When I was a young boy growing up in New Jersey
the most popular shows on television were westerns (Gunsmoke), medical
shows (Dr. Kildare) and courtroom dramas (Perry
Mason). Ahhhhh . . . the good ol’ days. Today T.V. overflows
with reality shows. Even PBS had a reality series, Frontier
House, in which contemporary men and women were placed in a simulated time
period, the Montana Territory in 1883, to test how well they survived.
That got me thinking . . . .
Picture living in the year
1860: African-Americans (then called "Negroes") are slaves since
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation will not come until January 1, 1863;
women do not have the right to vote - that won’t happen for another sixty years
(August 18, 1920) when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
will be ratified; and parents live by the rule "spare the rod and spoil the
child." Now imagine if the most powerful nation on earth is the
United Federation of Provinces (U.F.P.), a middle eastern country who
prides itself on its moral enlightenment, righteousness and economic and
military strength. A nation the cornerstone of whose constitution
guarantees all people "equality, justice and freedom." How do you
think Americans would react to the following scenario.
After many years of warning the U.S. to correct
its policy of open discrimination toward women, Negroes and children, the U.F.P.
responds to the pleas of those disenfranchised. It invades America,
topples the administration and its leaders, and replaces it with a new
democratically elected government. The U.F.P. mandates that there be the same
percentage of Negro and women congressional representatives, senators and judges
as in the U.S. population. Other legal changes include: slavery is
outlawed - Negroes are free citizens - women, Negroes and children over the
age of fifteen are granted the right to vote - and the death penalty is
banished along with parents and teachers being allowed to spank children since
both are viewed as cruel and unusual punishment. How would most Americans
in 1860 have reacted?
My hunch is that most folks in 1860, or today for
that matter, would resent some outside nation dictating to us how to run our
country let alone our families. Much too little effort is given to try to
understand why another country has the culture and customs it has.
Nations, like people, tend to be more invested in trying to force their
neighbors to be more like themselves rather than figure out how to co-exist in
peace. While this may seem like business as usual in the world of
geopolitics, when we experience this in our own families the consequences can be
tragic.
Take for example a young couple, recently married,
who have agreed to save for a house. The wife clips coupons and never spends a
penny more than absolutely necessary. The husband prides himself on saving
money by bringing lunch to work. But like many men, the husband loves
gadgets whether for his computer, car or personal use. She chastises him for
buying gizmos and complains they’ll never get a house. He defends his
spending as minimal and calls her a "coupon queen" who is too cheap to enjoy
life. What begins as a discussion ends in a battle in which each is
defensive, attacks the other and is only interested in proving they are right
and the other is wrong. Her only objective is to browbeat him into
spending less and he in turn tries to bully her into not criticizing his
spending. The couple now must decide how to handle this problem.
Let’s look at two very different ways of dealing with this:
One way is if neither shows any interest in
understanding why the other feels the way they do, but the consequences can be
severe. The wife, believing her husband is just selfish, is so furious she
stops being affectionate and rejects his overtures at romance. The husband
retaliates by spending even more on himself just to prove he can’t be
controlled. She decides "if you can’t beat ‘em . . . join ‘em" and so the
wife starts spending on herself like there’s no tomorrow. All of this
escalates to a point where their savings is wiped out, they no longer are loving
toward one another, each feels controlled and criticized by the other, and both
feel so trapped in the marriage that she thinks about divorce while he’s close
to having an affair with a co-worker who seems so understanding and supportive
of him. But there is another choice.
If each shows an interest in understanding why the
other does what they do, the husband will learn that when he spends money on
"grown up toys," as she calls them, his wife relives her childhood, when her
father, who called her "princess," would selfishly spend money only on
himself. Consequently, she grew up in a tiny apartment in an unsafe
neighborhood sharing a bedroom with two younger sisters rather than having her
own bedroom in the "castle" he promised to one day buy his princess. The
wife would learn that her husband’s family was even more impoverished than
hers. Every time his father tried to give the children a small gift, like
the time his dad got him a used bicycle for $5, his mother would scream that he
was wasting money that was better spent on other things for the children, like
socks. He remembers his family never having fun and his mother always
controlling his father.
In scenario one, the wife’s criticism of her
husband’s spending brought him back to his childhood just as his spending
brought his wife back to hers. Two adults have been reduced to two young
children each bullying the other to change, in an effort to repair the damage
that was done to each as a child. However, in scenario two their mutual
interest in understanding each other now allows them to resolve their conflict
where both win and neither loses. In fact, the husband now makes more of
an effort to spend less on electronics, reminding his wife how badly he wants
that house for her (and him). She, in turn, encourages him to, every once
in awhile, buy an electronic toy for himself to show her appreciation for
his willingness to validate and understand her fears.
How interested are you in understanding from where
your spouse or child is coming, or do you only want them to change without any
thought to how it might affect them and your relationship? When our goal
is victory rather than mutual agreement, when all we want is to win and the
other person to lose, we foster alienation, resentment and revenge. The
consequences can be tragic and severe. Families, like nations, have their
own weapons of mass destruction: marriage can end in divorce, parents can
turn children against the other parent, spouses can have affairs, and children
can run away or turn to drugs and alcohol.
Even though my scenario of the UFP conquering the
USA in 1860 was hypothetical and never happened, let us not forget what did
happen one year later on April 12, 1861 - the USA was at war . . . with itself.
That war, the Civil War, was very real. It began as the North against the South,
but soon degenerated into family against family and sometimes even family
members fought on opposite sides. What could be more tragic than that? A
nation at war with itself is a nation divided, but a family at war with itself
is no longer a family.
So the next time you and your partner disagree,
the next time you and your child are at odds, ask yourself which is more
important: to find compassion in your hearts for each other so that together you
can resolve your differences or to vanquish each other with your arsenal of
emotional weapons of mass destruction? Annihilation or Negotiation - the choice
is yours.
February 2005 - 4
© Rob Kaufman, LCSW
