I met Jack and Jill a few days after they had the frustrating evening I described in my last column. They came for therapy stating they were 100% committed to their marriage but they’d both been unhappy for a couple of years.
Jill summed up her feelings: “I love him, but I don’t like him. He disagrees with everything I say, and the only thing he wants from me is sex.”
On cue, Jack disagreed. In fact, he was outraged. “If I agreed with you any more than I already do, I’d have to have my balls removed.”
Jack said that Jill was addicted to emotional drama, leaving her little time for fun. Jill practically leaped out of her chair when Jack claimed that she avoided sex (and just about every other possibility for joy in her life) “exactly like her mother.”
Jill called Jack a couple of choice names, which Jack laughed off. He looked at me with an eye-roll and responded, “See what I mean by ‘drama’?”
Jack and Jill could go on like this for an entire therapy hour.
So how do we get Jack and Jill out of the Valley of Discontent and Up the Hill where they can drink together from the Grand Waters of Emotional and Physical Desire (to mix some metaphors)?
Let’s go back to the night that (they both agreed) typified their problems. This is the discussion that I pieced together from both of their descriptions.
Jill says to Jack, “God, my mother is going to make me crazy. She just cancelled plans to come to our house for Christmas because she can’t leave her dogs.”
Jack says, “I don’t know why you’re so angry. She always does that.”
Jill says, “That’s why I’m so mad! She puts her dogs ahead of visiting us and the kids.”
“It’s not her dogs,” Jack says. “She just hates to leave her home because she’s a stick in the mud.” For good measure, he adds, “…always has been.”
Jill looks away.
Jack wonders why she quit talking. “You know it’s true. She just can’t have any fun!”
“Whatever,” Jill mumbles.
When Jill described this conversation, she claimed that she was trying to avoid an argument that night. She felt furious because it seemed like every time she spoke, Jack disagreed with her. In the past she might have made a scene, but she was so sick of arguing, she just stuffed her anger, mumbling, “Whatever.”
Jack was genuinely outraged, once again. He thought that he had been very supportive. “That’s why I say she is insatiable. If I don’t agree with every word she says, she’s pissed! Okay, from now on I’ll just agree with everything you say, right? That’s exactly what you want.”
Jill accused of Jack of lying. “How could you possibly believe that you were agreeing with me? You told me that I shouldn’t be upset that my mother was coming. You said that it wasn’t because of her dogs, then you started putting her down for not having any fun. Right?”
Jack simply could not admit that he was being unsupportive. He thought that “joining her” in complaining about her mother WAS supportive. What Jill heard was: “Don’t be angry,” and “Your mother is a bitch.”
Over the next few sessions I tried to help Jack understand that when he said, “Why are you angry? She does this all the time!” his spouse heard “Don’t be angry,” which doesn’t FEEL like support (even if it is intended as such).
You don’t lose your authentic self (or balls, in Jack’s language) by changing the way you say something so that it will be experienced by your partner as supportive. Jack needed to realize that when Jill was upset, he could simply say, “Sorry you’re upset. I know she’s done this before, so it’s a bummer for you.” This statement conveys support for her experience while also adding Jack’s take; that this happens a lot.
It took a while to convince Jack of the importance of supporting first, then expressing his reactions afterwards (…and Jack, with a PhD in Physics, was no dummy). Part of his resistance to this new way of thinking was his own defense against being Wrong. Jack was a perfectionist who believed that by acknowledging he was part of the problem, he was admitting that he was not perfect. And, just as he feared, when he did admit to Jill that he had been unsupportive, she began punishing him. (“See, the therapist thinks you’re an ass, too,” she almost said.)
You see, Jack and Jill were involved in an age-old struggle among highly driven, successful couples. Accustomed to being in charge and in control at the office, they were in a continual competition for who was Right and who was Wrong in the home.
Many couples view therapy as akin to a legal procedure:
They each build and present their case.
I am jury and judge, deciding who won.
The winner gets to punish the criminal for the crime.
A wonderful family therapist and psychiatrist, Frank Pittman, once told me: “You can’t be right and happily married at the same time.” He meant that if you’re obsessed with being Right, you will end up in a death battle any time either of you make the slightest error. You may win the race to the top of the hill, but you’ll pay the price in Loneliness.
Since everyone makes errors in a relationship, the key to a happy marriage is for both parties to admit errors, learn from them, let them go and move on.
While it took time for Jack to use the Support first, then Add Your own Reaction approach, it worked so well with Jill that it eventually became a habit. Jill learned to be positive about Jack’s changes, rather than shaming him for not doing it sooner. So Jack and Jill were now getting up the hill together, rather than racing and tripping each other on the way up.
In my next column we will explore how this new-found connection played out in the bedroom~
Stay tuned.
