The Power of Women

The look of love that men rely upon from women is one of the most potent forces in male psychology. Men crave the look. The look serves as a powerful mirror that reflects back to men an image of themselves as being important, valuable, honorable, wanted, smart, or sexy. Rob, the narrator in Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel High Fidelity complains about his girlfriend: “You hear that? She’s not very good at slushy stuff? That, to me, is a problem, as it would be to any male who heard Dusty Springfield singing ‘The Look of Love’ at an impressionable age. That was what I thought it was all going to be like when I was married.”

The need for this look of love is not, by itself, a problem. It is oh-so-commonly human. As with other emotional needs, your goal for personal growth and development is not to transcend the need. Instead, the realistic goal is for you to become more resilient and flexible about the quantities and qualities you need in order to feel reasonably fulfilled. In other words, to learn to focus on the half-full glass of what you do have rather than on the half-empty glass of what she was supposed to offer all the time but doesn’t. And to be reasonably centered within – and reasonably respectful without – when these needs are not quite fulfilled.

…I thought there was going to be this sexy woman with a sexy voice and lots of sexy eye makeup whose devotion to me shone from every pore. And there is such a thing as the look of love – Dusty didn’t lead us up the garden path entirely – it’s just that the look of love isn’t what I expected it to be. It’s not huge eyes almost bursting with longing situated somewhere in the middle of a double bed with the covers turned down invitingly; it’s just as likely to be the look of benevolent indulgence that a mother gives a toddler, or a look of amused exasperation, even a look of pained concern. But the Dusty Springfield look of love? Forget it. As mythical as the exotic underwear.

I’m beginning to get used to the idea that Laura might be the person I spend my life with…. But it’s much harder to get used to the idea that my little-boy notion of romance, of negligees and candlelit dinners at home and long, smoldering glances, had no basis in reality at all. That’s what women ought to get all steamed up about; that’s why we can’t function properly in a relationship. It’s not the cellulite or the crow’s feet. It’s the…the…the disrespect. (274)

Listen to Rob, the narrator in High Fidelity. He is in the process of discovering that the little looks, in the everyday context of ordinary interpersonal transactions, are plenty. What guy would ever dismiss the thrill of “huge eyes almost bursting with longing?” Very few. Would you? But those huge-eyes moments are few and far between in even the most successful relationships (after the honeymoon stage), and you may find yourself struggling to adjust to appreciating the more ordinary looks of “benevolent indulgence,” “amused exasperation,” or “pained concern.”

Often, in hearing the stories of men who have become embittered toward their partners, I listen for the story behind the story. And when I get past the resentment, and the frustration, and the emotional withdrawal, what I often find is just plain hurt: I guess I’m not the great guy you thought I was when you married me anymore! or I just want to have her look at me like she’s happy to see me! Do these sound familiar?

It’s enough to make a good man behave badly.

Garry told me about the rawest of feelings that generated his destructive behavior in his relationship with his wife. “What’s the emotional trigger? I think it’s being taken for granted, feeling ‘less than.’ I’ve never actually physically abused Linda or the kids, but I threaten and intimidate them. I know it. I put them down and curse them.”

After a long time bitterly reporting to me all of his wife’s faults – her moodiness, her disorganization at home, her coddling of the kids – another man, Luis, finally got down to the core of it all: “I just want a woman who runs up to me when I come home and it’s all ‘on.'” I took that to mean that he desperately craved the look of love. All the rest of his complaints were ultimately superficial, if he only could get the look. The particularly painful part of Luis’s story was that his wife, Deborah, reported – and I believed her – that she was the one to initiate an affectionate response when Luis walked in the door, and that he always seemed cool and withdrawn. For Luis, it was never quite enough. He needed a constant stream of mirroring from Deborah. Because he had grown up with deficits in mirroring, he was especially vulnerable to the moments when there was even a slight breakdown in the mirroring he now received from the one person whom he granted the special power to give it. When he felt injured and deprived, he shut himself down emotionally. Once he got on that track, he perceived his wife’s intermittent lapses in attention as signs that she was cold and ungiving.

Once this narrative of her took hold for Luis, his wife’s new behaviors became data that only served to confirm this hypothesis. As Deborah put it, “He has ‘named’ me as an unaffectionate person, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it!”

Here’s an example of how sweet and meaningful this response from the most important woman can be. Kent, a good guy if I ever met one, also had a history of intermittent drinking episodes and occasional verbal outbursts towards his wife and kids. He lived with a lifelong burden of feeling that he was inadequate, a message he had regularly received from his father. Now, as an adult, Kent heard this message coming from his very successful, domineering father-in-law, who had brought Kent into the family business.

After one explosive episode in which Kent had yelled at his daughter and hurled insults at his wife, she moved the kids out briefly and then insisted he leave. She refused to even consider a reconciliation until he joined AA, entered therapy, apologized to her and the kids, and showed her a consistently different pattern of behavior. This was rock bottom for him, and he realized that if he didn’t change, he would lose everything he cared about. After several months, Kent’s wife invited him back into the house and into her bed.

Several weeks later, Kent broke down crying as he told me,

I know that I have tried so hard to change and become more of the man that Jackie wants me to be and that I know I can be. I have stopped drinking, and I am sucking it up and making amends – “fourth step” stuff. And, very gradually, she is letting me back into her life. Last night, we were lying in bed, just both reading, and she reached over and just lightly touched my shoulder. “I’m proud of you,” she whispered. Out of nowhere. That meant so much.

Another story, told by Benny, a man in a painfully distant and cold marriage, illustrates even further how the response from a particular woman can offer you psychological life or psychological death. For Benny, his wife’s sexual interest could determine whether he felt alive or dead.

My wife and I are being shitty to each other. She blames me for all sorts of shit. It tells me that she doesn’t love me. I got rejected from the time that I moved in with my grandmother for the rest of my life growing up. Now I walk in the house and I feel like such a shithead. I don’t believe I’m such a terrible guy, but my wife makes me feel that way. She says, “You’re persecuting me, you’re taking shots at me!” To her, I just don’t exist.

So what do I do? I make myself feel dead inside. Just dead. If I don’t feel dead, than I’m all over the place with my emotions. And I act dead with her too.

You can almost scrape the emotional pain off these pages. Benny has given his wife unbearable power over his emotional well-being, and it is killing his relationship. He allows her to make him feel like he “just doesn’t exist.” His oppressive need, and subsequent emotional coldness and aggression when it is not fully met, serves as a self-fulfilling prophecy of rejection.

In his desperate attempt to bolster himself and find a more satisfying mirroring experience, Benny turns to prostitutes. These are his hired mirrors. Those twenty-five-year-old models, they just make it seem so okay! They make you feel so right. And that’s not what it’s like when I walk in the door at home. I don’t hate my wife – it’s just so painful to me that she’s lost interest in sex, that I never get a hug, that I never feel very special.

If you are a woman reading this and thinking about your relationship with a man, ask yourself if you desire this power to govern his sense of well-being. The women I talk to say that it is only a little bit appealing; of course it feels good to be needed. But the rest of it is pure burden, often forcing women to spend more time than they want to worrying about how their partner will be affected. With only some exceptions, this power is not a power that women have signed up for in the relationship contract.

The Experience of Powerlessness

This reliance on women for validation can lead you to feel that you’re not in control of your own emotional well-being. Emotional dependency on women can be touching at times, but it can also result in emotional withdrawal or resentment. It is not a big series of leaps to go from feeling dependent on someone, to feeling a certain degree of powerlessness or helplessness as a result, to resenting that same person for the power that you perceive her to have over you.

The Fear of Women

Theo gives us a raw glimpse into the psyche of a man who fits this profile. The setting here was a group for men who were having trouble in their relationships. Theo intermittently became verbally abusive and emotionally withdrawn with his wife. Theo knew that he was handling things wrong. And he knew that this behavior violated his own personal code of ethics about how you treat others, and how you treat women, and how, in particular, you treat women you love. But his vulnerability to women, and his rage at feeling so affected by them, kept getting the best of him.

In one of our group sessions, one of the other men made a crack about women along the lines of You know how it is, guys. You can’t trust a woman with a credit card! It was blatantly sexist, but he was clowning around, making fun of his own sexist attitudes as much as he was making fun of women. We all knew that, and he pretended to duck for cover from my female cotherapist. She gave him a mock I’m-gonna-get-you-for-this look, all part of the give-and-take in establishing an atmosphere where it is safe for these men to reveal their truest attitudes. And he pretended to cower some more. The group members laughed. So did I.

Theo did not. He was doing a slow – actually very fast – burn. Seconds later, Theo exploded. He sat up straight in his chair. His veins bulged. He turned red. “You see? That’s it! That’s the look! You see how she controlled him with the look! Look at how he suddenly got quiet. Because she controlled him! Women do that all the time!”

The group sat in stunned silence. I gently pointed out to Theo that people of both genders could disagree on some points and express their opinions. That didn’t mean they were being controlling. In fact, feeling controlled is not always a reliable indicator that someone is actually controlling you. Besides, I pointed out, this interchange was lighthearted, and they were only playing.

I think Theo felt a little foolish as he saw his behavior reflected back to him in the mirror of the group’s reaction to him. But he stood firm and insisted that this was a classic example of how women control men. He had a hard time calming down. I thanked him for letting us know how he felt and how he truly thought. Secretly, I felt a new wave of empathy for his wife, who lived with this volcano ready to explode if she made a wrong move.

Theo showed us, in living color, the reaction of a man who feels oppressed by the power of women. Every look, every little remark, determines how he feels about himself. He looks in this mirror all the time.

Later, in another group, Theo told us about an argument he had with his wife in which she accused him of being possessive and jealous. The group members shifted in their chairs uncomfortably, unable to immediately come to his support, knowing that Theo was more than capable of being possessive and jealous. He went on to describe how he sat down in his chair in the living room while she “verbally harassed” him for six hours. But he found a way to turn off his feelings and let her rant and rave. He finally felt like he was no longer vulnerable to her. “The most beautiful moment of my life – next to the birth of my son – was those six hours when I was not being controlled by a woman. I just didn’t care. I could turn her off. It was such a relief.”

He didn’t care any more. Emotionally, she didn’t matter. He had deadened himself to her, and to his own feelings Like Benny, Theo was desperately attempting to survive emotionally, doing the only thing he could think of to protect himself. This was a perfect example of a man giving power to a woman in a way that had no appeal or interest to her whatsoever.

Feeling Left Out

I will never forget the story I heard from one couple in my office. Danielle and Jeffrey’s baby was about four months old. When the baby cried in the night, Danielle was in the habit of going to her and nursing her, thus soothing her so they all could go back to sleep. Jeffrey had a different philosophy about nursing schedules, and they argued about whether it was the best thing to continue to breast-feed in the middle of the night. So far, this sounded like a normal, healthy child-rearing disagreement between two intelligent and informed but disagreeing adults.

But then the story turned weird. One night, when they heard the baby’s cries, Danielle started to get up. Jeffrey tried to talk her out of it. She insisted. He blocked her path. She tried to push him aside and get to the now louder baby. He wouldn’t let her. One thing led to another, and he finally found himself screaming at his wife, in the middle of the night, with the baby’s screams piercing the house.

To Jeffrey’s credit, he woke up from this possessed state and shut up. He slumped down in a chair and wondered aloud, “What is wrong with me? How did we get to this point?” Jeffrey got to this absurd and destructive point because of his overwhelming (yet not consciously recognized) sense of powerlessness. His life, with a demanding infant and a distracted wife, was spinning out of control. He had ideas that he believed (perhaps correctly) would help them and would actually be the best thing for their child. He wanted to be a good and responsible father. Perhaps he was also feeling left out of the private bond between mother and daughter and could not tolerate the perceived loss.

Again, the ultimate behavior of this man – screaming at his wife over the screams of their baby in the middle of the night – only tells us that he has behaved badly. To help him change, we needed to dig deeper and help him understand why. In this book, I am operating on the good-man assumption: that you, like Jeffrey, are a good man with good values who will make good choices when you understand more of your emotional life and when you are equipped with other behavioral options.

You should be able to recognize some part of yourself in these stories. Accurate or not, fair or not, paranoid or not, you have to first recognize how these defining moments in your relationship look and feel to you. Then, and only then, does a window open for your defenses to soften and for new perspectives to become possible.

What Men Need from Women

Ask most men if they are affected by how women respond to them and, if they are honest, they will tell you that it means the world to them. As men, we offer women immense power to govern our state of self-cohesion and well-being. Joseph Pleck (1980) outlines two very important dimensions of men’s reliance on validation from women: expressing emotions and reinforcing masculinity.

The Power to Express Emotions

We often perceive women as having expressive power, the power to express emotions and particularly the power to help us discover and express emotions. Many of us have learned to depend on women to help us feel; in fact, her richer emotional life and capacity for emotional expression provides an essential life spark for many of us. Whether we can identify this or not, we may feel lost without the fundamental connection to this spark.

Perhaps you know men like this, and perhaps you recognize at least some of your own experience in these stories. You may live your life with limited emotions; you love your buddies and you need them, but you may not show them the full range of your more vulnerable or tender feelings. Then you meet a girl (or later, a woman) and, for the first time, you can let your hair down. You tell her your deepest secrets and fears. You reveal experiences that have scared you or shaken you. You are playful and silly in ways that would never fit in the guy world or anywhere else. She – or rather the relationship with her – is the ticket to this hidden and wonderful reservoir. She – or rather the relationship with her – is the catalyst.

Perhaps most significant is the refuge that women offer you, or at least that you perceive only women as having the power to offer. Women offer a port in the storm from the dangers and stresses of relating to other men. They offer the sanctuary where you can express your needs without fearing that these needs will be used against you.

Listen to this dialogue from the 1971 movie Carnal Knowledge, written by Jules Feiffer and directed by Mike Nichols. Sandy (Art Garfunkel) and Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) are college roommates. Sandy is dating a woman named Susan (Candace Bergen) and developing a very sweet and loving relationship. Jonathan, however, is secretly having sex with her, and neither have told this to Sandy.

The two young men have an argument. Sandy tells Jonathan that Susan “tells me thoughts I didn’t even know I had until she tells them to me.” This drives Jonathan nuts. Jonathan thought he had the upper hand in the traditional world of men. He is “scoring” and Sandy is not. But now it appears that Jonathan is winning. Jonathan is now threatened that Sandy seems to have something even more valuable than the affirmation of sexual conquest: expressive power. When Sandy tells Jonathan that “she thinks I’m sensitive,” it becomes too much for Jonathan to bear.

In a comical scene moments later, he confronts Susan in the maniacal way that Nicholson Asquith As psychologist Joseph Pleck points out about this scene, “When women withhold and refuse to exercise this expressive power for men’s benefit, many men, like Nicholson, feel abject and try all the harder to get women to play their traditional expressive role” (1980, 421).

“I Could Only Do It with Her”

Jared sat in my office one day and told me the whole story of his sometimes tragic, sometimes picaresque childhood. Jared’s father was an abusive alcoholic who frequently beat Jared’s mother, finally abandoning the family when Jared was twelve. What did this young kid do? He ran away and, believe it or not, joined the circus. He traveled with the circus until he was eighteen, developing charming social skills and a highly refined sense of how to get along by taking care of other people’s needs. Jared was a master at reading people and adapting himself to the situation in front of him. He was introduced to sex at the age of thirteen by some of the “older” women in the circus and, true to form, became very successful with women because he knew what they needed and found ways to shape himself accordingly.

For a kid who grew up in a such a violent and dysfunctional home, Jared was a roaring success. He was astonishingly self-sufficient, charming and engaging, and successful with women. But he was always plagued by the gap between his outward persona and his inner feelings. He was a master at presenting a false self, but he never felt really known by anyone.

Until he met Jeanie. “With Jeanie, it was like I opened up for the first time. I could really talk about feelings with her. Men don’t know how to do this; I could only do it with her. And then, it hasn’t been that long, everything started going downhill. We haven’t even been married a year.” He started to tear up. “I can’t do it again. I just don’t think I can do it again. It just turns out badly.” He paused. “I’ve always found a way to be successful at everything I do, but this is really a failure.”

Jeanie served as the catalyst for Jared’s emotional awakening: I could only do it with her. But it turned out that Jared did not have much experience with the demands of a mature relationship, and Jeanie herself (although effective at helping Jared feel nurtured and safe) was likewise immature in her relationship skills. It all unraveled quickly, and for Jared this meant not only the loss of the relationship but also the loss of possibility. Getting a taste of a truer emotional life – and then losing it – felt unbearable to him, to the point where he was telling himself that he could never do it again.

I heard echoes of this same theme from Kevin’s dad, Robert. Kevin was a college student who came to see me after getting suspended for alcohol and drug problems his first year away at college. Kevin had become estranged from his father since his parents’ divorce when he was eight. Now Kevin felt an intense wave of determination to develop some rapprochement with his father.

Robert was a domineering and emotionally closed man. Very successful in business, very limited in his emotional relationships. He and his wife divorced because she grew weary of his emotional coldness and his workaholism. His kids, including Kevin, had marginal relationships with him in which they maintained a veneer of attachment, but actually felt very little for him.

When Robert became ill with cancer, he finally confided in his girlfriend, Barbara. He broke down in a way that he never had before. “I’ve never had a real conversation in my life with my son!” Robert burst into tears. But he could only say this to Barbara; she was the only person he would show his emotional soft underbelly.

Even though Barbara secretly told this story to Kevin, and Robert knew that she had, he couldn’t bring himself to reveal to Kevin what he had finally, privately, revealed to Barbara. Kevin was deeply moved by this story and desperately wanted to be allowed into his father’s heart in the way that Barbara had. But, at first, Robert relied on Barbara to help him express his emotions and wasn’t ready to share that part of himself with anyone else. Kevin persisted, however, and he was eventually successful at getting his dad to communicate on an emotional level. Robert was able to learn from the experience with the woman in his life and take it on as his own.

Masculinity-Validating Power

The second way that men rely excessively on women is by depending on them to remind men of their fundamental masculinity and masculine self-worth. In this way, men give women what Pleck describes as masculinity-validating power. When a woman refuses to offer this validation, or when a man’s unrealistic expectations and subsequent distortions convince him that she is withholding this, the man may feel lost. He desperately demands the restoration of his virility, masculinity, self-worth, and ultimately self-cohesion by the powerful confirming source.

Again, remember that we men wrapped up in these interpersonal dynamics have made an unconscious decision to offer this power to women. These are not, for the most part, powers that women wish to hold. These are powers that we have handed over to women.

Defining Real Men

Miguel, a twenty-four-year-old Latino, sat in my office one day and described how confused he was about how to handle some difficult situations with his wife. I had never met her, but Miguel described his wife as very attractive and consistently drawing attention from men in public

My wife has always complained I have this big temper and I’m such a hothead. So we are out at the mall, walking together, and we walk past these two guys who really check her out and start laughing. I know exactly what’s up, because I’ve done so much of it myself. I want to do something, but then I remember that she wants me to chill out, so I just pretend like nothing’s happening.

Then, when we get home, she starts laying into me: “You’re such a pussy! How can you let those guys treat me like that? Why don’t you stand up to them like a real man?”

So what is it? Does a real man chill? Or does he pick a fight to defend his honor and the honor of his woman? I know that next time, I’m gonna go after one of those guys, if that’s what she wants!

Miguel’s story captures the masculinity-validating power. Who has the power here to determine his belief in himself as a man? She does. Because he has given it away. Do you recognize yourself in this story? For every man who says that he alone determines what a real man is, there are thousands more who recognize the emotional truth in this man-woman transaction. What she says, and how she treats you or looks at you, means so much.

Feeling Powerful

Joseph Pleck (1980) describes another scene from Carnal Knowledge gives us an over-the-top illustration of how men give away this power and how vulnerable men can be when women do not follow the script. At the end of this movie, after countless busted relationships and years of engaging in a dance of prodigious sexuality and emotional shallowness, Jonathan cultivates a relationship with a prostitute. We watch as she offers him obviously scripted lines designed to bolster his shaky virility – and he collapses in distress and rage when she varies from the exact words necessary for him to have an erection.

When she finally gets it right, her script has her praising him for being a powerful and strong man with an “inner power so strong that every act no matter what is more proof of that power.” She seductively tells him that he is strong, and masculine, and robust, and virile, and domineering, and irresistible. And finally, with all of this mirroring, he gets hard. At this point in his life, there’s no other way for him to get it up.

The ways that men turn to women for masculinity validation vary, of course, in as many ways as men interpret masculinity. In Carnal Knowledge, Jonathan equates masculinity with sexual prowess, and this is what he needs validated in order to feel like a real man.

Men’s Value and Self-Worth

My client Gene, however, responded most profoundly to validation of his ability to communicate. Seeing the mirror of approval in the eyes of his wife, Jeanette, made it all seem so real and so “masculine.”

All my life, I have been sure that I was weak, a coward. Because I never stood up to my abusive old man, like Ben finally did in the Great Santini movie that you told me to watch. I am so sure that any woman I get involved with will finally see what I am missing. And I assume that I will pass on this abusive parenting to my kids.

But when I start to tell Jeanette about these feelings, and she looks into my eyes and starts tearing up, and she tells me how much closer she feels to me, it’s like she believes in me. If she sees me as being okay as man, then maybe I am.

Carlo’s intense reliance on his wife for validation of his masculinity revolved around his need to be important and valuable to her. Carlo, a handsome, balding man in his fifties, sat quietly in my office while he listened to his wife’s complaints about their marriage. He stared her down without saying anything. He idly inspected his fingernails while she tried to get through to him. Finally, he decided to air his grievances and feelings towards her. The following example may seem almost comical, but it reflects a desperate man. Two facts you need to know to understand this outburst from Carlo: Carlo’s wife was very attached to her pet parrot, and she had been trimming Carlo’s hair throughout their marriage. Carlo began, “You offered to trim my hair, but you always forget to trim my ear hairs. What underlying psychological message are you trying to express? You groom that frigging bird much better than you groom me. It’s almost like you are mated to him. You’re right – at first when we thought the parrot was a female, it didn’t bother me so much. Then we find out it’s a male, and it’s like you have more of a bond with this male than with me!”

Carlo actually felt threatened and displaced by his wife’s attachment to her parrot, especially because it was male!

Dr. Alfredo Mirande (2003), professor at University of California Riverside, tells a personal story about the power of women to shape men’s view of themselves. “It is women who teach us to be men. They play a defining role in our development as men. When I was a child, I watched one time as my uncle was pushing around and threatening his wife. My mother, his sister, said to him, ‘How can you call yourself a man if you beat up defenseless women?’ My uncle was completely humiliated – she was calling him on his manhood. Women have this power. This had a profound effect on my masculine development. I learned that it is despicable for a man to hit a woman.”

Exercise: I Feel More Like a Man When She…

Think about the impact of your partner’s responses and actions on how you feel about yourself as a man. Be honest! Mark any of the items below that you think could complete the sentence “I feel more like a man when she…”

tells me she loves me

has the wildest damn orgasm you could possibly imagine!

laughs at my jokes

lets me know that she respects something I have done

does things that I approve of, making me feel proud

is someone I know I can really trust – it means she must love me!

is happy to see me

touches me

says cool stuff about me to other people

pays more attention to me than to her male parrot

On a separate sheet or in your journal, add as many items as you can to this list.

There is no sin in having the woman you love affect how you feel about yourself. But it is important for you to know yourself better – and to be careful about blaming her too much if you start to feel your positive feelings about yourself slipping away.

Misattributions and Misperceptions

When you tell yourself the narrative that explains yourself and your relationship, you are like the stationmaster at Grand Central Station. You send the train – your emotions and behavior – on the track to Pittsburgh, Boston, or St. Louis, and once the train is on that track, it takes quite an effort to stop it, switch tracks, and send the train in a different direction.

“It Was an Assault! A Goddamn Assault!”

Daniel stood in my office peering out at me through his horn-rimmed glasses. He waited nervously for me to sit in my chair, then sat down in his, across from his wife, Elise. She looked at me with eyes that said, Please help me out here! I don’t know how to get through to him! They proceeded to relate the most recent conflict, an argument about how much time to spend reading a bedtime story to their little girl. Daniel wanted to read to her longer, but Elise protested that their daughter’s bedtime kept getting pushed back later and later, and it became a problem in the mornings when it was time to wake her up for preschool. The argument was going nowhere. So, according to both of them, Elise got up from her chair and started to walk out of the room. Daniel, standing in the doorway, blocked her path and made no effort to get out of the way. She paused at the doorway, looked at him briefly, and brushed against him as she went through the door.

Sitting calmly in my office, both of them agreed on these facts. But as soon as I asked Daniel how this affected him, the quieter, meeker exterior suddenly disappeared. “How did that make me feel? How did that make me feel? I’ll tell you how that made me feel! It was an assault! A goddamn assault! I felt physically threatened by her!”

I doubted that. Both agreed that she had barely brushed against him. She had no history of violence in their relationship. Instead, what Daniel was reacting to was the pain of her disapproval and perceived rejection of him. “What do you think it’s like when she criticizes me like that? Telling me I’m doing something wrong when I like to read a story to my own daughter! It’s like a knife going right into my heart. Do you know what that’s like? Do you have any idea what that’s like?”

The core problem here lay in Daniel’s interpretation of the events. When Elise complained to him and asked him to change something, he heard that he was worthless. When she brushed past him, upset and frustrated, he read that she found him disgusting. Daniel experienced these events as extremely painful, rejecting, offensive, and shaming. And when he felt this bad inside, he concluded that Elise intended to make him feel this way. She was the very powerful mirror, and the picture of himself that was reflected back to him was devastating and unbearable. He blamed the mirror, but he had been looking at the mirror through the foggy lens of a lifetime of self-doubt, rejection, and fear of abandonment.

And once the conclusion was locked in place, once the mirror was viewed in this way and given this enormous unwanted power, Daniel’s train was launched on an emotional and behavioral track which was almost always destructive. (Daniel went on, in this state of self-justified resentment, to turn to me and calmly say, “She’s an idiot! She has rocks in her head! How do you ever get through to a woman who has rocks in her head like that? She’s a complete idiot!”)

If you recognize a little bit of yourself in Daniel, your essential task is to develop a greater tolerance of these distressing moments. Once you develop this, you have at least the opportunity to entertain alternative narratives about what is taking place. If you think your wife is in a bad mood, you will react differently than if you think she is trying to humiliate you. If you tell yourself that there is room for healthy disagreement in the best of relationships, you will react differently than if you believe this is an indicator of her hatred and your worthlessness. As psychologist Ross Greene tells parents about dealing with their kids, “your interpretation will guide your intervention” (1998, 14).

The same self psychology perspective that helped you understand the broken mirror can help you recognize the fundamental injury to the sense of self (or selfobject breakdown) that usually precedes emotional withdrawal, pouting, accusations, or abusive behavior. If you can recognize this vulnerability – and if you can develop the ability to communicate your needs – you will be more self-directed. You will have more power to turn away from the desperate or self-protective reactions that often emerge at these moments.

The Secret, Silent Decision

John Gottman (1999) has identified an array of toxic indicators that predict, according to his research, almost certain deterioration of relationships. By examining the interaction of a wide variety of couples – including successful, happy couples – he and his team have uncovered what they refer to as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: criticism (or accusations), defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling. When couples engage in these behaviors frequently, the relationship is much more likely to be dysfunctional and volatile. The researchers have found that couples who regularly use these styles with each other are almost certainly headed for unhappiness, affairs, verbal or physical abuse, or divorce. (Gottman claims that his research team can predict this with 90 percent accuracy!)

The problem arising from the Four Horsemen is not only how emotionally beat up each person feels. The Horsemen also represent a painful and destructive decision that one or both partners has made about the other: He (or she) is not a good-hearted person, is not truly on my side, and is a threat to me. I have given up.

In dysfunctional couples, negative mind-reading runs rampant. It is as if each partner has made what Gottman calls a “secret, silent decision” about the other that he or she is an adversary and not worth respecting. Each assumes the worst about the other.

An ally’s narrative goes something like this: Oh well, he is in a bad mood. He has been under a lot of stress lately and needs more sleep. An ally views negativity as unstable (highly alterable, fluctuating) and the cause as situational (external).

On the other hand, in an unhappy marriage, the same behavior is likely to be interpreted as stable (enduring, unchanging) and internal to the partner. The accompanying narrative might be something like He is inconsiderate and selfish. That’s the way he is. That’s why he did that.

Here’s another example that illustrates the immense power of misperceptions. Namir and his wife, Ellen, came to see me because of the tensions in their marriage. Namir was a very emotionally intense and extremely intellectually gifted man in his forties. He had a history of gambling problems and emotionally abusive outbursts – and he was extremely attached to his wife. Ellen’s views and responses to him provided an unbearably powerful mirror for his sense of well-being.

Several months before coming to see me, they were taking a shower together. Namir made a sexual overture to Ellen; she (according to Ellen) politely indicated that she wasn’t interested. Namir went ballistic. He became enraged and started screaming at her, hurling nasty insults about her frigid sexuality. The emotional injury, and her fear of his rages, was impossible for her to live with.

Ellen became colder and emotionally withdrawn over the next several weeks. She finally told him that she wanted to separate for a while. At first he graciously agreed, trying to show his respect for her feelings. But he could not tolerate this for long, and soon he began showing up at her workplace uninvited and calling her repeatedly.

Although they were still separated and Ellen was still somewhat afraid, she agreed to his request to come in for counseling. When I asked Namir what it had meant to him – what his perception was – when Ellen turned him down sexually in the shower, he spewed out a flurry of passionate feelings: “It means everything! I don’t even know who I am without her! If she doesn’t want me, it means I am not a man! I only want to have that look from her that tells me I am loved and valuable.” This was Namir expressing his raw need and vulnerability. Much of what he describes is painfully human, but this intensity and lack of coping resources is what leads him astray. “So I just had to do something! I want to just force her to make me feel the way I know she alone can make me feel! And sometimes I just want her to feel as scared and powerless as I feel! I know I need help. It isn’t fair to her, and I know I just keep driving her away.” Namir paused, then became tearful. “I’ll do anything you tell me to do.”

All of Namir’s emotional despair and destructive behavior began with his misperceptions of Ellen’s motivation and misinterpretation of her response to him. He was unable to just say to himself, I guess she’s not in the mood. Or any of a thousand variations on this statement. Instead, all he could say to himself was this: She and she alone can make me feel good about myself, and she is purposely withholding this from me!

It is clear from Gottman’s research that the secret, silent decision is hardly the exclusive domain of men. Rather, it is right at the core of the decisions any of us makes in a relationship: male, female, gay, straight, adult, child. But especially for men like Namir – and perhaps for you – there may be no more powerful intervention than developing a more flexible, generous, and realistic view of your partner.

Exercise: What’s Your Story?

1. Pick out a situation when you got into an argument with your partner, or even one of your children.

2. Identify the story (narrative) you were telling yourself at the time.

3. If your narrative included her not being a decent person who cares about you, you probably felt totally justified in retaliating. You may have felt tempted to give up and to forsake the relationship rules you usually believe in.

4. When this happens again, try substituting a new story line.

5. To help you do this, I’ve included some negative narratives and some more hopeful stories. As you read these examples, pay attention to any that sound familiar. Then, on a separate sheet or in your journal, create as many of your own examples as you can.

The Story of Doom

What a bitch!

She doesn’t care about anybody but herself!

I can never get through to her!

She always wants it her away!

I just don’t trust her!

She’s always trying to control me.

The Story of Hope

She gets really bitchy sometimes!

Right now I feel like she doesn’t have a clue about what I need.

I feel so frustrated trying to get through to her right now.

Damn, I thought I was stubborn, but she really is!

Most of the time, I know she’s with me, but it doesn’t feel like it right now!

I can tell she’s freaked out about something when she gets this controlling.

Notice that the stories of hope are not all that pretty – they are just more temporary, limited, and realistic. It’s impossible to be in an intimate relationship without feeling critical or unhappy with your partner. The stories of doom, however, create a narrative that justifies destructive behavior in response. With a few exceptions, this narrative – and the emotions and behaviors that inevitably trail behind – is something you can do something about!

“Mommy and I Are One”

The research of Silverman, Lachman, and Milich (1982) helps explain some of the unquenchable passion for deep attachment that so many of us experience. While their research was not exclusively based on men seeking attachment to women, it sheds some more light on the attachment phenomena often described as “the urge to merge.”

The authors lay out their belief that under particular circumstances, even the fantasy of experiencing a merger or deep connection can enhance self-cohesion. They employed an unusual method of testing this. Research subjects watched, for brief exposures not long enough to register consciously, slides containing the subliminal message “Mommy and I are one.” The researchers hypothesized that the subjects’ universal longings for oneness would be satisfied in some way as they received this message.

After multiple studies (and many variations of the message and type of subjects studied), the conclusions were usually positive. Smokers who were exposed to the message maintained abstinence from smoking longer. Male schizophrenics showed some reduction in pathological symptoms. Depressed women reported less depressive symptoms and depressive thinking after exposure to the subliminal message. Obese women who were exposed to the message lost more weight than women who were not.

The Special Connection

Why would an intervention like this make any difference at all? First of all, I should point out that this didn’t always work, and the use of subliminal messages as a treatment may or may not be valuable in the long run. And the research was not just based on male longing for merger experiences with women. But the research helps illuminate some important issues that often underlie the longing that men have for a special connection.

This search for oneness originates from the primary, symbiotic relationship between mother and child: first within the womb, and then, to a lesser extent, outside. This is the oceanic state of complete well-being, when you were never really called upon to face the ultimately lonely state of being human. There is no way to return to the womb, but you can seek approximations of this experience through a wide array of events, interpersonal and otherwise, in your adult life.

Most men, when I try to explain this, think this yearning is reserved for the deeply pathological or emotionally immature among us. Certainly, if your longings to merge dominate your relationships, you are in trouble. You are likely to be stuck in a regressed, disturbed, and ultimately hopeless life. But when these yearnings coexist with your other needs (such as autonomy and independence), they suggest no such disturbance. In fact, your recognition of these longings and your search for situations which help satisfy them can be viewed as an indicator of your emotional health.

The opportunities are everywhere – not to return to the womb, perhaps, but to find something good enough. Think for a moment about the many moments in life that can arouse these merger feelings. Interpersonal oneness experiences always involve a direct connection with a single person or with a group of people. The most obvious is perhaps the most potent: romantic union. The blissful merging that takes place in sexual and romantic love – both during peak moments of sexual union and during the little romantic moments of lovers who feel as if the world exists only for them – revives the original moments of union from infancy. Anybody who has been in love knows the golden experience of not knowing where your own body stops and your lover’s starts.

None of us can bear to stay in this boundaryless state because of our need for an independent sense of self. The classic fear of commitment usually stems directly from our fears that we will lose all boundaries and become trapped in the world of another. Still, as with so many aspects of emotional and psychological life, we are drawn to go back to the well again and again and again to experience it once more.

This merger experience does not require romantic or sexual love. You have probably had moments with close friends or family members – with nothing sexual at stake – when you felt as if you were at one with another. College friends locked in conversation deep into the night will often say afterwards, “I just felt like we were reading each other’s minds. I knew exactly what you were going to say!” One element that often makes the psychotherapist-patient relationship so significant is the experience (for the patient, and often even for the therapist) of being very deeply connected. Patients often report, “I just felt like she understood me so completely, like she knew everything about me. It’s like she was psychic.” This is the exhilaration of being deeply seen and known.

Men and Special Connections

So what does all this have to do with the frustration of marriage, the dark moods, and the power than men project onto women?

We all live, to some degree, with the psychic wound of losing the blissful umbilical connection. And we all, to one degree or another, turn somewhere in an attempt to restore this feeling of wholeness. This is normal and healthy.

But these intense longings – conscious or unconscious – for the oneness experience can be a fragmenting experience for you if you are desperately hungry for this powerful connection. Your perception and judgment can become warped with misattributions whenever you feel the oneness experience slipping away from you.

The problem lies in the unrealistic expectation that many of us have. Buried deep inside, men and women both often unconsciously believe that their partner will fill the empty space inside: As long as we are together, I will never feel empty or alone. When a woman fails to provide this magic restoration of our original feelings of wholeness, we men are often deluged with disappointment. It is usually not conscious, and you usually do not have words to describe the experience. You may have waves of resentment toward her for bursting the bubble. It’s as if she has promised you something all along and is now brutally failing to deliver.

When she fails to live up to this vision of how things were supposed to be – either because she changes or simply because the relationship evolves to a more individuated level or because reality catches up to the projected fantasy – you come to believe that she is letting you down. A new fantasy may begin to creep in: There is someone else out there who can do it better!

There may be, in reality, someone out there who can do it better, and this possibility must always be considered. Yet, unless you recognize that no romantic love – no love of any kind – can truly heal you or restore your wholeness, you may be doomed to keep searching in disappointment. The dilemma keeps recurring throughout these complex situations. We know how enriching interpersonal connections can be, and how impossible it is to develop personally except in the context of relationships with others. On the other hand, since we left the womb, no other can truly make us whole, fill the empty spaces, and take away our pain. We are entitled to, and can reasonably expect, a partner who knows us, cares about us, and excites us. We cannot expect her to be all-knowing, all-caring, and all-exciting. The early losses that we have all suffered cannot, in the end, be undone.

In his article “The Golden Fantasy” (1977), Sydney Smith describes the wish to have all of one’s needs met in a perfect relationship. This fantasy, like “Mommy and I are one,” is embedded to some degree in all of us. Even if the fantasy is never realized, just knowing that it might be possible somewhere and someday can be a source of vitality and reassurance for many people. “This fantasy touches on the deepest issues of one’s life and…indeed one’s very survival may depend upon its preservation…. To give up the fantasy is to give up everything, to lose the primary source of comfort…, even one’s sense of meaning. It is as if the fantasy provided a self-definition: without it there is no existence and the world becomes a place without hope” (311).

Perhaps you are one of those men for whom this fantasy takes on extraordinary prominence. When you fear that the fantasy won’t be realized, you can become threatened and fragmented. Most importantly, your attachment to the golden fantasy may sabotage your ability to find meaning and fulfillment in real relationships. “…While they are on an endless search for a fulfilling experience, they seem unable to make use of the loving relationships around them…. To decide to work at a particular relationship is to confirm that the fantasy is dead (or that Paradise is lost) or that what was once within one’s grasp is forever gone” (318).

The golden fantasy, while so alluring and sustaining in many ways, can erode any chances for you to become truly fulfilled by the actual, imperfect relationships that are available to you. She is never quite good enough. The legitimate longing for a richer and deeper relationship becomes blurred with the insatiable search for someone who can fulfill the golden fantasy.

Once you understand your need for connection and mirroring with the women in your life, you become empowered. You can take responsibility for your moods: just because you feel injured or self-doubting does not necessarily mean that your partner has tried to make you feel that way. You can begin to learn how to validate yourself instead of needing a woman to validate you. Or you can try to find other sources of validation that neither lead you to withdraw emotionally from your partner nor threaten your primary relationship. In other words, remember that it is healthy to need, unhealthy to need excessively, and essential to do nothing that is fundamentally disrespectful to someone you love and need.

 
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