Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / If You Consider Your Mother/Father Better Than Your Partner, Your Marriage Will Suffer

Transcript

If You Consider Your Mother/Father Better Than Your Partner, Your Marriage Will Suffer · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:05
  Hi everybody, and welcome to the doctor.
• 0:07
  Psych mom show today. We are going to talk about
• 0:10
  people who think that they are opposite.
• 0:12
  Gender parent is superior to their partner, and I see that a
• 0:18
  lot. I see it honestly more nowadays
• 0:21
  in women. That think that their fathers
• 0:22
  better than their husband, I used to see more men.
• 0:25
  They thought their wife was less of a good mother than their
• 0:30
  mother. I don't see that as much.
• 0:31
  We'll talk about why we'll talk about both and how to handle it.
• 0:35
  Reframe this. And why you may think it?
• 0:37
  It's not just because your spouse sucks so much before
• 0:40
  that, please do subscribe. I'm getting some subscribers
• 0:43
  every day and that is awesome. Really keeps me motivated to
• 0:47
  keep doing this a quarter of the episodes or subscriber only.
• 0:52
  So, if you do not subscribe, you're missing out on 25% of my
• 0:56
  awesome content. Most recently was discriminating
• 0:59
  between whining and expressing your emotions.
• 1:02
  The episode called it is true. Nobody Likes a whiner true.
• 1:08
  So anyhow, let's move forward to today's topic before my kids
• 1:12
  wake up. So today what I want to start
• 1:18
  with is why people may think that their husband is less of a
• 1:24
  good you know provider than their dad.
• 1:27
  So why a couple of reasons first of all, women have their dad's
• 1:32
  on a pedestal in healthy relationships.
• 1:35
  Father-daughter relationships. I mean, there's plenty of us out
• 1:38
  here adult children of dysfunctional families.
• 1:40
  Who, I mean, this is like 99 problems, but this ain't one.
• 1:45
  When you grow up in a dysfunctional family, you're
• 1:47
  never comparing anybody unfavorably to your parent like,
• 1:50
  you know, basically everything is good.
• 1:53
  You know. Basically they just have to not
• 1:54
  be a complete lunatic and it's cool but for people who grew up
• 1:59
  in these really functional Healthy Families, maybe not
• 2:02
  though because I'll get to that in a second but What they think
• 2:05
  of, as functional healthy families, that people Envy then
• 2:09
  they think of their, especially, their cross-gender parent as
• 2:13
  like they put them on a pedestal you've heard the term Daddy's
• 2:16
  girl Mama's Boy those things are real and so a girl especially
• 2:21
  tends to idealize her father her father tends to take care of
• 2:25
  her, puts her on a pedestal in return.
• 2:28
  The father wants to do everything for the daughter
• 2:32
  because frequently now this is where it doesn't get his phone.
• 2:35
  Frequently. The dad does not have his good
• 2:36
  relationship with the mom with his own wife, as he does with
• 2:39
  the daughter who never criticizes him.
• 2:42
  Always thinks. He's awesome, Etc.
• 2:43
  So a reason that women May in particular think that their dad
• 2:48
  is a better husband than their own husband is because they
• 2:51
  never had to be married to their dad.
• 2:53
  Their dad may be kind of annoying in many ways, but they
• 2:55
  only saw the part of their dad. That was really doing everything
• 2:59
  for them for the child, which honestly maybe with their
• 3:03
  husband does for their daughter, you know, but they're not seeing
• 3:06
  it that way. They were just comparing what
• 3:09
  they think is Apples to Apples, but it's really apples to
• 3:11
  oranges, which is this cross comparison of the husband.
• 3:16
  You know, the dad as a husband versus the partner is a husband,
• 3:20
  they're really looking at the dad as a father versus.
• 3:23
  The spouse has a husband. And everybody like wants to take
• 3:26
  care of their kids differently than they do with their spouse.
• 3:29
  This is why I have to explain re parenting so much about how
• 3:33
  people secret desire is. To be treated with the same sort
• 3:37
  of unconditional love that people give their children, but
• 3:39
  it's hard to really admit that. And to bring that thought into
• 3:43
  Consciousness and to express it, especially in today's
• 3:46
  egalitarian, Focus Society. Right?
• 3:48
  So the even though it's both both genders, by the way.
• 3:51
  So, both genders really have a secret yearning to have
• 3:54
  unconditional love from an attachment figure which in
• 3:57
  adulthood is the spouse. So anyhow, a girl, a woman May
• 4:02
  frequently say things like my dad can fix everything.
• 4:04
  A thing around the house and my husband can't or my dad is
• 4:08
  always there for me. He always picks up his phone and
• 4:11
  my husband doesn't or my dad is so patient and kind to me and my
• 4:16
  husband loses his temper. And if you're doing this you're
• 4:19
  really sabotaging the marriage because you're putting your
• 4:23
  parent in this role where you continually keep relying on them
• 4:29
  in ways that you don't rely on your spouse.
• 4:31
  So then your spouse never gets better.
• 4:33
  So it's like when Talk about when sometimes the Mother-in-law
• 4:37
  intention on intentionally boxes, the son-in-law out of
• 4:41
  parenting, especially when there's a new baby, the
• 4:43
  Mother-in-law the woman's mother will take over everything.
• 4:46
  Then the son, the father of the baby has really nothing to do.
• 4:50
  So then he just kind of does him.
• 4:52
  And then he never learns what to do with the baby, and then the
• 4:54
  cycle continues, because he doesn't know what to do with the
• 4:56
  baby. Then the woman calls her mother
• 4:58
  more and more Etc, but it can be the same thing with the dad.
• 5:01
  So like, let's say young couple their 25, they move.
• 5:04
  In together, she says to the guy.
• 5:07
  Do you know how to hang this picture?
• 5:09
  This let's say it's a mirror. Let's give him some credit.
• 5:12
  Everybody knows how to hang a picture.
• 5:13
  Even I can hang a picture, you know how to hang this 60-pound
• 5:17
  mirror and he says, oh my mom. Well yeah, well I think I can.
• 5:20
  She's like I'll forget it, I'll call my dad and so she does.
• 5:24
  And so dad comes over and he hangs the 60 pound mirror.
• 5:27
  He feels good about himself and she feels good about him and
• 5:30
  guess who doesn't feel that good the guy, but what's he going to
• 5:33
  say don't call your father? May say that then he looks like
• 5:36
  a controlling asshole so he's kind of in a fucked situation.
• 5:40
  Now when it's the inverse of that one, it's the the guy with
• 5:43
  his mother frequently. The guy thinks his mother cooks
• 5:47
  better parents better, she's more laid-back.
• 5:50
  What they the reason that I don't hear as much downward
• 5:53
  comparison is, I see more women that work then and are equal
• 5:57
  Breadwinners to you know, in comparison to women from the
• 6:01
  previous generation who didn't work and certainly weren't equal
• 6:04
  Breadwinners. As often so therefore the wife
• 6:07
  has like an automatic win if she works because then she could be
• 6:11
  like yeah of course your mom made chicken soup every day
• 6:13
  because you know she didn't have a job.
• 6:15
  So you know then then she does have a point made for the mother
• 6:19
  was a homemaker. And now those woman is a working
• 6:21
  mom. She could say, well we have
• 6:22
  different priorities and that's why this and that but it's still
• 6:26
  toxic for there to be those comparisons.
• 6:28
  And also in that one, particularly the guy tends to
• 6:32
  forget that the previous generation of moms were all More
• 6:35
  laid-back. So it wasn't just his unique
• 6:37
  mom, you know, that didn't care where he went.
• 6:40
  It was like every mom and the 70s didn't care where anybody
• 6:43
  one. And now every mom is like hyper
• 6:46
  Vigilant in comparison to the previous generation.
• 6:49
  So his wife is should be compared to her own generation
• 6:53
  either way. And oh by the way, the same
• 6:54
  thing of course with men being handy it used to be a really big
• 6:57
  deal. Every man you should know how to
• 6:58
  hang a 60-pound mirror. Now, wouldn't when is that
• 7:01
  learned? Never like, I certainly don't
• 7:03
  see my kids learning that shit in school.
• 7:05
  You know, so either you learn it from your own father or you
• 7:07
  don't. And a lot of those men that know
• 7:09
  how to do those things. Their kid wasn't interested
• 7:12
  because it didn't seem like they were going to have a blue-collar
• 7:15
  occupation or need to know anything or that this was even
• 7:18
  relevant in their generation. So there's a lot of
• 7:21
  cross-generational comparisons that need to be thought of but
• 7:25
  you know in in light of what the you know, the the whole The
• 7:33
  whole framing of the situation is really based on Familia of
• 7:38
  the generation, so it would be totally weird for a guy who grew
• 7:42
  up in the 50s, Not to know how to like build a doghouse like
• 7:46
  from scratch. Whereas like, a guy who was born
• 7:49
  in the seventies or eighties, they don't know that shit.
• 7:51
  Right? You know.
• 7:52
  So they could look it up on YouTube, they could figure it
• 7:55
  out. But here's the thing, you never
• 7:57
  going to look on YouTube and figure it out if she's always
• 7:59
  calling her dad, because why don't Doghouse.
• 8:02
  Did you're going to build? This is going to look like dog
• 8:03
  shit, nice to the dog house that he could build blindfolded.
• 8:06
  So why are you even going to try?
• 8:08
  You know? And so if you're caught in a
• 8:10
  situation, a couple things to think about a keep in mind, the
• 8:14
  cross generation, comparison isn't good.
• 8:16
  Second of all, keep in mind that you are a spouse has zero in
• 8:20
  motivation to learn how to improve and these ways that you
• 8:23
  value, if you don't ever give them a shot because you're
• 8:27
  always, literally calling your parent in to solve the problem,
• 8:30
  and also it's making. Spouse feel like shit and this
• 8:34
  will erode the closeness and connection in your relationship
• 8:37
  very quickly. Another point is that if you are
• 8:41
  always having your parent come in, that this is very important
• 8:45
  to fill in then when you were dating, you were instinctively
• 8:50
  not looking for somebody who could do everything for you
• 8:53
  because you thought that your parent would still be around.
• 8:55
  So think about how unfair that situation is, right?
• 8:57
  So let's say your dad is very handy or four Forget the dad,
• 9:02
  let's say your mom can cook. I see this show now, it's
• 9:05
  called, I'm in love with a mama's boy.
• 9:07
  It's really funny. It's like totally the situation
• 9:11
  and people brought it up in my, in my Facebook group, I was
• 9:13
  already watching it though, it's hilarious.
• 9:16
  But so let's say that the mom lives next door and she's always
• 9:19
  cooking and bringing stuff over. Well, the guy things, she's
• 9:22
  going to keep doing that, you know?
• 9:24
  So then when he's looking for a wife, he may have been trained
• 9:28
  to value a woman who knows how to cook, because his mother knew
• 9:31
  how to cook You talked about that, that was good.
• 9:33
  So she taught him to Value it, but he may not even be looking
• 9:36
  for somebody who could do it. Because in his mind is mother
• 9:38
  still going to be doing it. And when they have kids as
• 9:40
  mother's going to be watching the kids and cooking for them
• 9:42
  etcetera, Etc. So he's literally not even
• 9:45
  selecting on this variable, that's important to him instead
• 9:48
  he's going to select for other things because he thinks that he
• 9:50
  already has somebody who will cook for him.
• 9:53
  Same thing with the handy dad, the woman thinks.
• 9:57
  All right, so I this is not obviously articulated this is in
• 10:01
  the subconscious Conscious my dad will always be there for me.
• 10:04
  He's always going to move me and oh, and he's got it, you know,
• 10:06
  paint and help and make the dog house and whatever the fuck.
• 10:10
  And so I can go for this intellectual guy or I can go for
• 10:14
  this, you know, real real artistic guy, you know, or I can
• 10:20
  go for this guy who is very much of an abstract thinker type
• 10:26
  because my dad will always be there to do that stuff.
• 10:28
  Anyway, so here I am, I'm gonna have like everything so I'm
• 10:31
  going to have the guy who's, like an abstract thinker.
• 10:34
  I'm going to have the guy who can make my dog house and I'm
• 10:38
  gonna, you know, be like made in the shade, but the reality is,
• 10:42
  is people don't think about how little they are going to respect
• 10:45
  their partner. If their partner cannot do,
• 10:48
  these things that they were trained from childhood are very
• 10:50
  important in the opposite sex because they are the things that
• 10:53
  were extolled in the family of origin that put each parent on a
• 10:57
  pedestal. So, if the mom is an excellent
• 10:58
  cook and she's always talking about her cooking, And this is,
• 11:02
  by the way, just let me use this time to bracket, this bracket
• 11:06
  means come back to it, but we're just going to talk about it now
• 11:09
  frequently, these situations happen more in the narcissistic
• 11:11
  family, there's a good book, it's half jargon though, but the
• 11:15
  first half is good. I mean for for just the regular
• 11:19
  reader, that is not a psychologist.
• 11:21
  The first half is good, called the narcissistic family.
• 11:24
  And in the beginning and the intro, it's like there's like
• 11:27
  two psychologists writing it or something.
• 11:28
  And they're like, we used to see all these people that presented
• 11:31
  as All children of Alcoholics with those same traits but there
• 11:34
  was no alcoholism in the family. What was going on?
• 11:37
  Oh, we realized they were narcissist in the family.
• 11:40
  So adult children of narcissists frequently are raised with a
• 11:45
  really set with a very defined set of preferences in the
• 11:52
  opposite sex that are wholly based on the narcissistic
• 11:56
  parents strengths. So a man who grows up in a very
• 12:00
  narcissistic family, the Point of narcissistic family is a
• 12:03
  family that is where the mythology of the families that
• 12:06
  they are a better family than everybody else.
• 12:08
  Which is why kids in those families frequently grew up with
• 12:11
  a lot of mental issues and emotional issues, but they don't
• 12:14
  know why. Because they're like, my family
• 12:16
  was perfect by family was perfect.
• 12:18
  You've ever thought? My family was perfect, ain't no
• 12:20
  family is perfect, you know? So, so rethink that, because if
• 12:25
  your family mythology, is that your family is better than every
• 12:27
  other family definitionally your family's, not perfect, because
• 12:30
  y'all look down on, People, or you were trained to.
• 12:33
  And this sort of thing, may become more and more evident as
• 12:36
  you start dating and stuff and like, people don't necessarily
• 12:39
  get along with your perfect family in the ways that you
• 12:41
  always thought that they would. But that itself is an aside and
• 12:45
  could be different podcast on the narcissistic family.
• 12:47
  Although I really did give you that the major bullet points
• 12:50
  there. But anyway, if you grow up in a
• 12:52
  narcissistic family, let's say your mom's always like oh aren't
• 12:54
  you so grateful that I'm such a good cook and the father's like
• 12:57
  Mom is the best cook in the whole world.
• 13:00
  Look at other women's cooking. This is Nothing like Mom's
• 13:02
  cookie. Well, then how you think you're
• 13:04
  going to think when you're older, you're going to think
• 13:06
  cooking super important in a woman.
• 13:08
  Now if you think that this awesome but then if you think
• 13:11
  that and you get a woman who can't cook, think about how
• 13:14
  fucking nuts that is right? You getting a woman that you can
• 13:17
  look down on that your mother's going to look down on and why?
• 13:20
  Because subconsciously, you do not want her to compete with
• 13:22
  your mother because I would not go over.
• 13:24
  Well, so you are trained to like cooking, but then you're getting
• 13:27
  woman who can't cook, then your mother's going to have to be
• 13:29
  over more, everybody's going to be Condescending quote, joking,
• 13:34
  teasing your wife who can't cook.
• 13:36
  And for what, you know, this is going to erode your marriage.
• 13:40
  So the point is, if you are on the market or even just
• 13:43
  retrospectively thinking about when you were on the dating
• 13:45
  Market, think about whether you subconsciously pick somebody
• 13:48
  that would not compete with your parent, because your parent
• 13:51
  tends towards self-absorption and narcissism.
• 13:54
  And you know, it wouldn't go well if your parent was competed
• 13:57
  with. So do you have the dad that
• 13:59
  would really have his panties in a Twist?
• 14:01
  If Her husband did make a doghouse you know do you because
• 14:04
  think about it if otherwise, let me tell you how it goes in a
• 14:08
  best-case scenario in a best case scenario, if there's no
• 14:12
  narcissistic traits around the mother meets the daughter, the
• 14:15
  daughter-in-law the daughter-in-law understands that
• 14:17
  the guy likes to eat, he likes cooking.
• 14:20
  She in a healthy relationship, does not look down on that but
• 14:23
  wants to do it because he likes it and the Mother-in-law teaches
• 14:26
  the daughter-in-law. Some shit from cooking, you
• 14:29
  know, some stuff, some stuff, some recipes and Long because
• 14:33
  also the mother is very complementary toward the
• 14:37
  daughter law and everything else.
• 14:39
  I mean, in her efforts to cook too, but in everything else
• 14:42
  also. So in a healthier Dynamic, these
• 14:44
  things do not really turn into an issue.
• 14:46
  So the father comes over and he teaches the son-in-law how to
• 14:49
  hang the picture. Bam, this is done, but the put
• 14:53
  the times when this goes very poorly and when the person
• 14:58
  continues to compare their spouse on, favorably to the
• 15:01
  Opposite gender parent. There has been no such teaching.
• 15:05
  There has been no such collegial team spirit and with there isn't
• 15:08
  there's no vibe that the spouse and like that the second
• 15:14
  generation the adult child and their spouse are going to have
• 15:18
  to do things on their own. So either they ought to train
• 15:21
  how to do that or they should figure out how to Outsource it.
• 15:25
  Etcetera, Etc. So usually when this continues
• 15:28
  to be a problem, there is some self-absorption or even
• 15:30
  narcissistic. It's in the family of origin of
• 15:33
  the person who's continually doing the downward comparison
• 15:36
  between their parent and their spouse because it has been
• 15:40
  hammered into them that the parents are basically going to
• 15:42
  live forever, which is a conceit of narcissistic parents.
• 15:45
  They literally do not want to pass the torch to the Next
• 15:48
  Generation because then they would have to think that they're
• 15:50
  irrelevant so they don't want to teach the son-in-law had to
• 15:53
  build a doghouse. They don't want to teach the
• 15:55
  daughter-in-law had to make the food because then it means that
• 15:58
  they're going to become Superfluous and they don't want
• 16:01
  to be super Louis or irrelevant at all.
• 16:03
  They want to maintain that centrality and this is why in
• 16:06
  that show, I'm in love with a mama's.
• 16:09
  Boy, the women continue to live like literally 15 feet away from
• 16:13
  their son and come to make him breakfast in the morning because
• 16:16
  they want to have that role forever.
• 16:18
  They do not want to give that roll over and in a situation
• 16:22
  where you are the one who picked a partner who continues to extol
• 16:28
  their parents at your expense, you likely are Here, with a role
• 16:32
  of being looked down to, you were probably the least
• 16:34
  preferred sibling. You probably had a parent
• 16:37
  yourself who talk down to you and you're used to being
• 16:40
  compared unfavorably. So your Imago is getting
• 16:43
  somebody who would on, who would compare you unfavorably to
• 16:46
  somebody in this situation, is their own parent and then
• 16:49
  somehow the fantasy is you're going to impress them enough
• 16:51
  that they stop doing this and that they pick you over the
• 16:55
  parent, not going to happen. So if you're already in a
• 16:58
  situation where you feel that you have a Downward comparison
• 17:02
  between you and the guys parent or the woman's parent, get out,
• 17:07
  get out of that situation. But if you're already in that
• 17:09
  situation, couples counseling can really help with a third
• 17:15
  party coming up with some of the things that I would say like
• 17:18
  wait, hold on a second. So if this is really just about
• 17:20
  cooking then what about if you know she brings her, you know
• 17:25
  what if she does take out? Why is that not good?
• 17:27
  Oh, is it? Because like you're fucking
• 17:29
  obsessed with your mother? Like nobody's going to say that.
• 17:31
  It's me. But but like, you know, you
• 17:34
  could look at the deeper issues for why there is such an
• 17:38
  obsession with keeping the parent in this Central prized
• 17:43
  pedestal roll and less of an emphasis on.
• 17:47
  We are going to co-create a family ourselves and be a team
• 17:52
  ourselves. So in a healthy family, there's
• 17:54
  individuation from the family of origin such as both, people are
• 17:58
  primarily a husband / father. Wife / mother, instead of a son
• 18:03
  / daughter, at least in our Western culture, that is how it
• 18:06
  is. That, that is healthier.
• 18:09
  That is considered healthier and goes along better.
• 18:11
  There are other, you know, there's other ways to do it in
• 18:16
  other places in the world. So that, you know, the let's say
• 18:20
  the woman moves in with a, with the husband's family.
• 18:22
  It's how it's done after marriage, right, in some places.
• 18:26
  But that isn't how we do it here.
• 18:27
  So if you're the only one whose mother-in-law has to come over
• 18:30
  to make potato salad, Because you can't do it, right?
• 18:33
  You are going to be sad in your marriage and so, it has to be
• 18:37
  thought of why this is being maintained versus the more
• 18:42
  normative in your peer group ideal of at least somewhat
• 18:47
  individuating, from your family of origin, such that, you know,
• 18:50
  a couple can make their own party without having to rely on
• 18:54
  a parent bringing over food, a pair of a couple, can, you know,
• 18:58
  do their own home repairs or Outsource them without having to
• 19:01
  wait until a parent can visit from the opposite Coast so that
• 19:04
  they can bring everything out because they're just so awesome,
• 19:07
  Etc. So, if you're in this situation,
• 19:09
  really think about the self-absorption and potential
• 19:12
  narcissistic traits in the partner who is doing the, the
• 19:16
  comparison in their family because it's usually their and
• 19:19
  it's usually why the person finds it.
• 19:21
  So, complicated and challenging to at all, put their spouse on
• 19:27
  the same level as the parent because they were trained as a
• 19:31
  kid never too. It is that their parent is the
• 19:32
  best out of the best and nobody ever can approximate it.
• 19:36
  And this can be really like, you know, not really discernible
• 19:40
  even until problems start when you get married.
• 19:43
  So yeah, you may have had the perfect parentheses narcissistic
• 19:47
  family that everybody wanted to come over your house because
• 19:50
  your parents were so awesome. But then, whenever you have a
• 19:53
  significant other somehow didn't really click with your, with
• 19:56
  your part with your parent. I wonder what's going on there?
• 19:59
  That would be something to explore.
• 20:01
  Also these people are very competitive with the other set
• 20:03
  of grandparents usually they're usually they are the one who
• 20:07
  wants to bring over the potato salad, the other Potato Salad,
• 20:10
  fuck the other Potato Salad. Right?
• 20:12
  So think about it. Deeply this is a good one to
• 20:15
  introspect about particularly if you are the person doing the
• 20:19
  comparing because if you're the person who's being compared
• 20:22
  coming over and being like hey I figured out.
• 20:24
  What's wrong with your fucking mother?
• 20:25
  She's a narcissist, the doctor psych mom shows said so no it's
• 20:28
  not going to go over well so it's best.
• 20:31
  When you talk about that to your own therapist, if you're in that
• 20:33
  situation, think about how you should bring it up and whatever
• 20:36
  or if you should bring it up or how to cope with it.
• 20:38
  But the best way to cope with it, by the way is to understand,
• 20:42
  it's not about you and to set some boundaries what you will
• 20:45
  and will not tolerate in terms of these comparisons, but that
• 20:48
  involves a lot of self-esteem work usually as well.
• 20:51
  But anyhow, I hope you got something out of this.
• 20:54
  It's an interesting topic and I will talk to you all soon.