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A temporary white knight is someone who has been in high-functioning relationships but with the onset of some unusual stressors, such as the loss of a job or the illness or death of someone close, pursues an unhealthy rescuing relationship. Our use of the term "white knight syndrome" implies a chronic need to be the rescuer in intimate relationships. Temporary white knights do not demonstrate chronic rescuing and, technically, do not fall into our subtypes. However, we have seen a number of people who temporarily rescue in an unhealthy manner. The following case, a composite of many individuals, illustrates how someone who previously had healthy relationships, can temporarily fall into white knighthood.
Janice
Janice came to therapy confused by her eight-month-long extra-marital affair with her guitar teacher, Adam. Although she had been happily married to Jim for twenty-five years, she now believed that with Adam she had found "communication and true sharing." Janice's early history included the trauma of discovering her six-month-old sister lifeless in her crib when Janice was five years old. Subsequently, Janice's mother suffered a severe depression that required several hospitalizations. Because of her mother's physical and emotional absence from the home, Janice's nurturing paternal grandmother moved in with them. Her grandmother remained in the family home until she died, when Janice was in college.
Even with this difficult history, Janice had created a good marriage, and she described Jim as "a loving father and husband." They enjoyed similar activities, had two healthy sons, and treated each other with courtesy and respect. Janice was also an active member of her community and had developed educational and cultural programs for the school system.
Shortly before her fiftieth birthday, Janice experienced a series of stressors: her youngest son left for college; her father broke his hip but refused to move into an assisted-living situation; and Janice lost in a local school board election, which left her feeling betrayed by her community and wondering if she had done something wrong. It was during this period that Janice began her affair with Adam.
Adam had a history of at least one psychiatric hospitalization, struggled with recreational drug use, and often needed to borrow money to cover his rent. Janice recognized that Adam was unstable, and she knew that it would be foolish of her to give up all she had for someone like him. But Adam made her feel alive, and that feeling was addicting. She had tried to end the relationship several times and have just a platonic friendship with him, but that had never lasted. She hoped that therapy would help her to understand her own behavior and her "addiction," as well as help her discover a way to end the relationship.
Janice's early childhood contained significant losses, guilt, and shame. Although as an adult she intellectually understood that she was not responsible either for her sister's death or her mother's depression, as a child she had felt responsible, as children often do. Emotionally stabilized by her paternal grandmother's presence, she had married Jim and created a happy and fulfilled life. Indeed, one might question whether Janice would have become involved with Adam had it not been for this particular combination of stressors, which may have symbolically represented her childhood traumas.
The community's rejection of Janice for the school board position triggered her childhood feelings of shame and helplessness. Although, in reality, her son's departure for college represented her successful parenting, it stirred feelings of loss. The additional stress of taking care of her father may have triggered her childhood feelings of being powerless when she had tried to make her depressed mother happy. The thoughts about mortality that a fiftieth birthday can cause must have only added to her overtaxed psychological state. The illicit quality of her affair with Adam provided excitement and danger that took her away from her current troubles. His obvious pathology, which paralleled her mother's, provided Janice with the opportunity to rescue, to have the power to successfully "fix" someone in the present, where she had been unsuccessful in childhood.
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