by Chris G Moon
I remember once when I was young I lost our dog’s collar. This angered my father considerably. He tormented me with slaps and verbal abuse for what seemed to me to last at least an hour. The slaps I could handle—their marks disappeared within the day—but the emotional bruising did not leave so quickly. I needed my father’s forgiveness and love. When forgiveness and love were not forthcoming, it hurt me so deeply that I thought my heart was going to break. However, a few hours later I was running around outside, laughing and playing with my brother. One might think that due to the resilience of children around pain, I simply forgot about the ugly incident with my father and got on with my life. However, years later I recalled the incident. I re-experienced the pain I felt as a six-year-old boy being yelled at and hit by a father from whom I needed love, and once more felt my heart break.
I know from my work as a therapist that I am not unusual when it comes to how I handled pain as a child and as an adult. Many of us experienced painful episodes we thought would literally break our hearts, or cripple us unless we took some measures to escape the hurt. So we created a basement in our mind—the subconscious—where we could store our suppressed pain and lock it away, eventually forgetting about it altogether. Like a storage closet that we open only when we want to throw some unwanted article into it, the subconscious mind is a depository full of unwanted, painful memories that we never knew how to deal with or resolve. But unlike a storage closet, the subconscious mind kept growing in order to allow us to keep stuffing the discomfort away, thus avoiding the call to confront the pain openly.
So, you may ask, what’s the problem? If the subconscious keeps growing with whatever junk we throw into it, why not keep stuffing the pain in there? What’s the point in suffering if you can avoid it? I would be the first to agree with you, except for a few snags with the idea. One snag is that in order to avoid feeling the pain as a child, I had to reject any bond with my father. I withdrew from him as much as I could and maintained a distance throughout my early life, with the emotional wound standing between us. The other major snag, as mentioned earlier, is that painful incidents are instrumental in the formation of most of the limiting beliefs we have about ourselves and the world around us. For instance, the experience I suffered with my father over the dog collar may have caused me to believe that he did not love me. From that belief I could extrapolate that, since my father was to me a figure of great authority, no male authority figure would love me. Consequently, I may live out my life fearful of teachers, police, doctors, bosses, etc. Fear limits us from acting freely and according to our nature. Going further with that example, if I live in fear of all these figures, what does that make me believe about myself? Maybe that I’m a wimp or a weakling, a no-good screw-up, a failure. What we believe we are often determines what kind of work we choose, what kind of friends we have, where we live, the quality of our sex lives, and most other aspects of our existence, probably even including our choice for the kind of car we drive. You might argue that it is very hard to believe one incident of being slapped around by my father would create such a debilitating belief and poor sense of self worth in me, and I would probably agree with you. As stated before, the seed of belief is created from a singularly painful incident, but is reinforced by subsequent episodes of similar nature. The example was given to illustrate that painful situations from our past that have not been healed will negatively influence our beliefs about ourselves. Once the pain is dealt with in a healthy manner, the belief can change accordingly.
We all live according to who we believe we are. If you truly believe that you are successful, your failures will not keep you from ultimate success; if you believe you’re a failure, even your biggest successes can be experienced as failures. All beliefs formed out of an unhealed pain will be limiting. Since these beliefs about ourselves are inextricably woven to past traumas that can rarely be clearly remembered, much less changed, how can we ever be free from our limitations? This is what makes relationships such invaluable gifts in our lives. Your present relationship offers you the opportunity to revisit past trauma and heal those experiences, thereby correcting the mistaken beliefs that were formed from those incidents.
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GOING HOME
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“If you haven’t left home peacefully, you haven’t left at all.”
—C.G. Moon
Henry, a colleague of mine, told me of a visit he made back to his hometown. He was invited to dinner by Ron, an old school chum, and his wife Betty (not their real names). As a couple they were not doing well, steeped in the hellish waters of Power Struggle. Henry found himself sitting at the dinner table, listening to Betty as she went on and on about what a no-good bum her husband was. She would spread her complaints around, sometimes talking to my colleague, then suddenly swinging over to lash out at Ron before returning to Henry again. It sounded something like this: “This guy is a bum, Henry! He works at a job for a few months and then he quits. He’s so useless—he never sticks to anything. Why don’t you do something with your life, for Chrissake, Ron? Why don’t you go back to school and make something of yourself? Tell him, Henry! He’s got no brains! He can’t take care of his family, he’s so useless! He should go kill himself in a car accident—at least the insurance money would take care of us. That’s all you’re good for, Ron, is killing yourself! Why don’t you…” and so on. As my colleague’s ears were assaulted by the verbal barrage, he would look over at his friend who kept his eyes on the food, saying almost nothing through the entire diatribe, except to offer the occasional shrug and say, “What do you want from me, anyway?” Then his shoulders would sag and he would relapse into silent eating.
What struck Henry so powerfully was the amazing familiarity of the situation. There were times throughout his childhood and adolescence when he would find himself sitting at the dining table with Ron while Ron’s mother complained to Henry about how useless her son was. It was almost as if Betty had gone to acting school solely to learn how to play the part of Ron’s mother—that’s how uncanny the similarity was between the two most important women in Ron’s life. (Henry pointed out to me that Betty is a really wonderful, caring, loving woman—at that juncture in their relationship, just like in all Power Struggles, Ron was doing his best to bring out the worst in her, and Betty the worst in him.)
Henry told me that his friend had a very painful childhood, and that he had developed a very poor sense of himself as a man. It was obvious to all of Ron’s friends that his mother treated him horrendously. So why would he turn around and marry someone who would verbally abuse him like his mother had? And why would Betty marry someone so unsatisfying to her? I’m sure that when Ron and Betty first met, Betty wasn’t thinking, “Man, what a loser this guy is—I hope he asks me to marry him!” And I’m equally sure Ron wasn’t thinking, “Geez, who let this horrible nag onto the planet? Lucky I found her before someone else snatched her up!” They only began to see these unattractive aspects of each other as they got closer. But as ugly as that scene at the dinner table might appear to the observer, Ronald was actually being given a second chance. As a child, he had no idea how to respond to his mother’s dissatisfaction, and so could only suffer her criticism and reinforce beliefs about himself accordingly. Now, with Betty, life was giving him the opportunity to find a healthier response, one that could heal both his and Betty’s wounds. These opportunities for healing the past are offered to all relationships, whether the people involved take advantage of them or not. Who says there’s no going back?
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KILLED BY FRIENDLY FIRE
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“Yet each man kills the thing he loves….”
—Oscar Wilde
In relationships, the process of moving emotionally closer to someone and sharing more of our life with that other person causes us to re-experience past wounds that we would normally be blissfully unaware of. For
example, a bank teller might get angry at me and call me a jerk. My wife might get angry at me and call me a jerk. Which one is likely to hurt more? I have hardly any emotional connection with the teller, whereas the connection I have with my wife is as strong, or almost as strong, as the one I had with my mother when I was a child. My wife calling me a jerk could more effectively trigger a subconscious memory of a time when my mother lost patience with me and expressed it in a way that hurt my feelings. So any pain associated with my mother can be accessed, and forgiven if I so choose, through my relationship with my wife. My job is to remember, whenever I am tempted to get into a fight, that most, if not all, of the pain I’m feeling is not caused by my wife. It comes from the past.
Therefore when I fight with my wife, I’m only making things worse for myself. I’m compounding my misery by not dealing directly with the pain from my past, and I am doing my best to make my wife miserable by insisting that she is the sole cause of my pain. Together we are choosing to distract ourselves by focusing on some crucial issue, such as why I think the sofa should be at a sixty-degree angle rather than at the forty-five she is so stubbornly insisting upon. The most important point to remember when you find yourself being sucked into some form of Power Struggle is this: I am never upset for the reasons I think I am. To expand this point, let me give you some examples of what kinds of subjects have been used to fuel a Power Struggle. Among them are arguments I have witnessed professionally, socially, and within my own marriage:
• A couple arguing over the high school their children will attend. (The children were not even in the first grade.)
• Two lovers dispute concerning who the next president of the United States should be (neither of them votes, and only one is American).
• A couple heatedly debating the angle at which a sofa should be placed.20
• A couple on the brink of divorce because of a disagreement about whether the bird they saw was a crow or a raven (to date there is still no resolution concerning this vital topic).
• Two old friends of over twenty years refuse to talk to each other because one owes the other a hundred dollars.
• A married pair, unsure of what they are arguing about, but taking an opposite position to whatever the other one says (e.g.: “Snow is white.” “No it isn’t! Haven’t you ever heard of yellow snow?”).
To me, what makes Power Struggle even more painful is that the fight is between two people who truly care for each other. It’s just that the surfacing pain is so great that it blinds us to the love that, in our heart of hearts, we long to share with each other. If we could find a way to resolve our pain, we would certainly discover how wonderful we really are, and what a monumental mistake it was to let the traumas of our past determine what we believe we are in the present.
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CAUSE AND EFFECT
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“All choices have a consequence. Unfortunately some consequences appear long after you’ve forgotten the choice you made.”
—Anonymous
A close relationship can heal all the old wounds that affect our intelligence, creativity, personality, sexuality, money, life direction, self-expression and passion.21 But it often involves re-experiencing the traumas that influenced these aspects of our lives in the first place. And there’s the rub! Instead of feeling our pain and being responsible for it, we often try to make our partners responsible for hurting us. Then we try to control their behaviour so they won’t do it again.
Let’s look at an example of this idea.
John and Mary have been common-law spouses for a little over a year, living cozily in a one-bedroom apartment. Everything is going fairly well except that John is becoming increasingly bothered by Mary’s tendency to leave the bathroom in a mess. At first he mentions these concerns to her in a light, humorous, manner. Even though they are considerate of each other in most other cases, Mary keeps forgetting to tidy up the bathroom after she uses it. Finally things come to a boil one morning when John discovers a messy bathroom and charges back out to the kitchen where Mary is making her breakfast. This dialogue follows:
John: For Chrissake Mary, how many times do I have to ask you to clean up the bathroom when you’re through?
Mary: I’m so sorry—I was going to clean it, but you were in such a hurry to get in the shower that I forgot.
John: Well how much time does it take to put a toothpaste cap on, or to put your makeup in the cabinet?
Mary: I said I was sorry, John. I just didn’t have enough time.
John: Well why don’t you get up five minutes earlier? I mean, hell, it only takes five bloody minutes to…
Mary: I’m lucky I can get up at all, with you playing that damn stereo full blast until three in the morning!
John: Oh come on, it wasn’t three in the morning—and you’re just trying to change the subject!
Mary: I am not!
John: You are so!
Mary: You always want everything your way, John. I live here too, you know? You can be really selfish sometimes!
John: Hey, I’m not the one who leaves my stuff all over the apartment. You’ve turned the bathroom into a bloody obstacle course!
Mary: Oh, you’re just exaggerating!
John: I am not!
Mary: You are too!
John: Am not
Mary: Are too!22
Now how are John and Mary going to get through this one? It seems pretty obvious to observers that they just need to compromise a little bit and everyone would be happy. However, I have found that the problem with compromises is twofold. First of all, it does not completely satisfy either side, but leaves both sides feeling that they have settled for less than they truly wanted. The other problem, and I believe the more serious one, is that the issues which relate directly to the pain the situation triggered, never get addressed. In the case of John and Mary, the real reason they are fighting will not be given the chance to be resolved even if John turns down his stereo and Mary cleans up the bathroom. The truth is, neither John nor Mary are upset for the reasons that they think they are. To see what the real issue is, let’s have a look at some of John and Mary’s life experiences.
When Mary was growing up, she was under the discipline of strict parents who decreed that children should be invisible. If Dad found a toy lying around, he would throw it in the garbage and take away all her toys for a month. Her mother always punished her if she did not put her clothes away. And if she left the toothpaste cap off the tube, it sent both her parents into a fit of angry lecturing. As she continued to suffer these reactions from her parents, Mary began to firmly believe that she was nothing more than a bother to them, and the less evidence of her presence in their lives the better. After a while Mary came to believe that her parents wished that she were dead, or at the very least invisible.
Thus after a year of intimate cohabitation, without being aware of it, Mary was re-experiencing the childhood pain of being told to be invisible—that her presence, or any sign of her existence, was a burden to her parents. Now John was giving her the same message, calling up all the old pain from her past. Mentioning the toothpaste cap was a painfully effective way to uncover old subconscious bruises; even though his criticism of one of her habits may have hurt her feelings, it would never have had such an impact on her if not for the history of criticism she endured in her youth, and the way she interpreted her parents’ behaviour as denying her importance to them. Most of her pain was old pain.
When John was young, he felt like he was constantly ignored by his parents and siblings. At dinner table conversations, his opinions seemed to go unheard. During discussions about where the family should go for vacations, his input was never requested and twice his birthday was almost completely forgotten. In a counselling session, he once claimed that he nearly died of a burst appendix before his parents took his sobbing complaints seriously enou
gh to get him to a hospital. As far as John could remember, no matter how he tried to express himself—be it by tantrum, pouting, or even extreme illness—his family would either respond with irritation, or not at all.
Now living with Mary, John was being told once again that what he wanted was of very little relevance. He told Mary many times that a clean bathroom was important to him, but her repeated messiness was telling him that what he wanted was unimportant, and thus John himself was unimportant. He might as well not exist. Her mess broke through a dam that was holding back a flood of old childhood hurt.
When they met and fell in love, John and Mary both thought they had left the past and all its pain behind them. But that morning, both of them felt that they were once again being hurt for expressing their presence in the world. They were both in great pain, but instead of recognizing it and expressing it for what it was, they remained ignorant of the real issue and took their pain out on each other by fighting. This is such a widely accepted form of behaviour that most of us believe it is an intrinsic part of relationship; that’s the way it is and that’s the way it will always be.
What is really happening in the above scenario is that John and Mary are trying to control their old hurt by controlling each other’s behaviours. Just like my childhood experience of squirming uncomfortably on a hard chair rather than facing the horrible taste of canned carrots, many couples would rather squirm around in the discomfort of Power Struggle than face the pain inside them. In my work as a counsellor, I have seen that one of the biggest relationship problems is our attitude towards pain. Every intimate relationship has its difficulties; every time these difficulties arise, there is some emotional pain accompanying it. It is this pain that causes the arguments, criticisms or accusations. If we are experiencing a difficulty in our relationships and we indulge in our anger, we will push each other away. After a while the difficulty disappears, and we become more peaceful again. But it is an uneasy truce, because in order to make the discomfort disappear we had to push our partner away. Allowing them to get closer might well be equated with inviting more pain.