So you’re angry. You feel entitled. You’re like Richard III with the deformity, or so wrote Freud. The world, or the microcosm in which you live, has dealt you a blow, an unfair disadvantage. You’re gonna take what you can get, not expecting anyone to do anything for you. And you extend this attitude to your sexuality, with which you play like it’s a toy; actually, like it’s a modern toy, as in some electronic goodie that merits an upgrade like, every other week or something. Meanwhile, you’re down on the old toys, and especially one toy in particular. And this toy is a she, typically (yes, I’ll be ironically sexist for a moment). She’s your wife, or your long-term partner, whatever. Long-suffering, some will opine. Deeply impacted, traumatized, abused, others will say, including her, though some of the words are borrowed. The thing is you agree. It’s not like you don’t feel bad after you’ve done your thing after the Xth time. It’s not like you don’t feel guilty. And in feeling guilty you will feel penitent, at least until resentment returns and you sort of remember why you felt the things that made it okay to act upon your fantasies which then led you to feel guilty.
Validation. See, it’s not just about sex for you. It’s about the package of emotion that you wrap around sex, which includes murky yet happy experiences of freedom, relief, the pull of seduction, of play. That sinful other offers a conflict-free experience: she’ll admire you, or at least not intrude with her own troublesome wishes. With her you’ll escape the vague feeling that you are used up, have been used up, studded and then dispatched to some figurative pasture wherein you perform tasks that are drudgery, or acts that border on the heroic but which yield little in the way of thanks. Can’t she—meaning the old toy—make a bit more effort? Lose weight, put on some make-up…ya know, act like she did before you put a ring on it. Those days are gone, it seems. Now you’re trapped, or you feel trapped, subject to daily criticisms that now far outnumber the once-upon-a-time compliments. You know what to do. It’s 2021 still (yeah, I know, wrote this a month ago), hanging on by a thread, and something that’s trending aint gonna stop anytime soon. It’s never been easier to have affairs, writes Esther Perel, a modern author on the subjects of sex and relationships. It’s also never been harder to not get caught. If you get caught you might come see someone like me. I’m paid to take your confession, and then, as far as you’re concerned, tell you what to do about the old toy that you want to keep, apparently.
You want me to validate you? Tell you what to do? Affirm that you were entitled (whenever that attitude emerges) to all the toys on the shelf because of all that you do, all that you have tried, that merits the reward of intimacy. You tried everything, didn’t you? Did you? If you’re like the average (or even the not so average) obsessive, or “addict”, then you tried everything except actually asking for what you want, regularly, in the relationships that you chose. You think you asked for it, meaning the things you want. Well, maybe you did…once or twice. Yeah, okay. She said no. Then she said no again. Then you gave up and sought out that or who that says yes.
So you’re angry. You feel entitled. You discovered that text from that someone else and it blew a fuse. You walked in while he was looking at those images with his hands down his pants and you wondered, in part because he’s usually better at hiding, how much is this going on? The first time you found evidence of this you brushed it off, thinking it was normal, for men that is. Your girlfriends said the same thing, waving their hands, moving the air, declaring it was no big deal. A dissenter is your one friend who is bisexual, or maybe she’s more gay than before, you can’t tell. Anyway, she’s woke and she tells you you shouldn’t put up with this shit. Well, you’re not gonna put up with this shit. Not anymore. Plus, this getting caught thing: it means he’s losing control, doesn’t it? It must mean he has an addiction, unless he wants to get caught. Does he? Maybe he doesn’t love you anymore and this is just his way of saying it? An avoidantly attached personality, your therapist friend said. But you’re confused on that point because he says he’s sorry, wants to work stuff out, get some help. For himself? So he says, though he keeps implying that you’re to blame for the thing that he is doing a lot—so much so that he’s calling it an addiction.
So now you’re angry. Now you’re angry? Actually, you’ve been angry, or at least tense, for quite some time, because you thought something was going on but you were brushing it off and he was saying it was nothing, and nearly everyone else was saying it was nothing, and now it’s out of the bag and the pants are down by the ankles and suddenly it’s a something. It’s an addiction? Okay, well now it’s time for all the pent up feeling that you didn’t feel justified to vent is coming out, big time—like never before, it seems, which stirs another thought: actually, getting pissed at things has never been easy. You’ve never felt entitled to vent your spleen, even though people say you do so all the time. What they don’t know is how guilty you feel afterwards; how painful it is to get angry. That’s why you do it in secret a lot, which includes speaking to confidants, people who are as secretly angry as you so they vicariously enjoy (sorry, feel) your pain. Thing is, that’s starting to ignite guilt also. These confidantes: they can take so much, or worse, they’re gonna start judging you, thinking you’re too angry. Bitter. Time to pay someone to listen to you. A therapist. Specifically, find someone who specializes in something called betrayal trauma.
Validation. You want to hear someone validate your experience, tell you that you’re entitled to your anger and, by implication, the vengeful actions that will proceed from that anger. Here’s your secret: despite what has happened, you’re not sure you’re entitled to your anger, or to that much anger. So the next bit is unconscious: you want to borrow entitlement from someone else, and specifically, an expert. This is a form of permission seeking, and guilt reduction. And this was Freud’s deliciously amoral point: righteous anger is how we soothe guilt. It’s the bone we look for to justify the diatribe, the melt-down, the action movie climax that we all want to inhabit: the one in which the hero, or heroine, gets payback! Ah, those movies! Those HBO/Netflix binge-worthy gems: don’t they trade masterfully upon our desires? Addictive, you might say. See, if you pay close attention you might notice your internal conflict is not so different from that of the addict. The problem is guilt. Guilt doesn’t quite get extinguished, even in scenarios wherein the righteousness is fever-pitched. Why? Because the capacity for guilt may be inherited. It may be part of character, part of who we are, as opposed to something stirred by circumstance, the strictly external phenomena. You wanna know what a psychodynamic or psychoanalytic treatment would “do” for a patient like this?
Well, if you’re a Winnicottian worker, your marching orders will incline you to validate the anger of the betrayed, and even the underlying disappointments of the acting out figure. You will likely think that many in our patient mist lacked an original strong parent to teach them entitlement. As a result, you’ll think that some of us are simply ill-equipped to ask for what we want, or to protest unfairness, or wrongdoing. As a result, you’ll think it your task to bolster the wounded selves of such patients, give them a hint, at least, that what they secretly or impulsively want is…dare they say…deserved—so deserved that they might integrate that entitlement into their daily lives, which leads, broadly speaking, to the likely therapeutic goal: to be entitled in a way that is honest, non-destructive; at peace with the world. Ah! Doesn’t it sound nice, like a soothing hot tea before a nice hot fire on a cold, damp night? It sounds nice, but sometimes a little condescending, when those who claim to have reached this promised land boast of the achievement.
If you’re not Winnicottian. If you are, say, a Bionian or Kleinian figure, you’ll tread a less popular path. When a patient asks you, “It’s only fair and right for me to ask him to leave, isn’t it?”, you might respond with, “what are you asking me for?” (to be fair, only if you’re prepared to piss off your patient), or—slightly less frustratingly—“well, I think we can see how you’re struggling with the question of what to do. You’re angry and you want to express that. But you’re not quite sure it will feel right, so you ask me what I think, hoping I can make it easier”. You’ll know you have an analytic patient if the person can think upon this answer; if they can, as Bion once proposed, tolerate the frustration of not knowing answers long enough so they can use their minds, think about who they are and how they relate, historically, to anger and guilt.
Whether they perceive the irony or not, the rest of the patient population will seek out that which makes them feel better. Like any addictive habit, that will feel good, for a while.
Graeme Daniels Psychewriter 