Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships by Harriet Lerner Page B
Authors: Harriet Lerner
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have a reciprocal complaint: “My wife is much too reactive.” “She gets irrational much too easily.” “I wish that she would back off and stop nagging and bitching.” “My wife wants to talk everything to death.”
As typically happens, the very qualities that each partner complains of in the other are those that attracted them to each other to begin with. Sandra, for example, had been drawn to Larry’s orderly, even-keel temperament, just as he had admired her capacity to be emotional and spontaneous. Her reactive, feeling-oriented approach to the world balanced his distant, logical reserve—and vice versa. Opposites attract—right?
Opposites do attract, but they do not always live happily ever after. On the one hand, it is reassuring to live with someone who will express parts of one’s own self that one is afraid to acknowledge; yet, the arrangement has its inevitable costs: The woman who is expressing feelings not only for herself but also for her husband will indeed end up behaving “hysterically” and “irrationally.” The man who relies on his wife to do the “feeling work” for him will increasingly lose touch with this important part of himself, and when the time comes that he needs to draw upon his emotional resources, he may find that nobody’s at home.
In the majority of couples, men sit on the bottom of the seesaw when it comes to emotional competence. We all know about the man who can tie good knots on packages and fix things that break, yet fails to notice that his wife is depressed. He may have little emotional relatedness to his own family and lack even one close friend with whom honest self-disclosure takes place. This is the “masculinity” that our society breeds—the male who feels at home in the world of things and abstract ideas but who has little empathic connection to others, little attunement to his own internal world, and little willingness or capacity to “hang in” when a relationship becomes conflicted and stressful. In the traditional division of labor, men are encouraged to develop one kind of intelligence, but they fall short of another that is equally important. The majority underfunction in the realm of emotional competence, and their underfunctioning is closely related to women’s overfunctioning in this area. It is not by accident that the “hysterical,” overemotional female ends up under the same roof as the unemotional, distant male.
The marital seesaw is hard to balance. When couples do try to balance it, especially under stress, their solutions often exacerbate the problem. The emotional, feeling-oriented wife who gets on her husband’s back to open up and express feelings will find that he becomes cooler and even less available. The cool, intellectual husband who tries calmly to use logic to quiet his overemotional wife will find that she becomes even more agitated. True to stereotype, each partner continues to do the same old thing while trying to change the other. The solution for righting the balance becomes the problem.
DOING THE “FEELING WORK” FOR LARRY
Sandra had long been furious at Larry’s lack of reactivity without realizing her own part in the circular dance. She failed to recognize that she was so skilled and comfortable in expressing feelings that she was doing the job for the two of them, thus protecting her husband from feeling what he would otherwise feel. Doing the “feeling work,” like cleaning up, has long been defined as “woman’s work,” and lots of women are good at it. As with cleaning up, men will not begin to do their share until women no longer do it for them.
Although it was not her conscious intent, Sandra helped Larry to maintain his underemotional stance by expressing more than her share of emotionality. The unconscious contract for this couple was that Sandra would be the emotional reactor and Larry the rational planner. And so, Sandra reacted for Larry. She did so in response not only to family
As typically happens, the very qualities that each partner complains of in the other are those that attracted them to each other to begin with. Sandra, for example, had been drawn to Larry’s orderly, even-keel temperament, just as he had admired her capacity to be emotional and spontaneous. Her reactive, feeling-oriented approach to the world balanced his distant, logical reserve—and vice versa. Opposites attract—right?
Opposites do attract, but they do not always live happily ever after. On the one hand, it is reassuring to live with someone who will express parts of one’s own self that one is afraid to acknowledge; yet, the arrangement has its inevitable costs: The woman who is expressing feelings not only for herself but also for her husband will indeed end up behaving “hysterically” and “irrationally.” The man who relies on his wife to do the “feeling work” for him will increasingly lose touch with this important part of himself, and when the time comes that he needs to draw upon his emotional resources, he may find that nobody’s at home.
In the majority of couples, men sit on the bottom of the seesaw when it comes to emotional competence. We all know about the man who can tie good knots on packages and fix things that break, yet fails to notice that his wife is depressed. He may have little emotional relatedness to his own family and lack even one close friend with whom honest self-disclosure takes place. This is the “masculinity” that our society breeds—the male who feels at home in the world of things and abstract ideas but who has little empathic connection to others, little attunement to his own internal world, and little willingness or capacity to “hang in” when a relationship becomes conflicted and stressful. In the traditional division of labor, men are encouraged to develop one kind of intelligence, but they fall short of another that is equally important. The majority underfunction in the realm of emotional competence, and their underfunctioning is closely related to women’s overfunctioning in this area. It is not by accident that the “hysterical,” overemotional female ends up under the same roof as the unemotional, distant male.
The marital seesaw is hard to balance. When couples do try to balance it, especially under stress, their solutions often exacerbate the problem. The emotional, feeling-oriented wife who gets on her husband’s back to open up and express feelings will find that he becomes cooler and even less available. The cool, intellectual husband who tries calmly to use logic to quiet his overemotional wife will find that she becomes even more agitated. True to stereotype, each partner continues to do the same old thing while trying to change the other. The solution for righting the balance becomes the problem.
DOING THE “FEELING WORK” FOR LARRY
Sandra had long been furious at Larry’s lack of reactivity without realizing her own part in the circular dance. She failed to recognize that she was so skilled and comfortable in expressing feelings that she was doing the job for the two of them, thus protecting her husband from feeling what he would otherwise feel. Doing the “feeling work,” like cleaning up, has long been defined as “woman’s work,” and lots of women are good at it. As with cleaning up, men will not begin to do their share until women no longer do it for them.
Although it was not her conscious intent, Sandra helped Larry to maintain his underemotional stance by expressing more than her share of emotionality. The unconscious contract for this couple was that Sandra would be the emotional reactor and Larry the rational planner. And so, Sandra reacted for Larry. She did so in response not only to family
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