Masochistic Collusion or Maturation Collision? Why People Hate Psychologists and other Rants

Your unconscious approves of your partner's infidelity.........

Your unconscious colludes in the upcoming ambush of your partner's infidelity........

Your unconscious sees all but tells you very little, like a spy on a masochistic mission. Here. Hit yourself in the face.........

This shit is why people hate psychologists 

Madeleine posted Tammy Nelson's article titled Why Did the Affair Happen? which immediately set my fingers typing. When my keyboard exploded in flames, a bucket of water cooled it down which wasn't a good idea but who's thinking clearly when a world-renown expert suggests you colluded in your husband's affair? Is this true? Is our psyche psychic? To me, that's like being told that even if you didn't know he was cheating, you actually knew he was cheating which grants your APPROVAL even if you didn't say it was okay directly, which all-and-all makes me feel like I'm BACK in the narcissistic marriage being blamed for the look on my face. In fairness to the author, she did not say "all" people colluded in their partner's infidelity. I still and nonetheless question the degree of unconscious collusion suggested in the research statistics Tammy Nelson reported in her HuffingtonPost article:

"Many couples, if they are honest with themselves, may find that the partner who was cheated on colluded with the infidelity even if he or she didn't participate directly in the affair. That means that on some level, there was some type of cooperation, even if unconscious, to make the affair happen. 

This secret cooperation may mean the betrayed partner is doing something in the relationship to collude with his or her partner's behavior, even if he or she doesn't realize it. To be unconsciously aware means that on some level, the betrayed partner had an idea that their spouse was cheating."

Oh come on now. Is infidelity a Masochistic Collusion, or a Maturation Collision? Something I have noticed in my long-term relationships with people who've been betrayed is the difference between who we are in the thick of the crisis, and who we become once we've stabilized.  I can't explain sufficiently, how disorienting betrayal is to those who've invested time, money, family connections, emotional investments, concern and caring and trust in a marriage partner. You aren't just losing your partner. You are losing your 'life', decades of joint relationships and accrued assets. I know it's tempting for people to assume we're pining away for the man we couldn't keep, but that's a shallow, albeit popular perception. A stay-at-home-mother like myself, loses her security in old age and I'm not merely talking about the steadfast love-of-her-man. She is lucky to get half his retirement at the time of divorce (writing "his retirement" makes me wanna close my eyes and weep 'cuz you all had best know I worked equally if not harder in our partnership). What we are facing as older women is disenfranchisement from a system that would rather not acknowledge our contributions to the GDP. So when we're sitting in the therapist's office crying our eyes out, let's not over-focus on his acrobatic penis. Let's think about the  numerous losses she's facing.  Social disregard. Limited career options. Even heading for the social security office makes her insignificance clear. She devotes herself to "their" career too, yet she is only entitled to a portion of his social security. I guess society believes old women should eat like a bird and live in a shoe like the old lady Mother Goose warned us about when we were little. I hope I don't have to do day care in my shoe. 

Nelson's article was based on a psychology study. As you can read for yourself, the collusion Tammy Nelson reported was in "the judgments of therapists". Another reason why people hate psychologists who insist they know more about your experience than you do (then you find out the therapist ran off with her client's husband. True story. This really did happen in my circle of friends and that's another reason why people hate psychologists): 

"The judgments of the therapists reporting the cases were that fully 89% of the betrayed spouses either were consciously aware of the infidelity or, even if not acknowledgzng, really knew, and that even the majority of the betrayed spouses who claimed consciously that they opposed their spouses' behavior were unconsciously in collusion with them." ~Article needing spellcheck by Israel W. Charnya & Snan Parnass

I had to respond to the allegation about a partner's collusion because until we get away from the pathological relationship, we might believe we CAUSED our partner to have an affair. That it was our fault. Partners of narcissists have been groomed to take responsibility and one reason could be that we're pragmatic. We know from past experience that the only way to move on with life is to say, "Yea, I put that sofa there just so you would trip on it. Now can we do our taxes?"

We might also believe emotionally, that we're at fault after the affair has trampled our self-worth and raised our anxiety. While the affair has super-inflated his confidence, her self-esteem has plummeted. That's the effect an affair has on the betrayed partner (children too, though few people write about THAT do they?!!??$#%!) If you don't think a narcissist knows infidelity will reduce his wife to a crybaby, ThInK flipping AgAiN. Infidelity is just another tactic in the narcissist's arsenal of weapons maintaining his status. Consider his infidelity a bazooka rocket launcher. And that is why concepts like unconscious  collusion are dangerous to women's mental health. Psychologists might as well go back fifty years and say women are masochistic by nature 'cuz even though they're dependent on his income to feed their kids, they like getting hit in the face. 

"Maybe I was hoping that [he] would cheat..." ~excerpted from Nelson's article

I've been in marriage counseling with a philandering spouse and let me inform everyone who hasn't been through that grueling shitshow, you'll say almost anything you're so confused. So desperate. So hurt. You'll admit to causing hurricanes, economic collapse, and even shingles if it it'll ease the cognitive dissonance. You'll say things you don't really mean and believe me, the narcissist is listening---waiting for you to admit you MADE him do it! You MADE his penis drop clean out of his britches and the therapist is thinking, "Amazing how my insight about her unconscious collusion has both of them talking! Now we're getting somewhere." Another reason why people hate psychologists.

But the problem is that she's lying and doesn't know it and the therapist should.  The therapist should be seeing narcissistic abuse instead--that slow and steady drip of projected blame. After the shock of infidelity and the threat of being replaced, the betrayed partner hardly knows what's hers to claim and his to blame. It's that bad by the time you show up in counseling.  A year later, maybe five if she stays friends with the bazooka-armed narcissist, she'll get angry over being mistreated by her X and by the therapist, too. 

Let me add how easy it is for a narcissist to coerce a Collusion Confession from his/her spouse. All that has to happen is for the authority figure (i.e.: the therapist) to suggest that p-e-r-h-a-p-s the betrayed partner was aware of the infidelity on some eesny weensy level. The narcissist glances tenderly at his wife, tears roll gently down his face. She catches the sadness in his eyes and builds on it, believing there's hope that if she admits to moving the sofa, they'll file joint returns that year. "Thank you doc for making me a more responsible woman today. I thought HE was the one that was clueless. Now I know it's ME."

One more excerpt from a man in the article, whose wife didn't pay him enough attention boohoo: 

"Eventually I started a relationship with this woman who advertised on adult websites. She never let me down, and whenever I was lonely, she was there for me."

Instead of examining his wife's collusion, how about examining the Maturation Collision exhibited in his narcissistic need to be enmeshed, coddled, pampered---while maintaining his dominance. Please read that sentence again. His narcissistic need to be enmeshed, coddled and pampered while maintaining his dominance. She was no threat to his superiority, unlike his wife. (I hope that insight gleaned from my experience can help someone who's walking in my shoes today.) The pay-by-the-minute-cyber-sex woman just might be low enough on the female totem pole to protect his desperate-to-maintain superiority. It's a good way to put a wife in her proper place---"Hey honey. You've been with me through disasters and financial failures and we've kept each other going when times were tough but did ya know the local strip club dancer is a better partner than you?"

I've known women who once they recognized their rightful space on the planet and in their home, were replaced by sex workers whose adoration was effusive---while his pocketbook was open.  I will admit that if my husband had offered me five bucks a minute to talk to him on the phone, I'd have told him whatever he wanted to hear while dancing the hoochie coochie AND serving his favorite meatloaf on the side. Pray tell me, what kind of guy can't tell the difference between woman-as-dispensing-machine and woman-as-human-being? Oh, that's right. The Infidelity Collusion Guy. Once the idea of unconscious collusion spreads to the general public, it'll be the automatic WRONG answer for a society that's struggling to adapt to women's increasing autonomy. Personally, I believe the more differentiated a woman becomes, the more likely her marriage will fall apart if her partner is unable to mature with her. 

And one last thing that bothers me about that guy on the adult website is the stoopid suggestion that a cyber-sex worker could meet his needs in a way his wife could not. No doubt his wife expected him to meet his own needs in a responsible way and be her adult partner, not her child for gawd's sakes I'm gonna hafta stop typing or choke on the throat bile. I cannot stand this "meeting each other's needs" bullshit that has exploded in the media like green diarrhea when your baby eats ground spinach.  That's an apt metaphor for the crap I've read lately---grown up people meeting each other's needs as if we're emotional vending machines! When you run out of Compassion Kit-Kats, find another vending machine instead of taking responsibility for having run out of Common Sense Cracker Jacks yourself.

I can hear it all now---"I hated to do it. I'm against infidelity but the thing is doc, she wanted me to have the affair. She didn't know that she did but I knew that she did; and so I did what she wanted  me to do even though she didn't know she wanted me to do it." And then the therapist asks each of them to sign a contract admitting fault and reconciling their marriage until she runs out of Sympathy Snack Packs and he looks for another vending machine. 

ggggrrrrrrrr,

CZ