BP 190
I once journeyed with a man who had grown up with a father who was, at his best, absent, and at his worst, highly critical. Let’s call this man Sam. No matter how hard Sam tried, he could never do anything well enough to elicit praise from his father. The only responses he received were silence or correction in the form of comments like, “You have to at least try,” or “Your grandmother could throw a spiral better than that,” or “you don’t have the sense you were born with.”
Probably the worst thing his father did was to compare Sam to other neighborhood boys, always praising the accomplishments of the other boys over Sam’s efforts.
I’m not sure if Sam made the choice consciously, but years later he married a woman who had also grown up in a critical environment and was also starving for positive affirmation from her father. What worked early on for these two newly weds was for Margie to be a cheerleader for Sam who would then appreciate his wife for her affirmations of him that he had never received from his father.
They valued each other for valuing each other.
All went well for a season.
Eventually, it struck Margie that Sam was loving her not for who she was but for her consistent cheerleading for him, especially in the domain of his work performance as a construction foreman. As long as she was positive about everything Sam did, he valued her. As soon as she had a need that might interfere with her praise for him, Sam would withdraw his valuing presence.
Sam was so hungry for praise and so incapable of receiving what felt like criticism (even if it was constructive) that he simply could not hear his wife’s needs especially if they were voiced with some frustration. He was so averse to anything that felt like an attack or a withdrawal of praise that he immediately built up the same wall he had constructed against his father’s presence years earlier. At these times, Margie felt abandoned and rejected, a familiar childhood experience for her.
Margie wanted to be loved for who she was as a person, not valued for what she did for her husband’s fragile ego. Predictably, she soon felt unloved, then frustrated, then angry, then resentful, and then finally came the death blow to their marriage, namely, her contempt for Sam. Contempt is a killer according to Dr. John Gottman. Margie the Cheerleader became Margie the Despiser of her husband.
Margie eventually realized that her husband was not a man capable of seeing others but a boy looking for praise and admiration, something he should have received from his parents. Margie could not admire a boy. She needed a man to protect her, sacrifice for her, love her, and be aware of her needs even when they were different than what Sam needed.
She came to hate the boy who was using her to feel like a man.
Is there a clear culprit in this dysfunctional marriage? Margie stood out immediately in couples therapy as the one at fault because her contempt was palpable, toxic, sometimes stone cold and other times fiery hot. She was clearly a bitter woman whose initial admiration for her husband’s vocational achievements atrophied into a corrosive chemical element akin to battery acid.
Sam, however, was just as culpable. He was very young emotionally and was far quicker to point out his wife’s bitterness than to identify his selfish need to always be affirmed to the exclusion of the needs of others. (He did a better job loving his two children, but always found it much easier to love them when they were positive toward him.) His ability to give to others was always contingent on having received something positive from them first.
Clearly, both Sam and Margie came into the marriage with significant past wounds that would eventually blow up the marriage (another reminder of the importance of healing past wounds before you get married or at least very early after the wedding!!). There was no doubt about that. What was more uncertain was if the husband and wife possessed or would seek to acquire the tools and ego strength and love of God to deal with the predictable fracture in their marriage when it arrived.
Sadly, they did not. Toting their past hurts and needs into marriage hoping to somehow be healed by their spouse became its executioner.
Noah and Marie are a second couple that looked for their long-lost parental needs in their spouse.
Noah grew up with a mother with clear borderline personality disorder characteristics. She had grown up with a very critical and even annihilating mother (do we see a theme in these four men and women?) and, unfortunately, as we say in the world of psychotherapy, had identified with the aggressor. In other words, she had taken on her mother’s attributes and so was highly negative to her husband or children if they touched any of the emotional wounds afflicted on her by her mother.
Noah felt unloved by his hyper-fragile mother who was quick to blame him for his anger and “meanness” instead of owning the fact that her heart was covered with 3rd degree emotional burns that were daily touched by those around her. She could never admit she was wrong but found massive wrong in those around her.
A complicating factor for Noah was that his father never confronted his angry, blaming wife but retreated from the marriage and from Noah and instead immersed himself in his job. He was not present to help his son navigate the waters of boyhood or manhood. Noah never received the blessing from his father that would launch him forward onto the great seas of life with confidence and strength.
Noah was drawn to anyone who would smile at him, be strong for him, give him the leadership he had missed from his weak mother and his absent father. He also was highly anxious around anyone (especially females) who he perceived were critical and angry. He swore to himself that he would find a wife someday who would be mature and would never criticize him.
Uh oh. Look out Marie.
Marie’s father had succumbed to the flirtations of a manipulative, younger woman who, compared to his controlling and critical wife, appeared to be a pleasant escape from a marriage that was more a strait jacket than a loving union. The subsequent truth that her father actually jumped from the proverbial frying pan into the fire is not a development we will address here.
The point in this blog is that Marie was devastated by her father’s abandonment of the family. She felt down in her bones and believed in her eight-year-old mind that her father had not just rejected his wife but had rejected her because she was somehow unlovable. By age nine, she had begun dreaming of meeting her future husband who would be the opposite of her unfaithful father. He would be the perfect man who would never hurt or abandon the eight-year-old girl’s heart.
Talk about a set up for her future husband. Buckle up, Noah.
When Marie and Noah married each other, emotionally they were two children living under the same roof. They unrealistically expected their spouse to undo the wounds of their fathers (and mothers) by anticipating that they would find in each other the perfect presence for the wounded, untrusting, and angry child who lived deep within both of them.
Do you remember the old adage that if the first two people in your life are deeply hurtful and disappointing, you will expect the next primary person (your spouse) to be doggone near perfect. And if he or she is not (which they won’t be), you will transfer onto your spouse all your rage and poor coping skills carried over from childhood (unless you have done the wise and responsible journey to heal from the past).
Unsurprisingly, it didn’t take long for both Noah and Marie to shatter each other’s idealistic and demanding expectations. When Marie felt unloved by Noah, she told him he was a loser (thus transferring her anger meant for her father toward her husband). When Noah experienced his wife’s scathing disrespect, he either became passive aggressive or withdrew from her, triggering in Marie massive abandonment and rejection feelings from her childhood.
When Marie continued to malign her husband for his imperfect presence for the eight-year-old girl still inside her, Noah shockingly fulfilled his wife’s most terrible fear by leaving her for a while, the very coping skill he had developed to escape from the annihilation of his mother.
What a tangled web we weave.
What is the main truth to be learned as we consider these two marriages?
The primary strong recommendation here is for all you young men and women not to expect your spouse to heal your father (or mother) wound by giving you everything your father could not. The supplies required from a father are different in kind from those your spouse can give you. For one, parents (ideally) do not expect reciprocity from their child. The father is there to give to the child, not to receive affirmation from his offspring. The world is upside down whenever a father (or mother) looks to his children for praise and evidence that he is a good man. In marriage, there is reciprocity, mutual love and giving.
DTFL quoted Alice Miller in a past post when she wrote about the narcissistic father or mother: “There was a mother [father] who at the core was emotionally insecure, and who depended for her narcissistic equilibrium on the child behaving, or acting, in a particular way. This mother was able to hide her insecurity from the child and from everyone else behind a hard, authoritarian, and even totalitarian façade” (The Drama of the Gifted Child, p. 8).
In other words, only deprived or dysfunctional parents need peer mutuality from their children. Healthy families have fathers and mothers who exist for their children, not to have their own childhood wounds healed by their vigilant, co-dependent, caretaking kids. In marriage, however, mutuality is healthy and necessary because there are two adults in the equation, not an adult and a child.
So, if children who were significantly wounded by their father (or mother) enter marriage expecting to receive perfect presence from their spouse before they will give anything in return (something I call conditional valuing—there is no unconditional love in it), they will soon despise their spouse as the selfish and withholding one. These immature adults expect their spouse to be their parent, not their peer. So many marriage problems occur due to this unhealthy parental expectation of the spouse.
You sin against your spouse and violate God’s purpose for marriage when you expect your spouse to be the parent you never had (or in some cases, the good parent you did have and demand on replicating in your marriage). Marriage gets a bit tricky here since the husband is indeed called out by Jesus to be who He was to the church–leading and sacrificing. Such a calling could sound parental. However, Jesus is not asking the husband to be the parent of his wife. Jesus is calling the husband to be the sacrificing peer leader and a mutual servant with his wife.
When you as a man expect your wife to be perfectly affirming (unlike your absent, passive, or abusive father), you may be looking for the blessing from her that only a man can bestow on you. She will not respect you because you are valuing her for what she can give you instead of loving her for who she is. She might even perceive that you are using her, treating her like a mother, something neither of you will find workable or attractive in the end.
What man wants to be married to his mother and what woman wants to be married to her son?
When you as a woman look for your husband to complete you or be present for you perfectly, you may be looking for the loving giant that only a father can be to his little girl. Your husband will not desire to remain close to you because you are controlling, angry, and disrespectful. He will soon reject you emotionally or physically because he knows you don’t love him as much as you are forcing him to heal the wounds you experienced from an abandoning or neglectful father.
What woman wants to be married to her father and what man wants to be married to his daughter?
So, men, if you missed a present father or had an abusive one, do not seek out a strong woman to give you what Noah and Sam were demanding from their wives. Your wives won’t respect you for it. And women, if you missed a loving, protective parent, do not make the mistake that Marie and Margie made, namely, anticipating that when you get married, your husband will seamlessly and perfectly fulfill that need. Your husband will experience you as critical, angry, and disrespectful when he fails to meet your expectations.
You both may repeat the dynamic that you grew up with in your family of origin.
What is the solution? Both husband and wife must ideally heal the past before you get married, or you will bring other people into the marriage with you—your mothers and fathers.
Men, remember 1 Corinthians 16:13-14: ”Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.” You cannot love your wife until you are standing firm with Jesus and being strong for your family through His strength (not through your wife’s). Men, absolutely seek out the heavenly Father, a male mentor, and a group of men with whom you will grow as a man, healing past wounds and receiving the blessing from other men (above all, from God Himself).
You need men who will encourage you but who will also call you out firmly and lovingly as needed even if you are sensitized to criticism due to your childhood. When your wife is the designated encourager to make up for the past, she will eventually disrespect you, and when she becomes increasingly critical of you due to your childish expectations, you will pull away from her and the marriage will spiral down toward divorce.
Women, remember that you also need a heavenly Father and people in your life today who will assist you to heal the wounds of the past instead of anticipating that your husband will restore you through his perfect presence. You need to not only work through the sufferings of your past that might undermine your ability to trust, but you also will need the safe presence of a wise mentor and a group of healthy (not perfect) women. These individuals will love you and help you see how you likely have childhood coping skills that may erode your marriage relationship due to bitterness and disrespect.
There is so much more to be said in this matter, but for now simply remember to deal with unfinished business from your family of origin now. Don’t wait. Don’t expect it to magically get better in marriage. Heal today. Look inside. Choose to grow. Identify your faulty and selfish coping mechanisms that will carry forward unless you ruthlessly challenge them. Postpone the wedding date if you must. Saying your vows heals nothing.
So, look inside first. Human nature blames others. Jesus teaches us to take the log out of our own eye as a place to begin. Always seek God first. Then look for the people with skin on in the body of Christ who will help heal your father and/or mother wounds. Spare your spouse the impossible job of being the perfect parent.
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” ~ John 13:34-35
“So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant” ~ Philippians 2:1-6
