Rushing to Judgment

The first post of the new year in this poor, neglected blog is going to be rather personal, touching on intimate matters in my second-most intimate relationship: my marriage. Be assured that I write with the full knowledge and approval of my beloved wife. It’s our hope that if this account of some of our struggles made known to everyone can help someone, it will be worth it.

Every couple brings complexities into their marriage, and where these complexities cause friction are found the greatest opportunities for both misunderstanding and growth as individuals and as a couple. This is challenging enough when one member’s complexities simply annoy the other member, but when both member’s quirks tend to amplify and exacerbate each other, matters can escalate to the point of toxicity. Let me give an example.

In the home I grew up in, voices were rarely raised, at least by the adults. Even discipline was attempted in a reasoned, controlled manner, to the degree that was possible in a house with seven children. But matters could never be controlled perfectly, which meant that if voices were raised, it meant that matters were approaching extremis – someone was in real trouble. Since there was a chance that someone would be me, I learned from an early age that when things got close to shouting, I should clam up and ease my way toward the nearest exit, so as to make myself scarce until the trouble had blown over.

My beloved was raised in a smaller family whose members had strong opinions and were not afraid to voice them however loudly. This was done (usually) without hostility (as opposed to my home, where a raised voice would have presumed hostility), and emphatic conversations were assumed to be a part of usual family discourse. However, another facet of that family environment was a lot of indirect, non-verbal communications, such as questions that were veiled accusations, or “innocent” comments which contained suggestions or inferences. Another common tactic was punishment by withdrawal of affection and attention. This wasn’t uncommon in earlier generations, but that didn’t make it easier for a confused child, already upset by being chastised for some offense, to be cut off from reassurance or comfort as part of the punishment. It could (and did) provoke emotional distress that approached desperation.

My beloved and I entered marriage unaware of the significance of such formative events in our respective upbringings. Had someone brought them up, we would have acknowledged that they’d happened, but we had no comprehension of how much and in what ways our personalities had been shaped by them, and how that formation would cause conflict in our marriage. In fact, it was only the problems triggered by those conflicts that would drive us to understand those influences clearly – and even then it would take several years and much difficult communication before we understood how the dynamics of how those weaknesses could feed on and amplify each other.

A typical cycle might unfold like this: most often the triggering cause would be fear (the usual suspect.) My beloved might fear the implications of something I did or said. This fear would drive her to express her opinion or objection in a raised voice, because in her experience, that was how you expressed that something really mattered to you.

But I would not receive the communication in that spirit. To my keenly attuned survival instincts, a raised voice signaled Big Trouble Ahead – things were teetering on the brink of calamity, and I’d better clam up, lie low, and make my escape as soon as I could. That pattern would dictate my response, in the hopes that whatever the actual topic was could be reapproached later, when things had calmed down a bit.

Unbeknownst to me, my beloved had some keenly attuned survival instincts of her own – the ones that had been formed in her childhood when affection had been withdrawn from her just when she’d needed it most – and my response was triggering those instincts. This would cause her to escalate her response in hopes of heading off what seemed to be a Dire Outcome in the making. She’d raise her voice yet more, and sometimes get physically expressive, striking a counter or clenching her fists or making some other display to try to connect with me before I withdrew even more.

My emotions knew nothing of her intents and motives. All they knew was that an already dicey situation seemed to be spiraling out of control, and the best I could hope for was to shut down and escape before things got worse. After all, my emotions told me, I must be the problem, so absenting myself must be the solution. I was oblivious to the fact that I was throwing gasoline onto an already blazing emotional fire. Neither of us were aware of the cyclical and mutually aggravating nature of our behavior in such situations – our responses were instinctive and unconsidered. It took a long time and many difficult discussions before we began to grasp all the factors which were contributing to these relational firestorms.

Any outsider observing these meltdowns would have thought we were abusing each other, apparently deliberately. That’s pretty much what it felt like from the inside, too – like we were being abused. For my part, I couldn’t comprehend why my beloved, who was unwaveringly polite to store cashiers and strove to put strangers at ease, would unleash on me tongue lashings of a severity that my worst offenses in childhood had never elicited. For her part, she couldn’t comprehend why her companion, who had vowed to stay by her through all trials, was emotionally withdrawing, leaving her to face her inner distress alone. From both of our perspectives, it looked like the other was deliberately initiating something to torment us – while we were just reflexively reacting according to long-learned behavior patterns.

I’m glad I wasn’t the kind of guy who had a gang of drinking buddies at the corner bar to whom I could flee with my troubles. I’m sure I could have made a case that I was being abused by my wife, and they would have received it sympathetically. After all, I was a responsible husband and father who paid the bills and helped around the house – what had I done to justify being yelled at like I was a scullery boy? (Not that she would have yelled at a scullery boy.) I didn’t deserve that treatment. For her part, she certainly could have found a circle of friends (or online acquaintances, had such things existed at the time) who would have affirmed her perception of my cruelty at “freezing her out” or “going away”, and how how I’d shut down communications just when things got difficult. Such outside reassurance would have helped neither of us with the actual problems, and could have hardened our internal convictions that the issue was solely with the other person.

The reality was much more complex, touching on some of the deepest weaknesses and needs in both our personalities. We were also under some severe external pressure during those years, and my beloved was in the first stages of chronic anxiety, something she still works to control. They were difficult years indeed, calling for a lot of prayer and patience with each other and with ourselves.

A major corner for me to turn wasn’t convincing my beloved how badly she was treating me, or how much she needed to change, but self awareness. My pattern of handling distressing personal encounters – clam up, lie low, get away – was totally unconscious on my part. I wasn’t even aware I was doing it, so how could I possibly understand how it was affecting my beloved? Communications with her helped me to grasp just how alarming it was for her to have the person she loved the most seek to withdraw just when she needed him. These realizations let to more communications, and deeper understanding of ourselves and each other.

I wish I could say that we’ve put all that behind us, but such deep-seated personality traits don’t uproot easily. Better understanding does lead to quicker resolution, and these days when we find ourselves falling into the familiar pattern, we more swiftly recognize that “here we go again”, which helps us to pull out sooner. What I want to emphasize is how much patience, trust, and perseverance it took to make headway on just this facet of our relationship (and believe me, there are others.) In today’s environment, where personal experience is deemed the final and ultimate authority (“Nobody can deny my experience!”), it would have been far too easy for me to rush to the conclusion that my beloved was an abusive person. After all, her treatment of me sure felt abusive, and I couldn’t see any wrong I had done her that justified that. She could have made the same case against me - how my treatment of her had distressed her beyond any reasonable limit, and how I’d made myself emotionally unavailable to her just when she’d needed it most. But, by the grace of God, we were both able to suspend judgment and keep communicating until we began to see that the circumstances were more complex than they appeared, and what looked (and felt) like abusive behavior was actually the interplay of defensive patterns we’d developed over the years.

I’m recounting this because I’ve known far too many marriages that have broken down because one or both parties have dug into their own perceptions (“What more do I need to know?”), shut down communications, and refused to grow in understanding themselves or their spouse. In some cases this has led to “ossified” marriages, where both parties participate in a superficial manner but give up on any deep personal intimacy. In other cases it’s led to shattered families, broken hearts, and relational damage that spans generations. Persistence, patience, prayer, charity, and giving the benefit of the doubt pay off. As one of my very wise daughters once commented about her marriage, “We’re in this together for the rest of our lives – we may as well figure out how to make it work.”