When I Say No, I Feel Guilty (43 page)

JACK
:
What’s that?
[NEGATIVE INQUIRY]

JILL
: What if we meet someone we know?

JACK
:
We may. What would you like to do if that happens?
[FOGGING and WORKABLE COMPROMISE]

JILL
: I don’t know. God! That would be embarrassing.

JACK
:
Yeah
, but
what would you like to do if that happened?
[FOGGING and WORKABLE COMPROMISE]

JILL
: (Thinking aloud) I wonder if they would feel the same way? (Giggling) It would be kind of funny seeing Harry and Jane from down the street there. I bet he looks different without his Gucci shoes. Maybe it would be kind of fun … but I won’t go unless you promise we go together, we stay together, and we leave together.

JACK
: That’s a deal, luv.

JILL
: And you won’t make a play for anyone?

JACK
:
Only you after we leave
. [WORKABLE COMPROMISE]

JILL
: Okay.

This practice dialogue is only one of the real-life situations learners have dealt with by being assertive with their mates and working out sexual compromises that they both can feel better about. These compromises are as simple as sharing sexual position preferences within one act of intercourse or alternating them on different occasions. Sexual compromises that patients and learners have worked out often include mutual “turn-ons” such as increased foreplay, mutual fondling and masturbation, cunnilingus (vaginal kissing), fellatio (giving “head”), anal intercourse, “Wesson oil” wrestling, or as radical as swinging, group sex, “Cops and Robbers,” and separate lovers. Most of the learners in assertive training classes use a variety of these topics as hypothetical end goals in their role rehearsals. During the last eighteen months, only one learner out of three hundred reported that such classroom practice made her quite anxious … and her anxiety was a great surprise to her. She thought herself quite sophisticated sexually, and she was. She had experience in many of the more exotic sexual behaviors talked about. She had thought herself “liberated” sexually and found she wasn’t. She was “liberated” only if someone else did the “liberating”; in class she had great difficulty in practicing requesting what she wanted sexually and when she tried it with her mate, she was astonished to find she had even greater difficulty with him than with a relative stranger—a classmate—even with someone of the same sex. In reality, she was quite nonassertive in this area and needed much more practice than the classroom limits afforded. At this writing, she is specifically working on this area in private therapy. Most learners, happily, have no great apparent difficulty in coping with this sensitive conflict area—not after eight weeks of assertive practice and outside homework in other situations. In fact, the great majority enjoy it and say so
verbally or by their behavior in the practice sessions. One woman student in her early forties came up to me during the coffee break following this practice and said: “Pete. If you had told me eight weeks ago that tonight I would have been talking about my sex life and fantasies to a stranger and then asking him what he was going to do about them, I would have said: “You’re crazy!” But that’s what I did and I really learned something about myself and other people tonight.” After observing her behavior in class for eight weeks, I would hazard a guess that she was not in desperate need of systematic assertiveness to cope with her sexual wants. Nevertheless, what amazed her was her ability to calmly play her hand in this game of psychological strip poker. She learned that if she and others could cope in this high personal risk area with very little anxiety, it took no imagination to see what they could do in the more mundane behavioral realms. Several months later she saw me in Santa Monica. After we exchanged the usual pleasantries, she introduced me to her fourteen-year-old daughter, and said: “This is the Pete Smith who teaches that assertive class I keep telling you about. The class I hope you will take when you’re old enough to go to UCLA.” Apparently this middle-class Brentwood matron felt strongly that her teen-age daughter could benefit from learning to be assertive—perhaps sexually assertive, although she probably had in mind the more mundane conflicts that her daughter would have to learn how to cope with in living with a future mate.

The following dialogue shows how such a learner can assertively cope with a mate’s manipulation—his attempts to keep her at home while she wants to expand the horizons of her own lifestyle beyond that of mother and housekeeper.

Dialogue #32
A wife tells her husband
that she wants
to get a
job.

This is a shortened version of an assertive sequence between spouses developed by my colleague, Ms. Susan Levine, and myself, and demonstrated at a recent professional training workshop. The content of the dialogue is a sampling of situational and manipulative material we have observed clinically when seeing couples for marital problems.

Setting of the dialogue: After the children are put to bed, the assertive wife approaches her husband and brings up her desire to change her lifestyle.

SUE
: I was thinking about getting a job. The kids are gone a lot and I have a lot of time on my hands.

ME
: The house sure doesn’t look like you have a lot of time on your hands; it’s a regular mess.

SUE
:
Yeah, that’s true. The house isn’t the neatest but I’d still rather get a job out of the house
. [FOGGING and BROKEN RECORD]

ME
: Well … that seems pretty stupid to me. Especially since you don’t have any marketable skills.

SUE
:
I agree with you
. In fact I’ve been thinking about that myself. I don’t have any specific skills, but
I still want to look around and see if I can find a job
. [FOGGING and BROKEN RECORD]

ME
: (Trying a new tactic, but gentler) The idea seems pretty screwy to me.… I mean, by the time you pay a babysitter to watch the kids while you’re gone, you won’t have any money left. So what’s the use of working if you don’t have anything to show for it?

SUE
:
You know, I’ve thought of that. You’re probably right about me not making much money … especially at first
… but
I figure I have to start somewhere and I’m ready to give the working world a try
. [FOGGING and BROKEN RECORD]

ME
: You know your parents never thought I could support you in the way they raised you, and now when they see that you’re out working they’re going to look down on me even more. They’ll say I couldn’t support you and you had to work.

SUE
:
They might
… but,
really … what’s so terrible if they look down their noses at you?
[FOGGING and NEGATIVE INQUIRY]

ME
: You’re a lot of help. What’s so terrible? Don’t get smart ass with me.

SUE
:
I’m probably not much help in this
, and
maybe I was a little smart ass then
, but
I don’t mean it. Really … what upsets you so much about them looking dawn at you?
[FOGGING, SELF-DISCLOSURE, and NEGATIVE INQUIRY]

ME
: You want me to spell it out?

SUE
: Yes, please.

ME
: Well, when your folks look down at me it makes me feel uneasy … your dad makes me nervous, I feel kind of inferior, like a young punk sometimes when I talk to him. He’s been a bastard to me at times … the real problem is that I respect him too. For a bastard, he’s made some sharp deals and a hell of a lot of money.

SUE
:
Yeah, he is really good at some things
, but when it comes to how to act toward us I don’t think everything is kosher.…
I think it’s a crappy way to treat you, but I also think we make them uncomfortable because we use our own bread and don’t rely on them
. [FOGGING and NEGATIVE ASSERTION]

ME
: Maybe I could handle your father’s digs about your working, but what about the kids? I mean, those kids need you when they come home from school!

SUE
:
I’m sure they would like me to be there when they come home
. In fact I like to see them when they come home … but I can’t be home and go to work too.
I want to get a job
. [FOGGING and BROKEN RECORD]

ME
: Remember you can’t work and take Josh to his music lesson at the same time.

SUE
:
You’re right. I figure if I can’t make the 3:00
P.M
.
pickup at school and still get a job, I’ll choose the job over picking up the kids
. All of us will have to work out some adjustments to a new schedule. I don’t know what, but I want to do it that way. [FOGGING and BROKEN RECORD]

ME
: (Thinking out loud) That’s one thing I always missed as a kid. Both my mom and dad worked when they had the restaurant. When I got home from school I even had to make my own supper and eat it alone. I missed my parents when I was our kids’ age. I always envied my cousin Sonny. When I used to get really lonely, I went over to his house after school and Aunt Cody would just add another plate. They never had much money, and I didn’t like lamb stew but I liked being with the family. She was always home and when Uncle Spencer wasn’t working he would be there too. He even tried to teach me to play the guitar.

SUE
: I’m glad you could go over to Aunt Cody’s when you felt like that.
But that’s still rough
. You never told me that before. [FOGGING]

ME
: I know. I never felt like talking about it before.

SUE
: I think now I know why you are worried about me working.

ME
: Yeah, but who’s going to take them out to little League and the Girl Scouts like you do now? They get something important out of things like that.

SUE
:
I couldn’t agree with you more
, and right now … this minute,
I don’t know the answer
, but we’ll work something out. Besides that
what else about me working worries you?
[FOGGING, SELF-DISCLOSURE, and NEGATIVE INQUIRY]

ME
: Josh I’m not so worried about. Boys can take care of themselves, but Jenny is an advanced twelve-year-old, or haven’t you noticed?

SUE
: (Smiling) I’ve noticed.

ME
: And she is always having that slimy little Larry Bisque over. I don’t trust that little jerk.

SUE
:
That’s a point we’re going to have to look out for. The kids will have more freedom when I’m working
, and it worries me too. [FOGGING]

ME
: I can’t believe you want to go to work and leave your daughter alone at home with that creep.

SUE
:
You’re right. I don’t want to worry about that
, but
I do want to work. How do you think we could handle this … so we don’t worry about the kids being home alone with their friends?
[FOGGING, BROKEN RECORD, and WORKABLE COMPROMISE]

ME
: I don’t want you to go to work.

SUE
: (With empathy)
I hear you
, but
how can we work this out so we don’t worry about the kids?
[FOGGING and WORKABLE COMPROMISE]

ME
: (Thinking) Maybe we could sit down with them, explain the problem and set down some rules … like no friends in the house when we aren’t here.

SUE
:
That sounds good
and
I could ask Judy down the street if the kids could call on her if they needed something when we weren’t here
. [FOGGING and WORKABLE COMPROMISE]

ME
: Okay. I don’t like the idea of you working but a little bit of being on their own now won’t hurt the kids. Hell, I had to take care of myself ever since I was eight years old. But how are you going to work and still run the house? You’re tired enough now and if you get a job you’ll collapse on me when you get home.

SUE
:
I probably will get tired
, but
what’s wrong with me collapsing on you when I get home?
[FOGGING and NEGATIVE INQUIRY]

ME
: You know what I mean. The house will go to hell and I’ll feel guilty because you are doing two things, working and cleaning up, and I’m doing only one.

SUE
:
It could be hard on both of us
, but
I still want to do it. Will you work with me on it?
[FOGGING, BROKEN RECORD, and WORKABLE COMPROMISE]

ME
: How?

SUE
:
I don’t know exactly what we will have to work out right now, do you have any ideas?
[SELF-DISCLOSURE and WORKABLE COMPROMISE]

ME
: I could do the marketing in the evening. I don’t mind that at all. And Jenny and Josh could help more
with the house. A little more responsibility won’t hurt them. Maybe we can swing it.

SUE
: I hope so.… What else do you think we can do.…

The whole point of this dialogue was to demonstrate that being assertive and saying what you want in a marital conflict does not require a lot of bickering and arguing, or even shouting and screaming. As cotherapists for many married couples trying to work out their problems, Sue and I observed that, aside from blowing off emotional steam due to the general frustrations that none of us can avoid, much of the anger and frustration in marital situations is due to unrealistic fears of
what might happen if
…, and manipulation-counter-manipulation used to cope with these anxieties. We have observed how being emphatically assertive in telling your mate what you want, in spite of
what might happen if
… minimizes mutual manipulation, that awesome stumbling block to close communication and compromise.