The Sky is Falling!
I'm
a Four and my husband is a Six. We've recently adopted our first child and,
though we're overjoyed to have a new addition in our lives, this is also a
sleepless, stressful time as we adjust to our new roles. I'm particularly
stressed because lately my husband seems less like my helpmate and more like
an additional child, whose fears I must constantly calm. I feel as if I live
with Chicken Little who's constantly crying the sky is falling. I'm having a
hard time staying calm and positive when his paranoia kicks in. Any
suggestions about how I can better cope with this portion of my spouse's
personality, or ways I can make him feel more secure and less pessimistic?
First
children can be stressful for any number of reasons -- lack of sleep, changing
roles, new responsibilities. One particular element is that children seem to
evoke our
hidden parts -- both the Shadow inner child
and the Shadow inner parent. And because our society still pushes parenting more squarely
on the mother, she often begins to feel she now has two children. Men have complicated feelings about mothers and mothering
-- as depicted in Frank Pittman's Man Enough
-- that are evoked when children
enter the family.
Actually,
this can happen whenever the wife nurtures
someone else. For example, a Nine wife spent two weeks helping her mother
recuperate from broken ribs, expecting she could return to her Eight husband and nestle under
his protective arm. WRONG! He was feeling needy because she'd been gone, but of course as an
Eight couldn't admit it, so it was a tough re-entry for both of them).
Possibly you, as a
Four who's just become a mother,
are
connecting more with your
Two energy. This has
its up and down sides. On the down side, according to
Riso & Hudson (Personality Types), Two is a stress point for
Four, where Fours begin to exhibit qualities of average to unhealthy Twos -- wanting to be
reassured the relationship is working and/or being more highly self-absorbed and thus
having more difficulty relating to the spouse in customary ways (paradoxically, with
increasing fears of abandonment). At the same time the
Six is moving to his
Three
stress point -- plagued with self-doubt, experiencing a higher need for approval and
support, and feeling competitive (of the new child in this case), with increased
fear of rejection.
Within your primary
styles, under stress
the Four is more likely to focus on what's missing and
the Six to uncover
potential problems (as you've noted). According to Sarah Aschenbach (Relationships
Made Easy) the Four can move to being "self-conscious,
moody, hypersensitive" and the Six to feeling "anxious, vacillating, eager to
please" (or countering those behaviors with their opposite) for the Six. Aschenbach also writes:
"Under stress, Fours begin to feel no one understands or appreciates them for
their unique gifts ... As stress increases, they demand the right to do only what they
want to do when they want to do it." "Under stress, Sixes begin to vacillate
between caving in and taking a tough stand ... they may first try to make everyone happy
then suddenly turn on one or both of the forces that they feel are trying to tear them
apart ..."
Fours
often have a unique, protective energy toward
children and
animals (perhaps some internal
re-parenting is taking place?), so you may be focusing so much on your new child you're not offering your husband the love and affection and attention he's accustomed to.
That's neither good nor bad in and of itself, but you might ask yourself if you're living
some of your own unmet needs as a child through this new little person in your life,
perhaps overly focusing on the child's needs?
Helen Palmer (The
Enneagram in Love & Work) notes that Fours can be as fearful as Sixes. So it's
possible his paranoia is hooking you because in part you're
projecting
onto him aspects of yourself you're having trouble owning.
Palmer also writes,
"In a down phase each blames the other for feelings of low self
- esteem." The Four may think, "I'd feel better if I had a better
partner" and the Six may ask, 'How can this be love when I both love my partner
and entertain doubts?'... A crisis develops if both collude in
worst-case thinking about their future … It helps when either can back down long
enough to reaffirm their commitment. A good reminder would be: 'This is a difficult phase;
but remember, we're committed to changing and staying together.' Fair-fight guidelines are
useful because either type is likely to quit under fire…It helps when both partners
can see through their own ambivalence about intimacy…It's a breakthrough when either
can see the similarity between Four's push-pull habit of relating and Six's alternating
pattern of belief and mistrust."
A
Four friend married to a Six offered the following:
"My Six husband has been good for me.
As a
Four who feels flawed, his undying loyalty is a gift: he's
there for me. But if
we'd met at an earlier point in time -- when he was more into his anger and I was more
into my self-absorption -- it might not have gone so smoothly.
If the Four is very verbal and likes to process a lot of emotions
that could be a problem, because when a Six is hurting that's the last thing he wants to
do. The Four's way of processing isn't the Six's way of processing. It would irritate a
Six for the Four to process a lot of feelings, even if she just asked questions. What the
Six needs is space.
It can also be a problem if the Four is pulling back emotionally
because of all the attention the child needs, which the Six could take personally.
The Six tends to say, 'It's my fault' or 'I've got to fix it.' Any new mother is
going to get physically tired, and the things men take as affirmation will
go down the tubes (see Men Are From Mars, Women
are From Venus). So it may help if she explains to her husband what's going
on:
'Right now I'm stressed out and I'm pulling back because I'm trying to survive.'
He'll
probably be O.K. with that because it's not about their relationship, he's not
looking for a hidden agenda, not worrying she's going to spring something on him."
You can't make your husband
feel more secure and less pessimistic; that's his work. But you can look at yourself and
work on your own stresses; making it more likely your love for him will be clear
and tangible.
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