The Tetter-Totter Syndrome in Marriages

[motherofnine9]

Yup, Louie looks like the bad guy sitting on the low-end of the teeter-totter;

Victoria seems the perfect , suffering saint. Look again!

At first glance, the relationship looks bleak. Victoria, with low self-esteem and a victim complex, is in an emotionally abusive relationship. Louie, her husband does love her but he is a miserable man, struggling with cancer and the progression of M.S. In an attempt to dull the effects of depression, Louie drinks. In addition, he resorts to verbal abuse, venting his pain on poor Victoria.
Yep, Louie looks like the bad guy sitting on the low-end of the teeter-totter; Victoria seems to be the perfect, suffering saint, running the household and holding everything together. Look again!

The teeter-totter shifts. Victoria injures her knee and suddenly, bam, she is now on the low-end of the teeter-totter. She does not like it one bit. She does not want to accept this shift in power. Frantically, this good, little wife tries to stay in charge of her realm by hobbling around her house in order to do all the chores. of course Victoria finally breaks down in tears and asks her husband for help.

Louie responds to her requests! At first Victoria only asks if she is desperate but soon, without being asked, Louie is the one to pick up the morning paper at the corner, make his wife a cup of coffee and even cook dinner. Victoria bemoans the fact that her kingdom has crumbled and struggles to accept help. Yet, as she does, Louie continues to rise even higher on the teeter-totter. The balance of power has shifted.

Biggest surprise of all is that Louie drinks less and less everyday. Without his wife’s constant nagging or silent disapproval, Louie is now free to change.

The teetter-totter of life.

No one is always the bad abuser.

No one is always the helpless victim.

Both partners are part of an intricate dance because it really does take “two to tango”.

Husband and wife react to each other by triggering positive emotions or setting off volcanic erruptions that are rooted in old wounds, often from childhood.

When we change ourselves, our mates change. When we quit controlling and demanding change, our better half is free to change.There is nothing more damaging to a marriage than when one partner is a self-righteous, suffering Catholic marytr. Christ is powerless in the face of such pride; He is free to heal when both the good and bad looking partners come before Him with a humble and contrite heart.

Period.

 

[Melissa]

Is this a response to something else?

There are abusive people out there (who will be able to put on the Prince Charming facade during courtship), and a fable like this would be rather victim-blaming in those instances. Abuse isn’t a result of the wife being ‘nagging’ or ‘silently disapproving’. I’m still picking up pieces with my children from the years of abuse that took place while I stayed in the marital home with their father.

I am now divorced, living 900 miles away from him, and their father has supervised vistation (but he hasn’t ever taken advantage of it … even the one time when I made preliminary arrangements and offered to pay the supervisor’s fees–when I turned it over to him to complete arrangements, he blew it spectacularly by being rude, abusive, and behaving in a way such that the supervisor, who had 30 years of experience supervising visitation, terminated the visit before it began because she did not feel that she could guarantee the safety of the children in the face of his displayed behavior). Of course, to talk to him, he’s the victim and I’m the heartless person who keeps his children away from him–just look at how he made his mother’s funeral all about how horrible I was for not bringing the children there so he could see them (we didn’t attend due to the fact that our safety concerns precluded knowingly going where he would be, and I didn’t want to be seen as a cause as to why he couldn’t attend his own mother’s funeral given the full stay-away order of protection that I have against him–this order is valid to 2019, and was issued by the criminal court following his conviction for violating my previous order of protection).

Sometimes, people don’t change–and yes, sometimes there is one person who is the abuser (except for those brief honeymoon periods in the cycle).

 

[RPRPsych]

Is this a response to something else?

Psychologists call it “identification with the aggressor.”

Sometimes, people don’t change–and yes, sometimes there is one person who is the abuser (except for those brief honeymoon periods in the cycle).

I fully agree. Trying to minimize or deny this is a sin.

 

[RPRPsych]

suffering Catholic **marytr. **

“Martyr”.

Also, what’s wrong with suffering Catholic martyrs? (St. Monica and St. Rita, ora pro nobis!) We have one for almost every day in the calendar. You might consider rephrasing that. :crying:

 

[Prodigal_Son]

In response to the other posters, I think motherofnine has nicely described the way that *most *marriages between two sincere people work.

Obviously, there are some cases in which one spouse is mostly just a victim, but these cases are (in my experience) quite rare. It is common for people to *present *their marriages this way, but it’s rarely accurate.

As far as being a martyr goes, (1) spelling doesn’t matter. Get over yourself. And (2) The Christian martyrs did not consider themselves martyrs. They thought of themselves as sinners who deserved hell.

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you feel like you are just a good and holy person and everyone else around you is persecuting you, you can trust that you are **not **in God’s will. We are sinners, that is all. If God wants to make us martyrs, so be it. But we don’t get to be martyrs by feeling that way.

(As a side note, “martyr” means witness. A person who suffers for someone else’s sin is not a martyr, unless this action brings other people to Christ.)

 

[RPRPsych]

In response to the other posters, I think motherofnine has nicely described the way that *most *marriages between two sincere people work.

Speak for yourselves.

Such a cynical view of marriage has nothing to do with the Catholic Sacrament, and has more to do with pop psychology.

 

[RPRPsych]

Obviously, there are some cases in which one spouse is mostly just a victim, but these cases are (in my experience) quite rare. It is common for people to *present *their marriages this way, but it’s rarely accurate.

Classic victim-blaming. The wives asked for it, the embryos were bothering their mothers, the elderly were taking up hospital beds, the molestation victims lured the predators on.

When will we throw away the perverse values of this “progressive” world and listen to our consciences, as well as the voice of the Church?

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Classic victim-blaming. The wives asked for it, the embryos were bothering their mothers, the elderly were taking up hospital beds, the molestation victims lured the predators on.

The OP, to me, seemed to be talking about two ways to approach a marriage: (a) Nagging and continually demanding the other person change, as if you are better than the other person, or (b) Earnestly expressing your own emotions, how helpless you feel, how dysfunctional your own patterns are, and encountering your spouse out of your own weakness.

Are you seriously proposing that (a) is a more Christian option than (b)? So Christians are supposed to be opposed to self-righteousness, except when it comes to our marriages?

Mind you, if the OP is talking about a real case of serious abuse, I agree that more might be needed. But the very fact that the two spouses described are healing at the same time seems to indicate that this is not a case of serious abuse.

When will we throw away the perverse values of this “progressive” world and listen to our consciences, as well as the voice of the Church?

I wonder the same thing. Read up on Church history. The Church does not teach that there is a benefit to thinking of oneself as a victim. (The Church does teach, of course, that we should get ourselves out of dangerous situations, so we agree there.)

 

[RPRPsych]

The OP also made this categorical statement:

No one is always the bad abuser.

That is simply untrue.

Are there troubled marriages where both parties are at fault?

Certainly. In fact, I’d agree that in the majority of cases, that might be true to a greater or lesser extent.

But there are also good marriages where both parties make the best of both good and bad times.

And there are purely abusive situations in which Dr. Phil-style victim-blaming is both self-righteous and pathetic. If a man is dependent on alcohol, molesting his children, and indulging in marital rape, and his wife has no financial security to “walk out” (much less to seek “counselling”), it’s blatantly unfair to say “no one is always the bad abuser.”

Does this mean the man is irredeemable? Of course not. Everyone can change, sola gratia - alcoholics, pedophiles, spousal abusers. But blaming the wife for this is nonsense.

I never said we had to be self-righteous. On the contrary, I object to those who self-righteously pontificate about abuses within marriage without having to face that reality every day.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

This makes more sense. I feel like you’re zooming in on one quotation in the OP, though, and you’ve missed the forest for that particular tree. I think that what motherofnine9 was saying was that codependent relationships often appear – from the outside – to include a suffering saint. But really that person is just another sinner. And dealing with herself (or himself) as a sinner will help bring God’s grace into the situation.

Yes, I think that particular “always” statement is an overstatement. But even that statement didn’t blame the wife for the husband’s problems.

And we shouldn’t base our general teaching on situations like this: a husband “dependent on alcohol, molesting his children, and indulging in marital rape, and his wife has no financial security to “walk out”…” That would be like constructing a national abortion policy based on rare cases like pregnancies arising from rape. (Oh, wait, the US did that.) :banghead:

Maybe we ought to say, “It almost always takes two to tango.” There are cases where one person is tangoing on their own, but they’re just not that common. Living with a person mired in sin pulls us deeper into sin, ourselves.

 

[RPRPsych]

And we shouldn’t base our general teaching on situations like this: a husband “dependent on alcohol, molesting his children, and indulging in marital rape, and his wife has no financial security to “walk out”…” That would be like constructing a national abortion policy based on rare cases like pregnancies arising from rape. (Oh, wait, the US did that.) :banghead:

And yet it happens to thousands of women in my country and others.

Reality does not begin and end in the United States.

Maybe we ought to say, “It almost always takes two to tango.” There are cases where one person is tangoing on their own, but they’re just not that common. Living with a person mired in sin pulls us deeper into sin, ourselves.

Agreed. The problem is with the leap from “almost” to “no one”.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

And yet it happens to thousands of women in my country and others.

Reality does not begin and end in the United States.

Agreed. In the US right now, marital problems usually arise from the husband being too weak, not too strong and controlling. But I certainly can’t speak for India.

 

[RPRPsych]

Agreed. In the US right now, marital problems usually arise from the husband being too weak, not too strong and controlling. But I certainly can’t speak for India.

That makes sense.

And I must say that for many troubled couples from the “higher” reaches of our society, your points and the OPs make excellent sense.

 

[Tablefor9]

Wow.

I think this thread minimizes the dynamic of verbal and emotional abuse of women. It does so by putting the blame on the “nagging, controlling martyr-wife” and assuming codependency to be the order of the day, rather than an otherwise emotionally healthy woman who has perhaps been browbeaten, conditioned, or manipulated into an abusive relationship which she is attempting to stay in for valid reasons (children, financial, vows). I find this, coming from another woman, particularly disturbing.

I don’t know what the OP’s post is in response to, but I think it is adding insult to injury for a woman in such a difficult place in her marriage, perhaps trying to discern a way to rescue. Will she read this and assume God is speaking to her, assigning blame to her own account where there should not be, then stay in a situation that will bring further psychological or spiritual harm to herself and her children?

Pride is a deadly sin, indeed, and we must all take care to avoid it. Let us keep enough humble compassion for our hurting sisters to assume them blameless for the abuse they suffer unless we know otherwise.

Blessings to all–
V

 

[RPRPsych]

I agree fully with this post.

Unfortunately, modern “liberal” counsellors are very good at blaming the victim. If a child was abused, it’s their fault because they didn’t speak out. If a man is addicted to drugs, it’s his wife’s fault because she’s “co-dependent”. If a young man has schizophrenia, his parents are causing or worsening it through “expressed emotions”.

Ugh.

 

[motherofnine9]

Tablefor9 of course you are also right- this is not a “one shoe fits all” post, of course there are woman who are truly the victim, out of no fault of their own. And often the abusive partner is the dominant, strong guy who is lording it over his family.

HOWEVER, there is a sneaky sort of situation where a saintly looking partner, unwittingly keeps the lazy, depressed “bad looking partner” down. Of course it is subconcious. This was a real life situation where, when given a chance, the weak partner , who was ‘acting abusive’ rose up out of depression when he was needed and started to help his wife, The person who seemed victimized was really in a postion of power and control and strength.

 

[RPRPsych]

I think we have a consensus here.

There’s a legitimate dichotomy between genuine abuse and “giving a dog a bad name, then hanging him”, which I think you’ve captured well in this second post. Thanks.

 

[motherofnine9]

Agreed

 

[Phil_Marinus]

Motherofnine… You like to set off a chain reaction and see where it goes…
Once again I'm impressed.. You really are a deep thinker.....

 

[motherofnine9]

ah - you “get me”