admitting gratitude as legitimate only in a narrow range of settings in
which it is just a nice windfall and does not betray an unwise dependency.
Toward intimate relationships, however, my position is not Stoic:
I insist on their great importance for people’s well- being, despite their
considerable vulnerability. Indeed they appear to be constituent parts of
well- being.32 And yet I argue that full- fledged anger is never appropri-
ate. What, then, of gratitude, with its wish to benefit the other, analogous
(apparently) to anger’s wish for payback?
The first and most obvious point to make is that doing good is always
in short supply and hardly requires a justification. So a suspicious scru-
tiny of motive and coherence of thought seems uncalled for. Even if the
person benefited others because of some incoherent fantasy, we should
probably say, “So much the better.”
In intimate relationships, where gratitude is closely akin to love and
registers a person’s delight at the benefits that her parent, or child, or
lover has conferred on her, the pleasant emotion seems to have more
going for it than that: it seems to be a constituent part of the relationship itself, which is not exhausted by reciprocal benefit, but includes that as
a prominent component. And this sort of gratitude is above all forward-
looking, though not merely instrumental. Parents don’t care for their chil-
dren only in order to receive care in return in their old age, though this
is important. They would care for their children even if they knew they
would long outlive them. But the care is part of constructing a valuable
relationship that will endure over time, in which exchanges of many sorts
of care and benefit figure. And even though strictly speaking a child’s
gratitude looks back to care received, it too has a forward- looking func-
tion, whether or not the child is aware of this: the emotion contributes to
the relationship’s depth and stability. So gratitude, including its wish for
good, seems not only defensible but very important.
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Attention, however, must be paid to counterfactuals. There may be a
gratitude that has the following inner form: “I am very happy right now
because you have benefited me, given that I love and trust you and am
consequently extremely vulnerable to your actions. I feel grateful, and
I want to benefit you. But this vulnerability means that if you should
ever betray me and act badly, I will be furious and want you to suffer.”
Gratitude sometimes, even often, takes this form. The attitude that is
defensible, and constitutive of a healthy loving relationship, is gratitude
without this implicit threat, gratitude that is compatible with generous
onward movement in case of a betrayal or rupture. I think the reciprocal
gratitude of children and parents is often of this more generous form.
Perhaps one reason for this healthy situation is that both parties expect
the child to become somewhat independent, not vulnerable to the very
core; and parents understand themselves to be preexisting people with
a core that antecedes the child and would survive the child’s bad deeds.
Such limits to vulnerability are, I believe, healthy, and they make grati-
tude healthy.
Now let us study the strains and betrayals of intimate spousal
relationships, where the conditional threat- laden type of gratitude is,
unfortunately, all too common— perhaps because a core of personal iden-
tity, not utterly vulnerable to the other party’s bad behavior, is not always stably present.
VII. Lovers and Spouses: Strains
Marriage33 involves enormous trust. Unlike (at least some instances of)
the trust parents have in their children, this trust is not merely strate-
gic and pedagogical. Spouses entrust one another with many important
aspects of their lives, including sexual responsiveness,34 financial secu-
rity, care for a home, and, often, care for children. To some extent, trust
is codified in contractual form, particularly if there is a “prenup,” but
also in explicit marital vows, if the parties take these ritual utterances
seriously, or promises outside of ritual. Many other aspects of marital
trust are understood implicitly, and it would be a very untrusting mar-
riage that relied on explicit promises for everything— although it would
also be a bad marriage if the parties didn’t clarify their commitments
and expectations in certain important areas such as having children and
sexual monogamy. Because the couple pursues jointly some of the most
important life goals of each, these goals themselves become shared goals
and are shaped by the partnership.
The vulnerability involved in such a relationship therefore goes very
deep. It is quite different from parents and children: parents want all
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115
good things for and from their children, but they also know that life is
a lottery, and you really never know what child you are going to get.
Parents also don’t plan their whole lives assuming some specific input
from a child: the child- rearing relationship is understood as temporary,
and as not being a fulcrum for all of one’s friendships, career choices,
and so forth. With spouses it is different: the partner is thought to be a
known quantity, at least in many respects, and the terminus of the trust-
ing relationship is typically thought to be death, even if people know that
half of marriages end in divorce. As is typically not the case with parents
and children, the relationship is taken to be basic to one’s choices in other important areas of life, financial, employment- related, and geographical.
Even though it would still be possible, and, I believe, highly desirable,
to preserve a core sense of oneself as a person who could continue no
matter what, this is often difficult to achieve, and it is always difficult to strike a balance between this healthy self- preservation and a kind of self-withholding that is incompatible with deep love.
Some minor wrongs in a marriage may be occasions only for dis-
appointment: they undermine expectations, but they don’t really under-
mine trust. Thus if one person is always late, that may be annoying, but it
won’t feel like betrayal, unless punctuality has assumed unusual impor-
tance in the relationship, or unless unpunctuality is plausibly read as a
sign of something deeper, such as a lack of respect. Many inconsiderate or
harmful acts, however, cut deeper, and are occasions for well- grounded
anger because they involve a significant betrayal.
Before we can talk of well- grounded anger, however, we need to be
aware that here, as with children, false social values play a huge role
in conditioning people’s expectations and behavior. Ideas about how
women should behave have been particularly distorted by the demand
for a complete surrender of autonomy. Many cases of anger in current
relationships result from a cultural hangover: one party expects things
to be as they always used to be, the other wants them to be as she thinks
they really should be. Of course it is a separate question whether, once
<
br /> two parties have made a bad bargain, they ought to stick to it: clearly
there is something problematic in agreeing to forgo a career and then
getting angry at the other person later when one realizes that one has
done just that. But at least in that case we can say that the normative
framework is part of the problem: one party is angry because he expects
ongoing conditions of hierarchy and injustice.
Like marital anger, forgiveness between spouses often embodies
false social values. The idea that a woman who has sex before marriage
is impure and unacceptable is one idea that hoodwinks many people into
thinking about forgiveness when what has really gone on is harmless
behavior outside of accepted social norms, or even victimization. The idea
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that people should atone all their lives for a premarital “sin”— by being
separated from their children and given a low image of themselves—
is a staple of the nineteenth- century novel. A particularly ugly case is
depicted in Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, where Angel Clare’s confession to Tess that he has had premarital sex is greeted with prompt for-
giveness, but her confession of her own rape and abuse by Alec causes
him to leave the marriage.35
In order to study “pure” cases of wrongdoing internal to the intimate
relationship, we need to focus on cases that do not involve such false
cultural values, so far as we can tell with our limited vision. But we need
to bear in mind that problematic cultural norms are often hard to distin-
guish from a more general status- anxiety, which we do need to confront
as a central part of our concern. Indeed it is often difficult to tell whether a spouse who resents his spouse’s independence is angry as a result of
culturally deformed social expectations or as a result of personal insecu-
rity and status- anxiety— and often it’s both.
First, let’s look at strains in an ongoing relationship. There are likely
to be many, as time goes on, since we are dealing with two people with
different goals (to some extent), trying to figure out how to balance
autonomy and shared life. It’s clear that there will be more strains when
people are inflexible and intolerant, seeing every divergence from what
they want as a threat. Aristotle’s reminder about the playful and gen-
tle temper is important here: that background approach to life makes it
much less likely that people will find themselves constantly angry.
Anger will also be more common when one or more of the parties
feels a lot of insecurity, because so many things can seem threatening,
including, indeed, the sheer independent existence of the other person.
(Proust makes the point that for a deeply insecure person, the other per-
son’s very independent will is a source of torment and, often, rage.) A
good deal of marital anger is really about this desire for control— and
since such projects are doomed, that sort of anger is likely to be especially hard to eradicate. Intimacy is scary, and it makes people helpless, since
deep hurt can be inflicted by the independent choices of someone else; so,
as with other forms of helplessness, people respond by seeking control
through anger. People never dispel their own insecurity by controlling
someone else or making that person suffer, but many people try— and try
again. Furthermore, people are adept rationalizers, so insecure people
seeking control are good at coming up with a rational account of what the
other person has done wrong, just as Maggie’s mother was good at giv-
ing an account of Maggie’s failings, even though what she really wanted
was a daughter who would remain a child and not grow up.
Harriet Lerner proves an insightful guide here as well. Let’s look at
a case from her book that does involve some real wrongdoing: failure
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117
of respect, failure to listen, failure to allow independence. Our question,
like hers, will be: what is the good of anger, and indeed of apology and
forgiveness, in such a situation?36
Sandra and Larry went to Dr. Lerner together for therapy. Both were
deeply committed to their marriage. But they had some very serious
problems. Lerner’s first observation was that when Sandra spoke she put
her hand in front of her face so that she couldn’t see Larry: and then
delivered her indictment. Larry is a workaholic. He neglects the kids
and Sandra. He leaves the housework and kids all to her, and then fails
to sympathize with her emotions when something goes wrong. He gets
angry at her for being emotional and needy. Then, suddenly, he will take
charge and do something for the kids without consulting her (for exam-
ple, buying an expensive present). He doesn’t know how to talk. When
she advances, he retreats, opening a book or turning on the TV.
What does Larry have to say? Lerner observes that he is just as angry
as Sandra, but speaks in a cold controlled voice. Sandra doesn’t support
him. He works hard all day, and comes home to find a lot of complaining.
“ ‘I walk in the door at six o’clock, and I’m tired and wanting some peace
and quiet, and she just rattles on about the kids’ problems or her problems,
or she just complains about one thing or another. Or, if I sit down to relax
for five minutes, she’s on my back to discuss some earthshaking matter—
like the garbage disposal is broken.’ ” Despite the deep love and commit-
ment that Lerner later uncovers, all the two appear to share is blaming.
We can see that, although cultural expectations do shape this rela-
tionship, the anger of each is well- grounded, to some extent. Nor is it
just about status: it concerns important goods. Larry lacks respect for
Sandra’s work, as this brief extract makes clear: he thinks it is all trivial stuff, and he is the one who does the real work. He also doesn’t appreciate her isolation and her need for companionship. Sandra, for her part,
probably does not imagine with empathy how tired Larry may be after a
day at work. When he has a real problem at work (being passed over for a
promotion), she blames him again— for not being openly angry enough!
Another background issue is the behavior of Larry’s parents: very
wealthy, living abroad, they don’t respect Sandra, and don’t show interest
in seeing their new granddaughter. As usual, Sandra gets emotional and
blames them, which causes Larry to clam up, retreat, and defend them.
At a more abstract level, Lerner learns that Sandra has become the
one who voices emotions, and Larry is the calm rational one. This divi-
sion of emotional labor may have worked early on, but it has become a
dysfunctional pattern, as Larry never learns to recognize his own emo-
tions, and Sandra over- emotes in ways that are not helpful. Above all, the
two spend most of their time assigning blame for their various quarrels,
in particular by a triumphant search for “who started it.”
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As with Maggie and her mother, anger and blame, even if well-
grounded in a way, have become a self- perpetuating “circular dance,”
> which impedes real understanding and progress. As with Maggie again,
progress begins by breaking this cycle and taking constructive forward-
looking action. One day Sandra calmly asks Larry to put the children to
bed one night so that she can go to a yoga class. “When a pursuer stops
pursuing and begins to put her energy back into her own life— without
distancing or expressing anger at the other person— the circular dance
has been broken” (61). Such behavior could become manipulative. But
if it is honest and not cold or angry, a declaration that a person wants to
do something for herself rather than blaming the other person because
she doesn’t have what she wants can prove productive, Lerner argues.
It’s a much longer story, and it contains reversals, but the theme contin-
ues: anger resulted from seeking superior position through blame, rather
than simply cultivating an independent life, Transitionally. Even to the
extent that anger is well- grounded, it is a deflection of attention from the underlying problem: Sandra needs an independent life, and Larry needs
to cultivate his ability to care for others.
With Lerner’s assistance, both arrive at what I have called the
Transition: rather than punishing the other for their problems, they see
that they both want to solve the problems, and that turns them construc-
tively toward the future. As in the stories of Maggie and Liz Murray, sim-
ply realizing that you can take charge of your own life is a key Transitional point. Trying to get something by controlling someone else didn’t work,
and it built up resentment. Depending more on oneself takes the pres-
sure off the relationship. “Thus,” Lerner concludes, “she can talk to Larry
without hostility and let him know that she is needing to do something
for herself and not to him” (65). Oddly (since the contexts are so different), it’s like our King example again: okay, anger is well- grounded, but let’s
not dwell on that and wallow in blame, let’s look to the future and fig-
ure out what will work and what we can live with. In effect, we want
accountability (stating clearly what the important values are) without a
constant focus on liability: the “blame game” deflects attention from a
constructive resolution.37
What about apology and forgiveness? Along the way, there are
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