An ambitious, career-oriented type A man and a nurturing type B
"good mother" find each other. The wife is supposed to nurture her
husband's type A-ness away; she becomes the couple's stress absorber. He
goes to work, she creates a life. What happens, however, is the couple
ends up feeling separated from each other. Eventually, she starts to fear
her nurturing and absorbing may be promoting the very thing that hurts
their intimacy -- his TYABP.
A pitfall of this relationship is the husband becomes bored with
his "unexciting" wife. He sees her as having a limited capacity. Of
course, this is usually just a perception; he's not seeing her clearly.
The wife, in turn, doesn't feel understood by her husband. Both partners
are at risk for extramarital affairs.
A common example of this pattern is the traditional relationship
often established between doctors and work-at-home wives. The husband is
a dedicated practitioner whose extra-familial involvements -- work,
community activities, avocational interests -- bring prestige to the
family. During the couple's early child-rearing years, this situation
works -- despite high levels of stress -- because there's an appreciation
for each partner's contribution. For a while, the wife takes pride in her
caretaking role.
The husband tends to bask in his position of respect and power, at
least initially, and the marriage revolves around his professional
demands, emotional needs, fatigue, preferences, and priorities. He hopes
that his wife's infinite love will provide him with peace and contentment
and counterbalance his drive. The implicit understanding is that once he
reaches his goals, he'll relax and join his wife in a more nurturing
lifestyle.
But the husband doesn't change, and eventually the couple ends up
leading separate lives. When the wife's not attending to her kids' needs,
she's pursuing interests that don't involve her husband. Meanwhile, he
continues to build a life outside the home, his self-focused style
leaving him feeling disconnected from his spouse. Depleted, the wife
winds up feeling angry and hurt that her husband no longer values her
contribution. And he wonders where his all-nurturing wife went.
Pleasing Others, Even If It Kills Me/Them
This relationship revolves around a type A caretaker who wants to
be all things to all people. In addition to her career or leadership role
in the community, she's a hands-on parent. Her underlying hope is that
her spouse will validate and nurture her. Often her husband -- if he's
type A -- gets lost in his own "big" life; he tends to "forget" how
high-powered she is. Often, she forgets, too. The way this couple lives
results in fatigue.
We counseled one 40-year-old woman who was depressed and complained
that her husband pretended she couldn't think very well. When her husband
commented that she seemed to have lost herself in some way, she began
remembering how years earlier, when they first met, she'd been named
Teacher of the Year for two years running. In those days, she said, she
knew who she was and what she was doing, and it was her husband who was
floundering. "I'm the one who got him to shape up and encouraged him to
finish his education. Along the way, he developed a solid sense of self
but forgot who I was. I put my career aside to focus on home and hearth.
And now, he's forgotten about the parts of me that don't have to do with
being a mother or homemaker."
A variation of this is Pleasing Others, Even If It Kills Them. In
this scenario, relationship and family life are driven by a type A
woman's excessive need for validation: perfect children, recognition of
her work, and a thriving social life.
A woman who came to see us several months after having become a
stay-at-home mom couldn't understand why she was always exhausted. It
turned out that the woman, a former marketing director, was approaching
her new roles with the same fervor she had her career. She wanted her
kids to be perfect, she was consumed by volunteer work, and she was
pushing her husband, a lawyer, to be more ambitious. As a result, the
intimacy and affection she'd had with her husband and kids was
dissipating. Her husband began avoiding her, and her kids were subtly
sending a message that said, "I don't want to grow up to be like you. You
don't enjoy life."
The pitfalls for couples stuck in this pattern are exhaustion, lack
of validation, and loss of interpersonal connection.
Ready, Set, Go!
Two exceptionally competitive, hard-driving type As marry with the
hope that they will stimulate each other and have it all. Their
underlying wish, however, is that one will teach the other to calm down.
They create high-stress lives, then resent the complexity. Eventually
their relationship becomes a suffering and enduring contest. They become
competitive about everything: who can be the most nurturing parent, who
can make the most money, whose headache is worse. But as their lives go
on, they don't want to struggle anymore.
These are the kind of people who say they want to chuck everything
and move to the mountains and buy a country store. The trouble is that
given their high-poweredness the store will undoubtedly be a success and,
a year later, one or both of them will be trying to figure out how to
franchise it!
Chaotic Desperation
Tags:
babies,
emotional closeness,
everyday life,
hectic lives,
human endeavor,
intimate relationship,
long term relationships,
love life,
marriage,
potholes,
romances,
stress,
stresses,
type A behavior,
type B,
walk down the aisle,
whisper,
work
