Normal Marital Sadism (NMS)*
Learning to hate our partners
We don’t really anticipate that one day we will take pleasure
out of hurting someone we love. We want even less to admit to it. For most
people & couples, their reflex is to deny immediately any form of
dishonesty and heartaches we cause to each other. What possible reason could
justify such behaviour towards a person we have chosen to live the rest of our
lives with? The answer is NONE! That is the reason why we don’t want to admit
it, especially to our partner.
Normal Marital Sadism
Sadism is defined as
deliberately hurting someone, by feeling pleasure or gaining a sense of satisfaction
out of it. In long-term relationships (married or not), this phenomenon is more
wide spread than we would like to admit to ourselves. For this reason, it is
why we consider it “normal” to do marital sadism. But what is defined as normal
doesn’t necessarily mean that it is healthy, but in this situation it means
widespread. Normal Marital Sadism (NMS) is a form
of particular violence that is subtle between two partners, which contrary to
popular belief actually love each other, but also hate each other.
Love & Hate: Same continuum, just different extremities
Romantic relationships would
be way simpler if we could always feel good and feel love for our partner.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the case! There will always be parts of our partner
that we will truly detest. We aren’t perfect and we aren’t the same as our
partner on every aspect. These differences create important conflicts, that are
hard to overcome, which make us feel hate towards our lover. The way we deal
with this ambivalence between the love and hate we feel towards our partner
determines greatly how our relationship will develop.
To deal with theses contradictory emotions in a healthy way, it is necessary to have a good emotional balance. This balance allows us to live better with the fact that we can sometimes hate our partner very profoundly, but also that are partner hates us. The second part is normally the hardest for most people, because it impacts our self-esteem and our sense of self (identity). When the most important person in our lives hate a part of who we are, it can be difficult to deal with the emotions that this rejection creates. It is a difficult reality to accept for someone who doesn’t have a very high self-esteem.
How Does All This Operate Between Partners?
The more we
know our partner, the more we are capable of hurting them, because we’ve had
access to their insecurities along the many years. Generally between partners,
we sooth and help each other through our hardships and limits. The thing is,
the game is played differently when we are in an important conflict with them.
Especially when the couple has sexual difficulties, which is where most people
feel very vulnerable. When we don’t have a solid-flexible self and a capacity to self-sooth, we can easily feel attacked by our partner,
because we take things personally. This tends to create a reflex for vengeance
to downplay are hurt feelings and anxiety. Hence forth, the vicious cycle of
Normal Marital Sadism begins:
- One of the partners feels hurt or emotionally injured
- In return, they attack to feel better about themselves
- The other partner feels hurt and attacks back
- Repeat step 1-2-3
Let’s give a more concrete example to illustrate the
point. A woman has more sexual desire than her lesbian partner since the
beginning of the relationship. After many attempts to initiate sex and being
refused multiple times, she starts feeling reject and unloved. The partner that
has more desire starts feeling less desirable each time she initiates sex. One
night where she tries once more, she gets rejected AGAIN. Unable to deal with
the rejection any longer says to her partner that she has a problem and needs
to deal with it and says she is frigid. The partner with less desire attacks
back by saying that she is the one obsessed with sex and needs to control her
sexual urges. We can all imagine where this story is going. Obviously, gender
and sexual orientation can be interchangeable in this situation, as every
couple dynamic faces these issues.
A variety of more subtle examples can be found in
couples where a partner deliberately irritates the other and gains satisfaction
out of it (E.G.: not changing the toilet paper roll, spending an important sum
without talking about it to our partner, ignoring or being sulky, sighing of
irritation, giving a look of disapproval, etc.). All these behaviours aren’t
done in an innocent way, even though we tend to act that way. We are trying to
get a reaction out of our partner and when we get caught, we pretend that we
didn’t know or that we forgot.
To Admit It or Not to, That is the Question?
We would need to
be crazy to admit that we do Normal Marital Sadism (NMS) to our partner. What would be the advantages of doing such a
thing? Actually, it becomes a question of integrity and loyalty that allows us
to build a collaborative alliance and work on our points of emotional balance. It also allows us to get past our emotional gridlocks in our relationship. Admitting our NMS to our spouse allows our partner to
know who we truly are (the good and the bad) and have self-validated intimacy. How can you justify being loved or loving
someone, when you only present parts of who you are and not the whole you?
Most people won’t even admit to themselves that they
do NMS, because they don’t want to
admit being so mean and having such an ugly side of their personality. That
would also deteriorate their self-image and self-esteem even more. They won’t
want to be truthful to their partner’s about it so that the person who is the
most significant in their lives doesn’t rejects them.
Take the time to reflect on the next sentence and
understand what it means for you and your couple:
“Admitting the
worse in us, brings the best in us, because the worse in us cannot even admit
its own existence!”- David Schnarch
Francois Renaud M.A.
* Inspired by the book Intimacy and Desire from David Schnarch
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