Love and Addiction by Stanton Peele & Archie Brodsky

Author:Stanton Peele & Archie Brodsky [Peele, Stanton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B00IVAQQOK
Publisher: Broadrow Publications
Published: 2014-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

The Marriage Match

So we enter upon adulthood—often anxious, wary of risk, vaguely distrustful of others, awed by powers outside ourselves, held back by external and internal constraints. To a greater or lesser extent, we are left in a weakened position psychologically, a position not different in kind from that of the addict. Where are we likely to find relief? The answer, for many, is in marriage.

Why has marriage been such a panacea for the postwar generations in America? Their childhood experiences taught them that only the family could enable them to feel comfortable and have some say over their surroundings. When their parents disrupted their plans with friends by insisting that they uphold family obligations, sometimes even imaginary ones, they learned that friendship came second to a more basic commitment. Their chances for developing strong friendships were hurt further when their parents taught them that people outside the house were not to be relied on. When a person is made to be cynical about “outsiders” and their intentions toward him, then only through the sanctioned ritual of marriage, with its legal provision for the sharing of property and its customary provision for the sharing of secrets, can he relax his caution to the point of trusting one other person.

The nuclear family in which today’s young people grew up was a restrictive, inward-looking institution. Children observed that married couples spent all their free time together, that they went everywhere as one entity. For a husband or wife to have independent friendships and activities away from home would invite suspicion that the marriage was in trouble. Thus children sensed the boundaries clearly drawn around their families; economically, emotionally, sexually, that was where it was all supposed to be taking place.

All around them, children picked up prevailing attitudes about the primacy of social experience over personal experience. What they saw was that people are rarely secure in their own company, but always look for someone else to do things with. Even people who are interested in music or sports or movies usually don’t find these interests so compelling as to be worth pursuing alone. Instead, they are preoccupied with the social considerations involved: who will they go with, who will they meet there, how will others react? Yet these social experiences, all-pervasive as they are, are not used to enrich a person’s emotional life. They are screened through a filter of family solidarity and self-protection. Challenging new contacts—potential friendships—are ruled out, and the relationships that remain are most often casual and interchangeable. Deeper needs for human closeness can be channeled in one direction only.

Trained from an early age to look for one special person to share their lives with, young people direct the greatest part of their emotional energy toward finding this partner. High school and college life only reinforce this aim and confirm the artificial categories in terms of which people react to each other. With friends of the same sex, as well as those of the opposite sex who are not

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