We don’t anticipate that one day we will take pleasure in hurting someone we love. We would still less like to admit it. For many people and couples, their first reflex is to immediately deny any form of dishonesty or malfeasance towards one or the other. What valid reasons could justify such behaviour towards a person with whom we have chosen to live for the rest of our lives? The answer is none! It is for this reason that we do not succeed in admitting it to ourselves and even less to our partner.
Couples therapy sessions can help you clarify this question.
Normal marital sadism
Sadism is the deliberate way to hurt someone, take pleasure in it, or feel satisfaction from it. In the case of long-term relationships (married or not), this phenomenon is more widespread than we want to admit. This is why it is “normal” to engage in marital sadism. On the other hand, the normality of sadism does not mean that it is healthy in this case, but rather that it is widespread. Normal Marital Sadism (SMN) is a particularly subtle form of violence between 2 partners, who, contrary to what we think, also love and hate each other!
Love & Hate: Same Continuum, Different Extremes
Romantic relationships would be so much simpler if we could always feel good and have a feeling of love for our partner. Unfortunately, this is not the case! There will always be parts of a person that will be detestable. We’re not perfect and we’re not exactly the same as our soulmate. These differences create important conflicts, difficult to overcome, which often lead to a feeling of hatred towards our loved one (pun wanted). The way we deal with this ambivalence of love and hate towards our partner greatly determines the success of the couple.
To manage these conflicting emotions in a healthy way, you need to be
emotionally balanced. This balance allows us to live better with the fact that we hate our partner at times, but that our partner also hates us. The second part is the most difficult for many, as it influences our self-esteem. When the person who is most meaningful to us hates a part of who we are, it can be difficult to deal with the emotions of rejection that this generates. This is a reality that is difficult to accept for a person who does not have solid self-esteem.
How does all this work?
The more we know our partner, the more we are able to hurt them, because we have had access to their insecurities over the years. Generally between partners, we comfort and help each other through our difficulties and limitations. On the other hand, the game is played differently when we are in conflict with each other. Especially sexual difficulties where the vast majority of people are especially fragile. When we don’t have a strong-flexible identity and an ability to comfort ourselves, we easily feel attacked by our partner, because we take things personally. This generates a reflex of revenge to alleviate the wound and anxiety that it makes us experience. Thus begins the vicious circle of normal marital sadism.
- One partner feels hurt or wronged.
- In return, she attacks to feel better.
- The other partner is wounded in turn and attacks to retaliate.
- Repeat steps 1-2-3
Let’s give a more concrete example to illustrate the point. A woman has had more sexual desire than her partner since the beginning of their relationship. Following several attempts to initiate sexual relations and several refusals over the years, she feels rejection. So the partner with more desire feels more and more unwanted with each initiative. One night when she tries her luck again, she is rejected once again. No longer able to experience rejection, she attacks by saying that her partner is frigid. The latter, who is already worried about sexuality, retaliates by saying that her girlfriend is a sex obsessive. We can all imagine what will happen next. Obviously, genders and sexual orientations are interchangeable in this situation.
A variety of more subtle examples exist where we do things that can deliberately irritate our partner and where we get satisfaction from it. For example: not changing the toilet roll, spending a significant amount of money without telling your partner, ignoring or sulking, sighing, giving a look of disapproval, etc. All these behaviors are not done in a trivial way, but rather seek to make the other person react. When you get caught in the act: you pretend not to have been conscious.
To confess or not to confess, that is the question?
It would be foolish to admit the Normal Marital Sadism (
SMN) that we do to our partner.
What benefits could there be? This becomes a matter of integrity and loyalty that allows us to develop a
collaborative alliance and
our emotional balance. It also allows you to overcome
emotional impasses in the couple. Admitting
the SMN in your relationship allows you to present to your partner who you really are and thus live an
intimacy validated by yourself. How can we justify being loved or being loved, if we do not present who we are in our entirety, with the good, but also the bad.
The majority of people are not even going to admit to themselves that they are doing normal marital sadism, because they don’t want to admit to being so mean and having a dark side to their personality. This would affect their self-image and therefore their self-esteem. They will even less want to admit it to their partner who might reject them.
Take the time to think about the next sentence and really consider its implications for you and your couple:
Demonstrating the worst in us brings out the best in us, because the worst in us ignores its own existence. -David Schnarch
