Matches And Mismatches

On the one hand there is no need to describe what happens when people fall in love and form a natural marriage; on the other hand, a list of all the possibilities for a neurotic relationship would be impossible to make. However, a few basic patterns of couples interaction can be described, rather as chronic emergency responses have been described earlier, to supply some clue to the setting up of what can be called a neurotic tango: a daily dance in which the couple's actions are intricately interwoven, but whose final result is a marriage which is fixed, compulsive, and dead.

Natural marriages also have their own dance: some are like the orderly circling of a satellite around a planet, or the alternation of night and day. Others are more like those twin star systems observed by astronomers, in which there are huge explosions and tarings as the gravitational fields periodically merge or collide. A marriage is not necessarily a bad one because two strong spirits run frequently into fiery conflict, nor is it necessarily a good one when there is a perfect complementarity of needs and demands. There is some evidence (see Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind) from information theory and cybernetics that any relationship between two people will be more stable if it is complementary than if it is symmetrical or competitive. But complementarity and stability may themselves be a neurotic equilibrium or trap.

Each marriage has its own dynamics. A complementary relationship may appear functional at one level and not at another. It may be quite functional at an outer level for one partner to revolve around another. Examples might be a male historian whose wife's main role is to do the cooking and to type her husband's manuscripts, or an actress whose husband is her manager and factotum; such arrangements may suit both partners. But the same dynamic at the sexual level may not be fulfilling: the more subordinate partner might be making love only when the dominant partner demanded it and might know no way of taking the initiative. Another example is a couple in which one partner goes out to work and makes the money then hands it over to the other partner who then makes all the financial decisions. This not uncommon situation seems to indicate an excessive splitting or compartmentalization of functions. This couple would not be likely to experience sexual excitement and orgasm synchronously; their sexual relationship is more likely to be a transaction in which each takes turns at satisfying the other. One thing is clear from therapy: the sexual relationship is almost always the same dynamic as the rest of the relationship. Most people assume that the sexual relationship is secondary to social factors. It is often vice-versa, with the sexual relationship primary.

At the beginning of a good marriage there is a strong sexual tug between the partners. This may seem obvious—of course there is sexual attraction at the beginning—but it is not usual to acknowledge this attraction as primary: most people maintain they are in love because their intellects work on the same track or they share the same ideals. On the contrary, I believe that a strong sexual attraction indicates a possibility of fusion and shared rhythms at other levels. The unconscious self is capable, it seems, of making decisions which do not necessarily become conscious. In a healthy person this unconscious self is not, as the Freudians would have it, an enemy, but a friend. I have known people, and I suspect there are many, who fall in love and even start living together, before they discover their many shared views. It is important to recognize this, because otherwise some potentially good marriages can be prevented by considerations of snobbery or social approval—the things which support compulsive marriage. If two people are strongly attracted and function well together sexually, the odds are that their compatibility will extend to other areas, however unevenly developed these areas might yet be. Many wonderful marriages are contracted between people of different races, countries and backgrounds, and one of their basic joys is the discovery of ways in which the sexual fusion at the core of the marriage is paralleled in daily life.

Some marriages, though, are based on reciprocal neurotic needs and shared ways of dealing with anxiety, not love. Without attempting an exhaustive list, here are some possibilities, arranged to correspond with the chronic Emergency Responses.

Fright-Paralysis

1. Two partners whose emergency response is fright-paralysis form a "Babes in the Wood" marriage. Sexual attraction is not very important. Instead, the partners cling to each other in the face of an adverse world. There is a contact block, as it were, between the couple and the world.

2. One fright-paralyzed partner and a "protector," often a fright-rigid person.

3. One fright-paralyzed partner and one flight-away partner: a "Babe" plus a "Runner." This is not a stable situation. It occurs, not because of the Babe's need, but because the Babe is about as real a person as the Runner can stand to be near, and is non-threatening.

Flight-Away

These impulsive people or Runners tend to find a partner who functions as home base. This can be a Babe, a Victim (fight-fright) or a strong mother or father figure (fright-rigid, usually).

Flight-Toward

This is another Babe plus Protector situation: the partner is strong, often fright-rigid, super stable. The flight-toward Babe, however, is less likely than the fright-paralyzed Babe to choose attachment to flight-away types; the flight-toward person would sense the Runner's instability.

Fright-Rigidity

1. Two fright-rigid partners: the efficient compulsive marriage, in which there are no external problems— just symptoms such as psychosomatic illness and delinquent children.

2. The Protector of a "weaker" person."

Fight-Fright (Struggle)

1. Victim married to "Brute," fright-rigid and harsh or fight oriented and attacking and phallic. The partner has a hard edge or even some sadism, which is used in the struggle Victim's battle for release (every martyr needs their persecutor). It is very hard for a person in chronic struggle to sustain a relationship: their ceaseless torment drives the partner to leave, become an alcoholic or drug addict, or turn into a genuine brute.

2. Struggling person plus a Babe (fright-paralyzed) who will make no active demands. Here the struggling person has his or her tension basically under control, and the partner will not threaten this control by pushing the relationship toward too much excitement.

Flight-Toward/Away

1. This ambivalent person will characteristically choose a partner who is sexually glamorous and stimulating but not capable of a threatening tenderness. There is also often a shared narcissism and mutual seductiveness. The partner is usually an active fight-oriented person. This marriage is frequent: a flighty, rather passive partner with an active, rather aggressive one. In sexual terms, the person seeks a partner with a powerful genital presence, or the appearance of one, and gravitates around the partner's penis or vagina, now seduced, now not.

2. A similar dynamic to the above with a partner who is more fright-rigid, a "solid" type of parent figure.

Fight

1. Marriage to a passive partner (flight-toward/away, flight-toward, sometimes fright-paralyzed) who can be more or less dominated.

2. Marriage to Victim type who is bullied.

3. Two fight-oriented people together. In this high-energy symmetrical relationship there is a constant raging battle for dominance. In some cases this aggression may be turned outward by tacit agreement, and both take on the outside world. Both block tenderness.

It may help to look at your own marriage to see if in any way your emergency responses interlock, and how far this has created habits which block joy and passion, keeping your relationship closed in a trap.

Whatever is going on in the superstructure of your marriage will reflect the most important area of your contact: the possible interlocking of your emergency responses at the sexual level.

Another way in which partners can relate neurotically is well known: one or both are a mother- or father-substitute. The contrary situation is less well known: the partner may be chosen because he or she is the opposite of the other person's father or mother. In a concrete example: a man whose mother is a "saint" may marry another "saint," or the opposite, a "whore"; or he may be alternately attracted to saints and to whores. The dynamics of all this can be complex but one thing is clear: the man has a split between the tender component of his sexuality (his tender reverence toward the saint) and the sensual element (the whore he wants to "fuck" without feeling). These could not fuse in his feelings toward his mother and therefore cannot in his feelings toward any woman: he cannot both love and passionately make love to the same woman. For the partner this is of course a trap: sainthood and whoredom are limited options.

This kind of split is inevitable wherever incestuous feelings have not been resolved, and a person remains fixated on one or other parent. It is simple: a child may love a parent passionately—sexual intercourse with that parent is out of bounds. Nor is it usually desired.

The more you love your partner in the same way as your opposite-sex parent (you identify them), the more impossible it becomes for your feelings to be genitally focused. It is all very well to marry a person who reminds you of your beloved father or mother—but we must not make love to our father or mother. The other extreme is to marry the parent's opposite: then we can have an intense and permitted genital relationship; but here, often, the tender feelings are kept reserved for the parent.

Often psychoanalytic therapy devotes years trying to sort out this kind of problem. The psychodynamics can be complex. But Reich's innovation of direct work on the emotions by breaking through the character armor has made the "split" more accessible. When there is a split between tender and sensual, emotional and genital feelings, they may be resolved in intensive couples work, without much discussion of the person's relationship with the parents, although this may be fruitful.

When you observe each other's bodies, it may be helpful to note any reciprocities in terms of blocks. Does one of you have a more active upper or lower body? Does one of you make love from the heart, the other more from the genitals? As you get to know each other better, some leveling out in your contact may occur, and you may be able to surrender to each other with both hearts and genitals. In the meantime, if there are differences in the areas of openness, then an effort should be made to understand and acknowledge these. Many partners are angry with each other because they sense that the other is not reciprocating in the same way. This may well be true. But they may be reciprocating in another way. Just be as present to each other as you can.