These two traits are close
relatives. Everyone has the capacity for jealousy, and some jealousy is
normal. It is only when it becomes possessive and all-pervasive that it is
destructive.
Extreme possessiveness
stems from insecurity. A young man whose wedding was only a week away consulted
me about his overly-possessive fiance. She was eighteen, he twenty-two. She
had vetoed his selection of a best man, whom she disliked. In fact, he said,
she had stated that she would not allow his friend in the house. She had made
certain other demands which indicated considerable insecurity. I said, "If you
let her get away with this, you will have to give in a thousand times in the
next few years, until you either have no freedom left, or you abandon the
marriage. Ask her to come in with you so we can talk it out." She refused at
first, saying that as adults they ought to be able to work out their own
personal problems. I advised him to tell her that unless she would agree to see
some marriage counselor now, and after the marriage if necessary, he had no
intention of going through with the marriage. He said, "Thanks for that! I
wanted to do it, but felt guilty. The invitations are all out. But I feel I
have regained my manhood in deciding to tell her tath we must see a couselor
when it seems necessary."
Of course she came in,
though somewaht sullen and resentful. During the conference she tugged at his
sleeve reprovingly when he didn't sit up straight in his chair. She frowned at
him when he made a mild grammatical error. After listening to them for an hour,
I said, "Your marriage has less than a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. But if
you will both agree, willingly, to see a marriage counselor, or join a group
where your problems can be resolved, I'd give it a ten to one chance of working
out."
She would not agree. I
said, "I sense that you must have had an impaired or broken relationship with
your father."
She said, "My real father
died when I was two, and of course I don't remember him. Then for a few years I
had a stepfather. My mother diverced him. I don't feel that I ever had a
father."
She had two counts against
her, through no fault of her own. Having had no father to whom she could
relate, and no brothers, she really didn't know the first thing about men or
marriage. In addition, the loss of her father and stepfather had implanted in
her unconscious mind the feeling: "Men abandon you. They go away. I must
clingt o this one or I may lose him as I lost the other." Her all-pervasive
insecurity had an understandable origin.
As Freud pointed out many
years ago, we act out in adult life the unresolved conflicts of childhood. If
we are to live creative, happy lives, we must seek out the origin of our
insecruties and try to resolve them rather than jusitify
them.
Overpossessiveness will
drive a man away or cause him to retreat into the cold gray castle of his own
loneliness or into the arms of another woman. If you are unduly possessive, you
are basically very insecure. You probably cannot resolve this deepseated
condition all alone. You will need the help of a professional coundselor, and
it will take time.
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