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CHAPTER 3: STRUGGLES IN & OUTSIDE OF DIVORCE

In free cultures, individuals may find more opportunity to fictionalize their own character and misinterpret the health of their marriage or the character of their spouse. Homosexuals who marry straight adults are free to disguise their premarital motives. Similar dynamics, in terms of personality, are found within straight relationships when adults disguise or hide their premarital motives.

In free cultures, you may find more competition between adaptive and maladaptive personality since naïve adults have more opportunity to evolve. These motives compete with those who embrace their freedom to psychologically seduce others with questionable advertising, political rhetoric, journalism, premarital coercion, charisma, etc. In terms of dark personality, efforts to capture minds in our country are quite similar to those found within oppressive regimes in other cultures.

Maturing adults are preoccupied with increasing the accuracy associated with why they need relationships. This drive forces adults to examine their true relational needs as well as those of a partner. Spouses, partners, business associates and others start competing in terms of their accuracy regarding relational or economic well-being. Adults prone to misdefining the integrity of their social relationships may be quite limited in terms of finding adaptive or self corrective solutions.

The misunderstood competition between maturing/adaptive and non-maturing/ maladaptive personality is one reason adults may be married for years and never really understand their spouse. The competition between adaptive and maladaptive personality is frequently misdefined as gender differences.

Similar dynamics are found among maturing young adults who finally accept the maladaptive personalities of their parents, bosses, etc. This acceptance does not mean that adult sons or daughters stop loving their parents. It implies they have grieved the losses and obstacles created by their personalities. Individuals and parents who needlessly impose their active or passive will upon others are likely to favorably misdefine their own personality.

When studying human nature, you cannot divide humans and invent a certain psychology for each group. This principle is easier to understand in terms of biology. All humans have a common genetic genome. Even though humans are very diverse in terms of their surface psychological traits; they all have a common core psychology where you find varying types of personality.

Adults who assassinate the character of a departing partner will likely over involve their children in their maladaptive struggles. This needless parenting may limit a child’s ability to determine what is healthy and unhealthy in relationships. Children are commonly manipulated and misinformed by parents who aggressively oppose being divorced or by those who married knowing they would leave when their time was right.

Misusing children in divorce is regretfully too commonplace; yet you can never find a parent who will be honest about these self serving motives. Misusing family members in divorce is an underground psychology quite similar to generations of actively or passively supporting segregation. Spouses who aggressively oppose being divorced find it difficult to withdraw from their entitled dependencies.

Entitled relationships with children shaped by parental narcissism, antisocial instincts and dependency are found in both marriage and divorce. Adults, who disregard the self serving and negative consequences of their parenting, fail to understand their contributions to social decay.

As our population grows, the number of children affected by hostile divorces and domestic violence will also grow. Children have enough tasks to conquer without being drawn into the interpersonal conflicts of their parents. Difficult divorces are costly in terms of social services and limiting the maturational potential of younger Americans. Difficult to treat behavioral and mood disorders among children are usually affected by parents with maladaptive personalities and unhealthy relationships.

Many years were spent avoiding the underground psychology that supported
segregation in our country. We will most likely spend years avoiding the evils of divorce brutality and domestic violence. A great deal of time, money and human resources are spent because some adults have a private right to harm others when relationships end. Children are susceptible in terms of normalizing the narcissistic, antisocial and dependent behavior of their parents. Parents evading accountability and empathy in divorce are modeling maladaptive personality.

SELF & OTHER EXAMINATION

When working with divorced clients, you often hear, “Why didn’t I have the courage and information to figure this out earlier?” This can be a highly therapeutic inquiry. The client may now want to take a deeper look at themselves as well as the personality of their ex-spouse. Maturing adults usually find it very difficult to accept the fact they spent so many years with someone who cared so little about how they managed their marriage, divorce or parenting.

Self and other examination are integral parts of maturing in adulthood. Adults who mature have to manage their own fears and misinformation as well as those created by their partner. Maturing involves accepting interpersonal truths related to marital health. In other words, there is a painful and frightening maturational task associated with being honest about the health of one’s relationships. Adults who fail to mature always discount the role of their personality in terms of shaping relational health.

Within each generation and every zip code, high levels of relational conflict surface as one person accepts the death of their relationship while their partner or parent remains self servingly clueless. Not knowing why a relationship is failing will always increase one’s odds of creating more confusion, chaos and blame.

Well intended spouses in chaotic or misunderstood relationships need tangible information regarding personality that helps them validate their maturational instincts. Objective information regarding interpersonal conflict also helps adults gain some immunity from being brainwashed by their partner. In treatment, you often hear clients say, “I wish I had the tools to understand these problems years ago.”

Adults who senselessly harm or misuse others do not value psychological treatment. They abhor the notion that someone could possibly mature and leave them. Treatment and maturation are usually belittled by potential brutalizers. Treatment threatens how they self servingly define family values and how life should be lived. Discounting or assassinating the contributions of psychological treatment is an indirect expression of maturational resistance.

Aggressively opposing divorce is a form of elite control that helps adults avoid accepting the end of their relationship. Adults with malignant ulterior motives cannot control events associated with having to accept the death of a child or a life threatening diagnosis. We tend to underestimate the link between ulterior motives and the powerful need to control people, events and information with questionable tactics.

Many individuals entering psychological care are finding domestic courage associated with their adaptive potential. It may be the first time they begin to seriously examine the health of their marriage beyond their own subjective distortions or those of a spouse. Accurately defining failure is always the first step in either repairing or ending a relationship. For years, many naïve adults underestimated or feared the role of failure in terms of increasing their adaptive potential.

Recovering from painfully complicated relationships encourages individuals to become acquainted with the darker sides of personality. The darker the personality, the more difficult it is to understand. The domestic courage associated with recovery may require a psychological discipline similar to the type embraced while studying what happened to the shuttle Columbia or painstakingly going through the rubble at the WTC complex. You will find some very courageous individuals in psychological treatment who are preoccupied with personality and its contributions to both relational failure and adaptive potential.

Avoiding accountability in relationships complicates restoring or ending relationships. Adults who fail to consider the liabilities associated with their own personality will commonly displace failure upon their spouse who is leaving. Brutalizers who displace failure upon their divorcing partner will often claim that he or she is a failure as a parent.

Displacing fictional failure upon a spouse is an attempt to oppress their adaptive potential as well as demean their family values. This form of character assassination increases the immunity of adults who dismiss their responsibility regarding how they have managed their marital failure and divorce.

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