may262009

THE ABUSE OF DEVALUING - It Will Destroy a Marriage

Sherri Rainingbird, LMFT and Karen A. Stansbury, Esq.

Professional Women’s Alliance of Connecticut, pwa-ct.com

May 26, 2009

You just don’t matter. You are lucky to be here. If you left me, where would you go? You can’t support yourself. You’ll end up on the street. You’ll be a bag lady.

Most people are familiar with the fact that verbal abuse, physical abuse, and even sexual abuse can exist within a marriage. However, sometimes the worst kind of damage is the type that leaves no evidence behind---the insidious, relentless beating down of a woman’s confidence through devaluing.

A wife is informed by her husband that he isn’t going to bother insuring her life—she isn’t worth the premiums. Another wife is devastated because her husband publicly announces that he does all of the work in the marriage. A third wife has helped run the family business for over twenty years, but has never received a salary, and all of the marital assets are in her husband’s name.

Many of these women have college degrees, graduate degrees, and even professional licenses. Often they have left successful careers to get married, support their husbands in job relocations, and raise families. Although it seemed to be a joint decision at the time, these women are now trapped in miserable marriages by fear; fear that is engendered by a surreptitious chipping away of their self esteem.

Some do eventually manage to seek help from a therapist, and eventually from a lawyer. From an attorney’s perspective, often the devaluing has everything to do with control of the marital assets. Historically the husband is the primary income producer, and this scenario is still prevalent in Fairfield County. The “I made it, therefore I own it” attitude is surprisingly alive and well in the twenty-first century, and this stance is apparent during divorce negotiations.

Husbands expect to take out of a marriage exactly what they’ve put in. They expect to be credited for expenditures made for the wife during the course of the marriage. A woman has plastic surgery performed, or collects art, or owns a show horse. The underlying theme here is that the wife wasn’t worthy of these luxuries, and the husband deserves to be compensated for his generosity in the divorce settlement. Put simply---the husband was the only spouse of value in the marriage.

As a result, the wife’s attorney is faced with a client who is paralyzed with fear for her future. If the financial status of the parties necessitates that the woman return to full time employment, she is too terrified to take the first step. Often she has been out of touch with her career for years, or worse, moved straight from her college graduation into baby making. She has endured years of put-downs and monetary control, and suddenly, she is forced to support herself, armed with maxed out credit cards, and very little knowledge of the financial world.

How does this happen? Why do women allow this to happen?

Devaluing typically happens gradually and progressively over time. Though less frequent, it can begin shortly after the “I Do’s”. It is natural and necessary for the romance of courtship and excitement of new love and possibilities to shift in the first seven year cycle of marriage. Responsibilities and demands of a shared family life increase as the couple’s lives’ become more layered.

If a couple does not navigate the first few years of marriage with open communication, flexibility, and willingness to shed their agendas; the wounds of their childhood and protective mechanisms take over. When a couple works consciously during these years, a deeper sense of connection and purpose of union is revealed.

A spouse whose protective mechanisms include shame, blame, condescension, and intimidation entered the marriage with woundedness around matters of gender and power in relationship. They are often coming from polarity relational models of dominance/passivity, control/repression, or avoidance/over involvement. A spouse with unfinished business in a complimentary area is a perfect dance partner to create the potential to heal, or the potential to relive the earlier pain.

A spouse who devalues typically chooses a partner who is deeply committed to the relationship working, at all costs. The initial response of being devalued is one of shock over what’s happening, then denial and later minimization of what’s happening. The partner being devalued believes loving unconditionally can heal the situation. They believe they can handle it, that it will pass, that “they don’t really mean it”, and that their spouse is “just stressed”. They dismiss the behaviors right to the point of losing themselves.

On the female side of this commitment, at all costs, is the attachment to “for ever after”. Many women believe relationship is “their” department. While it is true that women are great teachers of relationship, both parties in a marriage need to be willing to learn from and grow with one another. The “Cinderella Illusion” dies a hard death. If it is compounded by family and religious expectations and a perception that divorce equals failure, the journey out of devaluing can be costly.

Heads are often placed in the sand initially because it seems relieving, even “romantic”, to have a break from the concerns of money and money management. Advancing professionally, raising children, and/or both seems to be enough, understandably so. When a spouse in uninvolved monetarily, either through information or actual earning of money, the gap becomes a toxic source of mistrust, tension, distancing, resentment, and loss of connection. Having any major area of a relationship out of the communication flow is a red flag: money, sex, family, spirituality, health, individual and shared visions, etc.

Tolerating verbal, physical, sexual, and monetary devaluing or witholding for the sake of love, physical comforts, the children’s adjustments, or fear is a short term band-aid when a long term solution is needed. Relationship bondage is an option, but it is not love.

From this model of relating, daughters learn that relationship is about power over, not true inner power and sense of self. They will be vulnerable to repeating the pattern, or choosing a Peter Pan whom they can have power over. They will find men not trustworthy. Sons learn to belittle and disrespect, or to see women as in need of rescue. They will often be attracted to women in need of rescue and then later become depleted and resentful for being in sacrifice to their partner. They may also be drawn to a very strong woman, only to then cope with their unhealed wounds by chipping away at her vulnerabilities.

The most extreme cases of devaluing occur when Narcissistic Personality Disorder is present in one of the partners. For purposes of this article, suffice to say that the spouse of someone with NPD will feel a deep sense of confusion because to the outside world, their husband is charming. The words and the actions may even imply love, but there is something inherently void in the connection. It will often take longer to seek professional support due to being convinced it’s entirely their fault. They often become addicted, chronically ill, and self-doubting in the years spent “determined to make it work”.

Wives of husbands who devalue are often optimistic, loving, giving, spontaneous, and incredibly courageous. Or at least, they were. The story often sounds like this: “When we met, I was soaring in my career, had great dreams for myself, and was outgoing and confident”. Ten to twenty years later they doubt they are qualified, secure, or confident enough to obtain a part-time retail position. They believe they are disposable.

Their spirits have been broken little by little, by their partner and their own self-abandonment in the “commitment” to justifying, denying and tolerating. In these marriages, the outside does not match the inside. Women become attached to what was “supposed” to be, to their marriage fantasy, their vision that they refuse to grieve. When their intuition was crying out years ago, they quieted it, or numbed it.

The women are seduced by their marriage fantasy, their belief that things will change, and their illusion that they have enough love for the both of them. They believe they can heal his wounds; Botox, tummy tucks, and implants will reignite that lost connection.

They lose their self in their pursuit of what was, what can be, and overlook what is. “What is” is a bleeding wound on both parts, that both parties must be willing to heal for a marriage to be conscious, loving, and successful.

It would be disrespectful to apply overly simplistic summaries of these dynamics.

What gets enacted in marriages is a matter of personality, upbringing, hopes and dreams, agendas, unfinished business, family and cultural expectations and beliefs, and even ancestral and karmic history and wounds.

Chronic devaluing happens from a place of the wounded male and female, and a deep misunderstanding that we are separate. It is a wound deep in our psyche that men must protect against the workings of women, and women must be in sacrifice to men. Men who believe women are out to “entrap” them, and women who believe men should take care of them, should fasten their seatbelt before saying “I DO”.

These masculine/feminine psychic wounds are a script for a devaluing dynamic. The gender split becomes magnified when one partner is earning money and the other is supporting the family life non-monetarily. When either partner measures self-worth solely in the masculine sense of earning money, and there is a large gap in monetary earnings, this marriage will surely give rise to the need to heal this wound.

Eve’s still taking the rap for Adam losing a rib. No wonder men feel duped and women feel overly responsible. Freud stirred the pot with mother guilt and fragmentation of our minds, bodies, and spirits, and many organized religions and governments continue to dictate our sexual and reproductive preferences.

We are in profound times of healing antiquated models that ultimately lead to depletion and overextension. Depletion of one another, overextension in family life and finances, being out of balance in mind, body, and spirit, and depleting the earth which sustains us.

We are being called to move beyond the wounded masculine model of depletion and emphasis on individual gain and into the times of the healed feminine.

Women, like never before in our world history, are being called to become a part of the solution, leading this paradigm shift. The call to healing often comes in the form of a painful marriage. A dynamic of devaluing can only be healed if both are willing to heal what drives the dance. If only one is willing, the healing will be individual, and that’s fine. It is no one’s place to dictate the healing, or lack of, for another.

Healing a marriage of devaluing is nothing short of a spiritual journey of honoring oneself. The pain, once healed, becomes a profound journey of finding one’s own voice. In doing, a woman learns, SHE creates her own happiness, her own security, and her own sense of worth. IF she chooses to engage in relationship, it nor longer defines nor depletes her, it enhances both of their lives. She then shares and enjoys who she is, and offers her partner the same. This is a ground for honor, respect, growth, and conscious love.

THE ABUSE OF DEVALUING - It Will Destroy a Marriage