Advice : Wedding, Marriage, Engagement, Anniversary

If a husband and wife-Miriam and Ken Thompson, let us say -agree that they are predominantly a status-struggle type of couple and are frequently engaged in stressful competition, they can learn to enjoy great cooperation and to function less competitively by practicing the series of exercises which follows. These techniques will not completely eliminate status struggles, for such struggles are necessary from time to time when issues arise for which rules have not yet been agreed upon. But the practices we suggest can help limit the struggles to appropriate areas, and make the marriage correspondingly more workable. Let us stress that the spouses must go slowly. They must not attempt to change their marriage overnight. After all, psychoanalysis not infrequently takes six to eight years. These exercises should therefore be taken slowly, step by step, over a period of weeks.

First, Miriam and Ken are to sit down together and compile a list of the various duties performed and roles filled when they are home together over a weekend. Such activities as cooking, cleaning, entertainment, and helping the kids with schoolwork will be listed. Miriam and Ken probably will discover that status struggles occur when both attack the same problem at just about the same time, as when Ken is helping Johnnie, their son, with his homework and Miriam cannot refrain from putting her two cents’ worth in.

For the sake of experience and practice they should plan for the next several weekends to divide functions and tasks rigorously, agreeing in advance about which spouse is to take charge of each particular duty. For example, it may be Ken’s job to drive the kids to their swimming lesson every Saturday and to mow the lawn, while Miriam goes to the laundromat and arranges for a baby-sitter for Saturday evening. (The matter of choosing the type of entertainment will be discussed later because this is one function that cannot be assigned to a particular spouse as part of a role.) Miriam and Ken may find during several weeks’ trial that they have to do some shifting of tasks. Perhaps Miriam is better at helping the kids with their English homework, and Ken with their mathematics. If Miriam accepts the task of attending the PTA meeting on Wednesday evening, perhaps it will be desirable for Ken to take charge of providing for dinner on that night. Since he does not cook, this may mean taking the family out to dinner, or having a simple barbecue.

The procedure described here sounds very simple and mechanized, but in carrying it out, most couples will find to their surprise that although they have been assuming that each has his assigned tasks, actually-except for the most obvious ones-tasks have not been clearly assigned, and that status struggles occur when husband and wife attempt to take over a task at the same time, or when one interferes with the other’s performance.

The couple will soon discover that even after weekend functions and tasks have been divided, many areas of dissatisfaction remain. This is most often the case in matters involving idiosyncratic taste or choice such as the selection of a movie. Status struggles occur in the choice of anything upon which one places cultural value. It is always possible to argue that it’s better to go see a Shakespearean play than a gangster film.

In situations of this sort, many unnecessary status struggles can be eliminated if the spouses agree to alternate in choosing the evening’s activity, with each in turn accepting without adverse comment the selection of the other.

After the status strugglers have weathered a weekend in which the labor was broken up into tasks for each, they are ready for the next step, the assignment of areas of competence rather than specific duties. This change introduced a relative freedom into the system, because areas are not as confining and controlling as specific duties. The trick here is to realize that a good cook is no greater than a good accountant, that the successful gardener isn’t superior to the careful housekeeper. In order to work out areas of competence, the spouses must have made enough progress to be able to agree on a number of important areas which must be taken care of if the family work is to get done, to recognize that the question of someone being better than someone else is not relevant.

Here is a method for assigning areas of competence. The spouses sit down together, and one tells the other what he did best-what situation he handled most competently-over the weekend. If the other agrees, this may be considered one of his areas of competence. For example, the wife may say to tile husband, “The way you kept the children from quarreling was marvelous. I think it would be a great thing if you could take over the discipline of the kids over the weekend because by the end of the week I’m somewhat weak and frustrated with them and probably not very effective.” If he assents, she is free to take over another matter; the husband may now suggest that she keep the family financial records, since she handled them neatly and systematically over the weekend and he finds bookkeeping a boring chore.

After trying a weekend during which areas rather than tasks are assigned, the spouses review the allotment of areas; some shifting, or at least a few slight changes will probably be necessary and these should be discussed at this time. The next step will then be to decide how to share responsibility in those areas in which some overlapping is inevitable. One such area is shopping, since an individual out for other reasons may stop to “pick up” something, thus doing part of this job. Child rearing is another area in which both parents are usually involved.

Many status struggles involve the question of who is doing a better job of disciplining the children. The fact is that the mother is with the children a great deal more than the father is, therefore her values will predominate despite her husband’s best efforts unless he has intimidated her completely, and the husband’s frustration is evident when he tries to impose his values upon the children during the infrequent periods when he is with them. In the effort to eliminate status struggles over the children a good first step is to assign the father complete charge of their discipline when he is present on weekends. His wife will often be dissatisfied with his approach, but only by stepping out of the picture does she make it possible for him to experience the burden of total responsibility for child discipline. The chances for settling into a compromise are much improved once one recognizes that it is all very well to wish the children were behaving in a certain way, but it is quite another matter to put forth the effort to get them to do so.

Spouses who attempt exercises of the sort just described will recognize, in all likelihood, that in their efforts to bargain and to divide responsibilities, they end up competing over who can fulfill his share of the bargain better. But though it is still competition, competing to cooperate is one step forward, for it leads toward more positive interactional patterns and gives one less of a sense of struggling with the other spouse over fruitless and never-ending “issues.” Issues are usually smoke screens hiding a more basic disagreement over who “cares the most” or who is being “more thoughtful.” The many status struggles occurring over particular issues may, indeed, be reflections of the basic status struggle implied in this central question.

For most people, the main difficulty in being thoughtful is that they experience a hurt vulnerability when their thoughtfulness is not returned, or when they fear that it will not be returned. The result is the defensiveness described elsewhere in the book as reverse vulnerability. To avoid this fear of being thoughtful, and hence this reverse vulnerability, spouses should divide tasks and areas of responsibility in such a manner that neither can claim that he is being more thoughtful than the other or is being denied thoughtfulness by the other. If the reader will think back on recent arguments with his own spouse about who has done the most or who has worked the hardest or had the hardest day, he will recognize that the discussion rarely concerns actual man hours spent in labor; it usually involves some ill-defined question of who “cares” the most or who “gives” the most. Such scrapping represents the desire of each for recognition that he has contributed at least his share, the desire for a display of thoughtfulness and appreciation on the other’s part, but usually it leads only to further argument, recrimination, and status struggling. Therefore, it is desirable for each spouse to avoid merely thinking competitively about how to “beat out” the other spouse, and try instead to put himself in the other’s position and imagine how he feels, asking, “If I do so and so, how will Jane (or John) be made to feel?” This approach introduces a forward look into relationship behavior and drives home the knowledge that cooperation is not just a moment-to-moment thing, but also affects the future.

Some additional exercises to break down destructive status struggles over who is “more thoughtful” and who is “less appreciative” of the other’s thoughtfulness can be found in discussions of reverse vulnerability.

Leave a Reply