I Hate You--Don't Leave Me - Jerold J. Kreisman [92]
—From Through the Looking-Glass, by Lewis Carroll
“I feel like I have a void in me that I can never quite fill.” Elizabeth, an attractive, witty twenty-eight-year-old woman, was originally referred for therapy by her family doctor. She had been married for six years to a man who was ten years older than her and had been her boss at one time. Five months before, she had given birth to her first child, a daughter, and was now severely depressed.
She yearned for something she could call her own, something that would “show that the rest of the world knew I was here.” Inside, she felt her “real self” was a swamp of childish emotions, and that she was always hiding her feelings, which were “ugly and bad.” These realizations turned into self-hate; she wanted to give up.
By her count, Elizabeth had engaged in nine extramarital affairs over the previous six years—all with men she met through work. They began soon after the death of her father. Most were relationships that she totally controlled, first by initiating them and later by ending them. She had found it exciting that these men seemed so puzzled by her advances and then by her sudden rejections. She enjoyed the physical closeness, but acknowledged she dreaded being too emotionally involved. Although she controlled these relationships, she never found them sexually satisfying; nor was she sexually responsive to her husband. She admitted that she used sex to “equalize” relationships, to stay in control; she felt safer that way. Her intellect and personality, she felt, were not enough to hold a man.
Reared in a working-class Catholic family, Elizabeth had three older brothers and a younger sister, who had drowned in a swimming accident at age five. Elizabeth was only eight at the time and had little understanding of the event except to observe her mother becoming more withdrawn.
For as long as Elizabeth could remember, her mother had been hypercritical, constantly accusing Elizabeth of being “bad.” When she was a young girl, her mother insisted that she attend church with her, and forced her father to construct an altar in Elizabeth’s bedroom. Elizabeth felt closer to her father, a passive and quiet man, who was dominated by his wife. As she entered puberty, he became more distant and less affectionate.
Growing up, Elizabeth was quiet and shy. Her mother disapproved of her involvement with boys and closely watched her friendships with girls; she was expected to have “acceptable” friends. Her brothers were always her mom’s favorites; Elizabeth would kid with them, trying to be “one of the guys.” Elizabeth achieved good grades in high school but was discouraged from going to college. After graduation, she began working full-time as a secretary.
As time went on, the conflicts with her mother escalated. Even in high school, Elizabeth’s mother had denounced her as a “tramp” and constantly accused her of promiscuity even though she had had no sexual experience. After a while, having endured the shouting contests with her mother, she saved enough money to move out on her own.
During this turmoil, Elizabeth’s boss, Lloyd, separated from his wife and became embroiled in a painful divorce. Elizabeth offered solace and sympathy. He reciprocated with encouragement and support. They began dating and married soon after his divorce was finalized. Naturally, her mother berated her for marrying a divorced man, particularly one who was ten years older and a lapsed Catholic.
Her father remained detached. One year after Elizabeth married, he died.
Five years later, her marriage was disintegrating, and Elizabeth was blaming her husband. She saw Lloyd as a “thief” who had stolen her youth. She was only nineteen when she met him, and needed to be taken care of so badly that she traded in her youth for security—the years when she could have been “experimenting with what I wanted to be, could be, should have been.”
In the early stages of treatment,