The personal relationship and the conflicts in it – Hostility

The personal relationship. Professor John Macmurray once described human relationships as of three kinds: instrumental, organic and personal. An instrumental relationship is one in which a person is regarded and used as an instrument, a means to an end. An organic relationship is one in which the participants are related through common membership of a group, and the purpose of the relationship is for the promotion of some sectional common interest. A trade union, a professional association and an employers’ federation are examples of this kind of relationship. A personal relationship is one that is self-justifying, it exists for its own sake, although it may fall apart if no common activity or purpose emerges to express the relationship and thereby nourish and strengthen it.

Each of these human relationships may be at the heart of a particular marriage and the bond between husband and wife may change from any one to any other of them. But in counseling we are mainly concerned, not so much with the type of relationship as such, but with the elements of marital conflict, in this case those applicable to the personal relationship. The type of relationship is here important insofar as it is an element in the conflict.

Four common types of conflicts in the personal relationship found in marriage counseling will be discussed, hostility, indifference, dictatorship and dependency. They are often interrelated with one another, but for purposes of discussion they will be dealt with separately.

Hostility is a universal human emotion and there is no human relationship into which it does not enter to some extent. Married couples who boast that they have “never had a quarrel in thirty years of marriage” have generally refused to face the inevitable hostilities. Some married couples who have gone into marriage with the “pipe dream” of the “live happily ever after” phantasy, may be deeply disillusioned by the first expression of real hostility, and may come to the impulsive conviction that their marriage is doomed. They need to be helped to the awareness that love can never be quite “100%”; that even though one may love another person deeply there are times when there is intense hostility against him. What matters most in marriage is not so much the fact of hostility but the extent to which for any reason it is threatening the stability of the marriage or injuring the children.

Hostility may show itself in all kinds of ways, disparaging criticism, belittling, sarcasm, slander, malicious actions, sulking, disloyality, twisting everything so as to put the “blame” on the other, physical violence, and other forms of mental and physical cruelty. In the marital situation the whole problem becomes so complicated by the mixture of action, reaction, and further retaliatory and protective devices as to be very difficult for anyone to disentangle. But it is not the counselor’s task to judge such issues, but rather to provide the atmosphere in which the differences and the hostilities can be openly faced and worked out by the partners if they are willing to do so.

In such working out it is important to distinguish between the “wounds” which come from direct injury; physical or mental cruelty; and those which arise from frustrated expectations which may have been unreal and unwarranted. The husband who expects another “mother” and finds himself with a “wife” may be very hostile at his wife’s failure to live up to “mother,” but he has somehow to come to terms with reality.

As we have seen previously the most important task of the counselor in handling hostility is to give it sufficient chance to be expressed by each partner in a fully accepting atmosphere; and then to work backward from the hostile feelings to the assumptions about life, about people, and about the client himself (or herself) on which the feelings may be based. In the clarification of hostility it may be that the partners will gain some insight into the distinction between acceptance of the partner’s feelings and the nonacceptance of his actions. There’s no reason to expect that all that any partner does will be acceptable to the other, but there is a vital difference between “I don’t like what you’re doing because of so and so” and “You mustn’t do that.” The first of these is a perfectly warranted expression of attitude, which does not constitute an interference with human freedom, while the second is a threat to human autonomy which is only justified when the unacceptable conduct may cause some oppression or injury to the partner or the children.

In many cases of hostility which come to the counselor the partners each accuse the other of doing something “wrong,” when in fact the conflict is often in terms of “difference” rather than “right and wrong.” The counselor can often help to clarify these conflicts by asking the appropriate question, “Is it really that your wife (or husband) is wrong in doing this or that you have quite different ideas about it?” “Is it that what seems so wrong to you may not seem wrong to your partner?” Such questions bring some fresh thought to matters and ideas which had been taken for granted. Of course there are some things that are in fact wrong in the sense that they are against the law, or that they are unjustifiably injurious to the marriage, the partner, or the children; and in such cases the offending partner may be faced with the question of the consequences or possible consequences of his actions and the extent to which the other partner will feel disposed to put up with them. In this way the conflict will at least be brought into the open, where it may be possible to deal adequately with it.

When two partners can learn to deal reasonably adequately with hostility in each other they will have reached a good level of emotional maturity, and will be able to help each other greatly in any outbursts of hostility which are always possible in marriage. It is a strange fact of experience that many husbands and wives who are able to be charming, gracious and well-behaved with everybody else are repeatedly hostile, ill-mannered, and very ill-behaved with their own partners and their children, as if their main rebellion is against the marriage and family bond, or the obligations of marriage. This may also be helped by clarification in the counseling.

Tags: Counseling