CAN THIS MARRIAGE BE SAVED?
Ladies Home Journal On-Line
“It’s clear that Lydia and Richard have vastly different ways of handling stress and expressing anger, which is causing many painful, unproductive arguments and jeopardizing their marriage in general,” note the Moschettas. “In a healthy marriage, partners find ways to deal with their differences instead of viewing each conversation as a battle to be won or lost. Lydia and Richard see each other as adversaries, not allies. She attacks; he retreats. They have a lot to learn.
However, we didn’t share their pessimistic outlook. In fact, there are signs that this couple really cares about each other. And despite Lydia's railing and posturing, she still hopes that Richard will finally understand what she’s going through.
Lydia’s childhood was an unhappy one. Criticized and demeaned by both parents, she grew up lacking in self-esteem, and part of her didn’t believe she was worthy of being treated any better. According to Lydia’s recollections, her father was verbally abusive to her mother, who not only endured the abuse but turned around and unleashed her anger and frustration on her daughters. Lydia absorbed the message that this is what marriage is all about. Also like her mother, Lydia stuck to the role society scripted for her.
However, after a year in individual counseling, Lydia made a 180-degree turn away from the submissive, docile wife she had been. Though she feels happier with herself in general, she still blames Richard for their marital problems and accuses him of being stubborn and incommunicative. She's now voicing her feelings, but, not surprisingly, the way she's doing it is causing Richard to see her as the aggressor always on the attack. If Lydia wants Richard to talk to her, she can’t frighten him away.
It doesn't help, however, that Richard is easily frightened. Introverted and socially ill at ease, he’s the epitome of the passive, female-dominated male. He was never encouraged as a child to talk about his feelings or voice an opinion, and he hardly spoke during the first few sessions.
For years, Richard had been smothered by an overprotective mother broken-hearted over the death of her elder son. Reluctant to do anything that might further upset her, he fell into a pattern of passive acceptance of her behavior, however outrageous it may be. Time and again, he excused her intrusiveness, and expected Lydia to do the same.
When faced with conflict, Richard clams up, slips into an icy, sulky silence and tunes out Lydia. Though he insists he does this because he feels he is no match for his articulate wife, his withdrawal is, in its own way, just as provocative and controlling as Lydia’s escalating criticisms and temper tantrums. The unspoken message is, “You’re not important. I don’t really care about your feelings and needs.”
Not surprisingly, the more Richard refuses to enter into any discussion with her, the more infuriated Lydia becomes. She doesn’t even realize that her criticisms have grown more intense, her tone mocking and contemptuous.”
“In our first session, we told Lydia that while we respected her concerns and believed many of her complaints were legitimate, the way she is trying to communicate with her husband and achieve her goals is definitely not productive.
'You can be assertive without attacking,’ we told her. ‘Unless you make your point in a tender way, he’ll never hear you.’ In our sessions, we stopped Lydia whenever she overstepped her boundaries. She has learned to slow up and turn down the volume, to refrain from interrupting her husband when he speaks, to monitor the tone and loudness of her voice and edit out hurtful comments. When Richard saw that Lydia was making a real effort to change her combative nature, he felt safe enough to open up and express some of his own opinions and needs to her.
As we noted earlier, Lydia has a tendency to talk about one issue, then throws other, often unrelated topics into the mix as the conversation becomes more heated. Understandably, Richard feels flooded by this tidal wave of rebukes. Now, however, Lydia is learning to stay focused on the present and deal with one issue at a time, and Richard feels strong enough to say, 'Lydia, you’re doing it again. I can’t listen when you dump one criticism on top of another.' This puts her on notice and she immediately puts on the verbal brakes.
Richard is also working on the obstacles to healthy communication that he can control. We told him, ‘Though it may be unpleasant for you to listen to Lydia when she’s upset, you have to give her time to vent her feelings. You can’t retreat into silence or leave the room. Try to stay with her and listen empathetically when something bothers her instead of telling her she’s exaggerating or getting worked up over nothing.’
We also told Richard that even though it may seem trivial to him, the fact that he never mentions his wife’s name in conversations with his mother is insulting and hurtful to her. ‘Just because it’s not a big deal to you doesn’t mean it’s not important to her. You can’t keep up the pretense that Lydia doesn’t exist,’ we said. Switching to ‘Lydia and I’ or ‘we’ is a small gesture, but one that means a lot to Lydia.
Together, Lydia and Richard have made progress. First, they made a pact that they would never go to bed angry—which means they have to stick with an issue until they resolve it. Then, as Lydia is learning to back off and drop her guard, Richard is moving front and center when it comes to discipline. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to take responsibility for the discipline,’ he explained at one point. ‘I just want to handle it my own way.’ Now that Lydia is giving her husband more latitude, she’s finding, much to her delight, that he’s rising to the challenge.
The last point that needed to be resolved is their bickering over money. Lydia solved that problem herself: She found a job in a crafts and needlepoint shop at the mall and now uses her salary to buy what she wants.
We now see Richard and Lydia periodically to catch up on their progress. 'If there’s one thing I learned from all this,’ Richard now says, ‘it’s that if you really want to, anyone can change. I hope it will no longer take a crisis to get us motivated.’ ”
Richard's Turn: Part One
Richard's Turn: Part Two
Richard's Turn: Part Three
