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Relationships
In Families, Blood May Be Thicker . . . but Skin Is Thinner
Does it feel as though your spouse is constantly criticizing you?
Posted February 22, 2009
Part 3 of "Why Criticism Is So Hard to Take"
Originally, I was going to call this post, "I'm Always Getting Criticized: The Trials of Marriage." But I opted for the more "picturesque" title above. The main thing is that as a therapist I so frequently hear from couples that "she's always criticizing me!"--or "he's always criticizing me!" And in fact, if your relationship is sagging under the weight of daily squabbling or bickering, it's likely that each of you is experiencing the other as constantly judging or second-guessing you.
Why is it that we often feel so compelled to find fault with our mate?--and to be considerably more vocal about our frustrations with them than with others whose relationship to us is actually far less important to protect? Additionally, why do so many of us feel uneasy when we observe our mate's saying or doing something different from the way we'd handle it? And just where did the expression, "My way or the highway" come from anyway? Are these words perhaps only an exaggeration of the impatience or intolerance so many of us display when we experience our partner's behavior as significantly deviating from our own?
My thirty plus years doing therapy suggests that our way of handling things (maybe even our way of being in the world) can easily feel invalidated when it's not explicitly supported or confirmed by our significant other. It may well be that anything our mate does that runs counter to our innate preferences or environmental conditioning somehow feels more unsettling, more threatening, to us than we'd care to admit--whether to ourselves or our partner.
Experiencing our spouse as out of synch with us can also feel like a betrayal, for in the pre-marital, romantic phase of our relationship he or she probably seemed a lot more like us than in our post-marital, domestic one. During courtship, once our future mate endeared themselves to us--and we decided that he or she was "the one"--we typically sought (however unconsciously) to hide or disguise our differences in order to endear ourselves to them. To varying degrees, we're probably all guilty of acting out of character to optimize the chances that this special (even "idyllic") union will last indefinitely. For, subjectively, what could be more important for us to protect than this most highly prized state of consciousness: the incredibly nurturant "warm fuzzies" of being in love. Certainly on a biochemical level very little else can so activate the pleasure circuits of our brain.
Consequently, we both work industriously at maintaining this enamored state--though at the time it hardly seems like work at all. As though effortlessly, we take enormous care not to say or do anything that might give offense or possibly alienate the object of our affection. If something about the other begins to frustrate us, we're likely to de-focus from it, intuiting that obsessing on it or bringing it to the other's attention might endanger the security of a relationship that has come to feel invaluable. And it may be precisely in our both neglecting--and concealing--important differences from each other that we're able to experience that wondrous feeling of finally having found our soul mate, the one person with whom we can live in perfect harmony.
But although our relationship may not be entirely detached from reality, it's still most vulnerable to disillusionment--and for reasons most of us typically remain oblivious to. In the paragraphs that follow, I'll try to suggest something of the hidden dynamics that make marriages so susceptible to divisive criticism--as well as the inevitability of such criticism. And doing so will require an abrupt shift of gears.
Japan's culture is generally regarded as highly conformist. It's hardly coincidental that their language has a word for "different" that's the same as their word for "wrong." But as regards the well-nigh universal pressure of parental dictates, it could be argued that the U.S. is hardly free of such conformity. For even in this far more individualistic culture, as children we're generally made to feel bad or wrong whenever we do something contrary to (i.e., different from) our parents' wishes. And since gaining our parents' approval is intimately connected to experiencing ourselves as safely bonded to them, in many ways we learned to be who we are today through our repeated endeavors either to please them, or at least to avoid being criticized or rejected by them. Thus by the time we're adults, our standards and values--as well as many of our personal characteristics--have been shaped predominantly by how we adapted to our parents' preferences. Even if we chose (say as adolescents) to rebel against their conformist pressures, our adult beliefs and ideals may still be understood as largely in reaction to theirs.
The main point here is that, either way, witnessing others talk and behave in ways that conflict with our own highly conditioned behaviors can be experienced as deeply invalidating. To whatever degree, such contrasting behavior can hardly help but make us feel uncomfortable--bringing up never fully resolved issues about our acceptability, security, or individuality.
Take this reactive tendency, multiply it by maybe five-fold, and you probably have something close to the woeful psychodynamic of marriage. For one thing, after we marry, our spouse is no longer the (quasi-idealized) person we courted--but, in fact, family. They may not exactly be "blood relatives," but our deep emotional ties to them yet make them feel that way. And so our original sensitivity to criticism--harking back to our desperate need to develop a secure attachment bond to our parents by assiduously avoiding their disapproval (see Part 1 and Part 2 of my earlier posts on this subject)--returns in full force to put at risk our emotional equilibrium as adults. As we were highly vulnerable to criticism as children, now our mate (who, unconsciously, is perceived not just as our partner but as both our parents "morphed" into one) has the power to render us newly susceptible to negative judgment.
But the situation is actually worse than this. In a sense, something about the very institution of marriage can make our skin doubly thin. To begin with, to the extent that it feels threatening to our present-day attachment bond, our spouse's criticism can easily induce in us considerable anxiety. Beyond that, however, when our spouse's behavior reminds us (however unconsciously) of what we as children got criticized for, we may feel driven to criticize them. Which is to say that when our partner behaves in a way that somehow is associated deep inside us with the loss of parental support, we may feel compelled to "dis-identify" from them. And typically, we do so through criticism--which is likely to push their own buttons, since all of us (to whatever degree) need to feel safe and secure in our relationships and are easily discomfited when this bond suddenly feels under attack.
In the moment, held in the grip of ancient emotional survival programs, we feel obliged to disown our present-day bond in order to protect our historic one. That part of our child self which still feels insecure can rise to the surface when--subliminally--we've just linked our spouse's behavior to our parents' disapproval. Needing, therefore, to emphatically disavow such behavior as representing any part of us, we're actually driven to repudiate our own mate. Because that relationship of old may never have felt entirely secure, we're compelled-even in the present day (when our parents might in fact be deceased)--to safeguard this original bond, which on a primal level may still be experienced as excruciatingly "real."
Moreover, when our spouse criticizes us--perhaps because our differences make them feel anxious and invalidated--we're likely to criticize them right back. And we may argue with such animation that it's as though we've brought the past into the present and, almost literally, are fighting for our lives (i.e., our vital union with our parents). Within both of us, such quarrels are unconsciously undertaken--and continued--to vindicate ourselves to those original caretakers now so firmly ensconced in our heads. And each of us shares the same unrecognized motive of trying to stave off the fears originally evoked by our caretakers' disapproval--which back then (with our primitive, absolutist thinking) felt like the withdrawal of all the love and support we were so dependent on them to provide.
To conclude, if our present-day relationship is to thrive, we need to find ways of better understanding and accommodating the inevitable differences underlying our conflicts. In brief, we must learn not to take each other so personally. Realizing what's going on beneath the surface of our discontent can go a long way toward ending once and for all the recycling conflicts that may be sabotaging our best efforts to make our relationship work.
Here are links to other parts of this post "Why Criticism Is So Hard to Take: Part 1 and Part 2.
