Married To The Enemy

Married to the Enemy

AuthorHouse

Chapter One

Most of us are well-intentioned when entering the state of matrimony. We believe the words "to love, honor, and cherish." Why, then, do so few of us actually end up feeling loved, honored, and cherished? How is it that, given enough time, the majority of couples end up divorced or miserable? Dawn's grandmother would tell her that familiarity breeds contempt. Well, if that is true, why would any of us let anyone get close enough to be familiar? The answer is that in spite of living in an image-conscious culture where it's more important to be kind to an acquaintance than to a family member, we all desire to have our deepest self known and loved.

Perhaps it is time to look at the social dynamic in this culture and how this dynamic may thwart a couple's ability to be happy. Our premise in this book is that, because of a culture that teaches us that the sexes are from two different worlds, the vast majority of us are predestined or pre-programmed to feel like we are married to the enemy rather than a friend, lover, partner, and/or soul mate. We feel like this for some very real reasons that have to do with the attitude and behavior that develop between us as a result of a deeply held negative belief system often taught by our culture and reinforced by our families.

This book is not for the fearful, but rather for the courageous couple who wants something better and is not afraid of working on relationship karma (WORK). It has been our experience that when the relationship is on automatic, we often fall into a very negative karma, creating an atmosphere of power and control instead of love and respect. Automatic, or the unconscious mode, is often a copy of our parents' relationship and thus usually falls short of what is needed to make a relationship work in these contemporary times.

Mark: Ultimately, if I try to dominate and control Dawn (and I routinely do this in some sort of passive-aggressive or underhanded way, since I would never want to be seen as a physical abuser), she responds with anger, hurt, or frustration, or perhaps matches my attempt to dysfunctionally control the relationship. In my efforts to be treated with the entitlement and privilege of my father's time, I have pushed Dawn away, generated an atmosphere of distrust, and created a lose-lose situation—a negative karma.

It has been our mission to change this unloving and negative karma to an authentically intimate, respectful, and honoring one. Like the humanistic psychologist Erich Fromm, we do not see love as something you fall into and thus can just as easily fall out of. We see love as an art that is cultivated over time with authentic communication, patience, experience, knowledge, wisdom, assertiveness, forgiveness, conscious loving choices, and most importantly, perseverance and practice. We may not be able to pick the person we are attracted to, but we can choose our behaviors with that person. We can choose behaviors that will cultivate love, or we can choose behaviors that will take us down a destructive path, much like the characters in the play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee, or the characters that Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner played in The War of the Roses, or the characters played in the movie The Break-Up by Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn. Love is an art, and relationship is the canvas we can use to create either a reflection of a higher love or a façade of a "put up with" love.

Divorce does not have to be the answer to the problems a couple faces in a relationship. Divorce is an external solution to what is often an internal problem created by negative external influences. Sometimes, the solutions are found when we go inside ourselves and learn more about how we became who we are. Through this process we are empowered to be more conscious of our choices and thus create who we are individually, as well as a couple. The two of us were struggling in our marriage, so we decided to take a hard look at what was going on under the surface. Regardless of whether or not we make it in the marital dynamic, we are growing into a deeper regard for each other. We hope that in writing this book and sharing much of our journey, we can help other couples move toward individual wholeness, which will ultimately enrich their relationship.

Dawn: While coming out of a grocery store, I heard one lady recommend to another that she read Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. I spoke up and told her that in my opinion, that book perpetuates a divide between the sexes. We started a conversation, and I told her about the book that my husband and I were writing. I told her it was titled Married to the Enemy. She said that was the book she wanted, because she could relate to the feeling of being married to the enemy.

Men and Women at War

At a fiftieth wedding party, we heard the female partner of the "celebrating" couple respond to the question "How did she do it?" with "I put up with a lot!" When this particular woman's husband passed away, there was not one mention of his relationship with her. Instead, the eulogy consisted of the people he worked with and his relationship with other family members. We know of another woman who lives a totally parallel life from her partner and "figures he will die at about age sixty-four, then she doesn't have to sacrifice anything like she would in a divorce." If you look around, you may observe that of the half of the marriages that stay intact, only a fraction seem to be fulfilling. "Putting up with" appears to be the general standard for American couples. We feel this is unnecessary, and our intention with this book is to give you the means to create a relationship base that you can build from—a foundation made of respect and honor, free of sexism and gender stereotyping.

We recognize that as human beings, we are a very complicated species, and there may be many contributing factors to a person having trouble in relationship: unresolved childhood mental, emotional, physical, or sexual abuse; overprotective parents or permissive parents; birth order; and the list goes on. We encourage our readers to address all of the different aspects that went into the making of your self and may now be keeping you from having the kind of relationship you would thrive in. However, before individuals in couple relationships can address any of the above, they need a foundation based on mutual respect and recognition of their equality of worth.

In this book, we will look at taking that first onion layer off of a difficult relationship. The first layer has to do with attitudes about our sex and the opposite sex that our culture cultivates from the time we are born. We will demonstrate how this culture divides us and undermines our ability to create a positive relationship with the opposite sex. This makes it necessary for many of us to consciously undo this influence if we are to ever create a positive partnership.

Of course, unlike the prejudices against the opposite sex, and even our own sex, that were imposed upon us in our youth and our adult life, the undoing of these influences is our choice. In sharing our journey, we hope to help other couples find solutions to the problems they may be having in relationships due in part to gender-polarizing programming. We use the word programming to further illustrate the reality of what happens when we are fed constant messages about our and others' gender during our formative years. Much like a computer that is programmed to respond a particular way to certain keys being tapped, we will respond to words, situations, and behaviors as if they are buttons being tapped, based on our gender training. For example, regardless of what was going on with Dawn (full-time career and mother of three), to Mark being married meant that he would automatically have his laundry done and meals made. Mark's unconscious key was his concept of "marriage," and his response was unfair domestic "expectations" of his wife.

In talking with individuals who were in couple relationships about this concept of being married to the enemy, we got nervous laughter and a definite "I can relate!" Recently, at an airport, we were in conversation with an older woman, and we told her about our book. After we quoted the title, she exclaimed, "Oh, the enemy, I divorced him a long time ago." We believe much of this problem comes from our culture's relentless push to drive the sexes apart.

Dawn: I know that in my first marriage, and certainly in the early part of my marriage with Mark, I felt that I was more married to the enemy than a friend. I have also observed many couples talking in warlike terms. For example, I heard one woman, while complaining about a conflict with her husband, say, "He may have won the battle but not the war." This happened to be a marriage therapist my first husband and I saw. Needless to say, we discontinued her services. My first husband saw himself as "conceding" to me if he saw things my way. He told me that he would get a knot in his stomach when I was right about something. These attitudes made it rather difficult to feel any sense of equal partnership in this relationship. Also, the more important I made something (a thing he could have easily given), the more determined he would be in withholding it. I thought this odd and contrary to what love (caring) means. In seeing this, I set out to ask the question, "Where does this attitude come from? What happened to the love, honor, and cherish?"

Mark: When I was married to my first wife, the "great power struggle" occurred. In our attempt to fix each other, I started to realize something was wrong. A co-worker had talked to me about codependency, and it rang true to my life, but I chose not to pursue it. With my previous relationships, my problems perpetuated themselves to ending in a breakup or a divorce. I did not realize that the issues with my relationships did not lie "out there," but within me. I spent several years being single again and found out it was a drag. I realize now that I wasted my single years without asking why. Why couldn't I have a good relationship? Why did I feel so possessive of my girlfriend? Why do I feel lonely, dependent, inadequate, and powerless when I am single—and when I am with someone, I feel trapped, controlling, controlled, and obligated? It feels like a no-win situation. When I am with someone I am miserable, and when I am without someone I am miserable.

Then I met Dawn. Dawn was a single mother of three, had been through counseling a couple of years, and after her divorce became a counselor herself. When we hit our first "bump," I called a therapist and started my journey through healing. I realized that I had just scratched the surface when it came to knowing how to love and how to feel the love on a much deeper level. It goes much deeper than codependency; as a matter of fact, codependency is the antithesis of love. It is our culture that drives the gender-based stereotypical attitudes and behaviors that perpetuate codependency and divisiveness in our society today. Codependency is the unhealthy psychological dependence on someone else who is himself or herself dependent on or addicted to something. In general, in our society, men will be addicted to their image and work; and in turn a woman may become obsessed on making their partner emotionally available. Addiction is the uncontrollable compulsion to repeat a behavior regardless of its' negative consequences.

We often create an unhealthy reliance on the opposite sex in order to have a false sense of being whole. Certainly, my being raised to not be the caregiver, to cook, do laundry, be emotionally present, or demonstrate any other number of life skills that were labeled "female" left me feeling like I was half a person. To make things worse, I was raised to believe that my "masculine" half had more worth than the female half. Finally, I realized I was getting married just to fulfill my wholeness. What if we were to live our life with our partner in mutual regard, with equality of worth, and with respect and honor? That is the path that I am on, and my passion to change is helping me to tear away from the culture's strong hold on me.

Much of our book is about our individual and couple journey. We hope that in sharing our personal trek of going from an attitude of devaluing each other to a more respectful and honoring relationship, you will be able to gain some insights into your own individual and couple needs. Throughout the book, we will be giving you assignments. Please be prepared to write in separate journals. You may scoff and say you do not need to write your thoughts and feelings down. However, you will not gain the greatest value of this book without doing so—and aren't you, your partner, and your relationship worth it? For example, when you started out with learning how to cook, you needed the guidance of a recipe book. Later, when you had mastered the basics of cooking, you could take more liberty in what you created in the kitchen. Our suggestions are like ingredients to a recipe; the closer you follow our suggestions, the better the results. We hope those results will empower you to create an ongoing growing relationship. We have found journaling to be one of our greatest tools in growing individually and as a couple.

Journaling Assignment

To what degree do you relate to the title of this book? How often do you find yourself feeling like you and your partner are from different planets, planets at war with each other? Knowing the reality is that you are both from earth, what physical, sexual, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual human characteristics, wants, desires, and needs do you share? In light of this, what are the true differences between you? We ask you to look at these questions again after you have completed the book.

Chapter Two

Dawn: Of course, you will only get out of this book what you put into it, as it is with your marriage or any other aspect of your life. As a counselor, I have found that invariably, when couples come into my office and I ask them what their goal is for their marriage, they look perplexed. I find I have to lead them to a response of "a lifetime together." From there, I point out that it doesn't just happen with the wedding vows, they have to recognize that they are responsible for the behaviors and attitudes that will result in a lifelong or a short-lived marriage. We then look at how they have been working toward their goal thus far. Eventually, their commitment to "putting up with" changes to a commitment to communication, behaviors, and attitudes that will actually take them to their desired goal.

My first husband, Rick, ended our struggling fourteen-year marriage by simply failing to come home from work one day. As I had been experiencing his lack of commitment for some years, it was not too much of a surprise that he left. Even though he would talk of how much he wanted the marriage to work, he was clearly not invested in the partnership. My surprise came in how easily he left.

Our relationship seemed to be rooted in power and control, not love and respect. I was very concerned about the children and felt betrayed, dismayed, and hurt at his choice to trade me in as opposed to working hard at moving our relationship forward. In addition to being the major caregiver to our three beautiful children, I had seen him through the lean years while he pursued higher education to become a doctor. At that time, my gender programming told me that my role in the marriage was to make sacrifices and revolve my life around the man's wants and needs. His choice was just another example of what I seemed to be constantly fighting in the relationship—his self-centeredness and seemingly chronic uncooperative attitude in making my needs as important as his own.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Married to the Enemy by Dawn K Kozarian Mark James Copyright © 2011 by Dawn K Kozarian & Mark James. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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