When Your Husband Becomes Your Father
by Dr. Brenda Shoshanna
Health Articles / Self-Help Title / Relationships

     When Ava - a tall, willowy, graphic artist in her late twenties - met Paul, she was immediately struck by how different he was from other guys she had dated -- particularly her father. After years of struggling with a powerful, authoritative father who treated everyone like an employee in his huge import-export company, Ava was utterly relieved by Paul’s mellow nature and spontaneous life style. A professional musician who taught in a small private school, Paul played the guitar for her. They took long walks at the beach and he often brought her a much-cherished single rose.

“He won’t even wear a jacket to dinner,” Ava told her best friend Lee. “He says it confines him. He needs his freedom. Can I ever relate to that. His hair is rumpled, his eyes sparkle. What a pleasure.” Ava and Lee smiled at the same moment, both knowing well the intense struggle Ava had waged for years to get out of her father’s iron grip, to assert her own needs and values. Above all, she couldn’t bear authoritative men who ordered her around. Up to now, most of her relationships with men had been short-circuited by her fear of being dominated again. The fact that her father was sure to dislike Paul made the match seem sweeter.

True to expectation, as soon as her father met Paul, he waged a full out war against him. There was nothing about him he liked. He even threatened to disinherit his only daughter, and, true to form, Ava’s mother remained in the background, refusing to get involved. Her father’s constant refusal to accept the match, and barrage of criticism, helped push the couple to set the big date much sooner than they would have otherwise.

What Ava never imagined though, was that, soon after the marriage, everything would change. Paul began to look up to Ava’s father, even admire him. His own father had died when he was twelve, and Paul soon gravitated towards the strong male role model in his new family. At first, family visits were fraught with tension, but little by little, Ava noticed Paul and her father sitting comfortably together eventually, even chatting like friends. By the time the first year of their marriage was over, to Ava’s consternation, Paul began to comb his hair carefully, pay more attention to his clothing, and even talk of leaving his career in music and taking a job in a large company.

 “It didn’t really hit me,” she said, “until the second Sunday after our first anniversary, when I was sleeping late, as usual. Suddenly I woke and saw Paul standing over me at the side of the bed. I opened my eyes slowly and heard him saying, ‘I’m hungry. Get up.’ At first I thought I was dreaming. I rubbed my eyes. His voice got louder. ‘Did you hear what I said? I’m hungry.’ At that my eyes bolted open wide. ‘Who are you,” I asked, “my dad?’ Although startling, Ava’s story is not unusual. It is actually common for a man who was married as a refuge from,( or rejection of) a difficult father, to slowly turn into him. The woman is then faced, once again, with the very same issues she ran away from. After years of struggling with an overwhelming father who demanded that everyone serve him, Ava found him again, right in her own home.

Patterns are powerful. Issues not addressed completely will -and must - return in our lives to be worked out again. These unresolved patterns can even attract a mate unconsciously similar to the difficult parent, even though, when they first meet, the opposite seems to be true.

During the first six to nine months of a courtship, each party often feels greatly loved and accepted, insecurities are minimized, and only the most positive aspects of the person’s nature is seen. There is a sense of play and wonder about finally finding someone with whom one can bond. Other aspects of the personality are naturally submerged, giving the bonding a chance to take hold. Neither individual is aware of the “unresolved issues and patterns” within the other; there is a sense that the love between them will be able to withstand any storm. During this euphoric phase both parties believe they have found a person who is perfect for them. They are attracted by the conscious qualities of the partner they see before them. But, of course, this is only part of the whole picture. Unbeknownst to the individuals involved, there is also a deeper attraction that may be bringing the two together. That deeper attraction is often fuelled by the unconscious patterns, struggles, longings, desires and fears that an individual has played out with their love objects all their lives. These patterns do not disappear. Sooner or later they demand attention and force us to work them out. Somewhere deep within, the new partner must also be a match for them. According to Jung, the famed psychologist, these hidden aspects within an individual are called The Shadow Self. The Shadow Self is the darker, often unaccepted part of all individuals, is part of us we bury, struggle against and pretend does not exist. Any deep relationship, however, will call that Shadow Self to the light. It will force us to be in contact with all parts of ourselves.

 “Paul turned into my father right under my eyes,” said Ava. “His way of dressing grew more and more like him. He quit his job teaching music and went to work for a company as an administrator. Paul became more fascinated with my father than he was with me. Our relationship suffered greatly, as I refused to obey his peremptory demands ; the end of our second year of marriage, I was growing to hate him, and seriously considering divorce.”

 Although Ava is a dramatic example of this transformation, many women feel, over time, as though the man who was once a romantic interest has turned into a parental substitute.

“What’s suppose to happens to the love and sex ?” Ava said sorrowfully. “And where was I? Back in the same struggles with Paul I’d gone through with my father my whole life long. To say I was disheartened is putting it mildly. I was furious.”

 During marriage, the original family configuration is naturally reconstructed, and the individual often projects onto the mate qualities he or she dealt with in the parent. When the original relationship with the parent has not been worked out, these projections can be lethal, not only plummeting the individual back into the original situation she thought she left, but bringing a sense of doom, as if this will go on forever. In these instances, the repetition compulsion - the compulsion to re-enact a painful situation so that it can be mastered and worked through – comes into play. An individual chooses a mate that resembles the parent in order to work through the original trauma, to make it right this time. When the original trauma cannot be worked through in the present day situation, many divorce or leave the relationship, thinking it will be different with someone else. But as they will sadly find, it can only be different when the person herself is different.

 In speaking of this pattern, Dr. Robert Jay Berk, Freudian Psychoanalyst and Training Analyst at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health, says, “People have an unconscious knowledge of one another. They seek the opposite of what they really want. On the deepest level, Ava wanted to be back in a relationship with her father once again, to work things out.” When asked how he deals with this pattern in treatment, Dr. Berk said, “I try to find the small, little things the person has in common with the one they claim not to want. I try to help them see that although many aspects may be similar, this person really is not their parent after all. They have to learn that, in an unconscious way, some part of them really wanted this kind of partner; they have to make peace with those desires. They have to see their present anger is not as justified as they lead themselves to believe; it is simply a displacement from experiences in the past. I also help them see that it’s not their fault they picked this partner. I do not believe a person can be held responsible for the unconscious object choices.”

When asked if Dr. Berk believed it was possible for a person to change, to find a new person who was not similar to the original parent, he replied, “Partially, it is. I have a patient, Andrew, who’s first wife was tremendously sadistic towards him, much like his mother. After working through much of his pain, he left her and re-married. His second wife can be difficult and angry at times, but not intentionally cruel. Though occasionally she has similar aspects to his mother, everything is milder and much more manageable. The two of them are happy.”

Most psychoanalytic psychotherapies focus on returning to the past and working out the original relationship that caused the difficulty, on becoming aware of and taking responsibility for, one’s own unconscious wishes and drives. No matter how much trouble we’ve had with a parent, it is difficult to give up the original love object in our lives. Trouble and pain can feel familiar in love, and a relationship without it can feel strangely empty, unsatisfying. Carolyn, the daughter of an alcoholic father, was force to watch her father’s drinking problem ruin the family and himself. One minute he was the father she always wanted, the next minute, in the grip of alcohol. He abandoned everything the family felt important - in particular, Carolyn. After graduating high school, she left home against her family’s wishes, and put herself through nursing school. She swore to herself she would never even date a man who took more than one drink occasionally.

“It was a new life for me,” said Carolyn. “I saw new faces, new horizons and new dreams I could build for myself. I told myself my father’s endless bouts with alcohol couldn’t touch me any longer. I started dating slowly, and then met Ed, a fine young man from a Christian home. His family never had to deal with alcoholism and that itself made me feel safe. Ed’s solid upbringing made him seem even more attractive to me. After a year of dating, we decided to marry. I didn’t want to risk meeting others, as I always worried about whether or not they would turn to drink. With Ed, I felt certain he would not.”

 When coming from a problem family, many women will choose the first person who seems healthy and stable as an antidote to the chaos they were raised in. In Carolyn’s case the mate became someone to rescue her from her past. The world felt fundamentally unsafe to her and she felt unable to explore it freely, to choose a partner based upon a mutual desire for adventure and growth. Her choice instead, was based on a desire for safety and security, on the hope that nothing would change. In Carolyn’s case, she was marrying Ed’s stable family, as well as marrying him. A healthy family was something she always longed for, and she felt she had finally found it. But what she didn’t realize was that she and Ed would have to create their own family, and that all healthy families require flexibility and the ability to accept growth and change.

 “The first few years of our marriage were pleasant,” Carolyn went on. “Not passionate, but I wasn’t looking for passion, although occasionally Ed told me he wanted more of it. He was raised in a repressed family and said, at times, he wanted to feel freer with me. I didn’t know what he was talking about; I was only looking for a caring, sincere and dependable man.”

For many raised in dysfunctional families, passion and chaos are associated; they therefore fear passion and spontaneity and spend the greater part of their time trying to keep things under control. While this can feel safe, it can also become stifling, as Ed implied to Carolyn.

 “I thought everything was going well,” Carolyn continued, “and was only slightly upset when in the third year of our marriage Ed started staying out later and later to complete projects at work. It never even occurred to me that he was not at work, but with the boys at a bar. When I found this out, I was stunned and shaken to my core. Not only had he lied to me, but he was spending time drinking, something he had never done.

 I confronted him immediately and raised my voice loud. That startled him, but I kept it going, warning him that he had better never go to a bar again. He looked at me like I was crazy. Deep in my gut, I realized big trouble was on the way.”

Some psychologists might say that Carolyn was engaging in catastrophic expectations, imagining the worst as if it were a present reality and making a situation more extreme than it was. Ed insisted he needed some male companionship and was thus joining friends for a drink, something that men do routinely. However, for Carolyn, this brought back memories of her father, his alcoholism, and all the pain she’d suffered because of it. What she feared the most was upon her. Carolyn did not perceive the present situation for what it was, but projected her entire past upon it.

When an individual nurtures a secret fear and does everything in his/her power to not let it happen, this fear is always on their mind, either consciously or semi-consciously; allowing the fear so much attention and energy, we draw it to ourselves. Sooner or later, what we pay attention to increases and appears in our lives. Some would say our dwelling upon it makes it happen.

Ed refused to give up his time with the boys, something that was important to him. Hurt and outraged, Carolyn refused him sex and kept calling him a drunk. Ed felt he was back once again in his repressive family. Neither of them felt as if they knew the person they had once married. When Ed tried to assure her he had only one or two drinks, Carolyn refused to believe him. Deep within she was convinced he was lying to her, as her father had. She became shrewish and hateful, something she’d watch her mother become. Also, a lot of the rage she’d held towards her father now came out at Ed. The more she railed against him, the longer he stayed away with the boys at the bar – and the more he turned to drink. “In a way she forced me to drink,” Ed mumbled, confused and unhappy when they finally came to counseling. “She kept telling me I was a drunk and I grew to believe it. I also drank to get away from her and her rotten yelling.”

The marriage was about to dissolve when the two of them sought counseling to help them sort out what had happened. Carolyn had to communicate her pain and disappointment with her original father and find a way to forgive and release him before she could go on with Ed; Ed had to understand how he’d contributed to the situation and how that related to his own family’s past. Little by little, with patience and effort, the two of them worked to salvage a marriage they both had once had high hopes for.

Dr. Selwyn Mills, Gestalt Therapist and leader of men’s groups says, “When two people meet, they recognize unconsciously who the person really is. Although in the early part of a relationship each projects what the other desires, as they get to know each other better, each person becomes more relaxed and more of who they really are. Not only Carolyn, but also Ed, re-created an early family scenario.” When asked how he would work with Carolyn in therapy, Dr. Mills said, “I would focus upon her resolving her issues with her father. Until that happened, she could never be available for any healthy relationship. I would have her visualize her father when she was a little girl, think of an incident in which he made her feel upset and helpless. In the course of the visualization, I would then ask her to bring her Adult Self in, to talk to her father and tell him that she won’t tolerate this behavior anymore. Not only will the little Carolyn feel protected, but her telling her father this in the visualization would then carry over in her present relationships with men. She would be able to set boundaries for what was and was not acceptable to her. It would also free her to be looser and more at ease in other aspects of the marriage, where her husband required more spontaneity, feeling and play.”

 As a Gestalt therapist, Dr. Mills focuses upon the different selves that live within an individual. Although chronologically we grow older, the young child within us, who has been hurt or traumatized may live on and respond to current threatening situations as it had years ago. The work in this kind of treatment is to protect, support, give voice to, and help that young child say now what it could not in the past, to eventually grow up and find mature ways to handle problems which were once overwhelming. This work is based upon the idea that in order to be mature and whole, all parts of ourselves have to be heard, make friends with each other and work in conjunction with one another. For a relationship to be happy and successful, sometimes the free, playful child is needed, other times, the mature adult.

When a husband becomes the father, it is useful to notice the ways in which the relationship is turning the woman into a small child, or the ways in which she might be calling out the father in him, wishing herself to regress and have the safety and security of a strong parent at home once again. When all parts of ourselves and our wishes can be acknowledged and accepted for what they are, growth and integration are possible. One can find healthy ways to be a child and express delight, passion and play and also be able to call upon the inner adult and find mature solutions to differences that necessarily arise in all relationships over time.

What we resist, persists. If we resist and deny our fears, they will persist in our lives. When we face and express them wisely, we can rise beyond them and live a life of inner and outer freedom – we can allow our husband to turn into our father, and receive the positive parenting we may need from him. He does not have to get stuck in that role, however. We can also allow him to be a lover, a child, a friend, and most of all, to be himself.

True health consists of flexibility, spontaneity, awareness, and acceptance of all parts of both our partners and ourselves.

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