THAT'S MEN:Your childhood may have influenced your choice of spouse, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN
A RECENT cartoon depicted a man and woman sitting grumpily before a marriage counsellor. “He’s just not the man I married,” the woman complains.
The man scowls. His briefcase is on the floor beside him and printed across it is his name: Dr Jekyll.
The woman no doubt is aggrieved that she thought she was marrying nice Mr Hyde but got the disagreeable Dr Jekyll as well. The marriage counsellor is probably wondering what was it that attracted her to Dr Jekyll in the first place. And what in heaven’s name attracted Dr Jekyll to her?
We don’t just marry people for the personality they present on the surface. Something else is going on too. Understanding this can help long-term partners be more tolerant of each other. It’s often illuminating to look at the things about your partner that you dislike and to ask why these attracted you in the first place.
Mary gads about a lot. She has to have an audience as often as possible to applaud her antics. She is the one who holds forth in the restaurant or the golf club. Husband John is fed up with all this. He likes a quiet life and wishes she would stop trying to drag him out all the time when he would far rather stay at home.
But Mary is fed up with her husband John because he would rather be working away at his garden and his DIY projects than accompanying her on her social whirl. John responds to her complaints by redecorating a room or starting another project.
As a child, Mary had to work hard for her parents’ attention. They had time for her brother but not for Mary, who had been a “mistake”. Her best hope of getting attention lay in being entertaining and making herself the centre of the little circle made up of the parents, herself and her brother.
John also had distant parents but managed his anxiety by throwing himself into his homework and his various childhood projects. This didn’t get him the attention he wanted, but it did help him to forget, gradually, that his parents were not interested in him.
Mary and John grew up, met and married. At an unconscious level, John fit in really well with Mary’s childhood experiences. Left to his own devices, he would ignore her presence, but she could always – in the early days – get his attention by being vivacious and entertaining. In other words, marriage to John brought her back into a familiar world in which she knew how to operate.
For John, Mary provided huge amounts of attention which he didn’t have to work for, even when he was preoccupied with his projects. He didn’t have to go to her: she would come to him. They may be fighting now, but they are fighting over the very things that attracted them initially.
Did the future Mrs Hyde sense a Dr Jekyll lurking in his background and was this a welcome change from straitlaced parents? Was it a relief for Dr Jekyll to marry a woman who would give him attention without him having to do bad things to get it?
One thing that helps, if you are caught in this sort of situation, is to reflect on childhood patterns that led you to marry this particular person. If there are, it is open to you to stop playing games and to try to connect with the reality of your partner. When you stop playing games, there is a chance that they will stop too.
If the marriage is so bad you need to get out of it, take the time later to reflect on what might have been behind the attraction to your erstwhile partner. Otherwise you may end up repeating history. And too many Dr Jekylls can be bad for the nerves.
Padraig O'Morain ( pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His mindfulness newsletter is free by e-mail