This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 8:45 pm 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.
Once upon a time there was a well-received television drama (it later became a motion picture) called Marty. At the conclusion of the performance, the viewer experienced a feeling of satisfaction and general good feeling, the same sense of well-being and joy that a person has when he has read a fairy tale, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Little Red Riding Hood.
The story of Marty concerns a lonely, shy boy, Marty, who finds, or is found by, a lonely, shy girl. They supply each other’s needs, decide to marry, presumably live happily ever after. It could be wonderful if such events could take place frequently in the lives of lonely people. But the action in Marty represents-for most people-fantasies, not reality. Lonely people who marry each other to correct their situation usually discover that the most intense and excruciating loneliness is the loneliness that is shared with another.
There are several types of loneliness.
First is the loneliness of individuals who have a limited behavioral repertoire. The “behavioral repertoire” is the accumulation of behavioral acts that have been learned since birth and are at the individual’s command. People afflicted with this type of loneliness find themselves to be strangers in a more than normal number of situations involving relationships. They yearn to be on a cheerful, or perhaps competitive, or perhaps collaborative, action-interaction basis with other people. But they have difficulty because their behavioral repertoire is limited and therefore in many cases they do not understand other people and other people do not understand them. So they are strangers-and lonely.
When such lonely people marry each other, each has expectations of his spouse, and neither realizes that the other is paralyzed by a limited behavioral repertoire. Neither of these individuals has much to give to the other, unless the behavioral repertoire is enlarged and developed. If lonely spouses recognize this problem, they may have a chance for a workable marriage; if they are cognizant of their limitations, perhaps they can form a team and slowly and painfully increase the range of their behavior. Usually, however, each expects satisfying behavior from the other-the kind of action which is beyond the capability of his spouse. As a result, both of them end up lonelier than ever before. And to this loneliness, bitterness frequently is added. For each of them is vulnerable, and when he does not receive the behavior he expects from the spouse, he believes he has been given a rebuff. Usually it is not a rebuff at all, but merely a reflection of social inadequacy. What happens next? The “rebuffed” spouse draws back and then the other feels that now he is being rebuffed and rejected; and thus the distance between the two quickly increases.
An extreme example of the result of limited behavioral range in marriage occurred with a couple known to the authors. The situation described here actually existed. A shy young woman married a shy young man. His mother and sister had reared him much as one would raise a hothouse plant. Several years after the marriage, the girl formed a close friendship with the young lady who lived next door. From her she learned that sexual intercourse was supposed to take place in a normal marriage. She and her husband had been so ill informed that they had merely embraced. Neither of them had been brave enough to bring up the question of how babies were made.
When the young wife learned the facts about sex, she felt humiliated and cheated. Vituperatively, she scolded her surprised husband, and as a result they experienced so much turmoil that it became necessary for them to seek the help of a psychiatrist.
One of the mysteries of this situation is why the young woman did not recognize that she was just as uninformed as was her husband, and why he did not point this out to her.
A second type of loneliness (more prevalent among males than females) frequently characterizes the individual who lost his mother at a very early age. This type of person has been denied love as a child and unconsciously seeks “triumphs” over others as a love substitute. He cannot get along with anyone over whom he cannot triumph in some way, or except in some rare instances in which he collaborates with someone else to triumph against society.
Within this category we find many “successes” in the arts, in industry, and in business. These are the perfectionists, the people who are obsessed with becoming champions or innovators, or the top person in a field. Such people have limited emotional repertoires. Usually they can be loving and kind and considerate only to those who are useful to them; and they define usefulness only in terms of their drive for perfection or success. In the marriage of such a person nothing which the spouse does is ever good enough. He is constantly critical of the spouse’s performance level. People of this sort trust no one to do anything well. They suspect that almost everyone will impede their gallop toward success. They require almost everything to revolve around themselves; and as this seldom happens in married life, these individuals drift from one marriage to another, always looking for the impossible and becoming more and more suspicious and more and more lonely.
The third type of loneliness is perhaps the most painful of all.
It is usually experienced by individuals who have had an intelligent, dominant mother and a passive father who behaved as if he were her inferior. These people are obsessed with the desire to be popular and well thought of. They have bright personalities and well-developed social skills. Frequently they are glib talkers and good dancers, and dress attractively. Often they are excellent salesmen, advertising personnel, and social leaders, and they tend to be gossips. By gossiping (transmitting malicious information about somebody else) they bribe others to approve of them. A high percentage of these people give the appearance of being flirtatious and “sexy,” but really are sexually unskilled, and often frigid, even though they act passionate and may have had more than the normal number of affairs. This type of individual finds it difficult to be intimate and collaborative with anyone unless their mutual behavior results in his being the center of attraction. This can happen only if he marries a passive person, probably his inferior. But the fact is that in marriage-and in relations with people in general-unless one can participate in behavioral interactions which are characterized by equality, one is lonely despite the appearance one may give of being very gregarious and a great mixer.
Loneliness cannot be cured by marriage. Loneliness is better tolerated by those who live alone; they have no expectations, and thus no disappointments. Lonely people who live together have about the same chance of realizing their expectations as the host who insists that everybody have a good time at his party.
