Associating the Mary and John case to Immaturity

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.

Tags: Counseling