Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship (35 page)

Pretty much everyone engages in NMS. Lots of couples—and 12 percent of therapists who don’t recognize NMS in themselves—need to wake up:
Marriage is where you realize you are living with a ruthless sadistic terrorist. And then there’s your partner to deal with, too!

Partners harass and annoy each other frequently. The more emotionally fused you are, the more you agitate, pester, and upset each other. When you don’t get the positive reflected sense of self you need, you feel entitled (if not obligated) to let your mate know it. The weaker your Four Points of Balance (Solid Flexible Self, Quiet Mind–Calm Heart, Grounded Responding, Meaningful Endurance), the more likely you are to practice NMS.

Long-term relationships have many frustrations. People who don’t handle frustrations and disappointments well, or who take things personally, can wreck havoc in the name of self-protection. One partner’s attempt to “protect” herself brings maximum misery and anguish to the other.

Love and torture are often unfortunate bedfellows. When people are dodging two-choice dilemmas they often become particularly sadistic.
Lying is a given to cover your tracks. Screwing with your partner’s mind is optional. But some of us really enjoy lying and being evasive and developing mind-twisting arguments simply because it’s
fun
.

Stubbornness, vindictiveness, vituperativeness, and competitiveness drive lots of couples into celibacy. Marriage is where the lousy blow job is perfected. It doesn’t come from ignorance or lack of experience. The sad truth is, if you have a reflected sense of self and enjoy borrowed functioning, it feels good to screw over your partner.

Barbie and Ken had an emotionally abusive relationship. Emotional abuse is the most common form of domestic violence. It’s the psychological version of beating someone with a rubber hose: It leaves no marks or fingerprints. No proof of assault or malicious intent. No proof of the recipient’s pain and suffering.

Ken and Barbie worked each other over psychologically. They feigned ignorance or innocence when they went after each other. You might think they were completely insensitive, couldn’t communicate, and had no idea what they were doing. But you don’t get their kind of accuracy or strategic timing in manipulation and deception without the ability to mind-map and communicate. Shutting your partner out and keeping your partner in the dark are art forms. So is using your partner’s mind-mapping to play with her mind, as in refusing to acknowledge an affair your partner knows you’re having, or denying disdain you know you’re displaying.

Like many couples, Barbie and Ken tortured each other with sex. It could happen during initiation or foreplay, or later in an encounter. It could happen after it was over. Barbie ignored Ken’s overtures for sex as if she never heard them. By his third or fourth initiation, Ken was plenty steamed. During foreplay, Barbie made it hard for Ken to get to her genitals by keeping her thighs together. She liked to “make him work for it.” She was passive, gave the minimum, and did as little as possible.

Ken had his own ways of getting back at Barbie. He’d put his hands on her butt in public, even though he knew she hated this. Ken said he couldn’t keep his hands off her because she was such a beautiful women. When they had sex, he’d squeeze her breasts harder than he should, or stick his finger in her vagina prematurely to see if he could get away with it.

I’m not describing the
absence
of a relationship. Emotional torture doesn’t result from a lack of relatedness. In many cases, it
is
the relationship. It’s the kind of attachment many people know best.

Do we torment each other because of what happened in our childhood? Sure. Do we torture each other because of the love we didn’t get? Not so fast. The truth is the other way around: People are often driven to do terrible things
by the love they got
. The love you
get
can twist you up much more than the love you never got. When torture is the only kind of relatedness we can get with our parents or our loved one, many of us will take what we can get. For some of us, it’s the only kind of relationship we know how to have.

We prefer to think people do terrible things to each other because they’re out of touch with each other. We assume torture and bullying arise from people not relating to the victim, or being out of touch with reality. In truth, people do terrible things to each other
because
of the connection between them. People wreak havoc in the midst of emotional fusion.
¹³⁶

Masochism is a powerful and common form of attachment and relatedness (emotional fusion). Masochism structures relationships in familiar ways. When it comes to normal marital (or family) sadism, we’re discussing the person who does it rather than takes it. But someone has to play the masochist to keep the relationship going. If you’re on the receiving end when you’re growing up, you get educated in how to do it. You learn how it is dished out—and develop a taste for it. When you get married you’re likely to take one role or the other.

The sad truth is sadistic relationships occur in many families. A shocking number of parents go out of their way to torment their children by disappointing them and breaking their hearts. This was certainly true in Barbie and Ken’s families. Barbie mapped her mother’s mind long ago.
Status, money, and the trappings of success were all that mattered to her mother. It was bitterly disappointing to see she was so cold and shallow. As a child, Barbie watched her mother “melt down” over small social embarrassments. Being sat at “the wrong table” at a luncheon was enough to set Barbie’s mother off. Her mother frequently badmouthed friends behind their backs, but she was saccharine-sweet when she was with that person.

Barbie’s mother was a social climber, and her and her family’s appearance was important at all times. During high school, she coached Barbie on how to get in with the most popular boys and girls. She entered Barbie in beauty pageants and talent shows. All she wanted from Barbie was help making herself look good. When Barbie was elected HomeComing Queen, her mother acted like she had won the Miss America contest.

Despite all the attention, Barbie was terribly unhappy. She was often depressed when she was alone. She had frequent emotional crashes, and drowned in an ocean of anxiety, insecurities, and self-doubts. She’d be down for weeks, preoccupied with her current boyfriend—or how to get her next one. She was consumed with her appearance and saw other women as competitors for men’s attentions. Barbie was emotionally hollow and brittle, without much solid self.

Barbie and her mother continued an emotionally fused love-hate relationship throughout Barbie’s adulthood. Her mother’s opinion had tremendous impact on her. Barbie tried to earn her mother’s praise, but what she mostly got were cutting comments. Barbie thought her mother was insensitive and blind, but in reality she was just plain cruel.

Barbie’s mother lectured her about not getting pregnant, but this had nothing to do with concern for Barbie’s welfare. Her message was
Don’t get pregnant until you find a wealthy guy. Then “accidentally” get pregnant if that’s what it takes to hook him. Don’t screw around too much because you’ll get a bad reputation—so don’t screw guys who can’t help you get where you want to go
. The impact of this attitude went far beyond Barbie’s feeling unloved. It was devastating to see her mother’s incapacity to invest in another human being.

Ken’s childhood experiences weren’t much better. He grew up in a family he described as an “ice box.” His parents emphasized formality
and proper appearance rather than physical or emotional affection. Ken watched his father and mother interact in extremely denigrating and destructive ways. Both parents were high-functioning alcoholics. His father was vice president of the local bank, and his mother rubbed shoulders with the social elite. Their smiling faces appeared in the society pages, but at home they constantly argued. Once they started drinking, the screaming matches started, furniture got broken, and occasionally punches were thrown.

Ken and his brothers did what they could to keep their parents from getting out of control. The price of peace was appeasement and accommodation, but never from a desire to please them. Ken hated the way they acted so immature and irresponsible. What really gnawed at him was the way they ate each other’s hearts out with their bickering. Despite all their trappings of success, and because of all their wasted potential, Ken thought his parents were disgusting.

In many ways, Ken and Barbie believed in nothing and no one. Although it sounds harsh, their basic attitude could be summed up as
Everyone is full of shit
. But rather than see them as villains or victims, I thought about Ken and Barbie’s situation and why they were willing to live like this. I saw them having the kind of relationship they knew best, the same kind they had with their parents: Constant chaos and cruelty were the norm.

Sometimes we hate our parents or mate
because
we love them. Beyond our vulnerability to what they can do to us, our love makes us vulnerable to what they do to themselves. What befalls them—and the ways they destroy themselves—impacts us. Watching your parents diminish themselves rips your heart out. And it’s not hard to hate someone you love who constantly diminishes you, lies to your face, and treats you badly in other ways. We deny our hatred because it punctures our reflected sense of self, offends our narcissism, and makes us feel unlovable.

Many long-term partners I know hate each other. The ones with good relationships don’t let it get in the way. To do that you have to accept your hatred, and your partner’s hatred of you. You have to be capable of genuinely loving too, because that’s really the focus of the relationship. The big difference between good and bad long term relationships is
not
whether
partners hate each other or not. It’s how partners handle it, and whether or not they love each other too. Your Four Points of Balance are greatly involved in tolerating extreme ambivalent feelings toward those you love. They make it easier to soothe the tensions of loving and hating your partner, and accepting that your partner probably loves and hates you too.

The untoward experiences I just described didn’t create all of Barbie and Ken’s marital problems. They also had to contend with the same problems and people-growing processes we all do. As all this came together in their daily interactions, Barbie and Ken had co-constructed their current situation.

Barbie and Ken’s sexual style hadn’t changed much from when they were dating, although to them it felt like night and day. Now that they weren’t the gleam in each other’s eye, everything seemed different. Twelve years later, Barbie still lay on her back during sex. Never one to be sexually generous, now she was passive-aggressive and withholding. She knew what Ken wanted, and he wasn’t going to get it. The only way Ken got to orgasm when they had sex was by bringing himself to climax during intercourse.

Ken tried to position Barbie the ways he liked best. He liked to pick up her legs and roll her knees to her shoulders, so he could ram his penis into her. Most times, Barbie complained this was uncomfortable and she couldn’t breathe. She preferred intercourse with her legs straight out, heels on the bed. Because she was the LDP, Barbie controlled how and when they had sex. Coming to orgasm, Ken frequently thought,
What the hell have I gotten myself into with you, Bitch?!
Although you could say Ken was squeezing the life out of Barbie, they were really doing it to each other.

Ken and Barbie couldn’t control themselves; and remember, people who can’t control themselves control the people around them (
Chapter 3
).
Poorly balanced people take up too much room in their relationship. There’s no room left for other people to have a life. But that’s not the only reason life-squeezing happens. If your Four Points of Balance are weak, there’s a good chance you’re squeezing your partner because you
enjoy
it.

Do you squeeze the life out of your partner? If you’re the LDP, one way to do it involves looking like you’re starting to understand him. You instill hope and caring in your partner. Then you dash his hopes to pieces by finding some reason to throw your “progress” away. Why would someone do this? It buys time and keeps your partner from leaving while you work him over.

Cold-blooded, isn’t it? But some LDPs and HDPs do these kinds of things all the time. Another way to cause pain is by going after your partner’s happiness. Find out what she cares about and what makes her happy. Get her to talk about it and look interested and supportive. Then, at a strategic time, criticize or belittle it. When she looks shocked and betrayed, say you didn’t know that would hurt her (betraying her yet again).

This kind of torment takes a while to set up because it’s inflicted over time. But there are many short-term tortures, such as forgetting responsibilities, appointments, or agreements. There are in-the-moment tortures, like sniping at your partner to keep him from talking openly to you. Normal marital sadism knows no boundaries.

Do you only do what’s convenient or comfortable for you? Does your mate do likewise? Living according to your feelings can squeeze the life out of your partner. When Barbie wouldn’t confront herself and deal with their sex life, she squeezed out that part of Ken’s life.

Not that Ken was a saint. He initiated sex frequently, even when he didn’t want it, to hasten Barbie’s guilt over not having enough sex. His initiations were crude, especially when he figured she’d say no.
“Come on, babe, let’s do it!”
and
“Wanna fuck?!”
made it clear he wasn’t offering romance.