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Authors: Ph.D Harville Hendrix

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THE POWER STRUGGLE
I can’t live either without you or with you.
—OVID
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
WHEN DOES ROMANTIC love end and the power struggle begin? As in all attempts to map human behavior, it’s impossible to define precisely when the stages occur. But for most couples there is a noticeable change in the relationship about the time they make a definite commitment to each other. Once they say, “Let’s get married” or “Let’s get engaged” or “Let’s be primary lovers, even though we still see other people,” the pleasing, inviting dance of courtship draws to a close, and lovers begin to want not only the expectation of need fulfillment—the illusion that was responsible for the euphoria of romantic love—but the reality as well. Suddenly it isn’t enough that their partners be affectionate, clever, attractive, and fun-loving. They now have to satisfy a whole hierarchy of expectations, some conscious, but most hidden from their awareness.
What are some of these expectations? As soon as they start living together, most people assume that their mates will conform to a very specific but rarely expressed set of behaviors. For example, a man may expect his new bride to do the housework, cook the meals, shop for groceries, wash the clothes, arrange the social events, take on the role of family nurse, and buy everyday household items. In addition to these traditional role expectations, he has a long list of expectations that are peculiar to his own upbringing. On Sundays, for example, he may expect his wife to cook a special breakfast while he reads the Sunday paper, and then join him for a leisurely stroll in the park. This is the way his parents spent their Sundays together, and the day wouldn’t feel “right” unless it echoed these dominant chords.
Meanwhile, his wife has an equally long, and perhaps conflicting, set of expectations. In addition to wanting her husband to be responsible for all the “manly” chores, such as taking care of the car, paying the bills, figuring the taxes, mowing the lawn, and overseeing minor and major home repairs, she may expect him to help with the cooking, shopping, and laundry as well. Then, she, too, has expectations that reflect her particular upbringing. An ideal Sunday for her may include going to church, going out to a restaurant for brunch, and spending the afternoon visiting relatives. Since neither of them shared expectations before getting married, these could develop into a significant source of tension.
But far more important than these conscious or semiconscious expectations are the unconscious ones people bring to their love relationships, and the primary one is that their partners, the ones they’ve winnowed out of long lists of candidates, are going to love them the way their parents never did.
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Their partners are going to do it all—satisfy unmet childhood needs, complement lost-self parts, nurture them in a consistent and loving way, and be eternally available to them. These are the
same expectations that fueled the excitement of romantic love, but now there is less of a desire to reciprocate. After all, people don’t enter into relationships to take care of their partner’s needs—they do so to further their own psychological and emotional growth. Once a relationship seems secure, a psychological switch is triggered deep in the old brain that activates all the latent infantile wishes. It is as if the wounded child within takes over. Says the child, “I’ve been good enough long enough to ensure that this person is going to stay around for a while. Let’s see the payoff.” So the two partners take a big step back from each other and wait for the dividends of togetherness to start rolling in.
The change may be abrupt or gradual, but at some point they wake up to discover that they’ve migrated to a colder climate. Now there are fewer back rubs; shorter, more cryptic love notes; less lovemaking. Their partners have stopped looking for excuses to be with them and are spending more time reading, watching television, socializing with friends, or just plain daydreaming.
THIS BLEAK RATIONING of love is partly the result of a disturbing revelation. At some point in their relationships, most people discover that some aspect of their partners’ character, a personality trait they once thought highly desirable, is beginning to annoy them. A man finds that his wife’s conservative nature—one of the primary reasons he was attracted to her—is now making her seem staid and prudish. A woman discovers that her partner’s tendency to be quiet and withdrawn—a trait she once thought was an indication of a spiritual nature—is making her feel lonely and isolated. A man finds his partner’s impulsive, outgoing personality—once so refreshing—is now making him feel invaded.
What is the explanation for these disturbing reversals? If you will recall, in our desire to be spiritually whole—to be as complete and perfect as God had intended—we chose partners who made up for the parts of our being that were split off in childhood. We each found someone who compensated for our lack of creativity or inability to think or to feel. Through union with our partners, we felt connected to a hidden part of ourselves. At first this arrangement seemed to work. But as time passed, our partners’ complementary traits began to stir up feelings and attributes in us that were still taboo.
To see how this drama plays out in real life, let’s continue with the story of John, the successful businessman from the previous chapter who was spending time with Patricia but desperately wanting to be with Cheryl. John came in for a therapy session one day in an ebullient mood. This time he didn’t spend the customary fifteen minutes talking about his software business; he plunged right in and told me his good news. Cheryl, in a rare, conciliatory gesture, had decided to let him move in with her for a six-month trial period. This was the answer to his dreams.
John’s euphoria lasted several months, during which time he decided that he no longer needed therapy. (As is true for most of my clients, he had little interest in working on his problems as long as he was feeling happy.) But one day he called and asked for an appointment. When he came in he reported that he and Cheryl were beginning to have difficulties. One of the things he mentioned was that Cheryl’s vibrant personality was beginning to grate on him. He could tolerate her “emotional excesses” (as he now described them) when she directed them at others—for example, when she was berating a clerk or talking excitedly with a girlfriend—but when she beamed her high-voltage emotions at him, he had a fleeting sensation of panic. “I feel like my brain is about to short-circuit,” he told me.
The reason John was feeling so anxious around Cheryl was that she was beginning to stir his own repressed anger. At first,
being around her had given him the comforting illusion that he was in touch with his feelings. But after a time her free emotional state stimulated his own feelings to such a degree that they threatened to emerge. His superego, the part of his brain that was carrying out his mother’s injunction against anger, sent out frantic error messages warning him to keep his repression intact. John tried to reduce his anxiety by dampening Cheryl’s personality: “For God’s sake, Cheryl! Don’t be so emotional! You’re behaving like an idiot.” And “Calm down, and then talk to me. I can’t understand a word that you’re saying.” The very character trait that had once been so seductive to him was now perceived by his own brain as a threat to his existence.
In a similar way, there probably came a time in your relationship when you began to wish that your partner was less sexy or less fun-loving or less inventive—somehow less whole—because these qualities called forth repressed qualities in you, and your hidden self was threatening to make an unscheduled reappearance. When it did, it ran headlong into the internal police force that had severed those self parts in the first place, and you were filled with anxiety. This was such an unpleasant experience that you may have tried to repress your partner the same way your parents repressed you. In an effort to protect your existence, you were trying to diminish your partner’s reality.
Your growing discomfort with your partner’s complementary traits was only part of the rapidly brewing storm. Your partner’s negative traits, the ones that you had resolutely denied during the romantic phase of your relationship, were also beginning to come into sharp focus. Suddenly your partner’s chronic depression or drinking problem or stinginess or lack of responsibility became evident. This gave you the sickening realization that not only were you not going to get your needs met, but your partner was destined to wound you in the very same way you were wounded in childhood!
I MADE THIS painful discovery early on in my first marriage—in fact, on the second day of our honeymoon. My new bride and I were spending a week on an island off the shores of South Georgia. We were walking along the beach. I was poking through piles of driftwood, and my wife was down by the water, two or three hundred feet in front of me, head down, totally absorbed in the task of looking for shells. I happened to glance up and saw her silhouetted against the rising sun. To this day I can remember exactly what she looked like. She had her back to me. She was wearing black shorts and a red top. Her shoulder-length blonde hair was blowing in the wind. As I gazed at her, I noticed a slight droop to her shoulders. At that instant I felt a jolt of anxiety. This was immediately followed by the sick, sinking realization that I had married the wrong person. It was a strong feeling—I had to check an impulse to run back to the car and drive away. While I was standing there transfixed, my wife turned to me, waved, and smiled. I felt as though I were awakening from a nightmare. I waved back and rushed up to meet her.
It was as if a veil had lifted for a moment, and then dropped back down. It took me years to figure out exactly what had happened. The connection was finally made one day while I was in therapy. My therapist was guiding me through a regression exercise, an exercise designed to take me back to my childhood, and with his help I was able to picture myself playing on the floor in my mother’s kitchen. I was only one or two years old. I visualized my mother busy at the stove, with her back to me. This must have been a typical scene, because I was her ninth child, and she probably spent four or five hours a day in the kitchen, cooking and cleaning. I could see my mother’s back quite clearly. She was standing at the stove wearing a print
dress, and she had apron strings tied around her waist. She was tired and depressed and her shoulders sagged.
As an adult viewing this imaginary scene, I was flooded with the awareness that she didn’t have any physical or emotional energy for me. My father had died only a few months before from a head injury, and she was left alone with her grief, very little money, and a houseful of children to look after. I felt like an unwanted child. Not that my mother didn’t love me—she was an affectionate, caring woman—but she was physically and emotionally worn out. She was so wrapped up in her own worries, she could only look after me mechanically.
This was a new discovery for me. Until that point in my therapy, I had attributed my anxiety to the fact that both my parents had died by the time I was six years old. But that day I learned that my feelings of abandonment had started much earlier. In my regressed state, I called to my mother, but she would not answer. I sat in the psychiatrist’s office and cried in deep pain. Then I had a second revelation. I suddenly realized what had happened to me that day on my honeymoon. When I had seen my wife so far away from me, so absorbed in herself, and with the same slump to her shoulders, I had had the eerie premonition that my marriage was going to be a repetition of my early days with a depressed mother. The emptiness of the early days of my childhood was going to continue. It had been too much for me to absorb, and I had quickly drawn the curtain.
At some point in their love relationships, most people discover that something about their partners awakens strong memories of childhood pain. Sometimes the parallels are obvious. A young woman with abusive parents, for example, may discover a violent streak in her boyfriend. A man with alcoholic parents may wake up to find himself married to an incipient alcoholic or drug addict. A woman who grew up in a contorted Oedipal relationship with her parents may be enraged to discover that her partner is having a secret affair.
But the similarities between parents and partners are often subtler. This was the case for Bernard and Kathryn, clients of mine who had been married for twenty-eight years. Bernard was a manager of a public utility; Kathryn was going back to school to get a degree in counseling. They had three children and one grandchild.
One evening as they walked into my office for their weekly appointment, they both looked downtrodden and defeated. I guessed right away that they had recently had one of the “core�� scenes, a fight that they had had over and over again throughout the last twenty years of their marriage in countless subtle variations. Most couples have such a core scene, a fight they have so many times that they know their parts by heart.
They told me that the fight had taken place while they were decorating the house for Christmas. Bernard had been characteristically quiet, absorbed in his own thoughts, and Kathryn had been issuing orders. All three of their children and their spouses were coming to stay for the holidays, and Kathryn wanted everything to be perfect. Bernard dutifully performed whatever task was asked of him and went on pondering his own thoughts. After an hour or so, his silence became deafening to Kathryn, and she tried to involve him in a conversation about their children. He volunteered only a few sentences. She became more and more annoyed with him. Finally she lashed out at him for the way he was hanging the lights on the tree: “Why don’t you pay attention to what you’re doing? I may as well do it myself!” Bernard let her tirade wash over him, then calmly turned and walked out the back door.
Kathryn went to the kitchen window. As she watched the garage door close behind Bernard, she was filled with two primal emotions: fear and anger. Anger was uppermost: this time she wasn’t going to let him retreat. She marched out after him and threw open the garage door. “For God’s sake! Why don’t you help me? You’re always locked up in the garage. You never help me when I need you. What’s the matter with you?”
To a therapist, Kathryn’s use of global words like “always” and “never” would have been a clear indication that she was in a regressive state. Young children have a hard time distinguishing between past and present; whatever is happening at this moment has always happened in the past and will always happen in the future. But Bernard was not a therapist. He was her beleaguered husband, and he had just escaped from a torrent of criticism in the hopes of finding peace and quiet. His old brain responded to her attack—which in reality was nothing more than an adult version of the infant’s cry—with a counterattack. “Maybe I’d help you more if you weren’t so bitchy!” he retorted. “You’re always hounding me. Can’t I be alone for five minutes?” He seethed with anger, and Kathryn burst into tears.
As an outsider, I could easily see the step-by-step evolution of their arguments. The trigger for the fights was almost always the fact that Bernard was withdrawn. Trying to get some response from him, Kathryn would nag. Bernard would pay no attention to her until he had had all that he could stand; then he would go to another room to try to find peace and quiet. At that point Kathryn would explode in rage and Bernard would respond in kind. Finally Kathryn would burst into tears.
When they were through recounting this latest episode, I asked Kathryn to remember exactly how she had felt working on the holiday preparations with her unresponsive husband. She sat quietly for a moment, struggling to recall her feelings. Then she looked up at me with a puzzled expression and said, “I felt scared. It scared me that he wouldn’t talk to me.” For the first time she realized that she was actually afraid of his silences.
“What were you afraid of, Kathryn?” I asked her.
She answered quickly. “I was afraid he was going to hurt me.”
Bernard looked over at her with wide-open eyes. I said, “Let’s check this out with Bernard. Bernard, were you standing in the kitchen thinking about hurting Kathryn?”
“Hurting her?” he said, his surprise evident. “Hurting her?! I have never touched her in my life. I was just thinking my own
thoughts. If I remember correctly, I was worrying about the fact that we would need to put a new roof on the house in the spring because of the leak. And I was probably thinking about something at the office.”
“Really?” asked Kathryn. “You weren’t mad at me that day?”
“No! Sure, I got annoyed when you kept criticizing me, but all I wanted to do was get away. I kept thinking about how nice it would be to be out in the garage working on my own projects instead of being nagged at all the time.”
“Well, the way I see it, you’re always angry at me, and eventually you can’t hold it in any longer, so you blow up.”
“I do blow up, but it takes about two or three hours of your nagging before I do! Anybody would get angry at that. I don’t start out being angry at you.”
This checked out with me. Bernard did not seem to be a violent man.
“Kathryn,” I said to her, “for a moment I want you to close your eyes and think some more about what makes you afraid when Bernard doesn’t respond to you.”
After half a minute she replied, “I don’t know. It’s just the silence.” She was having a hard time coming up with additional insight.
“Well, stay with that thought for a moment and try to recall something about silence in your childhood. Close your eyes.”
The room was quiet. Then Kathryn gasped and opened her eyes. “It’s my father! I’ve never seen that before. He used to sink into a deep depression and not talk for weeks. Whenever he was in one of those moods, I knew not to bother him because, if I did one thing wrong, he would hit me. When I saw him start to sink into a depression, I would panic. I knew that I was in for a hard time.”
Kathryn’s father and her husband shared an important personality trait—they both were prone to long periods of silence—and this undoubtedly was one of the reasons that Kathryn was attracted to Bernard. She had chosen someone who resembled
her father so she could resolve her childhood fear of being abused. She didn’t marry a talkative, outgoing person—she found someone who had her father’s negative traits so she could re-create her childhood and continue her struggle for consistent love and kindness. But Bernard resembled Kathryn’s father only superficially. He was silent because he was an introvert, not because he was depressed and given to anger. It was Kathryn’s constant nagging that provoked her husband.
I have found this phenomenon in many of my clients. They react to their partners as if they were carbon copies of their parents, even though not all of their traits are the same. In their compelling need to work on unfinished business, they project the missing parental traits onto their partners. Then, by treating their partners as if they actually had these traits, they manage to provoke the desired response. A colleague of mine claims that people either “pick imago matches, project them, or provoke them.”

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