The previous two posts, Lying is Developmental Parts One and Two, describe the normal development of two people who ended up in love and married to each other. Both had normal families. There was no extraordinary abuse or psychosis, yet what both learned was self-presentation more than self-revelation. This is a universal, developmental reality. We can’t stop our preference for self-presentation from happening. It is how human beings form a self and, by these inherent natural processes, certain predictable dilemmas occur in our marriages. (I know that was a mouthful. Read that last sentence again.)

It takes what is generally accepted as good practice in marriage counseling to disrupt this natural process and really screw us up! When we buy the popular message that what John and Jennifer have is a failure to communicate, we entirely lose the dilemma (and thereby the solution) at hand.

The dilemma has nothing to do with communication and everything to do with integrity and formation of self in relationship that results in self-revelation rather than self-presentation.  It is the difference between and adult and a child – a mature adult prefers self-revelation.

John and Jennifer had yet to reveal the truth about themselves. They kept it hidden, neatly packed away and after many years the truth had gotten lost in the fire and smoke of the blame game.

After a few sessions John revealed his need for freedom, his covert and rebellious tactics to get it, and he revealed for the first time that the freedom he was achieving by drinking and flirting was a pseudo freedom and not very satisfying.

After John settled down and stopped his subtle ‘screw you’ messages to Jennifer he showed up in a way he never had in his relationship. He stopped going for the mercy fucking she was offering and he let her know he wanted so much more. He let Jennifer see him and he stopped backing down when she would complain about what he wasn’t doing for her.

Finally, Jennifer started to get honest about the fact that she fundamentally mistrusts men and while she may have a fantasy of being taken care of by one, there’s no way she would ever put herself in that position. She acknowledged feeling angry with John in ways that were really unfair. She began to deal with herself and the ways she pushed not only John away, but most others as well. She found this self-confrontation freeing and she felt open to John for the first time in years. With pretense and blame gone, she could reveal herself for the first time in her life.

Again, this is not because John and Jennifer had abusive childhoods to get over. What is being described here is universal because it is how we develop as human beings. When there are abusive dynamics growing up, the process is just intensified. We dig our heels in harder. We more rigidly hold to our comfort zones, hidden behind a false self.

If things feel like they’re going wrong in your relationship, I invite you to reconsider. I’ve never met a couple where anything had gone wrong. Problems, even severe ones, in marriage are a fact of the institution. They are a fact of life. Formation of a self takes a lifetime and your marriage, by its very nature, will push you along that way.

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Part Two

In the previous post you learned about the fact that lying is developmental and an integral part of how we form (or sometimes don’t form) a self. You learned how a person can learn to present a self rather than reveal a self in close relationships. You learned specifically about a boy named Johnny who learned to present a self so well that he never really developed an authentic self, but rather a highly sophisticated façade. In today’s post I want to talk about the woman he married, Jennifer.

Jennifer

Jennifer also grew up learning to present a self more than learning to reveal a self. Her family was different from Johnny’s in that her experiments with lying went unchecked. There were no lectures or angry glares or tighter leashes. Her lies simply went unnoticed. Her dad was largely absent (working) and Mom was too (naïve, meek). Jennifer was the oldest of three, super responsible, and had the kind of special connection with Dad typical of oldest daughters. She admired his strength and independence and she longed to get his approval whenever he was home. He oscillated between holding her in high esteem and seeming annoyed that she was buzzing around his head wanting to interrupt his reading of the paper.  He would go between that and saying things like “You are so fantastic, amazing! I’m so proud of you!” or “You are the smartest girl!” Jennifer felt confused and frustrated by Dad’s changing temperament, but undeterred in her attempts to please him and get his attention. She just never quite felt she could do it.

What scientists understand now is that the brain is literally formed or changed via relationship interactions – particularly the more emotional ones.  Jennifer was forming a self in relationship, little by little, each time she had one of these confusing or frustrating interactions with Dad. Specifically, her brain was, in a sense, getting accustomed to a way of interacting with men. It rooted her in a stance that at once had her looking for approval while understanding that she wasn’t going to get it (and if she did it wasn’t going to be meaningful or it wasn’t going to last) – a stance that had her presenting a self that seemed to like men, while not revealing the part of her that fundamentally mistrusted them. (She didn’t just have these formative interactions with Dad. She had them with boyfriends, her first love, and her first boss.)

Low and behold Jennifer meets Johnny and the two fall in love. How? You may wonder after reading the last post. Ahhh…love is a many splendored thing. As my father used to say, “Love is blind, but the neighbors ain’t.” Johnny was fun and adventuresome. He didn’t mind taking risks and, actually, the financial risks he had taken as a young man had paid wonderful dividends. He was that strong, independent man that Jennifer had so idealized growing up. Jennifer was so sweet and she seemed to admire him and he really needed to know that he could be loved and that there was sweetness yet left in the world.

Everything went wonderfully for a while after they were married, but then the twins came along and Johnny lost his job.  Jennifer continued to do it all – to be the breadwinner, the super capable mom, and the social liaison for the family – the one Johnny could count on – but the sweet exterior began to melt away as she got more and more burned out and frustrated.

For Johnny’s part, being a stay at home dad was fulfilling – and he threw himself into the job – but he longed to work around adult types again. He missed Jennifer, her sweetness, her brightness, and the intimate sexual connection they used to share. He knew she was tired and had lost all interest in sex so he didn’t complain when it was quite clear she wanted him to get it over with.

As time went by, he noticed that she was more and more stressed and that she did little else other than complain about her work, the pressure, and more and more, the way he did things with their girls. He began to feel that no matter what he did it would never be enough for her. As more time went by, his frustration grew to anger and he began staying out late with friends, drinking more than he knew she’d like, and even beginning a flirtation with a woman he used to work with. The rebel had reemerged with a vengeance as Johnny began to abandon all else for that pseudo sense of freedom he knew as a teen, despite the mental, emotional, and spiritual cost he’d pay.

What’s the answer for this couple? Stay tuned for next week’s post Is This a Failure to Communicate?

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Johnny

Did you know that lying is developmental – an integral part of how we form and/or don’t form a self? Did you know that good lying is associated with higher intelligence in kids? The implications for our marriages are profound. If we take the above premise to be true (and there’s a lot of research to support it in more than one field of study!) that lying and various ways of stretching the truth are developmental – then lying is not only normal, it’s who we are. Perhaps you think I go too far. Let’s start at the beginning and I’ll tell you how I came to this.

Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman co-wrote a wonderful resource for parents called Nurture Shock in 2009. It is a compilation of research relevant to sticky parenting issues including talking about race with our children, bullying, “gifted” children, and lying. There is no moralizing or offering helpful hints for parents, but rather, straight talk about how kids’ development really works and how what we do as parents, educators, mentors, and politicians fits (or doesn’t fit) in. The chapter on lying was one of the most influential for me as a parent and even as a marriage counselor.

What I learned first was, as I stated above, that lying is developmental, (despite parents’ wishes to not believe so!) and it has everything to do with desire. Here’s what I mean.

Johnny is 6 years old and he’s on his way out the door to school. Dad asks Johnny, “Did you remember to turn your lights off?”

Johnny, who has no desire to walk back upstairs to turn off his lights and who wants to please his dad says, “Yes!”

Dad believes him and they walk out the door. Johnny develops the understanding that his father is capable of holding a false belief. Johnny gets his desire met (to not walk up the stairs and please Dad in the moment). Johnny gets his first successful experience with lying to get something he wants. Innocent. Harmless.

But Johnny has a problem. He just told a lie that he will get caught at. Dad will come home from dropping Johnny off at school and see that Johnny lied. Dad will talk to Johnny when he returns home. Johnny must learn to lie better to get what he wants next time. For example, when Johnny is 8, he begins to understand that Dad forgets things a lot – little things, like what Johnny wore to school the day before or whether he gave Johnny lunch money. Johnny has learned that not only can his father hold a false belief but he can also be forgetful – which can come in handy when Johnny wants to use it to get another desire met. The next time Dad asks Johnny why he lied about…whatever…Johnny can simply tell Dad that he did do X, Y, or Z and that Dad just forgot. (This works the first time. Dad isn’t a dummy.) And it goes on and on…and Johnny gets better and better at lying.

This is a highly sophisticated brain process, by the way. Johnny gets it down to such a science that he knows when to be quiet and fly under the radar and when and just how he needs to come up with a story. Girls, in particular, might use crying or weepiness to create a pity story to get out of responsibilities. The variations are endless.

Notice, though, that Johnny is not a “bad kid” nor is his father neglectful. These are just normal, unavoidable developments in the life of a human family. But let’s take a really reactive family wherein when Johnny is caught lying, Dad goes ballistic. He makes Johnny look in his eyes when he’s talking to him and he lectures and points his finger and has an angry face. Maybe he even spanks Johnny and sends him to bed without dinner. Johnny learns, by the time he’s 16, to turn his damn lights off and do all the other things Dad asks him to do around the house. He starts looking at least neutral to Dad, but when Dad isn’t around, Johnny drinks and drives, he has unprotected sex, and he does a little pot every now and then. But the work is done; Dad is fooled. Johnny has learned to paint a false picture of himself and in return he gets his desires met for rebellion, a sense of freedom, and even vindication or revenge. His emotional energy is wholly wrapped up in presentation – not revelation or discovery. He has to keep Dad guessing and at a distance.

If we look at this in terms of brain formation (which doesn’t end until late adolescence) what has been formed in Johnny is a strong desire for freedom – a pseudo freedom based in rebellion because he’ll take it no matter the cost to him or anyone else. These brain pathways don’t just melt away when Johnny falls in love later. He doesn’t just spontaneously learn to play it straight in his closer relationships. He might look like it for a while, especially if he’s in love, but when that phase passes, the reality of his level of development begins to become apparent.

What happens when Johnny gets married? Has his own kids? Stay tuned for the next post on Jennifer – the lucky woman who marries him!

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There are two major schools of thought on what makes a happy marriage. One that says the toxic environment is the issue and the other that says it’s the emotional immune system.

The most popular one (i.e. the one that’s easier to stomach) says that the toxic environment is the big problem and that individuals and couples must work to make their environments less chaotic and more loving. Prescriptions include having date nights, doing communication exercises, offering regular loving affirmations, and, oh yeah, doing your chores. There are also prescriptions for playing fair, being honest, and being kind. In addition, at its core, this view holds that we harm each other in marriage because of the toxic environments we grew up in.  A happy marriage (and successful marriage counseling) comes from having your partner help you heal your childhood wounds (and vice versa) by creating a more toxin free environment.

It has as its mantra: “Make me feel safe and valid and I’ll do the same for you”.

Here’s the flaw: Health cannot increase with a weak immune system. If safety is primary, immunity will not be challenged to get stronger and so the slightest exposure will make you ill. It’s the whole concept behind vaccination. In order for us to break out of our vicious cycles, we must get a little dirty.  On the whole, it’s not that we as individuals and married people and as a society have too much anxiety and “wounding”. It’s that we have too little ability to tolerate it.

This second major school of thought, and the one to which I adhere, can sometimes look the same as the first. Helping people find calm is integral – but we do it not by coddling them but by holding them more close to the fire that is their lack of integrity in crucial moments. This may sound harsh and, by all accounts, it is. But the people who go through it without running from it come out stronger, deeper, and more resilient. I can’t tell you the respect I have for my clients who show up, again and again, wanting to work through their own lesser natures to achieve something greater. It is truly a work of beauty and it inspires me to come to work everyday.

This paradigm holds that in order to have a robust mental health and a connected, meaningful relationship, individuals need to learn to hold their own, no matter what mean or disrespectful or base things our partners do.  It asks us to look straight at the ugliness of both our own and our partners’ behaviors.

It raises the question of narcissistic wounds in contrast to childhood wounds. Too often we look at our childhoods as having crippled us. But what if this is wrong? What if the theory (and yes, folks, it is a theory) of wounded children and a “shame based identity” are simply wrong? What if the bigger issue is resilience and our refusal at crucial moments to accept responsibility for ourselves and our actions?

This is not to say, by any means, that there aren’t terrible things that were said and done to us as children. Of course this happens and has a profound influence on our lives. But there are too many times that we remain stuck in the past via the very idea that was first proposed to help us – the idea that we are wounded or broken. When we focus on this, we kind of keep ourselves stuck in that mind set. We over focus on every little hurt and we lose ourselves in the process.  We start to think we are either too wounded to grow or too special to have to deal with our partners’ insults, craziness, or doubts about us. Our “wounds” actually become narcissistic rather than true.

What we also do with this idea is learn to deny the fact that what we learn most often from our parents is not how they wounded us. What we learn is exactly how to perpetuate the ugliness. It was not a fun day, as I’ve written about in other posts, when I could see my own narcissism and ability to hurt and pummel the ones closest to me. But it was the most important day of my life. I continue to learn.

I hope you found this post helpful! Let me know your thoughts! I love interacting with people here on the blog. Remember – you can respond anonymously!

As I began to read I was just a little bit excited that perhaps leaders in the marriage help industry were finally going to begin to approximate what real married people struggle with and to possibly offer some clarity or solution that made sense. However, the deeper I got into the article the crazier I felt!

The article starts out OK in acknowledging the normalcy of disenchantment in marriage. Terry Real, Boston family therapist, is quoted as saying “It’s an open secret of American culture that disillusionment exists. I go around the country speaking about ‘normal marital hatred’. Not one person has ever asked what I mean by that.” Good so far…

William Doherty, head of the marriage and family program at University of Minnesota, says that when we look to our spouses to make us happy, we engage in this compatibility (who’s the “right” person for me) based thought processes that make our differences “tragic and intolerable”. The point being that we shouldn’t look to our spouses to be the same as us in order to make us happy. We need to be responsible for our own happiness regardless of our differences.

Great…so how do we do that?

Here’s where I started feeling crazy. As a solution, Doherty suggests the following: “We tend not to think , ‘Maybe I’m not giving her what she needs.’ ‘Maybe he’s disgruntled because I’m not opening up to him’. Or, ‘Maybe he’s struggling in his relationship with other people.’ The more sophisticated question,” says Doherty, “is ‘In what ways are we failing to make one another happy?’”

Wait. I thought he just said that when we look to our spouses to make us happy we make our differences or incompatibilities tragic and intolerable. Now, he’s saying that it’s not about them making us happy but rather it’s about us making them happy. So the key to having a successful marriage is martyrdom.

What Doherty is saying can sound like good logic but in practice, when you’ve got a spouse who couldn’t be any less interested in “making you happy” you’re in a real bind.

In answer to this, Doherty concedes that spouses who aren’t interested in the least in making their partners happy are not great mate material. He says that “these are things that nobody should have to put up with in life.”

Wait…I thought this whole article was about how it’s not about having the right partner. But then he says it really is.

Well, Doherty says, these folks who don’t want to try are in a “completely different category”.

What category exactly is that?

I would put them in the category of folks who would really rather have their spouse change than themselves – which, in my experience, is every couple I’ve worked with in 14 years, every friend I’ve had, every family member, and, oh yeah, me too! Isn’t it the very nature of the beast that humans, by nature, kind of like homeostasis? We like change about as much as we like going to the dentist.

What category? Married human. So, who is this article written for?

I’ve worked with 100’s of couples where one spouse works to accommodate the “needs” of the other – very often for decades – and they are no closer to warming up their marriages than humans are to stopping the ice from melting in Antarctica.

What Doherty and the others are saying that makes sense is the fact that we are responsible for our own happiness. But the way they are suggesting we get there is fundamentally flawed and recreates the very problem they are trying to help solve. We do don’t become responsible for our own happiness in our marriages by asking what can we do or who can we become to make our spouses happy. Nor do we become responsible for our own happiness by “standing up for” what we want and need our partners to do as Terry Real suggests later in the article. We become responsible for our own happiness in marriage by…well…taking responsibility for ourselves.

What Growth in Marriage Looks Like

Taking responsibility for ourselves in marriage can be:

• Looking straight at our own dark sides without distorting them by saying we didn’t really mean to hurt our partners or by saying we may have been acting badly but it was all unconscious. (‘I didn’t really mean to not get treatment for my rapid ejaculation problem for the last 25 years. It was unconscious,’ is an example of a distortion.)
• Taking responsibility for ourselves can look like giving an ultimatum – this is what I mean by taking a firm stand regardless of whether your partner likes it – and doing it not because you’re angry or exhausted – but because you’re finally waking up. Things like: ‘That’s the last time I’m having sex with you because you ‘need’ it.’ Or ‘That’s the last time you are going to cheat on me and still be married to me.’ Or ‘That’s the last time I’m going to sit by quietly while you yell at the kids.’ There’s a great misconception about giving ultimatums. We think they are about doing something to our partners but really, they are about our own growth because for an ultimatum to mean anything at all the giver has to follow through. The most meaningful ultimatums in marriage are calm.

Doherty and the others propose that marriage is fundamentally an institution that is for meeting each others needs and achieving unconditional acceptance, etc. This idea is what sells.

But what happily married folks know more than anything is this: Marriage is not about making someone else happy or getting one’s needs met. Marriage is about growth and integrity and doing the right thing regardless of whether your spouse likes it. Very often, breaking the vicious cycle you are in requires just that – upsetting your spouse for the sake of your own integrity.

This approach includes the married couples that Doherty’s approach excludes. You can still be (or be married to) an addict, a cheater, a gambler, and whatever else and still have hope for your marriage.