Replies to '11/04 A Shopping Intervention'

Quote From: wildwood

 There is lots more to the "history" of both of these people than we have been shown.  I agree that NEITHER this woman or her husband are coping well with the rejection or the hurt or punishments they are inflicting on each other, him using workalcoholism and affairs or her using shop alcoholism or affairs. or the counterproductive "acting out" the other is manifesting. However, I would suspect that the husbands workalcoholism  and cheating came way before the shopalcoholism or her cheating. He has as just as many or more  emotional maturity problems as his wife his just seem more "justified or legitimate" in our "make money" oriented society. He knows she will be judged more harshly for her "coping" behaviors than he, and he strikes me as a perpetrator vying for the victim status. Check out his "victimhood" stance and smiles and smirks and "poor me" stance.  He makes light of his problems with workalcholism and his affairs. Her over the top behavior is a very non serving way of  screaming for his attention, which he apparently ignored till he began to feel the pain rather than inflicting it on her. I can just see her saying through her shopping, "you prefer work to the exclusion of your wife and kids, lets see how much work you can bear". Sad, cruel, and counterproductive, yet he obviously condoned this and they became two monster feeding the monster in each other. I really think Dr. Phil was right on target with his "diagnosis" of them both. They are caught in a self-relationship defeating whirlwind or their own making and both share equal blame in the problem and the solution. She seems, by  surface appearance only to be a real selfish money grubbing bimbo. Both have their 'holisms out of control.  As an ER doctor he is taking HUGE chances with peoples lives and his own to volunteer to put in such hours, but look at the self punishment he would prefer to endure  in order to avoid his family obligations. This took years to get to the point it is. He is using his work to avoid a relationship with his  wife and family and doing his best to make it appear HER fault with him the victim, and I would bet in the beginning he really got off on his work and mistress, to the exclusion of his family.  I suspect he is incapable of thinking past his own self serving attitudes. Rejection is the most painful of all emotions to try and deal with. His wife didn't handle his cruel rejections too well, obviously. He is only complaining now, cause now he is having to live the consequences of his rejecting his family and has major  overloaded. I suspect as long as he was more than willing to hide out at work, rather than be a husband and father, he never complained about the spending. Now he is "tired" and wants it to stop and he has set her up to appear the perpetrator of all their problems. She bit the bait, as he knew she would most likely with his urging in the beginning or his "whatever" attitudes toward her and his daughters,  and she obliged and gave him all the justification he needed. She strikes me as lost and bewildered, like most addicts are.  If we were to take this ball of yarn mess and unravel it to the beginning, my guess  is that he set her up to have this problem to justify his own workalcoholism and lack of any real emotion or commitment to anything but himself. They are clearly co enabling the WORST parts of each other and those "worst parts" are destroying them both.  His "silence and affairs and absences" and "poor me" attitudes are just as gross to me as is her out of control spending. He is using work to hurt and reject and so she is using  spending the money to attempt to "talk" to him regarding what she is feeling. Both are equally guilty of self and relationship and family destroying activities. I lay my money on HIS  ego/rejecting/ emotional zero problems coming first, and hers being a very unhealthy reactive stance to this slap to her ego and love for him. I am very interested if Dr. Phil addresses his passive aggression and self serving need to be a victim of his own making. He is a clearly  manipulative man, saying all the right words while feeling superior to her weaknesses. Been there done that. I hope they can work it out, and stop the out of control hurting of themselves and each other.