When A Partner Is An Emotional Toilet

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

You should never succumb to hysterics, because if it happened so, it can develop into a habit and will repeat itself over and over again. We must cultivate strength in ourselves.

Elizabeth Gilbert. Eat, pray, love

Recently, many articles have appeared on the Internet about the dangers of suppressing negative emotions. And indeed it is. The suppression of emotions requires colossal efforts from the individual, the costs of keeping them, provokes the emergence of intrapersonal conflicts and psychosomatic diseases.

I myself wrote about this in articles:

However, both in everyday life and in their practice, more and more often one has to deal with the fact that, having read the information that it is harmful to suppress emotions and it is important to immediately "react" to them, many take this information literally. Such people begin to use others as a "drain hole" or "emotional toilet", spewing out and pouring out their irritation, resentment, anger, aggression in social networks, on random people and loved ones. This reaction reminds me of young children, whose cry is addressed, in fact, to their parents: "You must accept me as I am!" demanding unconditional self-love from others. But the fact is that close people and people around you are not mom or dad, and they do not have to be a container of your feelings and be a "toilet bowl" for you. They need respect just like you.

Also, quite often I have to deal with the fact that after reading about the dangers of suppressing emotions, parents do not prevent their children's tantrums, but more often they even encourage them. It turns out that the management of emotions is confused with their suppression. Unfortunately, parents do not think about how their grown-up children will build relationships with Others.

Growing up always presupposes convention, adherence to certain rules and awareness of limitations. To feel the measure - both your own and the measure of the Other. The measure of what is permitted is in relation to oneself and to Others.

Case from psychotherapy practice (published with the client's permission, name and some details have been changed).

Tatiana, 34 years old. Two children, 9 years old - son, 1, 5 years old - daughters. At the time of her appeal, Tatyana looked exhausted, tired, depressed and nervous, she talked a lot about resentment and anger towards her husband and another woman

She formulated her request: I want to get my husband back.

Married for 10 years. A month before the conversion, her husband left for another woman, without stopping the full financial support of his family and communication with children. According to the client, as a child she grew up “like a princess”, her parents loved her and pampered her in every possible way. Father - worked a lot and earned good money, but was rarely at home, and his upbringing consisted mainly of gifts. She described him as a "holiday man." Mom was a housewife and she allowed everything. As Tatyana said, she was quiet and weak-willed. For 34 years of life, the client did not have relationships with friends, all the beginning friendships ended in rupture or distance. When the client was 22 years old, dad died tragically. After the tragedy, my mother organized a passive income for herself and began to get sick.

During the collection of anamnesis, Tatiana admitted that she often "threw tantrums at her husband" - for any small reason, and sometimes without it. "After all, it is harmful to restrain emotions!" Any of her irritation and discontent was accompanied by insults and humiliation of her husband and ended with the fact that "after I expressed everything to him, I fell exhausted." The husband endured, never stopped. Sometimes he went to another room. Like a mother in childhood. Until, by chance, on a business trip, he had an affair with another woman.

My questions are: “How do you think your husband felt during hysterics”, “Who was he for you in those moments?”, “Do you respect your husband?”, “What did you want from him?”, “How much did you look attractive to your husband during the scandals? "," What do you think he wanted to do when you insulted and humiliated him? " helped to return Tatiana to reality, to see herself through the eyes of her husband. “Why did he let me do this? And never stopped these tantrums? Why was he silent?"

I thought that this question, first of all, should be addressed to her parents, and then to her husband. Why the husband endured for so long and allowed his wife to treat him this way is a completely different story, the roots of which are also hidden in childhood and in upbringing …

From that moment on, the direct therapeutic work with my client began. The original request "I want him back" has been rewritten to "I want him back." Indeed, in the wording “I want to return him” there is so much of a possessive, childish desire to possess a toy, in which there is no place for freedom of choice of a partner. “I want him to come back” - sounds differently, in this form there is a place for both your desire and the desire of your partner, and at the same time - respect for him and his choice. Therapeutic work was aimed at realizing one's true needs and feelings, at finding a mature and adequate form of their expression, at developing the skills of self-regulation of their emotional states and building direct communication in the form of "I-messages", at developing the ability to see, hear, understand and respect Others …

This story ended with the fact that a year later my husband returned. Relations with another woman did not survive the first crisis, the husband was drawn to the children, the other woman pulled him to her and forbade him to communicate with them … And during the therapy Tatyana matured, became wiser and learned to value relationships. Well, Tatyana's husband himself turned for psychotherapeutic help in order to find answers to questions that had not yet been asked to himself.

I want to note that the main character of this story was a woman, but the uncontrolled manifestation of negative emotions is also characteristic of men. Male tantrums are also quite common.

Your feelings and emotions need to be recognized and accepted, as well as the needs that are hidden behind them. And look for a way to satisfy them in accordance with the characteristics of their age. The limits and constraints in raising children and ourselves are just as important as sensitivity. Just like the understanding that not all desires and needs can be met. And the understanding that others also have their own desires, feelings and needs.

This article may be useful not only for women who do not know how to manage their emotional state, but also for many parents, one of whose educational tasks is to teach how to deal with their feelings and emotions in order to remain themselves, they have the opportunity to be stable and close relationship with Others …

Respect for each other is one of the important conditions for creating harmonious, trusting and emotionally close relationships (more on this in my previous articles from the cycle on emotional closeness). I wrote about Malvin women, from whom men either leave (into dependence, to another woman), or completely lose themselves. In this publication, I described another type of castrating wives - hysterical. As the described story has shown, there is a way out. And the first thing to do is to realize and accept your part of the responsibility for the relationship. The second is to look for ways to get out of it. Perhaps your parents during the upbringing process were a bad container for your emotional reactions, but this is fixable.

It is possible to learn how to deal with your emotional world effectively for yourself and safely for others - you can with the help of a psychologist, personally I do not know a more effective way.

Respect for yourself and others to you!

To be continued…