Author: Miki Mizu
Source: Wu Zhihong (ID: wzhxlx)
Alain De Botton, in "You'll Marry the Wrong Man," writes:
In marriage, we can always see the original, all-encompassing, bone-stained mismatch between some partners.
Sometimes, we have to lament that these mismatches are not just small disappointments that will arise, but that it is true that some people should not be together at all.
In my interviews, I often secretly have such an exclamation.
Especially in the "functional marriage" type, I have seen too many people struggling and struggling to break free.
So today we will talk about:
What is functional marriage?
How to avoid going into extreme "functional marriage"?
Inseparable marriage
One of my clients, Tina, female, 36 years old.
When I first consulted, her main complaint was "marital relationship" .
Two years later, she finally broke out over a small matter and went to the point of divorce with her husband.
But she suddenly found that she could not afford to divorce this marriage.
Actually Tina, who has a good job, is not short of money on a realistic level, and has no practical livelihood problems;
There are no children, so they do not take into account the psychological feelings of children and the practical problems of properly arranging their children's lives.
In addition, she is also a very feminine charm person -
Have the habit of running marathons, and are in quite good shape;
She wears makeup, dresses well, and behaves gracefully and decently.
However, it is such a Tina, after 3 months of fighting with her husband and losing 15 pounds, she found that she did not have the ability to divorce at all.
So what's going on?
During the consultation, Tina finally pieced together a very important feeling through intermittent expressions-
Once divorced, you will be broken.
Tina spoke of several images to help her express this feeling.
Imagery 1:
It's a decently tall building now, and if you get divorced, a part of the foundation of the building will be sucked away, and then the whole building will become crumbling and almost collapsing.
Imagery 2:
I am a broken mirror, and marriage is the glue of this mirror. Divorce is when the glue fails and the mirror breaks again.
Imagery 3:
I am like a beautiful portrait made up of countless pieces of puzzles. Divorce means that a strong wind blows, and the portrait is blown apart and no longer exists.
In her eyes, she was born broken and needed to be bonded through marriage to become a complete body.
Once divorced, you no longer exist.
So, for Tina, the breakdown of the marital relationship also means the brokenness of "me."
Functional marriage
In my opinion, Tina couldn't get married, not because she was "flirtatious" or "not strong enough".
It's because she puts too much of her needs—even her entire existence—on the marriage.
Marriage is there, she is;
If the marriage is not there, she is not there.
This is the typical functional marriage.
In other words, we are united not because we are in love, but because the person, the relationship, provides the "function" we need to use.
For example:
Find a rich man, this is the economic function;
Find someone who will take care of you, it's a parental function.
It's not out of malice, most marriages consider function, just to vary in degree.
But the degree of functionality is too great, too big for the marriage to bear, then the marriage is not healthy.
Like Tina, she tied her "existence" and "self-worth" to the marriage.
Once the relationship is gone, its "existence" will encounter a serious crisis.
Why is Tina like this? It was related to her early trauma.
In his essay "Early Emotional Development," Winnicott refers to a state of "early unintegment."
This refers to the fact that in early infancy, the self is in an "unintegrated state" and is integrated as early maternal-infant interactions develop.
If the development is not smooth, then when we become adults, when we encounter some major events, we will retreat to the "unintegrated state" to varying degrees and experience self-"fragmentation".
When Tina was young, her parents neglected to take care of her for a long time, which is why she felt "broken" when she thought of divorce.
Motivated by her instinct to save herself, she unconsciously fantasized that marriage would best serve as a way to repair early trauma.
This explains why Tina has been dissatisfied with her husband but has not been able to divorce.
What are functional marriages?
In the counseling room, we often have functional marriages, which are typical of two types:
One is to find parents in marriage;
The other is "living together".
Regarding "finding parents in marriage", this is very common, and there are many forms of manifestation, and Tina is one of them.
On a subconscious level, she fantasizes that marriage can repair childhood trauma, which is the embodiment of "finding parents".
I want my husband to take care of her like a child, and everything responds:
Can help her deal with all kinds of small things, carrying water, blowing hair, cutting nails...
All the attention was on her, patiently waiting for her "instructions".
These are fine when they are affectionate, but over time, the relationship tends to stabilize, and the husband does not have the patience to continue to provide this function, so the marriage goes into trouble.
Let's talk about the second category: living together.
Visiting Mr. Zhang, Ph.D., teaching at the university.
Only talked about one girlfriend, who has been single since his mom objected to breaking up.
Married at the age of 44, the woman was introduced by relatives in the family and married for three months.
Three months after marriage, the wife became pregnant.
Because my wife's work unit is too far away, she resigned after becoming pregnant and saved her baby at home.
But after the birth of the child, the home becomes a battlefield.
In Mr. Zhang's original words: "At that time, the chickens and dogs in the family jumped, and there was no peace all day. ”
My mother-in-law came to live with him and was dissatisfied with Mr. Zhang.
The wife was depressed after giving birth and then her temper became grumpy.
This grumpiness continues to this day, when the child is 5 years old.
I don't know what mr. Zhang used to be, but now he is: lean, hunchbacked, his face is like a dark cloud, his face is expressionless, just 49 years old, his wrinkles are so deep that they are carved with a knife.
In short, the whole person looks very unhealthy.
Mr. Zhang said he did not want to get married.
But even a man, who is not married in his 40s, cannot withstand the impact of his surroundings.
The mother's increasingly frequent anxiety about his "no marriage and no children";
Relatives are always talking about the New Year's Festival or pointing out in the open and in the dark;
Even colleagues whispered behind his back.
The pressure of public opinion around them, coupled with the scrutiny of the collective subconscious in the context of oriental culture, seems to be always "judging" Mr. Zhang.
In short, people who do not marry seem strange and faulty.
Therefore, Mr. Zhang found a similar person and lived together in a group, the purpose of which was to block the mouth of Youyou.
Getting married and having children, the existence of a family, and looking more "normal" on their own, get it.
Whether it is Mr. Zhang's "partner to live a life" or Tina's "looking for parents", these are typical "functional marriages".
3 Drawbacks of Functional Marriage
First, such a marriage repeats certain pains.
Without being aware, we are more likely to repeat some of the pain of the past in our marriage.
Consciously, we do want to travel through the trauma of the past through corrective experiences.
But subconscious "compulsive repetition" drives us to repeat early traumatic experiences.
For example
A person who lacks love and wants to be compensated by love in marriage,
But in the end, he found someone who hurt and belittled himself to marry.
An abandoned person who wants to find security in marriage,
But after marriage, what I feel all the time is the sense of threat of being "abandoned again".
Like Tina, she seeks the love that was missing from her childhood in her husband again and again, but in the process, she also experiences the feeling of being ignored in her early years.
In this way, it constitutes "compulsive repetition".
Second, there is no quality in marriage.
This is the case with "living together".
Without an emotional basis as the background of marriage, nor a common goal and determination as a connection to the relationship, such a marriage, a little bit of wind and grass is to reduce the quality of life.
Just like my visitor, Mr. Zhang, what he never expected was that he would live such a "chicken and dog restless" life after marriage:
The wife who also wants to live a life, the controlling mother, the more controlled and more grumpy mother-in-law, as long as any one thing in life is enough to make them conflicted.
In such a battlefield-like family, he could not feel the warmth of home at all.
On the contrary, he can only carefully toss and turn in the cracks of marriage, and if he is lucky enough, he can still feel the fleeting moment of tranquility, which is already very luxurious.
In a marriage like "living together", who would have thought:
After the excitement of a wedding, it only opened the curtain of pain.
Third, if one partner grows up, the marriage is likely to break up halfway through.
In fact, the two chose to enter the "functional marriage", which is also a kind of "conspiracy".
Both people have their own agendas and, in this marital relationship, are somewhat "complementary."
As one side grows, this complementary game is likely to be interrupted.
Once you can't play anymore, the relationship comes to an end.
That's what Tina's marriage was.
In the past, when the two were in love, her husband could take care of her like a parent.
But as time went on, he also grew up, with more family responsibilities on him, and couldn't play the perfect "caregiver."
So then, their marriage also had a rift.
How to avoid going into extreme"functional marriages"?
First of all, a point to note in particular is:
Marriage itself has a functional part.
So, it's not that all marriages with functional attributes are "problematic."
The key is whether this situation has reached an extreme -
To the extreme, it seriously affects the status and quality of your marriage.
So, how to avoid going through "functional marriage"?
First, know yourself.
Be more self-aware, know yourself more, know yourself.
For example, knowing what kind of person you are, what you have experienced in the past, what kind of trauma you may have, what kind of personality you have created through your past experience, your temperament, etc., these are all about knowing yourself.
On the basis of knowing yourself, you will know:
What are your needs?
What are you doing?
What are you looking for in your marriage?
In fact, this process is subconscious consciousness.
Only when we know ourselves well enough and, as clearly as possible, what our needs are in marriage, can we avoid bringing unreasonable needs into marriage and avoid unreasonable demands and expectations for the other half.
There are many ways to learn more about yourself:
For example, seeing yourself in a relationship, reflecting on yourself through learning, or recording what happened and thought honestly in your daily life... All of this will help you to better understand what kind of person you are.
Second, the growth of personality.
One of the important reasons why we enter a "functional marriage" is that we encounter different degrees of obstacles in our personal growth, and those who do not grow will be put into marriage and then misplaced.
Although not absolute, we may as well try to express it like this:
When we are too traumatized in our early years, the growth block is obvious, and the problems in the "personality" are not seen, we will turn to marriage.
When marriage becomes largely a tool we use to compensate for early trauma and psychological blockage, the functional attributes of marriage will largely occupy the marriage, squeeze the space of the marriage itself, and then form a "functional marriage".
Therefore, at this time, let yourself really grow, this is the fundamental method of "drawing salaries from the bottom of the pot".
Tina's marriage gave her the joy of being taken care of, but it also made her experience the pain of being "abandoned."
It is also annoying to repeat it like this, unconsciously putting emotional dominance on the other person.
After several consultations, coupled with continuous self-awareness and growth, she finally saw the connection between her past and present, and understood why she was the source of her pain.
Now, the image that had been broken in her mind gradually dissipated, and the "broken self" slowly became the "cohesive self".
She began to feel a force in herself that supported her to make more decisions.
Write at the end
Marriage is the union of a man and a woman as spouses.
Objectively, it has a certain functionality, but it should not only be functional.
Those inconspicuous love is the most important part of a marriage.
Healthy marriages are: "me" and "you," snuggled up to make up "us."
Standing in a straight posture, standing steadily, in the relationship, I can still be me, you can still be you.
Only in this way can each other enjoy a relationship with a lighter posture.