This entry was posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 1:22 am and is filed under Marital Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
The failure of spouses to evaluate their differences as being only differences-not marks of inferiority.
A Frenchman considers himself superior to an Italian, and an Englishman feels superior to both of them. The Italian, in turn, looks down on both the French and the British. Most people evaluate cultural differences as better or worse, inferior or superior, good or bad, instead of simply accepting them as differences.
In many marriages, one spouse considers certain aspects of his rearing or traditions or tastes as superior to those of the other spouse. Naturally, the other spouse resents this attitude. The resulting tension is like a pebble in the shoe. At first it is only uncomfortable, but after some miles it breaks the skin and may cause a painful lesion.
This tendency to make the mistake of evaluating differences as inferiorities is most easily illustrated by the misunderstanding between nations and races. For example, before World War II, the Chinese thought American motion pictures which showed men and women kissing were in bad taste, and indeed, obscene. Partially for this reason, the Chinese considered Americans to be inferior barbarians. Yet in Chungking a respectable Chinese woman might, only a few yards from a highway, lift her skirts, squat over a “honey pot,” and defecate. This custom originated because in this part of the world human feces were prized as fertilizer and were collected. Also, Western-style plumbing was considered expensive and unnecessary. To the Chinese, their custom appeared practical and wise. Yet almost all Americans who saw Chinese publicly crouching over the smelly “honey pots” turned away in disgust. They ridiculed the Chinese as an inferior and backward people not sufficiently civilized to use modem plumbing.
This kind of misunderstanding is not self-limiting. Once started, it grows and grows. In marriage (with its day-after-day intimacy) the negative value judgments made by one spouse about the habits and traditions of the other constitute a slur on his background, a disparagement of his family, a slander on his breeding, and even an insult to his intelligence. The expression of such judgments is a cruel and effective way of repeating in endless ways, “You are inferior! You are inferior!”
Often the barbs are disguised as wit. For example, listen:
“Damn it, no one but poor white trash eats parsnips. If you had any taste . . .”
“Hell no. It’s simply that no one in your family ever knew how to prepare parsnips properly.”
Whether deliberately or not, one spouse is telling the other that he is inferior. If this message is taken seriously (and it usually is), it raises the crucial question, “If I’m no damned good, why did you marry me in the first place?”
And then the battle and the deterioration begin.
3 Parts to Destructive Omission
Destructive Omission I
Destructive Omission II
Destructive Omission III
