A TragicalCoMance For the Ages

I am going to tell you a twisted tale. It is a magical love story but also a tragic comedy and a horror story. This one is in its own genre. Perhaps I will call it a TragicalCoMance. It tells of a pair of intelligent, kind-hearted people who fall in 'love and build a beautiful marriage. They mold it and shape it and reshape it, believing they are creating a masterpiece. Instead, their creation becomes a grotesque display of a codependent, emotionally co-manipulative relationship. How did this happen? Well, I will tell you how I see it and you can decide if I'm onto something...

Lets say the boy is born with a beautiful brain. In fact, he is brilliant at several very specific things. But the brilliance steals from other parts of his mind so that certain social, emotional, and cognitive functions wind up underdeveloped. He learns early on as a child what behaviors are and are not acceptable. Expressing himself freely is not. Expressing his own desires is not. In fact, most of what he truly wants and does isn't deemed acceptable, so he learns to inhibit and mask himself in order to feel loved. On one hand, he loves to be around people. And when he is around them, he behaves in what he has learned is the acceptable way. But when he is alone, he gets to focus on what he truly loves and what makes him feel most alive. He loves to learn, especially mathematics, computer technology, and problem-solving. He has a gift for music. He studies it by ear and learns by watching, listening, and practicing. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. When he sees a need, he rushes to meet it. When he sees a desire, he rushes to fulfill it. Is this truly who he is or just who he decides to become in order to gain acceptance and value in the world? Not even he knows.

He meets a girl. She is fun and witty, vocal and decisive. He is drawn to her. She seems to see him and want to know him. She listens for long stretches, equal parts fascinated and puzzled by his beautiful, strange mind. She makes her desires known and she isn't patient. He doesn't want to lose her. So he decides early on in their relationship (once he wraps his brain around the fact that he will finally be entering into this kind of relationship) that he will do what he has always done for those he cares about. He will suppress his own needs, wants, and desires in order to please her. If he does this, she will love him and never leave.

Her drive and focus are spectacular. He barrels through life right alongside her as she tackles a medical career and military life at the same time. She catches glimpses that he is in distress but they are fleeting at best. This mask he constructs for her is his most effective one yet. He becomes her emotional refuge, plays the martyr to her lofty goals and insatiable striving. She doesn't know that he wants things for himself so she assumes that they want the same things. The mask begins to fail at times. His core self finds ways to declare itself. He goes through intense periods of burnout, recovering from the weight of the mask pressed against his face for so many years. But it has become his greatest source of pride and power. It is the perfect disguise. On the surface, he plays the yielding, compliant partner. He gives but only in specific ways. She appears strong and independent but its really him who is in control of her emotional wellbeing. He doesn't know his own power. He just knows that so long as he maintains this dynamic of appeasing her strongly vocalized preferences and supporting her goals, that she will feel secure and he will feel valued. Is he being selfless and she being selfish? Its impossible to tell even when you examine them closely. Where do the strengths end and the deficiencies begin?

It should have been a match made in heaven. He got a life where a lot of big choices were removed by design and any remaining decisions were left up to her because she had stronger opinions. When you struggle with executive functioning, this is the perfect cover.  Meanwhile, she doesn't realize that he is becoming resentful because he feels like she doesn't care about his wants, needs, and desires. In fact, its that she has never met his core identity and doesn't realize that the person she fell in love with was a combination of masks he subconsciously put on in order to please her. Meanwhile, she is growing tired of making all of these big decisions and carrying all of this weight. But she fears that if she shares more of it with him, he will falter. In fact, he has shown her in many ways that its too much for him to handle.

He gets a job that demands executive functioning tasks all day long and requires that he become predominantly a taker and a doer rather than what comes easiest to him---a giver and a ponderer. Doing this depletes him physically and emotionally. His core self shatters the mask into an unrecognizable wooden husk. His wife and the world are now faced with this splintered self, who rapidly alternates between the mask he needs to wear in order to succeed at work and the need for his core identity to assert itself. This leaves them both feeling exhausted, dissatisfied, and unappreciated.

She feels like she was duped into marrying a false version of him, which is partially true. She feels unloved because he is less willing to appease her strongly expressed demands and desires. She also feels depleted from overcompensating for his executive functioning deficiencies, assuming a caretaking role for him, and helping him navigate through missed or misunderstood social situations.

He feels unloved because she is not expressing enough appreciation for all he has done to please her. He feels depleted by the demands of making decisions and having to take/assert himself all day. He rapidly cycles between moments of asserting himself with her and then reverting to trying to please her so he can feel loved and valued again in the relationship. The thing is, both of them have good intentions and are doing their very best.

BUT THIS IS DEEPLY DYSFUNCTIONAL AND UNSUSTAINABLE.

And so, she makes the decision to leave. She does this because this cycle of codependency and emotional manipulation and counter-manipulation will never break if one of them doesn't.

I truly believe that the Bible contains wisdom about who the Creator GOD is, why He created us, and how best for us to be in relationship with Him. It contains wisdom about human relationships and marriage. But it does not have the specific answers for how to unravel this toxic web this couple has entrapped themselves in. This will require acquiring new levels of self-awareness, intentionality, professional intervention on multiple levels, and determination not to return to their comfortable yet deeply dysfunctional patterns of relating to each other. They are each others victim and victimizer. Throw in a pair of neurodivergent children and a wife who is recovering from deep emotional trauma, poor self-image, and high-functioning ADD and we have got ourselves an unholy mess that only GOD himself can decipher.

The fact that they are both kind-hearted people who love Jesus and want what's best for each other, somehow isn't enough. If they don't get on the same page about this, they are going to break each other's spirit. And yes, GOD hates divorce just like he hates every lie, act of violence, and corrupt act that humans beings commit against each other. Sometimes these things are justifiable. Wars are sometimes waged to correct a deep injustice or to counteract a more dangerous threat. Murder is sometimes necessary to defend the vulnerable or to protect a loved one. Dysfunctional marriages sometimes happen between well-intended people. When they create psychological bondage for one another and neither of them realize it, or worse, only one of them realizes it, how can that relationship be redeemed? What is the right answer or even the best one?

I'm not trying to say that that this situation is irredeemable. What I'm saying is that no matter the good they attempt do for themselves and each other, it will come at great cost. They will lose precious things and exact a tremendous toll on one another in the process. And if you haven't pieced it together yet, I am one-half of this troubled couple.

So yes, we will do all we can to preserve our marriage through this arduous process but I have to believe that there is still grace available to us if our very best efforts ultimately fail.

This is not the end of the story.

Stay tuned.

-Jayma Anne