![]() Consequently, I take it as license to indulge in feeling deprived and rejected, much in the same way that I felt with my father who rarely talked to me except to order me around or scold me. I conclude from his meager display of communication that he doesn’t want to be with me or that he isn’t interested in me or what I feel. I initiate small talk about the events of the day, and he responds with unintelligible grunts. I’m on the couch and my husband Peter is relaxed in his easy chair, glued to the TV. ![]() Here she describes a complication of our early marriage: These inner conflicts cause them to repeat the pattern of disharmony in their next romantic endeavor, or else they avoid subsequent relationships for fear of failure.Īs an example of transference in marital disharmony, I cite at length a passage from LoveSmart: Transforming the Emotional Patterns That Sabotage Relationships, written by my late wife, Sandra Michaelson. I believe failure of mainstream psychology to teach and disseminate this depth psychology is a terrible disservice, comparable to denying educational opportunities to women in centuries past.ĭivorce isn’t a solution, Bergler said, because divorced individuals typically haven’t resolved the inner conflicts that led to divorce in the first place. Many divorces and other acts of self-sabotage-with their accompanying suffering-wouldn’t occur if people were psychologically more astute. Though Sigmund Freud introduced those terms 100 years ago, we still fail to monitor or regulate these processes as they pertain to our suffering and self-defeat. These emotions are usually acted out with our spouse through projection, transference, and identification. fancies that he himself determines his own acts he does not realize for a moment that he is acting on orders from the forces within.īergler says that the “orders from forces within” arrive as impulses or compulsions to act out in present time those old negative emotions we acquired long before we even met our partner. In comparison with the total structure of their personalities, the conscious aspect is of no more importance than an underling who carries out orders but has no part in making decisions.The person who consciously carries out the orders. But the truth is that the conscious life of each of them is only the outer expression of a huge network of deep-lying motives and complexes of which they are quite unaware. The man and woman think they make their own decisions about their marriage and that its fate lies in their own hands. Yet so powerful are the unconscious partners, and so efficient in their work, that they determine the whole course of the marriage and every other important aspect of the lives of these people. This unconscious partner is really the deepest part of the person himself, but works so silently that the person is unaware even of its existence. In addition to the two people who took out the marriage license, there is for each of them an invisible unconscious partner. ![]() There are four parties involved in every marriage. Edmund Bergler is available at used-book websites and also from International Universities Press in Madison, CT ( Bergler writes: What are these hidden dynamics? The essentials can be found in Divorce Won’t Help, a classic written more than fifty years ago. You can agree to have a partnership that’s intent on helping each other discover and resolve the hidden dynamics of human nature. Both of you need to become more conscious. Recognize that the pain you’re feeling is not your fault or your partner’s. Intimacy and love can be restored and enhanced if we look deeper into our personal issues.įor starters, try approaching marital conflict as a no-fault situation. Of course, many other marriages can be saved. For various reasons, some feuding couples are too unlikely to re-establish harmony and love. In some cases, getting a divorce is the sensible thing to do. It’s just so easy to blame our tribulations on the annoying characteristics of our partner-or on faulty genes, biochemical imbalances, the malice of others, or the cold, cruel world. Through resistance and denial, we prefer to avoid the disturbing idea that we’re the architects of our own suffering. We simply refuse to approach the unconscious part of us that harbors and cultivates the negative emotions that feed marital unhappiness. We forsake our partner because we can’t stomach our own bile. Rather than examine ourselves, many of us elect to betray love and skip town. Many people are too conflicted and divided in their psyche to maintain the union of a loving relationship. When marital conflict leads to divorce, conflict in the human psyche is the culprit, not the institution of marriage. Many of us elect to betray love rather than look at ourselves.
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