His name is David, and his marriage of 23 years was teetering on the edge of the end. He’d worked hard to get through medical school and a grueling residency and he and his wife, Tish, had recently paid off student loans. They were finally about to close on their dream house when Tish’s mother died unexpectedly.
In their first therapy session, David’s anger was white-hot as he poured over the reasons why Tish should just be happy, not sad. But the more he talked, the more Tish wept, and the angrier David got.
When he finally stopped, Tish said…”David, I’ve never wavered in my support of your career. I’ve made it through the lean years with you, I’m your partner in life, but you’re simply not seeing me.” David shot back, “I see you – you’re right in front of me.” And then the silence in the therapy room grew thick.
“David…I mean, you don’t see what I’m feeling – the deep pain and grief I feel because I’ll never be with mom again – at least not in this lifetime.” Tish wiped her eyes and burrowed into the chair. We waited. Then she finished by saying “you’re brilliant and all, but you’re dumb as a rock when it comes to human emotion. I thought that you would change when we finally made it to this point in life, but now, I’ve lost all hope.”
Although this was the worst point for Tish and David, it turned out to be their tipping point. With Tish’s buy-in, I decided to suspend couples therapy and asked her to postpone her decision to leave the marriage so that David could have some time in therapy by himself.
In a nutshell, David told me that his family was all about achievement. As the baby in his family of three boys, if he could be successful, then he would prove to his family, more specifically, his father, that he wasn’t the screw-up they thought he was. David had been arrested at 14 a for possession of pot, twice and had also vandalized a neighborhood store. His dad had all but written him off, that is until he was accepted into medical school.
In therapy, David realized that if he could be a success, then he’d protect himself from ever having to re-feel the old painful feeling of being the family screw-up. He saw how he’d become skilled at using his intellect to justify and argue any emotion into the ground. Eventually, he became the guy that was always right without an ounce of empathy for anyone else’s struggles.
While David was in treatment, Tish did her best to lean on her friends for emotional support. Because Tish had said David’s attempts to repair the situation felt like a bandage, I gave David one and only one response to say to Tish during that time, and it was… I’m here, and I see you. He wasn’t ready for anything beyond that and Tish didn’t trust his words.
When we met again for our couples session, I felt that David was ready and I held my breath waiting for him to begin. As tears filled his eyes, he said, “Tish, I see how we’ve rolled along for six years because we were both focused on achieving our goal. You because you saw a vision for our lives together and me because I was stuck trying to protect myself from re-feeling the painful feeling of being the family screw-up. But when we thought we finally arrived, when we were buying the house we’d always wanted, and your momma died, our different motivations collided like a big bang – and I blamed it all on you. I see how I’ve relied on my intelligence to belittle you into thinking that your way was stupid, and mine was right. The truth is, I’ve done it for so long that I can’t remember what I really feel. I can’t remember how to connect to what you feel. Hell…to what anyone feels. I know I was a man on a mission to protect and defend myself at all costs. I know I’ve been a jerk and I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?”
I swear, my heart was beating out of my chest as all three of us sat in silence, looking at each other with tears in our eyes. Then Tish broke our silence when she said, “you get… I, I..love, of course, I will. But I want that European stove I showed you online.” In that second, it was like air filled the room and we started laughing and crying and taking turns ripping tissues from the box, wiping our eyes, and blowing our noses.
So I took my cue and stepped into my other room so they could hold each other tight on the sofa.
It’s been a lot to put together over the years, but I’ve come to see that how we protect ourselves is so primary that we just don’t give it much thought. And when we do, we think about physically protecting ourselves, not emotionally protecting ourselves.
But, all humans and animals protect themselves from the threat of pain. And, when we believe that we may have to re-feel an old emotional pain, we’ll create a defense to keep ourselves safe.
That’s what David did. It’s what I’ve done and probably what you’ve done.
The thing is, protective defenses have two sides. One side can motivate us while the other side can isolate us.
On the motivator side, David’s defense helped him create a career he loved.
On the isolator side, it separated him emotionally from his wife and from himself.
As I’ve dug through my own protective defenses, I’ve come to believe that when we come to know how we protect ourselves, we’ll know how to feel.