FAMILY’S INDIRECT BATTLES FOR POWER: PASSIVE POWER
Being passive can be a very powerful way to control a relationship. I often see couples in which one member seems to wield all the power by being the decision maker, the spokesperson for the family (and for the spouse's thoughts and feelings), and the orchestrator of the family activities. However, such marriages often have a secret: the seemingly powerless, passive spouse is actually in control. The passive one controls the brakes in the system. The relationship does not move unless the passive one cooperates, no matter how forcefully the "powerful" spouse mashes the relationship accelerator.
Signs of a couple struggling in this way might be the passive spouse's refusal to get excited—about a trip that the powerhouse has scheduled, about the guests the powerhouse has invited over for dinner, or about sex. In the example of sexual passivity, the message to the overbearing spouse is often quite obvious: "You may be able to control our life and outtalk me and convince me that my thoughts and feelings don't make sense, but you can't turn me on sexually."
Now, who do you think has the power in such a relationship?
Unfortunately, such passive power maneuvering can seriously interfere with recovery from heart illness. When passive spouses get sick, they usually treat the tasks of cardiac rehabilitation with the same passivity that characterizes their participation in the marriage. Such patients tend to settle into a sick role that further justifies their passive style of manipulating the marriage. Although they may quietly win their marital struggles, they may lose their lives by failing to recover from heart illness.
Each of the family pitfalls described in this chapter can cause serious problems in families and can seriously interfere with the cardiac rehabilitation process. If you and your family are caught in any of the coping pitfalls described in this chapter, it is important to be realistic about this fact: You risk sabotaging cardiac rehabilitation efforts if you do not correct these problems.
What can be done? In general, you must work together to strengthen your marriage by learning to be more intimate and helpful to each other in managing yourselves and the stresses of the rehabilitation process. The remainder of this book outlines specific ways to accomplish these important tasks. We will begin with a discussion of the most neglected topic in cardiac rehabilitation: how adult children of heart patients are affected by a parent's illness, and how such children can free their parents to heal together.
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