Okay, so this isn’t exactly a story, but as soon as I read it I knew I had to include it in the Equally Yoked series. Gerald Ford was a pastor for over 40 years, and is a licensed counselor and marriage and family therapist at the Houston Center for Christian Counseling. This article gets to the root of many unhealthy patterns in marriage, and suggests the solution: mutuality.
Terry Real, the author of many books about recovery from addictions, depression, anxiety, etc., has offered a model for the male/female power struggle found in many marriages. I think we can gain from looking at it.
He states that men tend to lead their life from a grandiose power position and have covert issues of shame.
Then, he states that women tend to lead their life from a one-down victim position and have covert issues of grandiosity.
Now, it is hard for me to write about stereotypes, and not throw in a disclaimer, so here it is. I don’t like to think in terms of stereotypes, and I don’t communicate or live according to the expectations set forth by them. However, there are reasons that stereotypes exist, one being that there are lots of people who fit them, feed them, and even cheer for their existence.
I see clients in my marriage counseling practice trying to break free from these stereotypes. Sadly, I see some trying to make them less abusive than they are, but not trying to break free, but generally these efforts don’t work. I am most sad for those couples where one person is trying to break free from the stereotype and the other is trying to reinforce the stereotype. So, knowing that not everyone fits a stereotype (thankfully), and that many are trying to avoid or get out of one, let’s take a look at these traps.
The grandiose power position may be one that people offer their sons out of good intentions. After all, this cold and cruel world requires strong participants. The problems, however, include the mistake of not raising strong daughters as well as strong sons, and the bigger mistake of teaching our sons that power is power over others, power in appearance and swagger, but not power of character and love. Hence, the appearance of strength is based on the power to dominate, and behind this façade there lurks great shame.
Shame has been ignored by many, but well researched by others, especially Donald Nathanson, whose writing I highly recommend if you want to know more. Briefly, shame is that deep and often hidden belief that there is simply something wrong with us, that isn’t wrong with “most people,” that when exposed will bring us accentuated humiliation and disgrace, even exclusion from the community of humankind. In shame, we come to see ourselves as defective and unlovable. Grandiose Power offers us a mask, keeping the “truth” as we fear it to be from being seen by others. Many men accept this trap, not knowing that there is any other acceptable way to live.
The one-down victim position is often introduced to daughters as “just the way it is” for women. This position may be offered in compliance to social norms that are built to keep women “in their place.” Early in life, brothers are offered some grandiosity by being told they must “protect” their sister. She fits into the mold made for her by society, not because she really fits, but because society doesn’t like it when the molds it builds are not filled. (Just look at Jesus’ description of the Pharisees’ complaints against him, “They are like children who sit in the market place and call to one another, and they say, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.’” Luke 7:32.)
The one-down victim position soon becomes a power position all its own. It morphs into the belief that one is entitled to be taken care of by someone else. Secrets are conveyed about how to win from the one-down position. (Oh, Rhett, you’re so good to me .) Women are told, by some, that the subservient position is one they will actually enjoy. Worse, they are told, by some, that God requires them to be subservient. Victimhood is often characterized as humility or kindness, which it is not. Humility and kindness are often characterized as weakness, which they are not. In this mix, we fail to teach our daughters, and our sons, the true nature of humility and kindness, traits that Jesus himself exhibits, and is by no means weak.
Victimhood also offers a mask to women, a mask for covert grandiosity, keeping the “truth” as they fear it to be from being seen by others. The truth being that, she also is tempted to control others through covert power. She needs courage to face life as a strong woman, and is just as capable as men are to find courage and strength, and humility and kindness, in being a disciple of Christ. Many women accept this trap of Victimhood, not knowing that there is any other acceptable way to live.
Meanwhile, back at the counseling room, I am dealing with multiple dilemmas.
-First of all, this couple coming to me for counseling may be so caught up in the power struggle, and the pain and anger of the relationship, that they have little ability to hear. The bully thinks I am trying to talk them off of their throne, and in a sense, I am. The woman who feels victimized may think I am minimizing her pain, when in reality I am not; I am trying to minimize her helplessness.
-Add to this struggle the voices of people in their church who are only reinforcing the stereotypes with poor theology, shaming and threatening tactics, and syrupy approvals of the games people play.
-Third, they may have even heard the stereotype fostered by previous therapists, and by the many books on the market that foster the patriarchy.
How to move for change is a difficult issue, since change, at least at someone else’s request, is not one of humankind’s favorite pursuits. We are asking this person to change the maps in their life and in the relationship, and it won’t go well if that change doesn’t look like it will be beneficial for both parties, or if the change won’t fit into the other person’s schema of how they want to live life. Collaboration won’t fit the lifestyle of the person who wants Power Over Others, whether through grandiosity or through victimhood, and it won’t fit the lifestyle of the person who demands that they be taken care of by others.
Practical applications:
I have one model to suggest, and along with it, a mindset. The model belongs to Sharon Anthony Bower and Gordon H. Bower, from the book Asserting Yourself, published by Da Capo Press. Briefly, their model says to be assertive by
1. Describing the experience one has just had in objective terms,
2. Expressing how it has been experienced, speaking only for self,
3. Specifying one’s expectations and intentions for the future, and
4. Sharing and clarifying the consequences which can be expected as the efforts at change either succeed or fail.
I urge you to get the book, digest it, and use it. It will empower the way you communicate. The mindset is akin to good assertive communication, it is assertive thinking. Assertive thinking is:
1. thinking for oneself, and
2. thinking for understanding (not to agree or disagree),
3. without taking on a compulsion either to please the other person
4. or to change their mind.
Let me make one more recommendation, and that is Terry Real’s book, The New Rules of Marriage. It’s excellent reading, too.
Gerald Ford is a minister, a licensed professional counselor, and a licensed marriage and family therapist at the Houston Center for Christian Counseling in Sugar Land, TX. After over 40 years of pastoring, he continues to do pulpit fill, and runs workshops on a variety of topics, including Collaborative Marriage Skills. His wife Billie Ritter, an “intriguing and fascinating woman,” is an independent historian and an ordained minister.
Next week’s Equally Yoked post is from Anne-Frederique Gass.
Want to contribute to the Equally Yoked series? Email Jenny at jennyraearmstrong@gmail.com.
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This is incredibly helpful!! Thanks Gerald, Billie, and Jenny.
Agreed! I thought Gerald did a fabulous job of laying out the issues. Perhaps too good of a job–we might have scared everyone into relative silence!
This is fantastic! Loving your blog!
Thanks Lydia! Glad you’re enjoying the blog!
This is a fascinating breakdown. I’m trying to digest all this…
Thank you Gerald!
This is a great description of what I have seen lived out in many legalistic churches. Women do have power and there are powerful women but because the church does not recognize or allow female leadership, these women became manipulative, underground, and very destructive with their power. In one Bible church we attended, the all male elder board was very effectively controlled by one of the elders wives. She had more power than any pastor or elder in that church and they were too blind to know it. I am always amazed at how we live in truth (the way God made us) or we live in some distorted image-which is always destructive.
Hi Jenny Rae. I’m going to go on a bit. I hope you don’t mind.
Terry Real and Gerald Ford make good points about how hierarchical marriages look. We need more of this kind of analysis because it simply doesn’t work for genuine human intimacy. However, they aren’t completely out of the woods–almost, but not all the way.
In Ford’s post, much space is given to the female’s pathology. This is understandable because the female’s behaviors are underground whereas the male’s behaviors are upfront. But whereas he establishes shame in the male’s pathology, there’s little mention of it in the female. Yet it is the core tactic for keeping women in the hierarchical relationship.
Thus, he brings up the idea that the one-down victim position is a power position, too. I think this is false equivalence. It is like saying that the house servant has a power position because he feels entitled “to be taken care of” by the master (food/clothing/shelter). Moreover, he can spit in the master’s food, shake itching powder in his underwear, and present domestic problems in a way that inclines the master to have sympathy for him. Because that’s power, right?
When one has been long-taught that Christ-like marriage functions hierarchically, it becomes a deeply-held behavioral pattern. Genuine respect cannot be obtained in a direct manner, so passive-aggressive manipulation inevitably occurs. It is extreme or mild, depending on the character. The existential and relational pain that one feels (because it is crooked and non-nurturing) is continually shoved away as sin.
Gerald Ford writes: “The woman who feels victimized may think that I am minimizing her pain when in reality I am not; I am trying to minimize her helplessness.” Generally speaking, when hierarchical couples come in for counseling, it is because the woman is collapsing in one way or another, which is what happens when one keeps shoving pain away.
When they come through the office door, it is often (not always) because the female has begun to try on the idea that her pain might be legitimate and not the natural result of “dying to the self”. It is a suspicion with mind-blowing implications because it disintegrates all that has been taught about marriage. And since this idea of authority/submission has been tightly tied to both of their understandings of God/Christ, the foundations of their world are called into question.
The person who presents with this tentative fragile idea needs, first of all, belief and safety in the therapist’s office. Pain must never be under-acknowledged, but fully believed with a vision of a way through it. Usually individual therapy for both is required before heading back into marital therapy.
Because we humans tend tochange only when forced into it by pain, it is generally the female in which the change starts, and it will likely continue through the female. The male will also need to feel enough pain in order to be willing to change. In the power-position, that intensity of pain occurs when the subservient rejects submission. The female, already frail and uncertain, will be on the steepest learning curve.
As Terry Real writes, humility and kindness are essential for intimacy. It is about rejecting shame for love and wonder. The power-over person needs to realize that power is not intimacy and that vulnerability and uncertainty are not shameful but essential and nutritious. The under-power person needs to realize that they are not shameful creations but have full human worth before God, which works out to asserting a self. In the process of establishing a healthy relationship, they may come to see how deeply the authoritarian viewpoint is embedded in their ideas of religion.
One last thing in this too-long comment. I have often heard the word “victimhood” slung about with a tinge of contempt. There is a similar smell in the phrase “welfare queens”. Yes, there are those who pathologically manipulate the victim status, but they are few and obviously low-hanging fruit. For the rest, victims (male or female) desperately need to be believed and supported, full stop. It’s not actually a fun position in which to reside, and people usually leave it behind when they can.
I am glad that you are blogging. Thanks for listening!