Don was a tall thin, ex bass guitar player of 43 who had been sober for 18 months.  He had, for the first time in his adult life begun to experience the pleasure of being alive without drugs in his system and had met Karen.  Karen was a divorcee with two teenaged children. Her ex-husband had been a raging, violent alcoholic with whom she had struggled nearly 20 years to make a life.

When she met Don she felt relieved to be with someone who listened to her feelings, cared about what she thought and wanted.  Together they forged an attempt at a marriage.  Within six months Don had begun verbally putting her down and nagging at her for minor infractions.  Karen had been “through this before” and she withdrew from him emotionally, mentally making her plans for divorce before they were through their first year. 

The Underlying Issues 

Before the year was out she had divorced him and was convinced that no man could be what she needed.  When I spoke with her a few months after the divorce she told me about the failure of their marriage.  She said he had never been able to perform sexually, but that she was not upset about it; she was just happy to have someone who cared about her. But as his own since of inadequacy around his sexual performance grew, he became angrier and angrier toward her, ultimately pushing her to divorce. 

I was saddened that she had not discussed her marital problems with me prior to their divorce because I knew what had happened could have been prevented had she been aware of the dynamic underlying his behaviors.  Don’s insecurity put him in a position of feeling trapped and hopeless, despairing of being the partner for his wife in the way he wanted.  His instinct was to move into a self-protective mode, pushing her away so that she would not want to be sexual with him.  Karen then reacted back in her own self-protective mode and retreated behind first emotional barriers, then legal ones. 

Both in tremendous pain and feeling like a failure, the marriage dissolved without so much as a look back. 

Failure Out of Fear 

Don and Karen’s dramatic example of how a marriage can fail out of a fear that is not addressed highlights the pain that results from a lack of compassion in marriage.  Do I think Karen should have continued to put up with his verbal abuse? No, I don’t. But I do think that if she had been able to see through the rage into the pain that was underneath, she may have been able to save her marriage. 

Don continued to be the same loving, gentle, wounded soul she had married, but she lost sight of that because of how his hurt and fear played out.  No one can blame her for that considering the abuse she had endured for nearly 20 years.  Yet all in all, it was such a shame for both of them. 

Had Karen recognized that he was pushing her away because he was so fearful of rejection by her because of his inadequacy in the bedroom, she could have responded to him with empathy instead of self-protective anger.  Had Don recognized and been able to own his true fear to her instead of pushing her away, things might have turned out very differently…

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