FAMILY’S INDIRECT BATTLES FOR POWER: THE POWER OF SYMPTOMS
Some people get caught in the trap of exaggerating their physical symptoms in reaction to relationship problems. They do not do so consciously; they simply feel stuck and miserable. Their health is poor, and their family life is worse. This unhealthy relationship pattern does not always revolve around symptoms of heart disease. I have worked with cardiac couples who dance no dysfunctional dances around the cardiac rehabilitation process but instead play out their power struggle around one spouse's sexual performance problems or the other spouse's arthritis, or alcoholism, or preoccupation over their children. The content doesn't matter. The process of being symptomatic in a way that controls the relationship is the point of this marital pattern. Furthermore, this form of marital struggle does not always involve the passive spouse developing an illness. A variation of this same relationship dance involves the less obviously powerful mate's reaction to the powerful mate's heart illness.
As is shown by the case of Tom and Lena, although certain reactions on the part of the "weaker" spouse increase his or her power within the marriage, these same reactions can significantly complicate the ill spouse's course of medical rehabilitation. This case also demonstrates the complex interplay in which both spouses indirectly use physical symptoms in an attempt to resolve marital struggles.
Tom was a classic Type A personality: hard driving, competitive, excessively focused on work, and seemingly unbothered by the stresses of his life. Like many such men, Tom was also rather uncomfortable with the whole realm of intimacy and was driven by the insecurities that lurked beneath the surface of his powerful style.
For years, Tom and his wife, Lena, had struggled with his tendency to ignore marriage and family life. Lena often became fed up with Tom's refusal to change and separated from him briefly twice, only to return home and continue the frustrating marriage. After twenty-six years of marriage, Lena had all but given up hope that Tom would ever slow down and attend to her and to their children. Then, with no prior warnings of failing health, Tom had a heart attack at the age of fifty-three.
By the time of Tom's heart attack, he and Lena had settled into a life of lonely frustration and extreme stress. Each of them lived in fear of the other's outbursts of anger and blaming modes of communicating. Tension was escalating to the point of another marital separation when Tom's heart attack stopped them in their tracks.
The heart attack gave Tom and Lena a new arena in which to play out their relationship struggles and their individual psychological issues. Lena now had a new power lever for getting her husband to respond to her needs—the doctors: "The doctors all say you need to slow down, relax, eat your meals at home, attend your kids' ball games, and generally start to enjoy life. So don't tell me I'm just whining when I fuss at you about these things!"
Tom, too, now had an indirect way of handling his own emotional pain. He had always harbored secret fears of his own stress levels and of the demands to perform that he had created with his own career momentum. He often wanted more soothing intimacy with his family, but he always had difficulty asking directly for such closeness. Now his heart illness had provided him with a less embarrassing and more comfortable way of getting his family to meet his needs for nurturing and intimacy. He now had a medically justified reason to slow down and enjoy life more. As long as he stayed sick, life would feel more comfortable and his wife and children would seem closer to him.
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