LETTING EACH OTHER GROW
Whether or not a husband and wife hurdle the stresses imposed by the mid-life sexual reversal will depend on many factors: How strongly are they still bound together by loving feelings? Is their sexual relationship mutually satisfying? How deep is the hostility between them? Equally important: How much loyalty do they feel for each other and for family life? What docs each expect from the marriage and from a marital partner? What does each imagine is possible in another relationship? And how much is one, or both, willing to risk to get something better?
In general, however; the survival of a marriage at this stage of life hinges on this key question: How much can each partner let the other grow without feeling unbearably threatened?
With the exception of couples who are emotionally disengaged from each other, and therefore relatively indifferent to their partner’s changes, one person’s growth will usually cause some disruption in the marital relationship. This is to be expected. What really matters in determining a couple’s success or failure in letting each other grow is the extent to which they are neurotically dependent on one another.
Those who are not so neurotically intertwined can usually ride through this decade fairly easily, despite their mutual changes, and then establish a new equilibrium in their fifties that will enable them to live out the remainder of their lives as close companions. The crucial factor is that “they don’t push and they don’t squeeze,” says Dr. Ian Alger. “For example, some women realize their husbands may be having affairs, but they aren’t threatened by this. And it isn’t necessary they confront the husband and make him feel guilty. On the other hand, if a man is able to accept his wife’s having an affair or starting a new career, then the same thing may happen in reverse.”
Nonetheless, such tolerance is often more easily preached than practiced, which means that in some situations a couple may need outside help in order to handle the perplexing changes made by a partner. Today, for instance, a man may find himself challenged by his wife in a peculiarly subtle way: She goes into psychoanalysis and then uses her therapist’s perceptions to attack her mate for his emotional and sexual inadequacy.
Husbands who have gotten this double whammy arc called “victims of psychotherapy” by Dr. Melvin B. Goodman, a psychiatrist who has treated many men in this dilemma. Reporting his findings on sixty-two men from the New York/Philadelphia area whose average age was forty, Goodman describes them generally as very successful businessmen and professionals.’ Despite their ability, however, these men wind up in his office needing treatment for depression because they are being attacked so relentlessly by their wives. that they have begun to see themselves as complete “failures.”
Having largely withdrawn from family involvement to dedicate themselves to work, these men were all suffering from impacted feelings, says Goodman: “They were out of touch with their emotions, detached from them, constricted. You have to get them to see that they are not really so insensitive, that they do have feelings, and that it’s not unmanly to have feelings—which most of them believed.”
And how did he accomplish this? First by developing a relationship that helped to neutralize their antipsychiatric attitude, and then by encouraging them to be more emotionally expressive. “Some of the energies that have been channeled into business can be channeled into feelings,” says Goodman.
“They have to work at it. But once they start becoming more insightful, and more sensitive to their own feelings and their wife’s feelings, then it’s carried over from the treatment into the family.”
( In order to improve their marriages, however, Goodman also found it necessary to use couple therapy and to help the wives as well. The woman’s becoming a person in her own right was essential to reducing her rage against her husband and making their time together as a couple more gratifying. By and large, says Goodman, these upper-middle-class women were discovering that neither cars nor country clubs, furs nor jewels, could compensate for their lack of self-esteem. Thus his efforts were aimed at reducing the Woman’s total dependency on her husband for intellecutal and emotional gratification, and helping her find her own identity, which often meant returning to school or going to work.
Goodman’s findings are significant. What he is suggesting, and what other authorities in the helping professions confirm, is that mid-life marriages need not be destroyed when men and women begin to move in opposite directions. To the contrary, as each partner grows and changes in an effort to become more whole—the man by becoming more expressive, the woman more independent—their relationship is actually strengthened. Without such movement, in fact, both persons will stagnate and so will their marriage.
Which is not to say that the road toward transforming a long-term marital relationship is smooth or painless. Achieving a new balance that accommodates the changes of both partners can be a scaring experience—especially when it is precipitated by a major crisis, like the revelation of a love affair.
As an example; Jonathan B. talks candidly about the months of turmoil, fighting, and confusion that he and his wife, Lily, went through after sixteen years of marriage. His going into psychotherapy led to the birth and evolution of his emotional self, and then to his falling in love with another woman. In the meantime Lily was changing too, becoming, more serious, intellectual, and intent on a career.
A classic case of mid-life reversal, their separate changes led to some violent clashes and then to a totally transformed relationship. Jonathan describes what happened:
Two years ago Lily and I were still maintaining a superficially placid relationship, but underneath we were really getting more and more estranged, and anguished. Finally we both recognized that we weren’t communicating with each other. There was no fighting, and we loved each other, but we couldn’t get across to one another. So we decided together to seek psychiatric help. After a few false starts, I got involved in group therapy—which was extremely helpful in opening me up, and getting me to recognize emotions and problems within myself that I had refused to see or deal with before. I also started to realize how much of a sham my marriage was.
I became much more able to open myself and talk to people—and it was very noticeable to everybody. My personality changed on the social level. Where I had been uptight and hard to approach and snobbish, I became very free and easy. There was also a definite change in Lily. In her twenties she was a bubbly, vivacious, gregarious young girl. But in her thirties, although she was an extremely attractive woman, she wasn’t so approachable. Also, she had begun working for a graduate degree—and was very serious about her career.
We reversed—and it frightened her, I think. We made commitments to work on our marriage, but I never really followed through. Instead, my opening up in the group was almost directly related to my becoming emotionally involved with another woman for the first time. – Nora was an enormously sympathetic woman who made me feel very comfortable, very successful as a man. The main contrast I felt was an overwhelming emotional vibration. She was very, very obviously in love with me, and very demonstratively so, and I began to feel very strongly about her. I was telling her I was in love with her, but I was also telling her T wouldn’t leave my family. And at home I didn’t feel that I didn’t love my wife, but I didn’t feel the same emotional pull. I became much less attentive and more distracted.
It finally came to a crisis after about six months when I felt just unable to handle the two situations anymore. I found myself in a turmoil—and I couldn’t continue carrying on what was developing into a real double life.
The normal thing might have been to say to my wife,
“Hey, it’s just all over between us, and I’m leaving. Good-bye.” But instead I went to talk to my therapist, and she said, “I can’t really advise you. But if you think you might still possibly want to save the marriage, go home and tell your wife the truth about everything.” And I said that was quite a tall order, and the therapist said, “Yes, it is a very tall order, and it’s very dangerous. It might kill the marriage.”
So I went home that night, and after some fencing I unloaded the whole thing! My wife’s initial reaction was that she still wanted to be married to me, and she would give me time to work out my feelings, and be patient. My feelings were I didn’t know what I wanted, and I was in love with another woman!
That talk precipitated her coming back the next night and saying that since I had been honest with her, she would be honest with me. And she told me that she had had several affairs—all with men who were our friends. One was even a close friend, and that was a very tough thing for me to take. These talks were extremely emotional, extremely packed. But T always walked away with the feeling—and so did Lily—that, well, we’ve unburdened all this. Let’s start to build something that makes sense now that we’re really telling each other how we feel about the most difficult and intimate parts of our lives.
That was in May. During the summer I was very confused and ambivalent. Extremely confused. I told Lily I wanted to see Nora again until I could figure out where I was at, and that maybe we should separate. But she said No. So while the kids were at camp we went into a period that was extremely painful for me, and I’m sure for both women, where I would with Lily’s knowledge see Nora several times a week. It became untenable for everybody. It was impossible.
By this time, too, Lily and I no longer had a placid relationship! That was broken by those few nights of unburdening ourselves. After that we had some actual physical fights, and we were much quicker to criticize each other and be emotional. Also, our sex life had improved immediately after that. Immediately. But during those months of going back and forth I was feeling like I didn’t know where the hell I was.
Finally I stopped seeing Nora. I sent her on a trip, to get her away from me. But I resented myself for doing it, and I resented Lily for pressuring me to do it. And after the kids came home from camp, the resentment was there to be seen. It was very oppressive. I also realized I had a lot of unresolved problems with Lily’s past, and I hadn’t really accepted it, whereas she had decided the marriage was what she wanted, and that whatever she had done before was cither a mistake—or at least she was through with that phase of her life. And now she was looking for a real commitment and a real relationship on a mature level.
So when we hadn’t progressed after a few more weeks, we decided mutually that I should move out of the house until I made up my mind. Really made up my mind. I didn’t know what I was doing at that point, except I hadn’t solved anything and T was just hurting everyone by living there. And I felt that if I got out and separated myself from it, maybe I could come to some decision.
I moved into an apartment, but I didn’t publicize the fact that T was separated. I didn’t really act like a free man. And although I saw Nora I told her I was trying to sort things out—and it would be a very rough period. I started withdrawing into myself, and I decided I was acting very immature. That I had let the cat out of the hag in the first place, so it was my responsibility to make a definite choice. And I painfully came to the conclusion that I belonged in the marriage, and I should commit myself to it. The main thing was I really couldn’t make a clean break of it. I saw myself covering up things, and I thought, hey, if that’s the way I’m acting I don’t really want to start again and make a new life.
I also realized that I definitely had deep feelings for Lily. I realized I was very uncomfortable leaving my children, and that being with them a lot wasn’t the same as living with them. Although I could bend it, and cheat on it, when it came right down to breaking the marriage structure, I couldn’t. And so I decided—after about six weeks—to go back home. Not just to try, but to make the marriage work.
I’ve learned a lot about myself. I’ve learned to be a little more honest about what my real motives are, and what’s driving me. And I’ve learned that I’m capable of real emotion. I haven’t been able even to this day to sort out all my emotions, but I think they’re real for the first time. Before I never had deep feelings that really, really troubled me with regard to other people—and that’s a very maturing thing.
I spent the supposedly best years of my life working to attain what is nothing more than material success— and when I got it, I frankly didn’t think it was worth what I paid. I paid ten years of being miserable—being a nonpcrson. When I got to that plateau it was very empty, and yet I didn’t know how to turn back to Lily. I didn’t know how to reach out to her. I was afraid to, just as she was afraid to reach out to me.
One of the answers I’ve come to in being able to handle her past is that she didn’t just go out and find some other guy and start screwing. It involved me in those early years, too. My strivings and my directing my life the way I did—though I might not have been able to help it—were in large part responsible for the way she acted. She has said she has no excuses for what she did—but that I just wasn’t “there” for her.
In many ways Nora represented a simpler solution. Cutting away all the past, not having to carry it forward with me. Starting new with someone I cared about. A much simpler solution! Lily represents building amidst a lot of ruins, and doing a lot of work on my own feelings in many areas that arc painful to me. Just the fact that we’ve opened up all this, and lived through it, and come out of it together and able to say, hey, we went through this and we’re going to take a shot at it—I think that’s probably healthier than 99 per cent of the marriages I see!
In contrast to Jung’s pessimistic prediction that marital castastrophes are inevitable when men and women begin to veer in opposite directions, what many quaking mid-life marriages seem to need is for the husband to discover his tender feelings, and the wife her sharpness of mind. Despite being explosive, this sexual reversal can be a blessing in disguise for couples who want to continue growing and also want to restructure a more honest, loving relationship for their middle years.
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