I think that was a very good article. But as I learn more and more about relationships, I can see that the issues discussed are really symptoms of further underlying problems. They result from even deeper FOO. The reason I bring this up is that my wife and I went through a lot of this type of thing years ago. She liked to bring up all these types of analysis. But just saying you will stop the behavior is very difficult to follow through on. The underlying NEED to act out remains, so a new tactic is developed and the relationship just evolves to a new form of dysfunction. That is why I think the behavioral changes are two sided – there can be good benefits to them if the changes somehow sooth the underlying FOO issue. But if not, a new damaging behavior will emerge to replace the old one.
Heather,
The article does highlight what enmeshment can look like. It is nothing more that codependency, which in turn comes from a lack of security in your upbringing. Looking to fill this insecurity or fear, you look to others to validate you, to give you the comfort you want. So your husband’s actions determine how you feel. When he distances, you feel panic, so you find a way to react that affirms he will not desert you. He obviously is doing the same to you. This is how you two are enmeshed.
Cutting off the enmeshment can make both of you go into a panic feeling and the fighting will escalate before it gets better. What I have seen is that the fighting gets TOO bad and the marriage falls apart, just when things are at their worst. So I wonder why counselors don’t encourage re-enmeshment just so couples can become comfortable again, stop the fighting, and slowly start working toward differentiation (the opposite of enmeshment).
Anyway, you really need to understand this concept inside and out. If you haven’t read Schnarch, I advise you to do so. “Addiction to Love: Overcoming Obsession and Dependency in Relationships” by Susan Peabody is also very good. It explains the pursuer/avoider dynamic.
As for as my comments to you go, I see now that I got your roles reversed. You two have switch the traditional male/female role of so many marriages, even my own. But thinking about it, I not sure how much it really matters. You two are essentially doing the same thing to each other, just in different ways. Men will express more anger and can be more abusive, but I would guess his underlying reasons are very close to yours. The bootm line issue is the longing for intimacy BOTH of you want but cannot express. You said your therapist stated you had some intimacy avoidance behavior. It seems he does too (by focusing on the kids).
Schnarch talks about this as a two-choice dilemma. The woman (in this case, your husband) is resentful for a whole basket of reasons, to the point of not wanting sex any longer. She does not want to want her H, but she wants him to want her. Because of her childhood, in which this particular woman’s mother continually failed to do things for her, this woman has now taken on her mother’s behavior. Schnarch says “But perhaps the most powerful fusion is the hardest to see: the only way Audrey could connect with her mother was on the receiving end of Mom’s sadism” (p. 301). So she learns to not want her husband as she learned to not want her mother. But as an adult, she is now the perpetrator, when as a child she was the victim.
Perhaps it is your husband who best fits this description, rather than you. You tried to get his attention, finally resorting to an affair. But you have a weakness in you that you need this attention is the first place. And because you do, you are only too willing to belong to someone, anyone, and put up with certain levels of abuse, much as the Stockholm Syndrome describes.
