By Philip Chanin, Ed.D., ABPP, CGP
Board Certified Clinical Psychologist
Assistant Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
www.drphilchanin.com
philchanin@gmail.com

Terry Real states to the husband of a couple he is working with, “The fundamental thing is that, real or imagined, your wife experiences you as someone who, though you don’t mean her harm, is nevertheless in day-to-day life simply too selfish and in your own way too controlling to live with.” (p. 29).

Real poses an interesting question: “Is there some natural law of marital entropy? Some ubiquitous centripetal force pulling people away from one another? Of the thousands of statistics about marriage churned out by social research each year, the one I find most depressing is that in all couples, rich and poor, happy and unhappy, one of the most reliable predictors of marital dissatisfaction is simple longevity. The longer couples live together, the lower their reported contentment.” (p. 35). The wife Maggie is quoted as saying, “My feelings for Steve are like a balloon that’s been leaking air for years. I don’t hate my husband anymore. I did for a while. But I don’t even have that much left in me. I’m just out of air.” (p. 36)

Real addresses the question of who is most likely to initiate divorce: “The crisis starts with Maggie. It is women who buy magazines with headlines that promise “Ten things to do to keep your marriage hot.’ It is women who fuel the self-help industry. And it is women, by and large, who end their marriages. In fact, over 70 percent of divorces are initiated by wives. Most men, like Steve, are not dissatisfied with the status quo, and they are not dreadfully unhappy in their marriages; they are unhappy with their wives’ unhappiness. If their partners could just ease their complaints, most men tell me, they’d be fine. Wives like Maggie, by contrast, often live in a state of chronic resentment.” (pp. 37-38)

“’Explode or corrode’ is the expression I use with women clients. If a wife truly demands that her emotional needs be met, she may indeed put her marriage on the line. On the other hand, few women who back away from their needs manage to bury their resentment. Their unspoken anger spills out as occasional rage and everyday coolness. Feeling uncherished, many wives unwittingly shut down their own sense of pleasure, as well as their willingness to please their partners. And even if women try to accept and forgive, eventually passion drains away from the marriage along with their authenticity. (p. 53)

Real concludes Chapter 2 with another phrase to describe the dynamics of women’s resentment: “Most of the wives and girlfriends I’ve seen over the years fit into the more common pattern of ‘stash and blow.’ That’s a cycle wherein, after weeks of silence or mild sniping and coolness, one Thursday evening the man comes home an hour late, or he leaves the lid off the mayonnaise jar, and then four months of unspoken resentment comes flooding into the room…but there is a great difference between histrionics and clear, firm limits. Maggie ‘lost it’ from time to time, but until therapy, she was unwilling to ‘mean it.’” (p. 55)

I often say to the men in my office that psychological health for men involves the ability to bear uncomfortable feelings such as hurt, disappointment, and loss. In Chapter 3, “Bringing Men in from the Cold,” Real describes men’s difficulty with this: “For all of men’s vaunted stoicism in the face of physical distress, many of the men I have treated are babies when it comes to bearing emotional discomfort. Men are socialized to mistrust feelings, particularly difficult feelings, to experience them as threatening, overwhelming, and of little value. It takes a lot to teach men, as they say in AA, ‘Don’t just do something, stand there!’” (p. 61). Real concludes this chapter with a vignette: “’Where did you learn to demand so little?’ I ask Tracy in our first joint session. ‘And just where would I have learned to demand more?’ she returns… Tracy must drop the mantle of long-suffering self-abnegation and allow herself to become dangerous. She must risk fighting for her real needs and taking on her husband.” (p. 70)

Over the almost 50 years that I have practiced psychotherapy, I have so often been struck by how many men show up at my office for their first appointment only after their wives have said such things as “I want a divorce” or “You have to move out.” Universally these men have said to me, “I had no idea it was this bad or that she was so unhappy.” A few of these marriages survive, but most end in divorce.

A recent morning in my office is illustrative of this phenomenon of the bubbling resentment that so many wives carry. My first patient that morning was an early 40’s very attractive professional woman, with two young children. I have worked with her and her husband both individually and as a couple for the past five years. She stated to me, regarding her husband, “I don’t have good times with him. I feel zero connection with him—no attraction! Constant dread. I don’t even care to argue anymore. He’s not a nice person to me. I don’t want to try anymore. I don’t care enough about him to work on it.”

She continued, “The amount of stuff he brings into the house—piles and piles and piles. His car is disgusting inside. Overbuying. His inability to connect with me. To him, everyone else is ‘stupid.’ He thinks he’s better than everyone. It’s so isolating. It’s so difficult and exhausting to be with him. He’s not worth my energy anymore. His ups and downs are exhausting.” I ask if she is lonely, and she immediately responds “Yes!” She adds, “He can’t talk to me. I find him boring. We have nothing in common. I pick up after him. I don’t have mental space for a husband. I get ‘short’ with him. I’m trying to get him to make a doctor’s appointment. He’s not healthy and not exercising.”

She continued, “He’s so focused on shopping—thousands of dollars of junk. I don’t like him. He’s a selfish, large ego person. He’s sick again. He’s always sick, and still won’t see a doctor. All he does is sit and doodle on his Ipad, and he plays video games with our son. He’s teaching our kids the wrong things. It’s exhausting for me. I get tired of parenting a 3rd child. His lack of self-awareness is exhausting.”

My 2nd appointment that morning was with another very attractive mid-40’s wife, with a husband and three teenage children. I have worked with her and her husband individually and as a couple for the past five years. She says to me, “It’s why I don’t share anything—it doesn’t make a difference. I don’t ask him for help, because he puts it off on the children. I’m wanting him to anticipate my needs a little more. At what point do I have a partner? His identity is that he can make money. I keep stuffing down things I really want. He says the right things, but the needle doesn’t move.”

She continued, “I hold myself to a very high standard. I’m settling for this facet of my life. He drinks heavily—it really bothers me that he drinks seven nights a week. He is so argumentative. At a birthday dinner for my dad, he and my mother got into a political argument. It ruined the whole night. He was drinking.”

“My daughter said to me, ‘What are you going to do when I leave home for college? You only have kids in the house for three more years. If dad doesn’t change, maybe you and I can live together.” It’s her way of saying, ‘You deserve more.’ I’m mad that I’m is such a shitty position. Perpetual limbo—not that bad, but not that great. His inability to look at himself. I don’t think he sees himself. There are so many things I can’t say.”

She adds, “I stay in my compartmentalized ‘not sharing my feelings.’ If I open the lid…I still have kids at home. I feel like a flower that’s been put in the wrong sunlight and water. I can’t seem to bloom, and no one can figure out why. I’m in the wrong pot.”

Later that same morning I met with a mid-50’s housewife with whom I’ve worked, on and off, for 25 years. Regarding her husband, she said to me, “When has he asked what I’m interested in? He’s like a child. He’s not interacting with me. He wants to sit on the sofa or lie in the bed. I have a whole lot to take care of, and not much help. He slept until 1:00 pm on Mother’s Day. He slept until 2:00 pm the day before. He piles up glasses for me to wash. He acts like he was raised with servants.”

She continued, “He’s not listening to me. I’m not going to try to get attention from somebody who won’t give it to me. He doesn’t ask me where I’m going or where I’ve been. He has a very negative view of marital counseling. He says, ‘It doesn’t work.’ He doesn’t want to do the work. It’s too hard. He’s lazy! I’ve been trying for a long time. I don’t think he’s ever going to be happy. As long as I have no expectations, I’m not disappointed. I’m not hopeful that I can turn thing around, because it takes two people. He has no time for me or the dog. He puts all his efforts into his family. I guess there’s no effort left for me. He acts like he loves me. Then he doesn’t. It’s very confusing!

My work with these three patients in my office that morning was for me a striking example of what Terrence Real writes about—the lack of attention from their husbands, their husbands’ grandiosity, the being taken for granted, the bubbling resentment these wives feel, just under the surface. As my 2nd patient that morning so eloquently put it, “I feel like a flower that’s been put in the wrong sunlight and water. I can’t seem to bloom, and no one can figure out why. I’m in the wrong pot.”

In Chapter 7 of his book, Terry Real credits the marital research psychologist John Gottman for the following insight: “Gottman found that the most reliable predictor of long-term marital success was a pattern in which the wives, in non-offensive, clear ways, communicated their needs, and husbands willingly altered their behavior to meet them. Women, it turns out, want more than to be understood by their men; they want men to change.” (p. 117)

Regarding who initiates marital therapy, Real writes, “Men do not bring women into therapy. Some men may volunteer, but most are brought; they are what I call ‘wife-mandated referrals.’” (p. 120). He elaborates on the implications of this dynamic: “There is a fundamental asymmetry in their agenda for therapy. She is there because she is unhappy with him, and he is there because she is unhappy with him. Pretending that both partners are equally troubled, equally skilled, and equally motivated is simply a charade.” (pp. 124-125)

In Chapter 8, “Small Murders: How We Lose Passion,” Real outlines the dance that traps many couples in an escalating downward spiral: “In the feedback language of family therapy, diagnosing their choreography is elementary: the more Dan withdraws, the more critical and less loving Judy becomes; the colder and angrier Judy becomes, the more Dan withdraws. Wind up the machine and let it self-reinforce for twenty years and what you have at the end looks like two decent people trapped inside a dying relationship. So go love’s small murders, tiny, everyday escalations of injury reacted to by disconnection, causing more injury, until one fast-forwards to a couple whose initial passion has become so ‘encrusted’ with disappointment that they barely function as a couple any longer.” (p. 147)

Real speaks to the steady breakdown of a once passionate relationship: “Down deep, Judy doesn’t really want to give Dan pleasure, or, if she were honest, give him the satisfaction of giving her pleasure. She doesn’t want to give in to him at all; she’s too angry…The degeneration of connection that spans years is made up of thousands of tiny incidents of disconnection that span mere moments. In the absence of closeness, other feelings rush in to fill up the vacated space—anger, bitterness, despair.” (pp. 147-148)

Real elaborates on the steady erosion of passion: “Both partners long for passion, but they are both too hurt by the other—his selfishness, her shrewishness—to sustain it inside their marriage. Real passion requires surrender. And the last person Lester or Carolyn wants to surrender to at this juncture is one another…(their) story reveals a great deal about the deformation of desire under patriarchy. We first meet the couple in a state so devoid of passion that it approximates death. Is this merely the natural degenerative course of erotic intensity in any long-term relationship? Is passionate monogamy an oxymoron? It is, frankly, difficult to say with authority what healthy long-term sexuality looks like because the patriarchal context in which we all live is so profoundly inimical to health…patriarchy erodes the capacity to desire at all.” (p. 151)

Real describes his work with a couple he calls Rachel and Steve: “Rachel, like many wives, tries to ‘get’ her husband to change, never realizing that no one ever has the power to ‘get’ anyone to do anything in this world, short of outright coercion—least of all women in relationship to men. In her day, Rachel has reasoned, pleaded, threatened, and cajoled. She has spoken rationally and with wild desperation. Steve’s basic take on all this, although he is far too political to speak it, is that Rachel is a controlling witch… The bottom line is that people don’t like to be controlled. Sooner or later it becomes evident that efforts to restore that first blush of happiness through control are doomed, at which point the frustrated partner often moves from control into the next phase of the downward spiral, revenge.” (pp. 188-189)

Real continues this line of thought: “Failing in our attempt to ‘make the person better,’ we then lose all patience and just want to hurt them. Maybe this will get through, we might think. Beneath the impulse to hurt the other lies a deeper impulse to heal. Revenge is really a perverse form of communication, a twisted attempt to repair. We want to ‘make the person feel’ what they made us feel. Why? Though we rarely admit it, it is so that they might understand. So they might ‘get’ what they’ve done and feel remorse.” (p. 189)

Real has a rebuttal to the idea that good relationships make us happy: “The truth is that relationships do not make us happy. Relationships are the crucible in which we get to work on ourselves, in which we have the opportunity to stretch, grow, and, if we are fortunate, thrive…
Perfect intimacy, just like distant love, is an oxymoron. Just as healthy self-esteem evolves not from fleeing one’s humanity but by cherishing oneself in the face of our flaws, so, too, real intimacy is not an escape into unbroken harmony; it grows precisely in the difficult and yet endlessly creative clash of your imperfections with mine.” (p. 209)

Real closes Chapter 13 with a profound statement about grief in relationships, that I have shared with so many patients who have been struggling with whether or not to stay in their marriages: “There are things you get in a real relationship, and things you do not get. The character of the union is determined by how the two partners manage both aspects of love—the getting and the not getting. Moving into acceptance means moving into grief, without being a victim. You own your choice. ‘I am getting enough in this relationship,’ you say, ‘to make it worth my while to mourn the rest.’ And mourn we do. Real love is not for the faint of heart. What we miss in our relationships we truly miss. The pain of it does not, and need not, go away. It is like dealing with any loss. I object when people, especially therapists, talk about ‘resolving grief,’ as if grief could ever be so compliant. We humans don’t ‘resolve’ grief; we live with it.” (p. 224)

Real describes what it means to act relationally in the most difficult moments. “Anyone can behave with skill and integrity when their partner is doing the same. What makes us grown-ups is the capacity to remain skillful, even when our partners act like full-fledged lunatics… Staying seated in maturity when your partner is acting like a big baby is like riding uphill. In the blast of his yelling, withdrawal, distortions, you dig down deep, switch into low gear, and crank. It isn’t particularly pleasant. You may not even be sure how much longer you can keep going. But the exercise builds great relational muscles.” (p. 255)

Real concludes his book saying, “It is a tough, anti-relational world out there. The old terms have been with us for a long time. We should expect to get caught up in them sometimes, losing our way…The couple is this final phase (of healing) transitions from the acute work of restoring intimacy to the lifelong challenge of preserving it.” (p. 277). And I will return to Real’s earlier suggestion: “The truth is that relationships do not make us happy. Relationships are the crucible in which we get to work on ourselves, in which we have the opportunity to stretch, grow, and if we are fortunate, thrive.” (p. 209)