disappearing family dairy farms and little towns that have never
heard of Starbucks or Target. (I didn't say I liked it, I said I live
here ….) Anyway, as I was saying…. This is a beautiful spot on the
planet, rolling hills, woods, fields, pastures, and picturesque
farmsteads for miles and miles.
A couple of years ago when one of my boys was in Cub Scouts we had an
opportunity to take a ride in a small plane with one of the other
scout's dad who generously offered his plane and his time. We flew
from the little airport about 40 miles from us up over our little
town and back along the river – seeing quite a bit of the surrounding
countryside.
What an eye opener! Driving along the highways or county roads you
roll past miles and miles of fields and pasture with the occasional
hill of trees in the distance. From the vantage point of a car (or
pickup!) this part of the world is mostly open fields with a few
wooded areas tossed in for good effect. But from the air – with a
larger, farther reaching view, an entirely different picture presents
itself. In reality the woods are enormous, covering more than half
the surface of the earth in comparison to roads, fields, and
pastures. Who knew!? Not being a bird, or having a plane of my own, I
had no reason to think the landscape was any different than what I
saw from the highway. That little jaunt in a twin engine prop plane
changed my vision of where I live.
So what's that got to do with marriage? Glad you asked. The having to
do with marriage part is all about a shift in awareness – of seeing
things from a different perspective and realizing that simply because
you have always seen things in one way or another does not mean that
it is the only way to see those things.
In the early months of my career as a coach, Harvey*, whom I had
mentored on and off over the course of a year, asked me to coach him
through a difficult time in his marriage. His wife had moved out of
the house after having had an affair and she was on the verge of
filing for divorce. Her primary complaint about the marriage was
Harvey's anger and control tactics. She told him that over the course
of their 20+ year marriage she had been mostly unhappy.
Now, if you do work with couples experiencing infidelity you know
that a re-write of history is common, and perhaps that's what
Harvey's wife was doing. However, having mentored Harvey for close to
a year and then working as his coach it was readily apparent that he
did have problems with both anger and control. He would rant at me at
least once a week, twist things around, becoming both demanding and
disrespectful – I could see why his wife complained and I believe
that she had been truly unhappy.
Harvey, on the other hand, just couldn't see it. He said something to
me that since that time a whole host of men have said about their
wives' version of their marital history "When is she going to wake up
and realize that she's wrong and that we had lots and lots of good
times?" Harvey was just like me rolling along in a car across western
Wisconsin – seeing only the open fields with the trees in the
background. He didn't have the point of view to see that the trees
really covered a much greater part of the landscape than the fields
visible from the road.
Other versions of Harvey's statement are – "But I have pictures of
us at
remember going to
or "We had lots of times where she was happy," or any number of
versions of the same refrain.
Interestingly, I only get this insistence that the past was wonderful
from men whose partners have left. And, even more interesting is
almost without fail these are men who have demonstrated problems with
control, anger, and abuse – verbal or physical. I have not (at least
as of today) heard a woman say the same thing about her spouse who
has pulled back from the marriage. There's probably a whole week of
Musings on the difference between men and women and how they react to
emotional situations, but that's for another time.
What I want to highlight today is the need to accept and validate
what the other person is saying about his – or in these cases her –
reality. Harvey's wife and the wives of many other men are seeing the
marriage from the air. To them, the good times are tiny open fields
edging the highway but the overriding picture of the marriage is a
forest of hurt and sadness. When they look back at their years of
being married they see little pockets of smiles, mostly at events or
activities maybe on holidays, and endless miles of tears.
If these husbands want to change the tide of the marriage – if they
hope to have a chance of enticing their wives back they need to stop
arguing about whether or not she was happy. A dozen (or a thousand)
pictures of a smiling woman do not a happy marriage make. Instead
they need to accept that her reality, although different from theirs,
is as real to her as his is to him. Instead of waiting for her
to `wake up' these husbands must accept at face value what she is
saying – she was unhappy, the marriage was not a wonderful place for
her, and then he needs to do something about it.
Changing one's vision of reality is often difficult. Unless we can
experience what someone else is experiencing it's virtually
impossible for us to know what it's like. We can imagine – but we
struggle to hold in our consciousness a point of view different than
our own. This, I believe, is why I see this phenomenon in men with
control problems. Control and the ensuing anger come from the idea
that our way is the only way and that we have a right to insist on
getting our way at any cost to the other person. Tunnel vision. The
inability to understand that there is a way to view something that is
different from our usual position. Rigidity.
Today, three or four years after my eye opening ride in that plane, I
sometimes forget that there are vast expanses of woods beyond the
fields and pastures that line the highways of rural Wisconsin. But
when I stop to think about it, I know they're there. In my minds eye
I can envision the hills and bluffs covered with trees. If your wife
is telling you she's unhappy – that she's been unhappy for a long
time – don't argue! Just because you see things from the front seat
of the car doesn't mean that another reality doesn't exist. Fly with
her – ask her to tell you about her reality. And then ask her what
you can do to make the next leg of the trip one that is much more
satisfying for her. And then, do it.
Happy Flying,
Penny
*Name changed to protect privacy and confidentiality
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