When You Can’t Be Content with Being Contented

When I am asked about members of couples who complain about a lack of affection from their long-term partners, in response I quote advice from columnist Amy Dickenson: "In relationships, if you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got."

As a psychiatrist, I had only limited experience doing marital therapy, but when I did some I was surprised when a wife got me alone and told me in a moment of candor that if we solved the problem they were both bitterly complaining about, he would divorce her! I started asking marital therapists I knew if they had ever heard anything like that in their practice, and most of them had. What? Solve their major irritant and the couple would only then break up?

These people continued to either put up with or needlessly inflict frustration on their partners. I eventually figured out that each member of the couple in this situation believes the other member of the couple really wants the relationship to continue in its current form, no matter how much they may complain about it.

Each member of the couple discounts their own compulsive behavior as indicating that they, too, want the current parameters of the relationship to continue. I found that it was because they are playing a role in their own family of origin that requires denying that they are playing that role. For a fuller explanation, see this post. In actuality, both members of the couple are highly ambivalent about making any changes. They really do hate the current situation, but this negative feeling dwarfs in comparison to their fear of having a better one — due to anticipated consequences in their respective families-of-origin.

Does this state of affairs also pertain to relationships that are chronically and significantly neglectful or abusive, or to those characterized by repeated infidelity, rather than just to those that are merely chronically frustrating? Absolutely. The ability of people to put up with ongoing pain in these situations is impressive. People who do that often act as if they are too stupid or evil to even know that this is what is going on, but those appearances, in my very unpopular opinion, are con jobs.

This can easily be seen in two letters recently published in the "Ask Annie" advice column:

6/4/21. Dear Annie: I have dated a guy for the last six years, always long-distance. I have loved this man with my whole heart. The issue is we have not met each other's families. He has never met my kids and doesn't even want to… There is always an excuse as to why he is unavailable. Yet he claims that he loves me. I just don't get it. I want to leave, but I care about him so much. What do I do? -- Mixed Signals

6/5/21. Dear Annie: I met a man about four years ago. We started dating a week after we met, upon his insistence. Well, after we were together a year, I found out that he was messaging with a girl online and had been for several months... I heard he cheated on me with someone from work who was in her early 20s, the same age as his daughter… he refused to admit he was guilty... I guess my question for you is, is it worth trying to keep this man in my life? I love him, and he says he loves me, but part of me is no longer in love with him… My heart is telling me to stay, but my mind is wanting me to tell him to get lost. -- Confused Girlfriend

Of course, in both cases, the advice columnist advised breaking off the relationship. In other cases, advice columnists have also recommended psychotherapy if the letter writer couldn’t seem to do that.

I submit that both of these letter writers already knew exactly what the advice columnist would recommend, but are just pretending that they can’t see the obvious. In fact, I might predict that they both are likely to stay in the relationship anyway, giving the partner even more evidence that that is what they really wanted to do all along. The way they word their letters practically begs for that ever-so-obvious advice.

If I were seeing them in therapy, hearing this would be the perfect opportunity for me to ask the Adlerian question: What would be the downside of being in a relationship with someone who was actually there for you?