Engagement Rings Advice : Wedding, Marriage, Anniversary

The Weary Wranglers and the Psychosomatic Avoiders - and their situations are as unattractive as these names suggest - form a considerable proportion of the American married population. The spouses in this Unstable-Unsatisfactory category make up the majority of couples seen by counselors, psychologists, or psychiatrists.

The Weary Wranglers reach their condition after years of preliminary bouts. It takes them some time to discover how to hurt each other frequently and with finesse. By the time the spouses have become competent Weary Wranglers - if the marriage has not been terminated by uxorcide, suicide, desertion, or divorce each usually finds satisfaction in seeing the other make mistakes or experience failures, for these count as defeats in the continuing war.

The Weary Wranglers may recognize that they have a miserable marriage, but usually they are unwilling or unable to do anything about it. Often they need or desire the combat which their marriage provides. Frequently the Weary Wranglers are angry people who are not prone to introspection or self-accusation. Directing hostility outward is one of the ways in which an individual relieves the discomfort of anxiety and frustration. The Weary Wranglers find a degree of comfort in being hostile to each other, for the situation enables each to shift the responsibility for his unhappiness to the other. In fact, it is sometimes for this advantage that people are drawn to each other in the first place. Another major attraction of this mutual hostility is that it prevents personal change by keeping the participant’s attention focused away from himself. But the ‘Weary Wranglers do not know that hostility and anger are not self-limiting. Once the trend has started, it accelerates geometrically; often the anger runs away with the contenders and damages both equally.

One reason the Weary Wranglers have such a shaky future is that the spouses do not know how to stop their argumentative games and begin to form coalitions. In any discussion or activity each is more interested in winning than in dealing effectively with the matter at hand. Indeed, carried along by the need to win every game, they may not even be able to stick to a single topic. A third party listening may experience an eerie sense of unreality as the topic changes with every sentence. By contrast, couples able to form coalitions and to collaborate can explore a situation as a team, each in tum contributing and building upon what his spouse has contributed.

The Weary Wranglers tend to blame each other explicitly ( verbally) for the failures and disappointments in their relationship. Often, they involve the children in their conflict. Sometimes the wife picks one child for special favor and the husband picks another; but sometimes they bid for the same offspring, and he may end up feeling he is God’s special gift to the world. On the other hand, a child’s life may be extremely miserable because his parents are competing to find fault with him (the «fault,” allegedly, being “inherited” from the other spouse). In either case the child is apt to suffer from severe psychopathology. Often the children of such a marriage who are not forced into the role of scapegoat or of parents’ favorite seem to survive the marital mess, because the parents’ battling is relatively overt and tlle children are aware of the parents’ discontent. Children can adjust to what is obvious, even though they look ahead to the day when they will be old enough to leave home.

Not all spouses in the Unstable-Unsatisfactory category are continuously battling and agitating openly. Many couples in this group begin as Weary Wranglers, but after a few years they grow tired of arguing and become Psychosomatic A voiders. Some spouses who are unable to express anger openly at all never try to fight it out and are Psychosomatic A voiders from the beginning of the relationship. The primary characteristic of such couples is that they wage their battles covertly, expressing their anger and disappointment primarily through subtle sarcasm, double-edged humor, tangentialization, or nonverbal means. A few of the more common nonverbal methods of expressing their frustration are illness, alcoholism, and frigidity. Both parties unconsciously recognize that the disturbed spouse is expressing discontent with the marriage, but our health-oriented culture allows them to focus on doctors, pills, and heating pads. The sine qua non of this group is the pill-filled bathroom where a careful reading of labels on containers shows frequent changes of medication. Partially empty jars, bottles, and boxes are mute testimony to the fact that the doctor has no prescription for a bad marriage.

Many of these spouses eventually find their way into the offices of psychiatrists. Normally just one spouse of the couple seeks therapy for his psychosomatic symptoms, drinking problems, or frigidity-while the other spouse looks on sympathetically and believes himself to be perfectly healthy by comparison.

Some spouses among the Psychosomatic Avoiders work out an unconventional modus vivendi. For example, the wife permits her husband to have a mistress, while in order to achieve a temporary, uneasy peace he allows his wife to spend large amounts of money on clothes, entertainment, and psychoanalysis. Of course, their apparent acceptance of such a destructive agreement does not mean they are happy about it. Not only does the wife pay heavily with her illness, but the husband normally would prefer to have a loving, healthy wife rather than a mistress. Psychosomatic Avoiders, unfortunately, find it easier to bear their pain alone than to argue openly.

Many Unstable-Unsatisfactory couples attack each other over the years-either overtly or covertly-with a determined destructiveness increasing in geometric progression, so that the fifth year may be sixteen times as bad as the first. One common cause for this kind of escalating marital antagonism is the husband’s increasing financial success. More rarely the financial, social, or professional success of both spouses precipitates the conflict. The problem is so widespread that many large industrial companies insist on interviewing the wives of prospective executives. The Young Presidents’ Organization (a national association of men who have become presidents of million-dollar-gross companies by age forty) makes its contribution to marital harmony by planning most of its regional and national meetings for the executive and his wife. In the United States various estimates have been made of the loss of productivity caused by marital problems. The figure is especially high when it includes the huge sums spent to train executives whose effectiveness is subsequently reduced or destroyed by discord at home. Some educated guesses have put it as high as one and a half billion dollars per year.

The pattern of this kind of difficulty is often so familiar to the experienced clinician that he can fill in the middle part of the story after hearing the first few minutes of the beginning from a distraught couple.

Typically, the young man and woman meet in college and marry shortly after graduation or when he has returned from military service. Often, he goes to graduate school while she supports him, and during this period they are equally busy and fairly broke, with little time to dwell on their spats and quarrels. Then comes his first offer-excitement, the vision of a joyous future of color television and wall-to-wall expenses and country clubs, and eventually Europe!

Maybe Sally doesn’t like the thought of living in Kalamazoo, but after a few days of quarreling and tears she keeps her prim little mouth shut and tries to share Walter’s delight in being selected by such an up-and-coming outfit. Then her little secret is added to the dice they’re rolling. She is pregnant! Probably it does make sense for Walter to go ahead to Kalamazoo while Sally goes to Houston to have her child and let her mother help in those trying days. Then Walter, of course, plans to fly down to Houston to bring Sally and the baby to Kalamazoo to start the nest, and Sally’s mother will come along to help out until Sally is strong again. Walt is unhappy about the arrangement and feels Sally is not being supportive enough. He is also hurt by her inability to share equally in his excitement over the job, but since she did give in to the move he now feels he has no choice but to let her go to her mother’s. He has always liked Sally’s mother, but the situation changes soon after they arrive in Kalamazoo. Mrs. Hanson seems too eager to keep him from the baby (as if all men were clumsy oafs knowing nothing about children). Sally seems petulant and demanding and her mother responds, while Walt worries about whether indeed this too shall pass. After a few months, Sally’s mother departs. The quarrels Walt and Sally had in the privacy of their bedroom during Mother’s visit have left them angry and drained. Sally becomes tight-lipped and resolves not to argue with Walt any more, since she feels she never wins anyway. Walt becomes equally guarded, since he feels Sally never gives in, and he begins to spend more time at work.

Things at the plant are going swimmingly. Walt and his immediate superior get along together like an up-and-coming kid and his wise older brother. Of course, late some afternoon Mr. Eccler may suggest, “Say, Walt, why don’t we grab a drink and a quick meal and come back here and go over the Choosey Chews account? I think it’ll open your eyes to some of the problems and their solutions.” So a happy and guilty Walt calls home, filled with the knowledge that Sally is alone now that his mother-in-law has left, and informs his hurt, trying-to-understand wife that the boss insists he go over the Choosey account instead of coming home.

“But I had planned …”

“Really, it’s an opportunity I can’t miss.”

Sally says, “All right, Walt. If you must, I suppose that nothing I say will matter,” and turns off the oven. She sits before the television munching cheese and crackers (they have a great martyr quality about them, in contrast to the filet Hubby is presumed to be eating), and wonders from time to time what she has done wrong. And so the unfortunate pattern is set: each spouse, responding to cultural pressures, sees himself as reasonable and the other as unreasonable, and believes that the other is becoming angry because he knows he is in the wrong. Wishing confirmation, they discuss the situation with friends. Each finds comfort and support in his particular clique, unaware that this “understanding” increases the space between himself and his spouse.

Once a pattern of “victim versus victimizer” becomes established, even a sincere attempt on the part of one spouse to “make up” is likely to be misinterpreted as just another trick. For example, Walt may have been working every night for a month to complete a difficult assignment. He is rewarded with a raise, and gaily sweeps Sally off on an expensive holiday to compensate for his past neglect. Sally is thereby caught in a conflict which she dares not discuss, in order not to ruin the holiday. She may be suspicious, wondering if Walt is indulging in such a trip because he feels guilty. If so, of what is he guilty? Was he really working every night last month? If Sally becomes convinced that Walt is just being loving, she is now unable to express her frustration and resentment over his earlier neglect, for she finds it impossible to criticize him when he is taking her on an expensive holiday. Perhaps some aspect of their unsent messages steals out and delivers itself, resulting in further misunderstanding and hurt feelings. Walt may now be angry because Sally’s response to his conciliatory gesture is not altogether enthusiastic. Halfway through the holiday, Sally becomes ill with a headache and stomach cramps, and has to be taken home. Both are disappointed, Walt is quietly angry, and Sally feels misunderstood and guilty. By this time, they have started down the path of the Psychosomatic Avoiders, having become weary of wrangling.

As their situation worsens, they have only the child in common, and the specter of that day in the future when the child will leave home begins to hang over their heads. Despair, unfortunately, does not always breed solutions-instead it may beget further despair.

The end of this particular story is of little importance. It may adopt several conventional forms; the spouses may resort to booze, blondes, illness, separate beds, “he doesn’t understand me,” or “I’m on my way to my first million and she couldn’t care less.” The crucial thing is that time and the pyramiding misunderstandings have created a gap very difficult to bridge. Each spouse is equally convinced of the righteousness of his position. Angry defensiveness replaces the biblical injunction “Come now, and let us reason together.”

Frequently the inability of spouses in the Unstable-Unsatisfactory category to improve their situation is a reflection of the gamesmanship which they employ. For example, the wife may attempt suicide for fear that her husband will leave her. The attempt fails, but the husband feels guilty and assures the wife that he will stay with her, “only please don’t kill yourself.” She promises him never to do such a thing again. The wife has won the game for the moment and the couple push their rowboat back onto the stormy sea and continue the journey. But the husband knows that now it’s his tum to win a game, and he starts looking for one. Couples of this sort are surprisingly easy to find in our society.

The Unstable-Unsatisfactory couples often stick together because each partner hopes to collect unpaid emotional bills from the past. There is a vague but persistent dream of what the other spouse could be like if he really tried. “Someday he’ll realize how I’ve been wronged and he’ll be more loving and appreciative; then we can be happy. Before we married [this theme continues] he gave every evidence that he would love me and do so and so …” These individuals usually end up severely disappointed, frustrated, and angrier than they ever were prior to marriage. As they get older they realize that time is running out and they still have not received what they feel the other spouse owes them.

One other important characteristic of many Unstable-Unsatisfactory marriages should be mentioned. These couples often give the impression of togetherness when in fact they live in quite separate emotional, and perhaps also physical, worlds. In most couples, this deception takes one of two forms. These appear to be quite opposite, but serve the same function-disguising the separateness of husband and wife.

The first form is typified by the man and wife who individually maintain active, absorbing lives, each having professional and social roles so demanding that he literally sees little of the other, and yet preserve the Facade of an integrated marriage through such accouterments as a large house, several children, and a dog. As long as they do not see too much of one another, they appear to get along quite well. But inevitably there are occasions when the distance between them cannot be maintained because the wishes or needs of the two at that moment are on a collision course.

Two young married physicians with small children, for example, appear to have a surprisingly intact marriage. A considerable amount of their success in maintaining the marriage is due to the presence of a matronly, tenderhearted housekeeper who lives in and is virtually one of the family. She fulfills most of the household and mothering functions, so that the wife-physician is free to pursue her career. However, just before an important medical meeting which both spouses wish to attend, the housekeeper is forced to go to the hospital for a kidney operation. The husband immediately assumes that his wife will find another babysitter or, failing this, will stay home from the meeting and take care of the children. The wife, on the other hand, feels her professional responsibilities make it just as important for her to attend the meeting as it is for her husband, and before they have even attempted to find a satisfactory babysitter, they break out into violent quarreling which changes the entire cast of their relationship.

This kind of clash of interests is inevitable from time to time in such a marriage, but the spouses may get enough enjoyment from the relative “independence” their marital arrangement gives them to tolerate each other when they are together. We do not mean to suggest that all or even most couples in which both partners are active are less close than they appear. Some couples can be busy and often separate physically, yet be close emotionally and in genuine agreement. But for many active couples this is not the case. Furthermore, if in the course of time one spouse’s career or local social importance becomes relatively greater than the other spouse’s, the marriage will have a smaller chance of survival. Often the frightening thing about the occasions when one spouse’s career is on the upswing while the other’s is on the downswing, is the sudden recognition of how little marital glue they really have to hold them together in a crisis. There may be an outbreak of despair about their ability to overcome the current situation and carryon.

The other common manifestation of this characteristic of deceptive togetherness among Unstable-Unsatisfactory couples is more difficult to spot. Certain couples consist of individuals who have developed common interests or strong causes to which they can devote enormous amounts of time and energy. Because the spouses in such a marriage are seen together a great deal, and to some extent believe in the value of what they are jointly doing, the casual observer may think them a wonderfully companionable couple. A more intimate examination of their marital situation often reveals that they are virtually never alone with each other, and that when they are, the momentary absence of the joint cause leaves them each feeling quite separate. This is frequently the case when the children of “professional parents,” who devote their lives to the children, go away for the summer, and the husband and wife find themselves feeling quite “lost” and are unable to enjoy activities as a couple. Couples who rely on causes for their togetherness have no time for intimate talk or occasional chitchat and may even enter into a kind of competition by occupying their free time with preparation for the cause, by doing research for reports to be presented later on, for example, or by attending lectures related to their cause celebre. Again, so long as they remain relatively equal in the eyes of their peers, the marriage may appear quite sound.

It is probable that in most of these couples, one spouse is more intimately involved in the cause than the other, while the second spouse is able to conceal the fact that his involvement is slighter, or even to convince himself that he is as interested as the other. But as the years go by, it usually becomes apparent that he is only secondarily concerned. Both find it more and more difficult to hide their emotional distance. This sort of relationship is sometimes portrayed in fictional presentations of missionaries; the missionary couple in James Michener’s book Hawaii is one example. In many such instances, it turns out that one of the spouses, either the husband or the wife, is more able to endure the hardships of missionary life, or has the greater “faith,” and the second spouse becomes increasingly ill, martyred, or complaining. Or the martyred one ( often the wife) becomes ill and dies and the other spouse is free to carry on the great work, while sanctifying his “good wife” for her martyrdom.

In a nonmissionary couple–perhaps active in politics, or “professional parents” devoted exclusively to their children-one spouse may suddenly walk out on the other after years of an apparently close working relationship and mutual agreement on “their” goals. This may occur because the more dominant spouse has found someone who is a greater “believer” in his goals than the current partner, and feels the need for refueling. Or the opposite may occur; the apparently more subservient spouse, who in order to keep the relationship going has been pushed into a way of life that he does not wish, is finally fed up and leaves the whole situation behind-to everyone’s astonishment!

A beautiful example of the latter situation-one which is very common in our culture-occurs in Elia Kazan’s novel The Arrangement. The central figure of the story has become increasingly dissatisfied with his marriage and at forty-three engages in a serious affair with a younger woman. He cannot understand his own behavior and feels guilty because he cannot admit that his wife’s apparent benevolence is driving him into a rage and leaving his most basic needs unfulfilled. His wife arranges a plan, a “way of life,” at this point for the two of them, in the belief that it will “cure” her husband’s “illness.” The husband tries, and for eleven months they share this new style of life, closely resembling that of two sorority sisters. Their arrangement is appropriately called the “fortress”: it is designed to protect the couple from material and carnal desires and dangerous independence-chinks in their imaginary togetherness. The wife’s emphasis on the “pure” life and spiritual values is intended to eliminate her husband’s carnal feelings for other women, but as is to be expected, the husband sabotages her dominance by becoming impotent.

During the fortress period, they become the envy of all their friends who do not see the covert aspects of the relationship. Such sharing! Such devotion! What the friends do not realize, as the reader does, is that the togetherness, the shared style of life, represents only the wife’s dream, not the husband’s. After eleven months, the husband has a serious auto accident which forces him to recognize a suicidal impulse. That’s the beginning of the end of the relationship, for the husband leaves the wife after his recovery.

Although a husband and wife may appear to be sharing, if their goals in life or their ways of behaving are based on the wishes .of one spouse rather than both, they are not actually sharing. Togetherness without genuine agreement is like a sand castle built too close to the water’s edge. When the tide of change comes in, the castle crumbles, and when it goes out, one resident of the castle often goes with it-to swim toward new shores which he sees with his own eyes.

Today, almost everyone has known at least one couple which broke up after years of apparent togetherness. Usually, the longsuffering spouse who leaves the “fortress” is labeled the “bad guy,” and in one sense, he is. By going along with another’s dream -out of passivity or sheer exhaustion or denial of his own real desires-such a person has lulled his spouse into a false sense of control and security. When one spouse passively refuses to set limits to the other’s demands, by refusing to fight it out and choosing withdrawal as the better means of survival, and when the dominant spouse refuses to heed the many clues and messages that the other is only going along because he can’t win, and that he is not really in agreement, the husband and wife lead each other on and on into the woods of imaginary togetherness. Then when night falls, and the suffering, passive spouse “can’t take it another minute” he walks out, leaving the dominant spouse behind. They would have done better never to enter the woods at all, or to fight things out earlier, while there was still some daylight and a chance to try to make necessary changes. It is not uncommon in a sharply dominant-submissive marriage for the dominant spouse to become increasingly hysterical or dictatorial, to the point of losing all self-control, as he slowly discovers that the submissive spouse neither loves nor respects him and that the passivity is simply based on loathing. Kazan also depicts this “arrangement” in his description of the hero’s mother and father. The submissive, downtrodden mother holds her tongue and survives. The domineering father dies in hysterical self-defeat.

Many Unstable-Unsatisfactory couples do not break up, although the increase of divorce in this category is alarming. Couples in this category vary widely, ranging from those who exchange quite a bit of information by “fighting it out” day after day, to those who exchange practically no explicit information and ignore much of the information that is exchanged (leaving one spouse’s needs unfulfilled much of the time because he won’t or can’t fight the dominant spouse effectively). But many of these spouses stick together physically despite the lack of emotional closeness, and the amount of consequent psychosomatic illness, infidelity, disturbance in children, and general misery is great.

A small number of Unstable-Unsatisfactory couples do manage eventually to make a workable union. Fortunately, aided by acts of God, or wise counsel, or understanding bosses or relatives, they realize that they do not have black-and-white differences, and that compromises are possible. Sometimes a painful crisis or blowup threatening a runaway shocks each spouse into renouncing his righteous, misunderstood position, and then the partners begin to communicate.

What, nevertheless, remains important is when (i.e. how early in the marriage) something useful in the way of change is attempted. Years are not of equal length in marriage, and sick patterns, once fixed, are increasingly difficult to extirpate. If positive change occurs early enough, these couples may work up the ladder to an Unstable-Satisfactory marriage. If it comes late, their chances for developing a satisfying give-and-take relationship are seriously diminished.

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