Yin and Yang

July 22nd, 2005
Marriage

Recently I’ve been re-reading parts of Judith Viorst’s Necessary Losses. Her approach is way too Freudian for me to swallow wholesale, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

One claim she makes is that we tend to marry people who act out the parts of our own personalities that we repress out of fear. This goes beyond the more obvious spouse-as-complement idea (e.g. a lazy man marries a hard-working woman, a loud woman marries a quiet man). Could it be true?

The other day, Matt, our destructo four-year-old, created a whopping toilet clog with wads of toilet paper. Poor Andrew, the innocent eight-year-old, flushed. (Later on Andrew told me that in the past, flushing had cleared up the problem–toilet paper experiments are popular around here.)

We had just sat down to dinner when I heard the dreaded sound of an indoor waterfall. Rushing to the bathroom, I found a major deluge. For some reason, the water flow hadn’t stopped once the toilet tank was full. “Reed,” I called, “emergency!” And here’s the funny part: I didn’t feel at all worried, or upset, about the water. I was a bit reluctant for my husband to see it, because I knew what his reaction would be, but overall I was–shall I say it?–serene.

Predictably, Reed was furious. Sharp scoldings came. As I grabbed towels and our carpet-cleaning vacuum (great for sucking up water) I felt badly for Matt, who of course didn’t intend to cause true disaster, and for Andrew, who of course didn’t either. But I realized that had Reed not been there, I would have been furious too. Would have scolded, would have fumed. Since he was aptly playing out that role, I didn’t have to.

Having Viorst’s claims freshly in mind, this got me thinking. My husband has a few traits that I don’t like, and they are the very things I fear in myself. It’s entirely possible that (among many other reasons) I chose him in order to vicariously express myself in taboo ways. So even as I resent some of his personality and behavior, he’s actually contributing to my sense of emotional safety. Oh, the irony.

(There’s a whole part in the book about marrying Daddy, and I hate to say it but my husband is a lot like my father…)

A couple days after the toilet clog I found a note my nightstand from Christine, age 6: