Transactional marriage, devoid of any real love

[easterncappy]

Did anyone else's parents have a totally transactional marriage?

My mom and dad had a terrible marriage, although neither of them would ever admit it was bad. To them, it was normal - marriage was "man does x, woman does y", even if it means both of you have multiple affairs, treat each other poorly, and don't even like each other. They genuinely couldn't fathom the idea that other couples actually love each other, are loyal to each other, live peacefully... they called this a "Hollywood marriage", because clearly it only existed on TV, and every other couple secretly lived just like my mom and dad did, they just weren't honest about it. They thought I was out of my mind and delusional for desiring one of those "Hollywood marriages", and I was met with eye rolling and sarcasm when I implied that they do in fact exist in the real world and are actually very common.

I think a part of it comes from their lack of normal human emotions, like they view *every* relationship as entirely transactional so why not marriage too? As much as I don't play the "abloobloobloo they had rough childhoods too!" game, I think this is all they saw growing up because their parents were just like them too. On some level I think they suspect that other people live differently, and they're bitter about it, so they pretend it couldn't even be possible. It's the real self vs. false self. The real self is the one that secretly wants a loving marriage with a genuinely faithful and kind partner, the false self is the one that's pretending no one has that and it doesn't exist and you're a big stupid idiot for thinking it's real.

[NarcKiddo]

Funnily enough, I was just speaking about this with my therapist today.

My father never expresses emotions and I am not actually sure what emotions he has. He needed a wife who could cope with the travelling aspects of his job and I think he picked my mother purely because she fitted the bill as she had been brought up in that environment. She herself needed to escape PD parents so he fitted the bill for her.

My mother is emotional and volatile and has been very unhappy throughout the marriage. But won't hear a word said against my father except by her. I doubt my father has enjoyed the marriage but I am honestly not sure if he cares. As long as the family behaves properly (as he would see it) and does not cause him problems he just follows his own path. I am sure he is aware of her affairs but so long as they are conducted discreetly and do not bring shame on him he does not care. He himself could not be bothered with an affair. Both of them display a public image of a happy and supportive marriage.

He was never there for us as children. Children are the woman's responsibility. She could have been beating us black and blue and I don't think he would even have noticed, far less done anything about it unless there was a danger of it becoming public.

My mother always goes on about how other women seek to trap men because they can't cope without a husband. Projection, much?

[easterncappy]

My mom had a huge prejudice against unmarried women, divorced women, remarried women... probably because she was upset that her marriage was a flaming heap of garbage and other women simply did better when they found themselves in that situation.

The affairs were obscene. I'm glad I'm not the only one who had that WTF moment as a child. It was more like a complex series of WTF appointments.

I remember finding my dad's accounts on affair websites totally by accident when I was using the family computer. Around 10 years old. I told my mom, he told her he was "running the accounts for a friend so his girlfriend wouldn't find out" (stupid excuse, also, why wouldn't it be suspicious that someone is helping their friend cheat on a partner? I would be horrified to find out that my spouse is a part of such an evil scheme *if* it was true, which it wasn't), and she believed him... if I brought it up again, she got angry at me. My dad also had a really horrifying addiction to pornography, I'm talking outright illegal content, also something I found accidentally on the family computer on repeated occasions.

She'd tell me after this that monogamy isn't natural and people sometimes cheat, making it out like everyone does this. I also remember her taking me "shopping for sweatpants", which was code we used around my dad when she was going to visit her boyfriend(s). Looking back, I cannot believe she dragged me to visits with her side pieces. She'd get really angry if these men were also married. Everyone involved lied and said they're divorced. It was just Drama Central.

When two boys liked me in middle school, she told me to date both of them as long as they don't find out about each other. When I was trying to find serious dating partners, she'd only care about their ability to provide for me materially, all else was okay even if it meant I'd end up with someone who hits me and has nothing in common with me (there were a few of them). Like she thought that being cheated on was a fair price for being able to buy new throw pillows every month.

As for children being a woman's responsibility... my dad would smugly say with this terribly smirk on his face, "I left that up to your mom, I wouldn't have known how to do it, and women are better at it". And it's bizarre comparing it to my husband who is always trying to play with, feed, cuddle, etc. our baby daughter. It comes so naturally to fathers who don't have personality disorders. Even though my dad is a horrible person, it had negative effects on me to never have gotten any positive attention from him as a child.

[treesgrowslowly]

I have long seen these transactional marriages as superficial marriages.

The problem with people who remain on the superficial level is that they have a distorted vision of themselves and others, and relationships in general. What I consider very superficial, they consider "normal". I can see varying levels of depth,  but they cannot. All they can do is see things from their own myopic perspective.

They rarely if ever have insights on shallow vs deep because it would require some depth to investigate that topic!

I've also seen what you describe. They judge other relationships harshly despite being myopic. They don't see they are myopic. I believe that is a garden variety defense mechanism, that comes out when they need to feel superior.

It's all such a mess. I personally think superficiality is set early on in teens or 20s. Maybe some people develop depth later in life but I think most people who are transactional in their 20s remain that way throughout their life. As parents, their more insightful (adult) children baffle and bewilder them. I bet that most transactional parents who have multiple children,  give birth to at least one kid who looks at the transactional ways and thinks, whoa that is just lacking depth. It's very hard to have parents who lack depth and maturity. For sure.

The good news is that we don't have to parent our kids the way that we were parented. You are doing good things easterncappy! Breaking the cycle as they say.

Trees

[Escaped_Goat]

Yes this is one of the hallmarks of unresolved trauma. Parent spoke a lot about how no one is actually happily married. He had stopped talking about it with me though when i indeed became happily married. I think it relates to denial of how their trauma is affecting them, and as if humans are always fake as a way to cope with how false they feel. It's sour grapes, like 'I don't have any happy relationships because they don't actually exist anywhere'.

[Pepin]

Transactional marriage - this is what I believe CN MIL was living.  I believe it drove her crazy to see that DH and I loved each other.  Actually, of all DH's siblings, our marriage was utterly different.  Their marriages seem cold and just mean.  I have to fight hard to keep mine from getting cold, really hard.  I married DH for what I hope is for life.  It isn't a tit for tat situation at all.  We both bring our own things to the table -- things that I do, I don't expect him to do and vice versa.  He doesn't owe me anything - just what we vowed to each other.  And yeah, its hard when you've been married 20+ years sometimes to keep the fire burning but it can be done.

One of the things that struck me and I'll never forget was when DH's father was dying.  CN MIL was beside herself of course and it was her behavior near his end that shocked me.  Rather than spending every last minute with him, she gave up.  She didn't want to stay overnight in the hospital with him if he should wake up.  She didn't want to hug him or reassure him.  She completely withdrew and had DH manage all of it.  I mean....wow.  If my DH were on his way out, I'd be setting up camp next to him. 

I think CN MIL and FIL's marriage was out of convenience at the time.  They weren't really a match and behaved like roommates.  It was clear that FIL was not up to CN MIL's expectations and CN MIL herself was actually quite annoying to him and he often had to get out and take breaks from her during the day when they were retired.  He needed space from her demands.  And sadly, those demands were turned onto DH.  FIL was loving in many ways.  CN MIL was not loving....she thrived on transactions to elevate her status. 

[easterncappy]

Yes this is one of the hallmarks of unresolved trauma. Parent spoke a lot about how no one is actually happily married. He had stopped talking about it with me though when i indeed became happily married. I think it relates to denial of how their trauma is affecting them, and as if humans are always fake as a way to cope with how false they feel. It's sour grapes, like 'I don't have any happy relationships because they don't actually exist anywhere'.

What do you mean this is one of the hallmarks of unresolved trauma? I'm curious because I'm trying to find more literature about it. Growing up with these people gave me a huge intellectual interest in deciphering their nonsense, lol. The sour grapes comment was eye-opening, I guess that's it for my parents, they're just upset that their flaming garbage dump of a marriage isn't as fulfilling as it ought to be, despite the fact that they're never going to leave each other. Like it's really baffling to me that they're both so clearly miserable and just won't leave, no matter what.

[easterncappy]

I have long seen these transactional marriages as superficial marriages.

The problem with people who remain on the superficial level is that they have a distorted vision of themselves and others, and relationships in general. What I consider very superficial, they consider "normal". I can see varying levels of depth,  but they cannot. All they can do is see things from their own myopic perspective.

They rarely if ever have insights on shallow vs deep because it would require some depth to investigate that topic!

I've also seen what you describe. They judge other relationships harshly despite being myopic. They don't see they are myopic. I believe that is a garden variety defense mechanism, that comes out when they need to feel superior.

It's all such a mess. I personally think superficiality is set early on in teens or 20s. Maybe some people develop depth later in life but I think most people who are transactional in their 20s remain that way throughout their life. As parents, their more insightful (adult) children baffle and bewilder them. I bet that most transactional parents who have multiple children,  give birth to at least one kid who looks at the transactional ways and thinks, whoa that is just lacking depth. It's very hard to have parents who lack depth and maturity. For sure.

The good news is that we don't have to parent our kids the way that we were parented. You are doing good things easterncappy! Breaking the cycle as they say.

Trees

Thank you for the insightful response. You always give me something to think about.

I suppose this could also relate to their inability to have any genuine, long-lasting convictions. I know all sorts of people... different religions, different political beliefs, different lifestyles... and all of them are capable of explaining their opinions, standing by them even when things get tough, and holding onto them for life or until they experience a genuine change of mind from being exposed to new information. But it's not on and off again, constantly switching back and forth between two extremes. Occasionally, my parents would threaten divorce, but it'd be just that - a stupid, empty threat. I believed it a couple of times as a yougin but I quickly learned that's just what they say when they get a little too uncomfy with the dysfunction, before going back to normal the next day. Literally no one else I know does this. If you threaten divorce in a normal marriage, it's because you're really at that breaking point. They would do this with every other major belief or major life decision. Back and forth, back and forth... like none of it had any real meaning. In this case, it was because their marriage never had any real meaning to them.

I want to pick their brains so bad but we don't talk anymore and they'd just lie to me anyway, lol.

[treesgrowslowly]

Hi Easterncappy,

What you describe, sounds to me like emotional immaturity.

I was like you after I became an adult - being raised by dysfunctional parents made me really curious about how and why they were like this! I hear you.

It took me a while to think about emotional immaturity as being like a developmental delay. So then, I could start to imagine that within their brain, the functioning just wasn't there.

They can look like other adults, and they can pretend to have 'adult' levels of functioning sometimes, but if you "look under the hood" i.e. look at how they behave over time and especially when they are upset, you can see that the mature responses you can expect of other people their same age - are just not actually there when you look at how your parents actually manage their emotions and decisions.

My parents could 'fake' adult like behaviours in a lot of situations and socially. But in reality, the functioning is not at an adult level. This is why we end up scratching our heads around these people so often. She might be 50 years old chronologically, but she deals with being upset, with the brain development of a 5 year old (for example).

Often, emotionally immature people learn how to mimic others so that in public at least, they can appear 'normal'. Mimicry is not the same as actually possessing those traits. As a child I could sense that something was 'off' but it was only after I developed into an adult, that I could truly comprehend the reasons for PD behaviours.

We can't do anything about the level of development (brain development) our parents had / didn't have. In a lot of cases, not even sure they could do much about it depending on what are the factors for them (i.e. trauma that resulted in injuries to how their left and right hemispheres communicate to one another, developmental delays, other undiagnosed traits such as perhaps having undiagnosed ADHD etc...). They would need to become deeply invested in helping themselves out of the immature state they are in, and I am not sure that is even possible - I have read that some narcissists can get better with therapy but they would need a lot a lot a lot of effective treatments over time. Most don't even want to change.

I think my own healing work lept forward as I worked to accept that the type of relationship I needed with those people was completely unrealistic. There was just no reliable, adult-like behaviour that I could expect out of them. They might be in a good mood for an hour, making some visits more tolerable than others, but in terms of having them show up for me as supportive people who would foster emotional safety with me or for me as their child? Ha! Not a chance.

I'm going to suggest that a possible explanation for how your parents could cry divorce every so often is because that is how we are as small children - we express extreme emotions "I hate apples!" and the adults around us know not to put much stock into what a small child says they "hate" or "love" because their brains are just at the beginning of developing. Our species has a long brain maturation process that can occur over 20 years or so. And that process can be interrupted by something that halts the maturation process. Hence the concept of arrested development.

You are right - even if you tried to talk with them and ask them describe and account for their instability and emotional immaturity, they wouldn't be able to. Mine certainly couldn't.

If they've never developed beyond a certain point, then they don't know what that would even feel like. They've always dealt with the world in these ways. To them, it's not immaturity it is just "who I am".

At some point, you likely matured beyond the emotional / mental age that they were at. I'll post some articles in the other media section that summarizes this stuff.

Getting defensive when asked about their own behaviours is another way that they reveal their actual emotional age. As young children we were defensive when we felt upset, but with 'normal' brain development, that stuff gives way to a more mature way of being and understanding ourselves. 

If we look at the mountain of research on child development, we can see how much has been studied regarding how childhood is a time of great neuroplasticity so that children can learn how to share, take turns, not lie, and regulate their own emotions. But when I think about my own parents, having so many years of "data" from watching them and being with them, I know that they could not do those things reliably.

They had different behaviours based on whether other people were watching or not, and based on whether they would get in trouble or not. Those are the moral judgements of very young children....

It is very sad I know, to realize how immature our own parents truly are / were. We grew up without access to a lot of the experiences we needed as a result. Thankfully, with time and self-care and knowledge - and access to relationships that are actually emotionally safe, we can heal from having PD / emotionally immature parents.

This is what the writer Pete Walker writes about so well in my opinion. His book "Surviving to Thriving" describes the steps in detail on how to address the damage done by how we were treated in the past.

Trees

[easterncappy]

Transactional marriage - this is what I believe CN MIL was living.  I believe it drove her crazy to see that DH and I loved each other.  Actually, of all DH's siblings, our marriage was utterly different.  Their marriages seem cold and just mean.  I have to fight hard to keep mine from getting cold, really hard.  I married DH for what I hope is for life.  It isn't a tit for tat situation at all.  We both bring our own things to the table -- things that I do, I don't expect him to do and vice versa.  He doesn't owe me anything - just what we vowed to each other.  And yeah, its hard when you've been married 20+ years sometimes to keep the fire burning but it can be done.

One of the things that struck me and I'll never forget was when DH's father was dying.  CN MIL was beside herself of course and it was her behavior near his end that shocked me.  Rather than spending every last minute with him, she gave up.  She didn't want to stay overnight in the hospital with him if he should wake up.  She didn't want to hug him or reassure him.  She completely withdrew and had DH manage all of it.  I mean....wow.  If my DH were on his way out, I'd be setting up camp next to him. 

I think CN MIL and FIL's marriage was out of convenience at the time.  They weren't really a match and behaved like roommates.  It was clear that FIL was not up to CN MIL's expectations and CN MIL herself was actually quite annoying to him and he often had to get out and take breaks from her during the day when they were retired.  He needed space from her demands.  And sadly, those demands were turned onto DH.  FIL was loving in many ways.  CN MIL was not loving....she thrived on transactions to elevate her status.

My mom never liked my husband. I eventually figured out that there were two reasons for this:

She was scared of the idea of me ending up with a nice man who treats me well. That would disrupt the generational dysfunction of women marrying nasty violent alcoholic perverts and then bonding with their daughters who would end up making the same poor decision. I would eventually grow a spine, realize that some people will love you unconditionally and defend you, and I'd realize how screwed up my life was and I'd leave. Which is exactly what happened. If she suspected this happening with previous boyfriends, they'd be "brainwashing me against my family". My husband from the beginning would tell me my parents are screwed up and help me find a place to stay (he lived 2 hours away during the early part of our relationship) if my parents were giving me too much trouble. My mom hated it.

And she was bothered by the fact that he actually liked me. There were genuinely no red flags. He isn't perfect and can be a goober sometimes and we have our disagreements, but he's not a pervert, no anger issues, no substance abuse, no verbal abuse... she even asked me "what do you even have to offer a boy like that?". I don't know, mom, maybe he just likes me. She treated other women in actually happy relationships with a lot of disdain too. They must be pretending! Their husbands aren't rEaL mEn! They're not rEaL wOmEn! Why aren't they miserable like me!

I can relate to my parents living like roommates. I know for a fact there was no intimacy because they both told me repeatedly. It was basically them marrying the first person who showed interest, partly convenience and partly just having low standards. They had damn near nothing in common. And both of them resented me a lot for walking away from the first long term relationship I had, which was very dysfunctional. Cue the comments about how I broke an innocent boy's heart and I'm an evil woman and not traditional enough and how I should have just stuck it out. Because that's what they did, no one else is allowed to do anything different. Lol