In Marriage, a Misdiagnosis Can Lead to the Crazy Cycle

Anyone who has visited the emergency room or urgent care with a mystery pain or illness knows how important it is to receive an accurate diagnosis from the doctor. Imagine the doctor explaining to you that your constant chest pains are from acid reflux, which he treats with a pepcid, but it turns out you were having a heart attack. The misdiagnosis is likely to lead to your death. 

Or consider a patient with a common cold and sinus problems. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, he simply needs a decongestant and perhaps some Nafarin. How ridiculous and even dangerous would it be for a doctor to immediately call for surgery!

When a husband and wife are in conflict, an accurate diagnosis at the conflict’s outset is also extremely important if they are going to avoid taking a few spins on the Crazy Cycle. As it is in the medical field, though, some diagnoses are much easier to communicate and treat than others.

For example, when a wife feels her husband has hurt her feelings, she will say, "You hurt my feelings and we need to talk." She may tear up and even cry. For many marriages, that is quite common. The marriage had a “sickness”—he hurt her feelings—so she accurately relayed that to the person who can best treat her—her husband—who now knows what the problem is and will hopefully treat it accordingly.

Communicating in this way when she is hurt is part of who God has created her as a woman. It is part of her pink design. Problems arise, however, when she expects her blue husband to handle a similar situation in the same way. This is not how the blue male will typically handle being hurt by his wife, though. Instead he becomes a patient in which the doctor—his wife—must learn how best to navigate her way through making a diagnosis and prescription.

A husband whose feelings have been hurt by his wife is more difficult to diagnose and treat, because he is unlikely to cry and explain to her that she hurt him. Instead, he gets defensive and feels attacked. Many husbands get angry. His wife had hurt his feelings and shown him disrespect. But it is not likely that he will explain that to her, at least not at first. Instead, he reacts like someone who has been wounded by an animal and runs away to hide.

It is at this point usually that the wife begins misdiagnosing the problem. He must need reassurance of my love, she tells herself. So she tells him over and over that she loves him. This, of course, has no effect and she wonders why. Why is he still upset with me? Somehow I hurt his feelings, but I have followed him and reassured him of my love for him. All should be good now. After all, this is what works when the roles are reversed. Why not now, though?

The answer is that her husband being hurt has nothing to do with her love. He knows she loves him. She loves pretty much everyone, including him. For women, reassuring someone of your love is like the catch-all ibuprofen, which can be used to relieve anything from headaches to muscle pains to fevers to menstrual cramps. But it can’t treat the hurt a husband feels when he is attacked at the core of his manhood. When this happens, he hears the message: “You are inadequate as a man and I don't respect you. You have failed again to be good enough for me." Being reassured once again of his wife’s love for him does not begin to scratch the surface of the healing he needs in that moment.

Of course, she does not diagnose—or decode—any of this since she doesn't process the world as he does. After all, he is not acting like the patient she tries to be. He won’t explain truthfully and accurately what she did or said that shut him down and caused him to become angry. How can she prescribe the right treatment if he doesn’t tell her what is bothering him? 

But her response cannot be to simply prescribe love when every ounce of who he is as a man has been crying out for respect. To make matters worse, when he doesn’t respond to her love as she feels he should, she claims his anger is unjustified and the real problem is that he is hurting her feelings by claiming she is attacking him. It is here that most conversations swing back toward the wife's feelings, especially when he displays anger. She needs to talk to him about how he has hurt her feelings. If he says again that he is miffed over her disrespect, some wives push back, "There you go again. This is all about you and being respected. Well, I don't feel respect for you during such moments. You don't deserve respect when you fail to be sensitive, caring, and loving. You are insecure, defensive, and angry. No, I don't feel respect for you at those moments."

The “doctor” is hurt that her initial treatment of love was rejected, and now she is choosing to deprive him of the treatment he is crying out for. It is similar to someone going into anaphylactic shock because of a severe peanut allergy and being deprived of his epinephrine. But of course, initially, the “patient” would not tell her what was truly hurting him. In fact, he shut down at the outset of the conflict and left her on her own to hazard a guess for what might be wrong.

With an actual physical ailment, the patient must be honest and forthcoming from the beginning, and the doctor must listen attentively and prescribe the correct treatments. If either does not happen, the sickness will continue and is likely to get worse. Similarly, in marriage, avoiding the Crazy Cycle begins with one spouse being honest and upfront about how he or she has been hurt. Then the other must diagnose the situation through their spouse’s eyes and their spouse’s felt needs in that moment and avoid prescribing for the spouse simply whatever they would want prescribed for them if the situation were reversed.

Because every patient is different, especially your spouse!