Mind Matters: Infantile power struggles reappear in adult relationships

Do you and your spouse have the same argument over and over, an argument that you can never resolve?

Unless both parties in a relationship are able to say what they feel, even the happiest couples eventually and inevitably get tangled up in a power struggle.

From my extensive training in Imago Relationship Therapy, I offer an explanation for why this is so in the hope that readers can find a way out of their own power struggles.

A power struggle is nothing more than a disagreement that occurs when two people want to do something different without being apart. We have our first power struggles in infancy with a mother who is occasionally unable to provide immediate gratification while we scream for what we want.

Mothers usually respond to a baby's screams and, as adults, many of us resort to a grown-up version of screaming when a loved one fails to hear what we need.

In the throes of new attraction we tend to be overly agreeable and interested in anything and everything our new love object suggests. That changes as we become more secure in the relationship and we dare to bare our individual needs, which will not always match those of our partner. The plot thickens because we are attracted to someone whose personality traits are similar to, yet opposite, ours.

As we grow we learn to hide, disown or deny parts of ourselves that we sense are unacceptable to our parents.

The result is we are attracted to a potential partner whose disowned or denied aspects are different from our own — actually different, yet complementary.

We fall in love with a person who makes us feel whole again because their personalities contain the parts we cut off. It works both ways. The individual we love so much feels whole with us because his or her lost parts are rediscovered in us.

The problem is that we disown certain aspects because we don't like them. The irony is that even though we initially love it that our partner can make us feel whole again, those very traits that contribute to wholeness, the ones we so dislike in ourselves, eventually annoy us in the other. They annoy us because we turn the dislike in ourselves onto the partner, a psychological maneuver known as projection.

For example, Phoebe loves Sam for his outgoing friendliness. She is basically shy, a quality her parents and siblings teased her about as a child. She hated being shy, but had no way of changing.

Sam made her feel comfortable with people and she could forget her greatest flaw when she was with him.

However, as the glow of romance wore off, Phoebe felt resentful that Sam could socialize so easily. She hated her shyness even more and withdrew when they went to parties. Later at home, she attacked him for leaving her alone all evening. This was the beginning of their power struggle. In spite of their love for each other, neither knew what to do.

Check in again next week for a look at potential solutions to their problem.