Anatomy of a Quarrel

*Author's Note - This article is actually a chapter from a book I am now writing.  I would be grateful for your feedback if you would please send it to me on the form at the bottom of this page. 

            Jim and Marie came for marriage counseling to increase communication and to help Jim with his anger management.  Jim acknowledged that he had a short fuse and that his raging was sometimes excessive.  This was probably accentuated by his tall imposing physique.  He was able to keep his anger in check for his upper management position but didn’t do nearly so well at home.  In contrast,  Marie was a rather quiet and petite school teacher.  She had emotionally distanced from Jim for the past several years.  The couple had been married twenty two years with three children, two of whom were still living at home.  There had been no separations, no violence, and no history of affairs.  After a half dozen counseling sessions, the couple reported their relationship and communication had improved. 

            During one of the later counseling sessions, Marie reported a recent quarrel that had occurred like this:  The whole family, except for the oldest son, had been together for their big Sunday dinner.  Jim and Marie were both upset about having recently heard that the oldest son had lied to them.  The son had taken a loan from them under false pretenses.   He did not have a job as he had previously led them to believe.  During dinner, Jim ranted and raved about the situation.  Although Marie was similarly upset about the news, she was also concerned that their other two children were present for their Sunday dinner ritual.  For her,  Jim’s angry venting was spoiling a ritual for family cohesion.  Having already learned a new tool from counseling, she asked Jim to come with her into a different room to speak with her privately.  Marie then privately told Jim how his anger was excessive and was spoiling the dinner.  Jim protested that he was entitled to have his feelings and she shouldn’t demand that he give them up.  Marie persisted in telling him that she wanted the family to enjoy their dinner without turmoil.  When they returned to dinner, Jim was quiet for a while but eventually lapsed back into his angry venting.  After dinner, Jim and Marie continued to quarrel.  However, there was now a new dimension.  After the dinner, Marie tried to escape Jim’s anger by retreating to another room.  Jim followed her and kept up his diatribe.  Marie then tried to escape to yet another room but to no avail.  Jim kept on following her and kept on ranting.  Jim wasn’t criticizing Marie but rather the oldest son.  However, Marie had had enough and didn’t want to hear any more.  The quarrel ended when Marie finally had to drive one of the children to an event and she escaped from the household. 

             During the counseling session when Marie and Jim were describing their recent quarrel, I made some interesting observations.  One was that Jim didn’t want to talk about the issue of Marie’s right to retreat from his anger.  When I kept raising the issue, Jim’s facial expression was that of bored disgust.  He frequently diverted attention back to the subject of his son’s deceit.  This was a seemingly unintelligent response from a man who worked in a human relations field.  I wondered what was really going on with him.   Marie then brought up the fact that Thanksgiving dinner was coming up soon and she didn’t want a repeat performance of Jim’s anger at the table.  I invited Marie to work that out with Jim right there in the session.  She then turned to Jim and bluntly stated how she didn’t want the issue of the oldest son raised at all.  She turned back to me as if she had finished what I had asked her to do.  At that point something became clear to me and I asked her about how she had negotiated for Jim’s cessation of ranting during the initial dinner incident.  When she had him off privately in the side room, had she actually asked him for a commitment?  Marie’s first response was confusion.  After a bit more discussion she finally admitted “no.”  I then asked Marie to turn toward Jim and actually ask if he would agree to no angry expressions at the Thanksgiving dinner table.  Marie halted and turned back with a bewildered look on her face.  The ensuing dialogue went something like this:

             “This is hard.  I’m afraid I’m going to be hurt if he actually says he’s going to do something and then he doesn’t.  That would be really painful.”   

             I replied “Yes, I imagine that might be true.  And you don’t feel as vulnerable if you merely state your expectations or throw them at him, do you? You feel a lot more vulnerable asking him for something with the possibility that you might be rejected somehow.  If he forgets you, he kind of drops you.  I would guess that even if he rejects your request outright, you’d take it like a personal rejection – or am I wrong about that?  Tell me if I’m wrong.”

             “No, you’re right.  That’s how I would feel.”

             I continued:  “That’s really a kind of fear.  It’s subliminal but your reaction just now indicates that you don’t ask for a commitment because you’re afraid.   Do you think that the same fear was operating that night after the dinner incident?  I mean you didn’t actually ask for a commitment then either did you?”

             Marie leapfrogged ahead a giant step at this point.  We had had previous discussions about the possible influence of her uninvolved parents when she was a child.

             “You know it makes sense but I guess I really didn’t realize it at the time.  Remember we talked before about how when I grew up my parents really ignored me.  I didn’t ask for anything back then either.  I couldn’t.  It was no use.”    

             I tried to give her support. “And it helped you to survive.  It really fit back then.  It helped you survive it without getting overwhelmed with pain.  For a little child, feeling rejected is almost like feeling annihilated.  But that was then and this is now.  Go ahead and ask Jim this time.  Ask him about Thanksgiving dinner.  Give him an opportunity to get involved with you.”

             Marie proceeded to do a commendable job of asking for a commitment.  Of course by this time Jim was really primed.  He even articulated back to her his detailed commitment to avoid expressing anger during Thanksgiving dinner.  Marie was pleased.

             The next part of the session focused on how Marie had originally complicated the original argument by confronting Jim about his anger’s intensity.  I pointed out to Marie that Jim’s poor timing in ranting during the dinner was a valid issue.  However, why was she evaluating its intensity?  I confronted Marie that Jim had been correct in one respect.  He accurately perceived that she was trying to invalidate his feelings.  When she did that, she ruined her chances for successfully confronting him about his timing.  Marie was perplexed.  She asked if it was really all right for him to get so angry and loud. 

             “Did he attack you at all?  Did he hit you or threaten you?  Did he use sarcasm on you?” I asked.

             “No”

             “Well if the two of you had been alone and he wasn’t intruding into your privacy and there was no dinner to be disrupted, then would you have been OK with his intense anger? You know… if the two of you were just privately discussing your son?”

             She replied, “I really don’t know, probably not.  I don’t think I’ll ever get comfortable when he gets like that.  Is it really OK for him to get like that?…….I really don’t know.  I’m not sure I really know what normal is or what I really should expect.”

             Marie’s comment about not knowing normalcy was a surefire indicator that she was struggling with her past.  We talked about that family background: about how her parents yelled and sometimes got violent, about how her mother often hit her, and about the near total absence of loving attention by both parents.  Marie agreed that she associated Jim’s intense anger and loud expression with the lack of safety she experienced as a child.  We discussed how some people are relatively comfortable around their partner’s intense anger because they’ve never experienced violence.  She eventually accepted the interpretation that her parents’ violence had left her over-reactive to her husband’s non-violent anger.  Marie and I discussed how she would need to accept her husband’s anger.  She would also need to get very good at retreating from  Jim in situations when she would start to feel too uncomfortable.  

             The remaining piece of the puzzle was Jim’s tendency to follow and intrude when Marie wanted to retreat.  Even if Marie were to accept that Jim had “a right to his feelings” (as he termed it),  Jim would still intrude on her privacy when she would try to retreat during future episodes.  At this point, I figured that Marie’s preceding disclosures might have made Jim less defensive.  I decided to try a new tack.

             “Jim, what’s the story on your following Marie when she’s trying to calm herself down?”

             Jim thought for a moment before replying.  “I just didn’t want to leave it before she could understand.  I could tell from what she was saying that she didn’t understand the situation.  I didn’t want to end our discussion with a lack of understanding.”

             “But Jim, at that point she was no longer listening.  She was hearing your anger and reacting to that instead of your ideas.  You would have never gotten her understanding by continuing with your ranting, especially by violating her privacy.” 

             “I know , I know.  But you asked me what was going on back then and I told you.  I had this very strong frustration that I wasn’t being understood.  I just couldn’t leave it like that.”

             I took a chance. “So you couldn’t leave it because that’s a very painful feeling, an almost unbearable feeling for you …..to not be understood about something you feel strongly about….and then to be left, maybe that plays in there too.  How about it Jim?  How about the possibility that you’ve felt that before?”  I watched Jim closely because something about his demeanor indicated we were onto something important.  I continued pressing.  “Where does that come from?  Who used to do that?”  Jim’s sudden stillness and inward gaze confirmed my hunch.  “Who was it Jim…..who was it?”  I waited and was determined to say nothing until Jim answered me.  . 

             In the tension of the moment, Marie’s patience abandoned her first.  She blurted out the answer for her partner as is all too common among couples in counseling:  “It’s his dad!  He used to tell me his Dad would yell and scream and then leave home for days at a time.”

             By now, Jim was beginning to mobilize. He also probably didn’t want his wife to continue talking authoritatively about his most vulnerable subject. He echoed Marie:

             “It was my father.  He was a bad drunk and he’d just take off for days, usually after he got real mad about something.”  He nodded while saying this, then turned silent and continued with that inward looking kind of expression with his eyes not focussing on anything around him.  He remained still while I picked up the conversation.

             “Let me guess at something Jim.  Back then could you talk to him at all?  Could you ever get him to understand you?

             Jim’s facial expression was saying a lot.  In addition to the change in his face coloration, the telltale glint of welling tears were beginning to show along his lower eye lids.  By now his voice had become more “breathy” from painful emotion and the tightening in his diaphragm. 

             “No……  I never could get him to listen…..especially when he was angry.  Everything  came down from him but nothing could go back the other way.  I didn’t dare….not when he was angry.  He was a real rage-aholic.  An alcoholic and rage-aholic too.

             “So Dad would rant and rage and he would act in such a way you could never get to be understood by him….…..and then he’d up and leave you. Was that how it was?  Did I get that right?”

             Jim didn’t answer.  He just sat there, teary-eyed, looking miserable. 

            I continued.  “It’s a heck of a coincidence… but you know it’s really not coincidence don’t you.  I mean you can’t stand for Marie to leave you without your being understood.  It has both elements there.  You can’t stand it when you’re not understood and you can’t stand to be left.  So you avoid feeling that old awful feeling of being worthless, unimportant, and like a nothing ….. but you avoid it in a desperate kind of way.  You continue in your raging and you don’t allow Marie to have her privacy to collect herself.  Tell me if I’m off-base.”

             Jim replied very solemnly:  “No.  You’re not off-base.  In fact, I think you’re hitting the nail right on the head.  I just never looked at it like that before.  He continued to reflect.  After a while he concluded, “I’ve got a lot to think about.”

             The rest of the session flowed with understanding and cooperation.  We all now had a common model for what had really transpired during the day of the infamous dinner quarrel.  The blaming had stopped and both Jim and Marie were now receptive.  It was obvious that we had opened up issues for each that they would be examining for a long time to come.  Before they left, I gave each of them an assignment to practice certain self-suggestions.  I wanted them to consolidate their gains.  A lot of additional work would be required but we had established a good start.

             The reason why I present this little vignette is to further clarify the biggest obstacles to anyone attempting to change their own emotionally rooted behavior.  There’s a good metaphor to help you with your understanding.  Imagine that most of your relationship behaviors are like plants that have roots extending way down into deep emotions.  You can’t see all the roots but they’re vitally important to what happens up above on the surface.  In Jim and Marie’s case, what can we conclude about some of their obstacles?  Let’s take that same question from a different angle.  Let’s suppose both Jim and Marie were not in counseling and were trying to improve their communication on their own.  The central questions would then be the following:  

1)      What feelings would Marie have to endure if she were to start asking  Jim to commit to suppressing his anger in certain situations?

 2)      What feelings would Marie have to endure if she were to start accepting that it’s often OK for Jim to express his intense anger? 

3)      What feelings would Jim have to endure if he were to start accepting that it’s OK for Marie to disagree and “not understand” his position? 

4)      What feelings would Jim have to endure if he were to start accepting Marie’s retreat from his anger and her withdrawal to her privacy? 

 Taking it from the top, I would answer the questions like this:

             For #1 (Marie asking Jim to commit to suppressing his anger in certain situations):  Marie would have to wade through her fear that Jim would either refuse her request or possibly even ignore it.  But it wouldn’t be the actual refusal that she would fear.  She would be afraid of triggering her old shame of feeling unimportant and worthless.  She had originally felt that way about herself when her parents were self-absorbed and were oblivious to her need for attention.  She had worked many years to become a worthwhile and important human being.  She didn’t want her worst fears confirmed: that she’s still the same little girl who isn’t worth being noticed.  It’s important to note that even with full knowledge of her fear’s origin she will still have it.  That’s because insight and awareness don’t prevent the triggering of painful shame in a person’s memory.  The latter is a neurological event.  Insight can help modulate the feeling but it doesn’t prevent it.  So, the simple version of my explanation is that Marie would have to endure the discomfort of subtle fear.  The technical term is anxiety but it’s still a type of fear.

             For #2  (Marie accepting that it’s often OK for Jim to express his intense anger): Marie would have to endure fear from two sources.  One is that she would fear the re-emergence of feeling inadequate and defective like she did when her mother became violent.  As a child, she made heroic efforts but could never be good enough to prevent the violence.  By the same childish logic, she was never good enough to stop her parent’s destructive fighting.  For Marie to begin accepting Jim’s intense anger, she might start feeling the same old shame that she is inadequate to bring about love and harmony in her family.  Even with new conscious knowledge that anger has a valid place, Marie would have to endure discomfort.  She would still be afraid that her feelings of defectiveness might re-emerge.   

             For #3  (Jim accepting that it’s OK for Marie to disagree and “not understand” his position):  Jim would have to endure the fear that he’s not sufficiently important to be noticed.  He would have to endure the covert fear that he’s once again letting himself be treated as an insignificant victim.  As a child, he had to hide thoughts and opinions.  He couldn’t afford triggering his father’s rage and disappearance from the family.  During these early years of hiding his symbolic self,  Jim accumulated a great sense of weakness and unimportance.    Now as an adult, he unconsciously fears the re-emergence of those old feelings.  To start accepting Marie’s disagreement would stir up the fear that she’s ignoring him just like his father did.  And that would stir up the fear that he’s still weak and unimportant. 

             For #4  (Jim accepting Marie’s retreat from his anger and her withdrawal to her privacy):  By now you can probably infer the answer from our past examples.  Marie’s withdrawal serves to stir up old emotions from when Jim’s father disappeared for days.  For Jim to start accepting Marie’s privacy, he would have to covertly be afraid of feeling worthless and powerless.  As a child, he felt worthless and powerless to prevent his father from abandoning the family for long stretches of time.  It’s not surprising that Marie’s withdrawal into privacy threatens to trigger Jim’s old shame.  Jim is afraid of feeling that old pain.  Again, it’s probably not a conscious and obvious fear.  It’s probably a vague kind of anxiety.  For Jim to be more accepting of Marie’s privacy he would have to wade through that anxiety. 

             Now let’s bring all of our discussion and all of these dynamics down to a simple conclusion.  For Jim and Marie to successfully change their conflict behavior they will each have to endure fear and anxiety.  It’s like the popular adage:  “No pain, No gain.”   As Jim and Marie change their behavior, each will be afraid of being overtaken by parts of themselves they’re trying to leave behind.  Knowledge, insight, and effort won’t be enough.  They will also need courage and faith.  The rest of us are no different in that regard.   

             At this point you may be thinking something like “Wait a minute.  I didn’t get beaten, I didn’t have parents who raged, and I didn’t have a parent who left for days at a time.  My parents loved me and treated me well.  All of this fear and shame stuff really doesn’t apply to me.”  If this is what you’re thinking, then you’re only partially correct.  You’re probably not as encumbered with old traumas as many of the people who show up for counseling.  But you’re only partially correct because it’s only a matter of degree.  All of us (except the purest of psychopaths) pick up shame along the way.  I presented Jim and Marie’s case here only because their dynamics were so simple and obvious.  For many of us, the origins of our shame are subtle.  We may have had the most perfect parents yet we were still exposed to smaller traumas.  We may have been exposed to the teasing of playmates, the occasions when our parents were too depressed or emotionally depleted to notice us, and times when we failed miserably to meet the expectations of our family and friends.  We may also have unconsciously adopted the shame of our parents.  Our parents may have been so ashamed of certain emotions that they never risked expressing them.  For example, they may have been so afraid of anger that they never disagreed, argued, or forcefully negotiated among themselves.  Perhaps they were loving parents but they never touched or verbally expressed their affection.  They may have felt so undeserving that they never took off time from work and responsibility to have fun.  None of us were so strong as children that we could avoid vicariously picking up some of our parents’ shame.  The stuff may be subtle but it’s powerful. 

             The fear of shame is so powerful that we often sabotage our own efforts to improve our relationships.  In the next chapter, I will discuss some of these self-sabotage traps.  I will also discuss the importance of a different kind of faith to help us to face fear and avoid self-sabotage.

 ã COPYRIGHT (12/2000) Allied Psychological Services.  All rights reserved.                       

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