When we describe the relationship between mother and infant, we understand that baby and mother are one. In that symbiotic relationship, there is merger. There are not two separate selves with their own subjectivities who are relating to one another. (One\u2019s subjectivity is the unique way in which we perceive our self and the world.) Our selves and subjectivities develop as we grow from infant to child to adolescent to adult.\u00a0 When two people come together with their subjectivities, they are relating as two different people. When the processes of separation and individuation have been problematic, the development of one\u2019s unique subjectivity is impaired. The ability to consider someone else\u2019s subjectivity is also not developed. This makes relationship difficult. When a self is undeveloped in a relationship, there is no \u201cother\u201d to connect to.<\/p>\n
Ken has been married for 15 months to Ellen. They met when he was finishing law school and she was teaching at the local high school. Ken loved her. She was smart and pretty and Ken was excited about making a life with her and starting a family.\u00a0 Ken was an optimist and nothing seemed more wonderful to him than the thought of their future together. It came as a shock when Ellen told Ken that she didn\u2019t want to be married to him any more. She said it was nothing about him, but that she was just not as happy as she wanted to be and thought they should end the marriage. This was what Ken told me when he came to see me for therapy.<\/p>\n
Ken came into my office. He was shaken. \u201cHow could I not know?\u201d \u201cHow could this happen?\u201d Ken felt numb. He was depressed and had trouble finding words to describe how he felt. It simply didn\u2019t make sense to him that there was anything wrong. But as Ken and I talked in therapy, it became apparent that Ken had not attended to many of the tensions and conflicts that were present in his marriage. Ken reflected that he had wished that Ellen had been more affectionate and more\u00a0 \u00a0interested in sex, and that they could have spent more time together. But he understood that they were different that way. He thought it wasn\u2019t important. He hadn\u2019t allowed himself to notice that his needs weren\u2019t being met.<\/p>\n
Ken was overwhelmingly surprised at Ellen\u2019s declaration of wishing to end the marriage. As he described his shock, he also began to recall that Ellen could be irritated or critical with him. But this hadn\u2019t troubled him. He told me he didn\u2019t mind her negative feelings and knew that everything was okay because they loved each other. Ken didn\u2019t experience Ellen as being unhappy with him. When Ellen would make comments like, \u201cI wish you wouldn\u2019t wear that\u201d or \u201cI can\u2019t believe you like those friends, they\u2019re so boring,\u201d Ken would just laugh it off. Her expressions of discontent didn\u2019t impact on him. He remembered Ellen getting angry when she wanted to travel for three weeks on vacation and Ken only wanted to travel for one week. But Ken wasn\u2019t concerned. They decided to postpone the vacation. Ken hadn\u2019t felt troubled or angry about this disagreement. He was also unaware of any negative impact he was having on Ellen. He couldn\u2019t recall Ellen expressing any problem or feeling that the marriage wasn\u2019t working for her. \u00a0Her complaints and criticisms were no big deal. Weren\u2019t they part of every marriage? They loved each other and everything was fine. Ken was able to tell me that it was very important to him to keep things on an even keel and avoid conflict. He considered that this might have affected his willingness to attend to the stresses that were part of the relationship.<\/p>\n
This brings us back to the question \u201cHow could I not know? It was clear that Ken was a person who needed everything to be okay. He didn\u2019t like to rock the boat or notice that the boat was rocking. If he could keep his perceptions of his external world conflict free, he would have no internal stresses to deal with. His attention was on his external world. He was vigilant in making sure everything was okay \u201cout there.\u201d As a result, there was no need to pay attention to his internal experience. He simply didn\u2019t have to notice if his needs weren\u2019t being met or if he felt anxious, dissatisfied or criticized. He was not accustomed to listening to himself.<\/p>\n
Ken was a person who never developed a clear voice of his own. He recalled that when he was growing up, if he had ideas that differed from his parents and tried to express them, he was typically\u00a0 told, with a very big smile from his parents, \u201cNo honey, don\u2019t be silly, you know it wouldn\u2019t be good for you to \u00a0play football, it\u2019s too dangerous.\u201d Or, when he was little, he recalled how he wanted to go to his friend\u2019s house for a sleepover and his parents would tell him how it is best to have friends come to his house. His parents didn\u2019t like when he put up a fuss. Since he believed that his parents obviously were right, and knew exactly what was good for him, there was no need to argue with them. Soon, he never had to think about what he wanted. He knew they would guide him in the right direction. In fact, it was his mom\u2019s idea that he would be a wonderful lawyer. He doesn\u2019t remember every having any other idea about what he would do. He knew from the time he was 8 or 9, that he would be a lawyer.<\/p>\n
Ken\u2019s experience of surprise that his marriage wasn\u2019t working is an example of what can happen when you haven\u2019t developed a unique, individual self. Ken had never really separated from his parents. He had not experienced the process of individuation where he had an opportunity to develop himself emotionally. This means that he didn\u2019t know what he felt about things. He was guided by the desire to avoid conflict and anxiety and to accommodate to what other people wanted. It wasn\u2019t that hard to avoid conflict if you didn\u2019t have strong feelings about what you wanted or needed. If you experience no feelings of stress and tension in the world, if you see the people around you as pleased and satisfied, if you have no demands or complaints, then you believe that you are successful and happy.<\/p>\n
Ellen\u2019s wish to end the marriage changed everything for Ken. He had not succeeded in keeping his world functioning smoothly. His wife, whom he only wanted to please, was not happy. Somehow, his way of being in the world: to go along, to be happy and accommodating, did not work with Ellen*. \u00a0I suspect that Ellen may have found it difficult to relate to Ken. He wasn\u2019t much of a person: he didn\u2019t express his own thoughts, desires, or opinions. Without feeling like your partner is a person, the lack of conflict is probably not enough to create satisfaction in a relationship.<\/p>\n
As Ken and I continued to talk about this in therapy, Ken began to understand how the absence of his personhood made relationship difficult. There was no \u201cother\u201d there for Ellen to relate to. It started to make emotional sense to Ken that he had avoided developing a unique self. It was scary to contemplate doing that \u2013 after all, some people might not like him or might disagree with him! Ken also realized he might not like someone or get angry too! We acknowledged we had a lot of work to do. But Ken was also excited about the prospect of growth and discovery. He hadn\u2019t lost the optimism that has always been a part of who he is.<\/p>\n
* The description of Ken\u2019s experience does not take into account Ellen\u2019s role in the marriage relationship.\u00a0 While both partners always have responsibility when a relationship fails, I am only focusing on Ken\u2019s issues.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When we describe the relationship between mother and infant, we understand that baby and mother are one. In that symbiotic relationship, there is merger. There are not two separate selves with their own subjectivities who are relating to one another. (One?s subjectivity is the unique way in which we perceive our self and the world.) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1777,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[231,31,387,431,382,434,450,25,41],"class_list":["post-8506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-anger","tag-psychotherapy-practice","tag-communication-problems","tag-emotional-overwhelm","tag-family-of-origin-issues","tag-identity-issues","tag-individuation","tag-psychotherapy-issues","tag-marriage-counseling-relationships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1777"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}