Sleeping with the Enemy

I was listening to Dr. Laura on the radio today and this woman and her husband call in. The wife tells Dr. Laura a bit about her childhood and how unhappy it was. She gives her summarized version of life at home and how she is for the most part happy, loves her children, loves her husband, her job, but still she finds herself on the brink of divorce.

The doc asks how that could be. The lady goes, "Well, I don't know we've been married for eight years and.. .well there's been abuse. In eight years of marriage there have been 4 different occasions. . 4 violent fights.. is that too many?" Dr. Laura tells the woman, "One time is too many. I have a 1 blow, zero tolerance policy." [There's a long silence] Dr. Laura addresses the husband, "John? So you've been beating on your woman?" He tells her yes, its true he has been violent towards his wife on four different occasions but he says he was not the only one who brought arguments to a physical level.

I found it very interesting that this fact shifted Dr. Laura's stance on the issue. She asked the wife if she had hit her husband John on any of these four occasions--to which she admitted yes, she had. She asked the wife if she felt she had been striking her husband in self-defense and the woman very adamantly assured Dr. Laura that she felt her involvement in the fights were always in self-defense. Then came the golden question, "Ok, which one of you throws the FIRST blow?" After a very long silence, the husband and wife say that in their last fight, he had--but in all of the ones before she had initiated violence.

This seemed to kind of piss off Dr. Laura and she asked the woman why she failed to disclose that information in the beginning--why did she lead her to believe that she was a battered housewife.. The woman quickly apologized, saying "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to mislead you." "Your lying," she responded, "you did mean to mislead me--you meant to create this grand image of yourself, and make your husband into a monster. Because if he is the one with the anger problems it keeps you from having to acknowledge your own issues. You are the one with the aggression problems. You felt that the safest place for you to take them out was on your husband. Now you are running from the situation because now he is striking back." [Longer silence]

The woman goes on to say that she knows she has anger problems that stem from her childhood. She says that her husband triggers her anger and she cannot help but to lash out at him--she can't control it. "Yes you can. You can control it," Dr. Laura corrected her, "you don't hit police officers, you've never struck a teacher, you can control it when you want to." She asks the woman to tell her what these 'triggers' are that have caused her to become violent with her loved one. Every example she wanted to give involved her husband, and each was rejected.

Dr. Laura wanted to know a trigger from the root of her aggression and finally the woman told her about her father and how he was very abusive and controlling when she was a child (telling her what she could wear, where she could go, that she could not use the phone, etc.) and how these were 'triggers' for her now as a grown woman. Dr. Laura said, "the abuse is very different, but the 'controlling' that you are upset over was a father controlling his child, now you are a grown woman--married to a man with preferences--" and the woman burst into tears saying that Dr. Laura had misunderstood what she was saying and blah blah blah. ..

But Dr. Laura understood exactly what she was saying. The woman was trying to say that as a child her father controlled her, and beat her--and now she is married to a man that controls her and beats her. "Is that correct? Am I understanding you?" "Yes." "No, that is not true," the Dr. told her, "if that were true you should and would have left. You are demonizing and punishing your husband for your fathers wrongdoings in the past." "So, I should be okayyy with him not letting me talk on the phone?" Dr. Laura then asked the husband to explain his reasoning for this, which was simple enough--that his wife spent the majority of her time on the phone and when he would come home he asked that she not be on the phone. "So, you married a man that PREFERS his woman to spend a little quality time with him without being distracted or preoccupied on the phone. You need to separate your past from your present or else you are going to get the divorce and just end up leaving the next guy for the same daddy issues you are ignoring today..."

Relationships are about balance and equilibrium. We cannot expect to receive from our partner what we are not willing to give them. Relationships are about sacrificing for the sake of making the other person happy--and we do this because we WANT to, because we have chosen this person to be a part of our lives and we are willing to do things we may not like because we WANT to keep them in our lives. (Of course I am talking about reasonable healthy changes like the woman on the radio was not willing to compromise such as her clothing, socializing, etc). I can relate to the 'daddy issues' she had and see how she can unwittingly allow her past to cloud her current relationship. She felt like she needed to defend herself in the way she couldn't when she was a little girl. She felt like she was sleeping with the enemy because her husband's needs made him embody her controlling father, and so, she villainized him. The simple requests of a loving partner became the unreasonable demands of a monster and she needed to strike back and prove she wasn't the weak young person she was in the past. It is very difficult to accept fault in situations like these. It is very easy to place blame on someone else or even to fall back on dark pasts or things of that nature as a means of deflecting responsibility. Dr. Laura was right, the woman CHOSE to act out against her husband. It is not beyond our control to lash out at someone. The comfort of knowing someone will love you no matter what sometimes makes them a prime candidate as the victim of your unresolved rage. Knowing that someone has gained so much of your trust and also knowing how much of your trust has been violated and lost in the past is deathly frightening. So, we test them. We push them--we try to find their triggers, their limits. We constantly feel like they are hiding some demonic 'dark side' that would sneak out one day when we least expect it. We become vulnerable in the way we were when we were violated as children. But it is not the same at all. The vulnerability of a relationship is beautiful. We are making ourselves emotionally available to this other person by CHOICE, because we have chosen to let them into our lives. It is unfair to make them suffer for any and every time you were wronged in the past. It is unreasonable to expect them to love you and be entirely open, trusting, and vulnerable to you if you aren't willing to meet them in the middle. We have to realize that we have the choice of 'holding onto our baggage' or resolving those issues and absorbing as much good into our lives as God will allow us. What sense does it make to always be suspicious or weary of the person we have DECIDED to give our hearts to? If they were really no good for us we wouldn't be with them in the first place. Love is a strength not a weakness. You don't 'fall' you fly. Our loved ones never make us feel pressured, anchored, and held down; they are our anchors, keeping us centered, grounded, and aware of all the good we are receiving. And most importantly--It NEVER hurts. When you describe the person you are with you should have nothing but great things to say. Never make them out to seem like a horrid person if that isn't the reality. If you find yourself doing this, it is probably a good time to check yourself and see what issues you are struggling with separate of them. Am I being too difficult? Am I failing to compromise? Am I not caring for them properly? Am I distant or distracted? Could they be responding to my actions? If its not you--if you are NOT the problem and the answers to all of the above are no, then by all means, YOU'RE RIGHT! You are sleeping with the enemy! You really have chosen an insensitive, evil, controlling, abusive, unmotivated, non-caring, loveless, loser or w/e you wish to call them. And by all means GET OUT of the relationship. But if thats not the case-- check yourself. (;