their mothers and toward whom they adopt a juvenile or passive position. Fate acts in strange ways. Do we not, as neurotics, end up marrying our mothers or women who are so much like them that it amounts to the same thing? And if we marry a woman who is not like our mother, do we not treat her like our mother and, in effect, turn her into a mother figure?
The same is true of a woman. If her sexual feelings for her father were suppressed, with a concomitant repression of the memory, the desire remains fixated upon the original love object and can only be transferred to someone who reminds her of that person or to whom she can relate in the same way. This is the basic reason young women marry older men, as we all know. In other cases, though, the acting out of the suppressed desire may not be so evident; but careful, analysis shows that the marital situation replicates the oedipal one.
The following case illustrates this principle. I began by remarking to one patient, Bill, that most men marry their mothers. He immediately countered by saying, “My wife is not at all like my mother.”
I answered that often the personalities are different, but we men treat them as if they were the same. And we insist that they treat us as our mothers treated us.
“Oh, no!” Bill said. “My mother was never home to take care of me. She was always out playing cards. One of my problems with my wife stems from the fact that I did demand that she stay home to take care of the kids and of me. She complained that I never allowed her any independent activity. She has started something for herself now, and I am letting her do it. This is a new attitude for me and it seems to be working out better in our relationship.”
I should add that Bill and his wife were constantly fighting with each other and their relationship was not a happy one. Each felt deeply frustrated in the relationship, yet Bill assured me that they cared deeply for each other.
It would seem, therefore, that my thesis was not applicable to this case. Bill made demands on his wife that he had never been able to make on his mother. But how did it work out in practice? Did his wife take care of him as he demanded?
“No,” Bill said. “She wasn't capable. It turned out to be the other way around. I took care of her.” Bill, then, admitted that this was his father's attitude toward his mother and that his own attitude toward his wife was the same. He also admitted that the two women had many personality traits in common. His wife was anxiety ridden as his mother had been. “When I or the children are away, she becomes a nervous wreck just like my mother.” And both, as we saw, were relatively helpless-needed taking care of.
“In appearance, however,” Bill added, “my wife and my mother are different. I could not have married a woman who looked like my mother because I didn't like the way my mother looked.”
Bill made the point that his wife was sexually attractive to him, which his mother wasn't (we know that this last remark isn't true). “She still is attractive to me, but she is afraid of sex. We don't have much sex because she is sexually unresponsive.” As a result, his own sexual feelings steadily decreased, causing a further deterioration in the relationship.
What a twist of fate. Bill married his wife thinking it was going to be different because of his strong sexual excitement with her, only to find that it ended on the same note as his first love affair-that with his mother-sexual frustration and the loss of sexual feeling. Symbolically, he had taken his father's place with his mother. His father had had no greater fulfillment.
At this point the discussion turned to his wife, Joan. Bill remarked, “I am the exact opposite of her father. He was five feet, two inches tall, I am six feet, two. He was always broke and never home. I am financially successful and caring. He never touched his daughter, would not permit her to sit on his lap, and was ashamed of showing affection. This is not true of me.”
We do not consciously choose mates who are like our parents. If anything, we seem to pick those who, on the surface, are just the opposite. However, as I pointed out earlier, on the unconscious level each boy marries his mother as each girl marries her father. Unconsciously, we choose as spouses those who have traits or features in common with the loved parents. From what I could determine, Bill's wife and his mother had in common the fact that on an emotional level both were little girls who needed and were looking for a father.
Bill was aware that Joan's fear of sex stemmed from her experience of rejection by her father. That rejection was due to sexual feelings that made her feel guilty. I knew that Bill, too, suffered from sexual guilt. That could be deduced from the severe tension in his pelvic area, which limited the flow of sexual excitation into the pelvis. I asked Bill about his early sexual experiences with his wife.
Bill related the following: “We were very strongly attracted to each other. Joan let herself go with me as she had not done with other men. We engaged in heavy petting, but we did not have intercourse. I did not want to do that until we were married. Joan came from a good family, and I respected her. Strangely, after we got married, all her passion disappeared. We have had problems ever since.”
Bill did not realize that in protecting Joan's chastity, he rejected her sexuality just as her father had done. Joan desperately needed to feel that her sexuality was normal and healthy. Bill could not help projecting his own sexual guilt on her. In his mind's eye, he saw Joan as the mother of his children and he unconsciously identified her with his own mother. Having suppressed his sexual feelings for his mother, he could not fully transfer them to his wife. Throughout his marriage, Bill suffered from some degree of erective impotence. He blamed it on his wife's fear of sex and lack of passion. It is not difficult to see that she was disappointed in her marriage by Bill's lack of manhood. At bottom, he proved to be not so different from her father.
At our next session, Bill said, “I realize I am both opposite and similar to Joan's father. She treats me with the same guilt and fear she has toward her father. From time to time I will experience failure in my ability to hold the erection. I feel terrible. I feel impotent. I feel like a failure.”
We have now uncovered the common factor that identified Bill with Joan's father. Bill had characterized Joan's father as a failure financially. He now recognized that he, too, was a failure, not only because of his difficulties with erection but because his wife had never reached a sexual climax. He blamed himself for this, and he felt guilty toward his wife for his failure. The situation was like a vicious circle, slowly enmeshing the two of them in misery, each outwardly blaming the other but inwardly blaming himself.
Having suppressed much of his sexuality in “resolving” the oedipal situation, Bill could not approach a woman manfully. He was too sexually insecure. His structure only allowed him to pick a girl-woman who needed him. He could then be sure she wouldn't abandon him. In return, he assumed the responsibility to help her, to protect her, and to fulfill her. He played the role of the father, but he was still the boy. As a boy, he had to pick a nonorgasmic woman, which only confirmed his failure to be a man. The harder he tried to overcome his weakness, the more he failed, for he was denying a fate that he had structured in his body.
The idea of fate as body structure is more clearly shown in the following case.
Ruth was a woman about forty years old who complained of depression and a lack of feeling. Her sexual desire was very low. However, she could be excited by a woman, especially when she fantasized kissing a woman with tongue penetration. One other complaint was about severe ulcer type pains in her stomach. In other areas of her life Ruth was a highly successful person. She had her own very profitable business. She had many friends and was socially active. She was married and had a family. Publicly, Ruth was one kind of person; privately, she was another. This denoted a split in her personality that was also manifested physically.
Ruth's problem was clearly revealed in her body. The upper half of her body was slender and well shaped and had a very girlish
