Women with Alcoholic Husbands by Ramona M. Asher

Author:Ramona M. Asher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press

5: Sorting the Ambivalence

Personalizing Stances

Overt stands taken by wives in response to their husbands’ drinking further illustrate ways in which the women personalize their experiences. These responsive acts are not only ways of personalizing experiences, but also ways of comprehending and creating selves in ongoing ambivalent interaction. In this study, the wives tended to assume one of two contrasting stances: placative and confrontive. In taking a placative stance toward their husbands the women sought to appease them somehow, or to make concessions with regard to problems and solutions. The wives described placating behavior as an initial attempt to satisfy the husband and hopefully decrease problematic drinking and any underlying problems they perceived.

Reflecting back on such actions, however, the women spoke of intimidation or victimization as having been a part of their placating stances. The following example typifies this pattern: “I for years thought that a lot of his problems I could really [help resolve]—if I did differently, then he’d do differently. I could be more supportive. I could work harder. I could do all sorts of things. . . . I could love him more. I could show that love more and try all those things. Then I realized it wasn’t working. . . . I felt shut out of his life and I. . . was really resentful of that. . . [it] hurt bad.”

Such intimidation hinders free-flowing ease of self-expression in the one place where persons most expect it, the home. The household is no longer a stable organization of persons against the world: “The home, where wounds were meant to be licked, becomes precisely where they are inflicted. Boundaries are broken. The family is turned inside out” (Goffman 1971, 381). Importantly, because self is an emergent reflexive process, a self in performance (in intimidating situations) is also a self in discovery and creation. Domestic and marital upheaval, in the eyes of the wives, is symbolic of low respect and worth that they perceive coming from their husbands toward them—and by imagination or by action, many rebel against this low status through confrontation.

Actually, there appears to be a curvilinear pattern of confrontation-resistance: a lower level in the early phase of the moral career, working up to a peak at some point in the problem amplification phase, then decreasing, often in that phase as well. The initial period of lower confrontation is more apt to be of a placating and problem-solving orientation, whereas low confrontation in the later period appears to be more of a withdrawal-avoidance type. The following interview excerpts represent these general movements, although it is important to keep in mind that intensities of confrontation vary considerably with individual couples’ situations. Needless to say, definitional ambivalence during this entire phase of problem amplification is pronounced; changing overt stances symbolize changing views of selves and situations:

I guess I’ve been through all of those [feelings and behaviors] at one time or another. I think I would switch: I used the humor bit there for a while and just kind of tried to laugh it off, and I tried to accept it.

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