Archive for October, 2005

Before leaving the subject of immaturity as an intra-personal factor in marital disorders it is well to remind ourselves that many of the ostensible causes of marital conflict are really outward manifestations of immaturity. Some of these may be considered at this point.

Intemperance in one form or another is a very common apparent cause of marital breakdown. Repeated drunkenness has been put forward as one of the most common of all causes by people who are mainly concerned with the more obvious destructive factors without looking far beneath the surface to deeper causes. Here again the boundary line between emotional immaturity and neurotic illness as a cause of alcoholism is vague and ill defined, and it is more of academic interest to the marriage counselor, because it is outside his province to attempt the cure of such intra-personal disorders. When it becomes a serious threat to a marriage, or indeed to any person’s health or general welfare, it is properly the concern of such professional help as given by psychiatrists, often helped by a period of institutional care and discipline, and such “mutual help” organizations as Alcoholics Anonymous. It may be the counselor’s task, when such troubles come to him in his marriage counseling, to try to persuade the alcoholic to submit himself for proper treatment, and to see the value and the possibility of relief.

The alcoholic may provide a very difficult problem in marriage counseling because he seldom has any idea of how his conduct appears to other people, and he may be so much at the mercy of his addiction that even with all the misery of “hangovers” he still has little motivation to undergo the difficult discipline involved in overcoming it. He seems to have little recognition of the suffering and distress imposed on his partner and of the intensity of his demands in many cases for sexual intercouse at the very time when his wife is likely to feel nauseated by his crude uncouth behavior. Beyond all of this there is often a further problem in the excessive spending of money on his alcoholic excesses, and in the growing neglect of his home and surroundings and the progressive loss of the respect of his growing children, even if by some good fortune he is able to keep a reasonable job.

Another form of intemperance which may have quite devastating effects on marriage is in the spending of money, particularly in response to what may be termed the gambling fever. When this gets hold of any man or woman it may bring the partnership to financial ruin unless some strong measures can be taken to restrain the spending, and unless some good psychotherapy can bring the underlying immaturity or neurotic trends to the surface so that they can be dealt with decisively. Here again such difficulties are generally best referred by the marriage counselor for appropriate psychotherapy, without which any apparent recovery is likely to be temporary.

The overspending of time may also be destructive to marriage. For example, one of the partners may become so addicted to some craze that his home and even his job are neglected, not to mention his personality. Almost any activity can become the object of overaddiction, even religious activities, and these addictions are also indications of either emotional immaturity or of definite emotional or mental disorder. They are seldom helped greatly by exhortation, but are more appropriately regarded as symptoms of deeper disorder which is best dealt with by psychotherapy.

Irresponsibility is also frequently suggested as a cause of marital disorder, but here again it is probably better regarded from the point of view of treatment as an outward and visible sign of immaturity. It is more within the field of counseling than the various forms of intemperance except when it is a symptom of deeper emotional disorder, such as the psychopathic personality, which will be referred to in due course. Some cases of irresponsibility can be helped over a period of time by the marriage partner, through repeated exposure of the irresponsible person to situations which demand responsibility, taking the risk of evasion of the challenge and being ready to accept some inconvenience when that happens.

Another form of immaturity may be described as spiritual immaturity, and it may also show itself in various ways. There may be a kind of spiritual overdependency, which looks on God as a kind of over-indulgent “father figure,” and prayer as a sort of spiritual Aladdin’s lamp. This kind of attitude may get by while things are going well, but it will not sustain anyone in times of great strain and trouble because it is unreal. If it is present in a husband it may encourage him to be quite irresponsible and to take no thought at all for the morrow instead of the “no anxious thought” suggested in the Sermon on the Mount. The more mature spiritual attitude is surely what has been described as “the higher carelessness,” doing all that one can, with all the help available, and then being content to leave the results-or apparent lack of result-in the “better hand than ours.”

In addition to this “magic and superstition” kind of spiritual immaturity, there is often a kind that shows itself in very rigid spiritual attitudes, which tries to insulate those who have it from “the world, the flesh and the devil,” and to keep them in an ivory tower of exclusiveness, completely out of harmony with the Founder of Christianity, who could dine with publicans and sinners, and deliberately make His way among all kinds of people. The most common difficulty that such attitudes produce in marriage is that many such rigid people are not content to apply their ideas to their own lives (which of course they have every right to do if they see fit), but also try to impose them upon other people, particularly upon their marriage partners, and upon the children, irrespective of the feelings of the others.

Some difficulties of this kind are brought about “when, some time after marriage, one of the partners undergoes a “conversion” to a rigid religious sect; and in tremendous religious zeal, and considerable blindness to the implications of what he is doing, makes it his most important life-work to “convert” his partner and the family. The inner blindness is generally so great, and the inner conviction so strong, that even the most skillful and patient counseling may find no point of entry into his rigid formulations. The other partner may well be helped to carry on with patience and tolerance, quietly standing firm on her own convictions and being willing to “agree to differ.”

There seems to be a rich field of specialized counseling on this spiritual level, so that marriage counselors can have some really competent spiritually equipped authorities to whom they may refer people with such problems, if they are willing to be referred. But this is by no means likely to happen in the rigid cases, and those in which an unreal religion happens to act as the opium of spiritually immature people.

In the first case Mary may find after marriage, to her increasing anxiety and despair, that she only has about one quarter of John’s loyalty and companionship, the rest being held grimly and determinedly by John’s mother, who “never approved of Mary anyhow,” and has so over-mothered John that he has never been able to cut himself loose from her apron-strings. Now he can’t decide anything without asking his mother’s opinion, and he accepts it and acts on it irrespective of Mary’s ideas or indeed of the true interests of their home and family. His mother has only to make a skillfully vague implication of her “disappointment” at John’s “ingratitude,” with the spoken or unspoken climax, “after all I’ve done for you,” and he is clay in her hands. If John is ever induced to do anything of which his mother might disapprove he may not even be able to tell her, “for fear it might upset her.”

In the second case it soon transpires that in the home John must get everything he wants, and when he wants it, or there’s trouble. If a meal is a few minutes late, or the toast is slightly burned, or the egg slightly overcooked, he gets angry even to the point of losing his temper. He expects Mary to be at his beck and call in everything, as his overattentive mother used to be, and when she doesn’t fulfill these insatiable demands he gets into a sulky or angry mood and accuses her of not loving him any more. At the same time he has given up all the little attentions and gestures of “love” which he used to offer before their marriage, and he doesn’t feel any responsibility to help Mary in any of her domestic activities, even when she is ill or tired. Mary may then have to face the extraordinary inconsistency of a husband who is a charming fellow to everyone outside the home, and a touchy, moody, demanding “spoiled child” in the home, who constantly indulges in temper tantrums and even physical violence when his demands are not fulfilled. She finds it impossible to understand, and her desperate efforts to cope with the emotional scenes only seem to make things worse.

This kind of situation occurs among otherwise good, generous, conscientious people. John’s mother would probably be astounded at any suggestion that she had over-mothered him. She, like many middle-aged mothers, may have ached to feel needed, and found little emotional inspiration from her own husband. She would then have unwittingly used her son to fill the aching emotional void, and failed to see that as he grew up he couldn’t continue to need her in quite the same way. So instead of turning her attention outward to some kind of social service in which she could continue to feel needed, she kept her claws fastened on John, who always had been affectionate to her and ready to do what she wanted. The same kind of situation of course can happen with an overdependent, demanding wife, who will never let her husband out of her grasp, and who turns on a temper tantrum whenever he goes against her demands in any way. Such a wife may well team up with her mother against her husband, who will feel very much “odd man out” or even the “villain” of the piece.

This demanding attitude may often express itself in demands for frequent sexual intercourse by the husband at all kinds of times of day or night, irrespective of his wife’s feelings or doings. This ignores the fact that love, of which intercourse is a deep symbol, is not properly something one can have on demand, but rather something one seeks to win from one’s partner. It may also express itself in the opposite kind of demand from the wife, that her husband must never have any sexual relations with her. The “spoiled child” of either sex will show this character in any aspect of personal relationships, including sex.

In some cases the marital disorder is triggered off by a change in one of the partners some years after the wedding. It may be that a demanding husband finds a wife whose dependency is expressed by willingly allowing him to dominate her. Then for some reason, possibly after the children come and she becomes more mature, or possibly because his demands become unbearable, she begins to stand firm on her own autonomy, and to resist his domination. It may be very difficult for such a husband to adapt himself to this change in the relationship, and it may need the skillful and patient help of a good marriage counselor to keep the marriage from breaking up if the husband fails to see and accept what is happening. A somewhat similar difficulty may happen when, some years after the wedding, the husband begins to grow to maturity much more rapidly than his wife. This may happen because of promotion in his job, with much greater challenges to him, the association with more mature people, and possibly travel in connection with his work. In such cases it may be very difficult for his wife to “keep up” with him, and it may demand more tact than he possesses to avoid making her feel inferior and inadequate. Here again the frank facing of such a situation and a genuine sustained attempt by both of them to meet it, possibly with the help of a good counselor, may well help his wife to rise to the challenge and develop many latent qualities of great value.

A second group of manifestations of emotional immaturity is in abnormal dependency. This is often seen as a kind of social timidity and shyness and a feeling of inadequacy and personal inferiority. Such people are often emotionally dependent on one or both parents, whose need to feel needed may well cause them to remain rather over-possessive. When they are away from home, even for a short time, they may feel a great lack of confidence and a need for someone on whom they can lean.

When two such young people meet, their emotional needs may encourage a very deep bond of sympathy between them, and a feeling of mutual confidence when they are together. If they are of the same sex this may intensify any homosexual trends, and if of the opposite sex it may well seem to them as “falling in love” and lead on to marriage. But it soon becomes obvious that each is trying to use the other for reassurance and support, and neither has the qualities to supply those needs in the other through the humdrum everyday concerns and the ups and downs of marriage. It was easy enough when they only saw each other outside their homes and all dressed up and on their best behavior, but marriage may well bring mutual disillusionment and recrimination, and even the possibility that one or both may be attracted to someone else who again may appear to satisfy the dependency needs.

This kind of situation may often be recognized by a good pre-marital counselor, because of small indications in either of them of possessiveness, sulkiness when demands are not fully met, and general “spoiled child” behavior. This would suggest that much of the “love” into which they have fallen is really self-love, and not what they think it to be. It may be very difficult or even impossible for the two young people, so deeply “in love,” to see anything of this, and the counselor’s most helpful contribution might then be to try to keep their mutual confidence in him, so that the way might be open for him to help them when the almost inevitable troubles come.

When the disillusionments and recriminations begin after marriage the emotional conflicts may become very intense, and there may be deep wounds on both sides, even leading to a “nervous breakdown” in one of them. In our society, in which the husband is generally the breadwinner, emotional immaturity is generally more destructive to marriage when it occurs in men than in women. Two common situations of this kind may be described.