SOLVING THE RELATIONSHIP PUZZLE
By Dr. Tom Merrill, Bobbie Sandoz Merrill, MSW
Cox News Service
Published on: 07/22/04
The Need for 'We' in Partnerships
Last week Tom responded to the following question with a promise that Bobbie would answer it from a female perspective: My wife and I have been married for six years, and for the most part I believe that we have a good marriage. I have a demanding job that takes me away from home two weeks each month. When I am home, I have a lot of catching up to do — both around the house and in my personal life. Between house chores, my career and my passion for golf, my wife says she feels she is low on my priority list. I tell her that she is always in my thoughts when I am at work — her picture is prominent in my office — and she is welcome to play golf with me. I n my opinion, I am building my career for us and should not be penalized for the time I spend working. And when I am home, I think I should be able to do what I want. I have suggested that she develop some interests on her own and not rely on me so heavily for companionship. I think I'm doing a pretty good job, even though she still complains. Do you agree with me?
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Bobbie Says: I cannot count the times I have heard men in couples counseling express the same confusion you describe while their wives complain about the kind of arrangement you are promoting. Women do not want to hear about their photo on the desk or that their husband's career is being pursued for them, especially when these lean remnants seem to be all that's left of a previously enthusiastic and robust partnership.
A woman feels painfully ignored and discounted when the man who once adored her becomes filled with excuses about why he needs to carve increasingly more "me" time out of the initial "we" focus she experienced when they were first falling in love. She is even more hurt when she notices that this time and focus are not taken from his work schedule or activities with buddies, but from what was previously allotted to her and the relationship during the period when he was so intent on winning her heart.
She feels humiliated by his loss of interest in even basic allotments of time with her and is saddened by his accompanying failure to continue to value their relationship. Because she is more prone as a woman to participate in marriage as part of a twosome, she innately recognizes that his desire to pull out from the "we" of their partnership to a "me" and "you" experience will result in little focus invested in their partnership. She also knows that his effort to return to a singles oriented "me" approach to marriage will ultimately undermine both of their abilities to remain very deeply in love.
As a result of his change in focus, she finds herself in a difficult position as she decides how to respond. This becomes even more challenging when he conducts their discussions about this from his more masculine perspective of "me" versus "you," putting them into deeper layers of opposition and separation.
Although many women will take on this battle and become shrews in their effort to win it, many others simply wish the "we" relationship had a higher standing on the scale of things valued and that there was a better "we" based approach to deciding which individual and joint pursuits to include in their lives together.
These are the women who will ask a few times for more honoring of the partnership. But if these suggestions are resisted or met with denial, arguments and proclamations of love "proved" by such things as photos on the desk, they feel any further effort to bring back the "we" would render them pathetic.
And so they tuck their sadness away, quietly note their own loss of interest in partners so disinterested in them and begin to pursue their individual interests and lives, separate from their partners and safely outside the domain of a "partnership" that no longer feels aligned or safe to them.
This leads their husbands to believe they have "won" the battle and are free to continue guilt-free on their "me" paths. Both fail at this critical juncture to understand the importance of what really happened. Instead, they pursue parallel lives, and feel relatively happy at first. However, what they fail to notice in the early stages of this arrangement is that their relationships have lost the critical "we" component so essential to the life-force of truly fulfilling and enduring partnerships.
When Tom first noticed that the only real chance couples have for a truly robust and rewarding partnership comes out of their willingness to view all of their attitudes, thoughts, conversations and decisions through the perspective of what will work for the "we" of the partnership, he thought men might resist giving up their traditionally strong urge to argue for "their" way, rather than support "our" way. But then he realized that men as much as women want their partnerships to not only survive but to feel powerful and rewarding and that they would actually welcome an approach that would give them more, rather than the less they are now wrestling with. We will provide additional details and tools in future columns for implementing how to do this in ways we guarantee will lead to more in your partnership experiences.
Tom Merrill, Ph.D., ABPP, and Bobbie Sandoz Merrill, MSW, are married and veterans of the relationship puzzle. Tom, a clinical psychologist, and Bobbie, a therapist and parenting specialist, bring their personal and clinical experiences to this column. They have co-authored Settle for More: The Art of Outrageous Relationships, to be published in fall, 2004. They welcome reader responses and questions: Merrill@lava.net.
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