only a few sentences. She became more and more annoyed with him. Finally, she lashed out at him for the way he was hanging the lights on the tree: “Why don't you pay attention to what you're doing? I may as well do it myself!" Bernard let her tirade wash over him, then calmly turned and walked out the back door. Kathryn went to the kitchen window. As she watched the garage door close behind Bernard, she was filled with two primal emotions: fear and anger. Anger was uppermost: this time she wasn't going to let him retreat. She marched out after him and threw open the door. “For God's sake! Why don't you help me? You never help me when I need you. You always find some way to disappear. What's the matter with you?" His old brain responded to her attack—which was nothing more than an adult version of the infant's cry—with a counterattack. “Maybe I'd help you more if you weren't so bitchy!" he retorted. “You're always hounding me. Can't I be alone for five minutes?" Now he was seething with anger, and Kathryn burst into tears.
From an outside perspective, it is easy to write the step-by-step evolution of their arguments. The trigger for the fights was almost always the fact that Bernard was withdrawn. Trying to get some response from him, Kathryn would try to engage him in conversation. Bernard would give a minimal response and continue whatever he was doing. When Kathryn still did not get his attention, her anger would escalate. Pushed to his limit, Bernard would respond in kind.
When they were through recounting this latest episode, Kathryn was asked to remember how she had felt when she had been working on the holiday preparations and Bernard had been so quiet. She sat quietly for a moment, struggling to recall her feelings. Then she looked up with a puzzled expression and said,"I felt scared. It scared me that he wouldn't talk to me." For the first time, she realized that she was afraid of his silences.
“What were you afraid of, Kathryn?"
She answered quickly,"I was afraid he was going to hurt me."
Bernard looked over at her with wide-open eyes.
“Let's check this out with Bernard," I (Harville) said. “Bernard, were you thinking about hurting Kathryn?"
“Hurting her?" he said, bewildered. “Hurting her?! I have never touched her in my life. I was just thinking my own thoughts. I was probably thinking about something mundane like the fact that the roof needed to be replaced or that I needed to put snow tires on the cars."
“Really?" asked Kathryn. “You weren't mad at me that day?"
“No! Sure, I got annoyed when you kept ordering me around and criticizing me, but all I wanted to do was get away. I kept thinking about how nice it would be to be out in the garage working on my own projects instead of being nagged at all the time."
“Well, the way I see it, you're always angry at me, and eventually, you can't hold it in any longer, so you blow up."
“I do blow up," Bernard acknowledged,"but it takes about two or three hours of you harping at me before I do! Anybody would get angry at that. I don't start out being angry at you."
This checked out with the observations in the office. Bernard did not seem to be an angry man. By guiding with prompts, attuned therapists know when a moment is ripe for deepening.
“Kathryn," I said,"for a moment, I want you to close your eyes and think some more about what makes you afraid when Bernard doesn't respond to you."
After half a minute, she replied,"I don't know. It's just the silence." She was having a hard time coming up with additional insight.
“Well, stay with that thought for a moment and try to recall something about silence in your childhood. Close your eyes."
The room was quiet. Then Kathryn opened her eyes and said,"It's my father! I've never seen that before. He was often depressed. In fact, he was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Sometimes his depression would last for weeks, and he would barely talk to anyone. When he was in one of those moods, I knew not to bother him because if I did one thing wrong, he would get very angry. Once, he slapped me across the face. Whenever I saw him start to sink into a depression, I would feel scared. I knew that we were all in for a hard time."
Kathryn's father and her husband shared a personality trait—they both were prone to long periods of silence—and this undoubtedly was one of the reasons that Kathryn was attracted to Bernard. She didn't marry a talkative, outgoing person—she found someone who had her father's negative traits so she could continue her struggle for consistent love and kindness. But Bernard resembled Kathryn's father only superficially. He was silent because he was an introvert, not because he was depressed and given to anger.
We have found this phenomenon in many of our couples. They react to their partners as if they were carbon copies of their parents, even though not all their traits are the same. In their compelling need to work on unfinished business, they project the missing parental traits onto their partners. Then, by treating their partners as if they actually had these traits, they manage to provoke the expected response. Our colleague claims that people either “pick Imago matches, project them, or provoke them."
OF TURTLES AND HAILSTORMS
WHILE READING ABOUT Bernard and Kathryn, you may have noticed another complementary trait about them: they both respond to anxiety in different ways. As their core scene unfolded, Bernard ultimately retreated to the garage with Kathryn stomping out soon after, hurling the “always" and “never" accusations. As mentioned earlier, a part of our old brain's sole purpose is survival. It constantly scans the environment, checking to see if something is safe or dangerous. If the environment is safe, it can eat, play, nurture, or mate. But if it perceives something in the environment as dangerous, an internal defense system goes into action: freezing (“Maybe it won't see me"), fleeing (“If I run/fly/swim fast enough, I can escape"), or fighting (“I can injure or kill my enemy"). It is this archaic “fight, flight, or freeze" defense system that keeps us alive. However, this part of the brain does not distinguish between past or present, nor does it differentiate between emotional or physical safety. It is all the same “code red" warning. It is why safety in the Space Between is essential in Imago Therapy.
Similarly, as we experienced challenges with intrusive or neglectful parenting in our childhood, we adapted defenses to protect ourselves from emotional injury by either minimizing our feelings (freeze or play dead) or maximizing our feelings (fight or flight). In Imago, we call the minimizer the Turtle and the maximizer the Hailstorm. This is the unconscious voice inside the Hailstorm: “I'm going to make my partner give me more attention and love by raising my voice and expressing my feelings and thoughts with a lot of energy." Simultaneously, the unconscious voice inside the Turtle says,"I'm going to make my partner honor my boundaries by retreating even further into my isolated shell, excluding them from my personal space, and figuring out things by myself." The Hailstorm-Turtle dynamic ends up perpetuating itself with drastic consequences: the more the Turtle retreats, the more the Hailstorm hails, and vice versa, exacerbating their mutual anxiety. And of course, true to the nature of the oscillating energy of opposites in a relational field, Hailstorms and Turtles fall in love.
Now we have defined the three major sources of conflict that make up the power struggle. As the sensation of feeling fully alive in romantic love slowly erodes, the two partners begin to:
1. Stir up each other's repressed behaviors and feelings.
2. Reinjure each other's childhood wounds.
3. Use opposing defenses to protect themselves from relational anxiety.
All these interactions are unconscious. All people know is that they are feeling disappointed, confused, angry, anxious, and unloved. It is only natural that they blame their unhappiness on their partners. They, of course, haven't changed—they're the same people they used to be! It's their partners who have changed!
WEAPONS OF LOVE
IN DESPAIR, PEOPLE begin to use negative tactics to force their partners to be more loving. They withhold their affection and become emotionally distant. They become irritable and critical. They attack and blame: “Why don't you...?" “Why do you always...?" “How come you never...?" They fling these verbal stones in a desperate attempt to get their partners to be warm and responsive. If they give their partners enough pain, they believe, their partners will relent and return to their former loving ways. But to a therapist, global words like always and never are an indication of a childhood wound. These are clues that the “past injury" is activated in the present relating.
What makes people believe that hurting their partners will make them more loving? Why don't people simply, quietly, and respectfully tell each other in plain English that they want more affection or attention or lovemaking or freedom or whatever it is that they are craving? We asked that question out loud one day as we were conducting a couples' workshop. It wasn't just a rhetorical question; we didn't have the answer. But it just so happened that, a few minutes before, we were talking about babies and their instinctual crying response to distress. All of a sudden, the answer became clear. Once again, our old brains were to blame. When we were infants, we didn't smile sweetly at our mothers to get them to feed us. We didn't pinpoint our discomfort by putting it into words. We simply opened our mouths and cried. It didn't take long to learn that the louder we screamed, the quicker they came. The success of this tactic leaves an “imprint," a part of our stored memory about how to get the world to respond to our needs:“When you are frustrated, provoke the people around you. Be as unpleasant as possible until someone comes to your rescue."
This primitive method of signaling distress is characteristic of most couples immersed in a power struggle, but there is one example that stands out in our minds with a couple who had been married about twenty-five years. The husband, Zachary, was convinced that his wife, Tina, was not only selfish but vindictive. “She never thinks of me," he complained, listing numerous ways his wife ignored him. Meanwhile, Tina sat in her chair and shook her head in mute disagreement. As soon as he was through, she leaned forward in her chair and said in a strong and earnest voice,"Believe me, I do everything I can to please him. I spend more time with him; I spend less time with him. I even learned how to ski this winter, thinking that would make him happy—and I hate being out in the cold! But nothing seems to work."
To help end the stalemate, we asked Zachary to tell his wife one specific thing that she could do that would make him feel better—one practical, doable activity that would help him feel more loved. He hemmed and hawed and then said,"If she's been married to me for twenty-five years and still doesn't know what I want, she hasn't been paying attention!"
This man, like the rest of us, was clinging to a primitive view of the world. When he was an infant lying in the cradle, he experienced his caregiver as a large creature leaning over him, responding to all his needs. He was fed, clothed, bathed, and nurtured, even though he could not articulate a single need. A crucial lesson learned in the preverbal stage of his development left an indelible imprint on his mind: other people were supposed to figure out what he needed and give it to him without his having to do anything more than cry. Whereas this arrangement worked fairly well when he was a child, in adulthood, his needs were far more complex. Furthermore, his wife was not a devoted mother hovering over his crib. She was his partner, and she had needs and expectations of her own. Although she wanted to make him happy, she didn't know what to do. Lacking this information, she was forced to play a grown-up version of pin the tail on the donkey: “Is this what you want? Is this?"
When partners don't tell each other what they want and constantly criticize each other for not giving it to them, it's no wonder that a rupture forms in the relationship. The river that flows between them—the Space Between—has become clogged with debris, and their love begins to falter. In its place comes the grim determination of the power struggle as they try to force each other to be more responsive. Even though these maneuvers provoke further hostility, the partners persevere. This is a classic example of what Freud called the repetition compulsion, the tendency of human beings to repeat ineffective behaviors over and over again.
Another example of this power struggle comes from our own relationship. We had a challenging issue that repeatedly showed up: deciding where and how to spend our vacations together. It's an area where we are polar opposites. I (Helen) am a homebody, and since our work and family require us to travel a great deal of the time, I prefer spending our vacations at home. Harville, however, is passionate about traveling. So our vacation planning time was full of conflict. Whoever “won" the argument would feel self-righteous while the “defeated" one would feel resentful and invisible. This battle of the wills repeated for years. It wasn't until we engaged in the principles we will describe in later chapters that we were able to equally honor each other's voices and cocreate an elegant solution: a motorhome allowed Harville to travel the open road, while surrounding me with the chance to cook and leisurely do my needlepoint for hours, which was paradise for me.
Some couples stay in this hostile state all their lives. (We personally moved in and out of this ruptured state for more than three decades.) As time goes on, couples hone their ability to pierce each other's defenses and damage each other's psyches. Rob, for example, described a scene he had witnessed between his aging parents. His mother had multiple sclerosis and was confined to her bed. She entertained herself by reading and watching TV. One day, he walked into their bedroom and saw that his father was playing keep-away with the TV remote, preventing his mother from changing the channel. His mother had tears of frustration running down her face. Rob said that his parents' power struggle had gone on for at least forty years.
STAGES OF THE POWER STRUGGLE
WHEN YOU AND your partner are immersed in a power struggle, you have little sense of when it all started or how it will end. But from an outside perspective, the power struggle has a predictable course, one that parallels the well-documented stages of grief in a bereaved person. First comes the shock, that moment of truth when a window opens and a troubling thought enters your consciousness: This is not the person I thought I married. They tricked me! At that instant, you realize your married life is not going to be what you'd hoped.
After the shock comes denial. Your disappointment is so great that you do your best to see your partner's negative traits in a positive light. “My partner does not lack compassion. She is simply preoccupied with her own needs." But eventually, the denial can no longer be sustained, and you feel angry. Either your partner has changed drastically since the days when you were first in love, or you have been deceived all along about your partner's true nature. You are in pain, and the degree of your pain is the degree of the disparity between your earlier view of your partner and your partner's emerging reality.
If you stay together beyond the angry stage of the power struggle, some of the venom drains away, and you enter the fourth stage, bargaining. This stage goes something like this: “If you stop drinking so much, I'll be more interested in sex." Or “If you make an effort to treat my mother more kindly, I'll go on more fishing trips with you." Relationship therapists can unwittingly prolong this stage of the power struggle if they spend their time helping couples negotiate behavioral contracts without getting to the root of their problems.
The last stage of the power struggle is despair. When couples reach this final juncture, they have no hope of finding joy and happiness within the relationship; the pain has gone on too long. At this point, approximately half of all couples abandon the relationship. Most of those who stay together create what is called a parallel relationship and try to find their happiness outside the partnership.
SUMMARY OF THE FIRST FIVE CHAPTERS
FOR THE SAKE of clarity, we would like to reduce the discussion in this first part of the book to its simplest form. First of all, we are drawn to our partners for two basic reasons: (1) they have both the positive and the negative qualities of the people who raised us, and (2) they compensate for positive parts of our being that were cut off in childhood. We enter the relationship with the unconscious assumption that our partners will become a surrogate parent and make up for all the deprivation of our childhood. All we have to do to feel connected and fully alive once again is to fall in love.
After a time, we realize that our dreams are not being fulfilled. We believe that our partners are willfully ignoring our needs. They know exactly what we want and when and how we want it, but for some reason, they are refusing to cooperate. This makes us angry, and for the first time, we begin to see our partners through a darker lens, and the traits that once were attractive (our “lost parts") now grate on us.
As conditions deteriorate, we decide that the best way to get our partners to satisfy our needs is to be unpleasant and irritable, just as we did in the cradle. If we yell loud enough and long enough, we believe, our partners will come to our rescue.
What may not be apparent in this summary is this: there is little difference between romantic love and the power struggle. On the surface, of course, these two stages are worlds apart. A couple's delight in each other has turned to antagonism, and their desire to please each other has been replaced by a battle of wills.
Despite these apparent differences, the underlying motivation remains the same. In both stages, people are searching for a way to overcome their emotional difficulties and their deep-seated feelings of being unloved and unworthy of love. Another similarity is that people believe their partners have the power to provide the experience of feeling joyfully connected and fully alive.
What is the way out of this labyrinth? What lies beyond the power struggle? In the next part, we will talk about a new kind of relationship, the conscious partnership, and explain how partners who are entangled in a power struggle can reconnect and experience love and joy once again.