Someone once said that there are two kinds of warm relationship: the one where you warm each other's hearts, and the one where you boil each other's nerves. Tellingly, in neither case does the couple think of parting. There are couples where you cannot understand not only how they ended up together, but also why they carry on "ruining each other's lives". Marina and Pavlik were exactly that sort, yet splitting up was unthinkable for them.
Background: The stories are published from the feedback we received and with our clients’ consent. The names have been deliberately changed. At the end you will find a counsellor’s commentary analysing the relationship.
Skip to the counsellor’s commentaryThey met back at school. Pavlik was the classic outcast: at first, trying to win the group over, he did everyone's homework and let them copy his tests, and then, when he realised that this had not helped, he threw tantrums and sneaked on everybody to the teachers. He was often beaten, he was despised, he was laughed at. Marina was careless enough to feel sorry for him once, and for that she was thrown out of the crowd and never managed to get back in, however hard she tried. The girls took it out on her worst of all: she was stupid, she was ugly, she was a dreamer, she was an amoeba. And so Marina and Pavel tacitly joined forces against everyone. Later they even jokingly called each other Forrest and Jenny, after the characters in the famous film — those two were also against everyone and in spite of everyone.
Despite going to different universities, they stayed in touch after school. They trusted each other. Pavel did not even look for anyone else; if someone did ask him out, he would go lazily to a date that turned out to be the only one. To Marina, other men seemed unreliable and aggressive. In the end, after a string of failures in her private life, the two of them somehow imperceptibly joined forces here as well. Pavlik was caring and thoughtful; he told Marina what she could and could not do, but never made her follow it, he did not drink and could do almost everything around the house. She had heard from her mother all her life that men are bastards, had confirmed it through her own bitter experience, and Pavel, for all his softness and his lack of initiative, was already beginning to look like quite a good match. Pavel, for his part, could not understand how anyone could be so helpless and so unfit for life, but he valued the trust, that union of souls, which had grown up between them over the years. He had never had that with anyone else.
There is no telling when they would have thought of getting married if Pavlik's mother had not demanded grandchildren — and since there was no one else to have them by, let it at least be with Marina. She demanded it about five times. Pavlik realised that he would not be left in peace now, and gradually worked himself up to proposing to Marina. They registered the marriage quietly, without any fuss. Neither of them particularly needed it. And they went on living as they had lived: the two of them against this mad, cruel world.
As it turned out, living as they had lived did not quite work. Forrest Gump and Jenny, as grown-ups, met occasionally and romantically; Marina and Pavel met every single evening after work. And those evenings gradually grew louder and louder. Marina, being a "real woman", honestly waited for Pavel to come home from work so that he could "prove that he was a man": put up a shelf, change a lightbulb, unblock the trap under the sink, knock in a nail and so on. She nagged him, as usual, that everyone else's men were proper men — ambitious, full of initiative, pushy — and only hers was neither fish nor fowl.
– «How can anyone be so utterly useless?» Pavel would joke it off as usual. «At least you are capable of switching the cooker on...»
– «So I am the one who cannot do anything?! And who washes all your shirts! Cooks your food!!! The whole household rests on me!» Marina would shriek. «And I am not obliged to know how to put up a shelf! That is what men are for! If you are not a man but some sort of woman, that does not mean I have to turn into a man!»
– «And what else are men for?» Pavel would enquire snidely.
– «And it is a man who is asking that?!» Marina would turn up the volume, launching into a highly emotional list of everything that "a man owes you, if he is a real man".
– «And what does a wife owe, then?» Pavel would slowly come to the boil.
– «What a wife owes you is all being done, you ungrateful wretch! Or have you gone hungry? Or is your shirt not ironed? Or?...»
– «A-a-and off we go again...» Pavel would spit out, cynical and spiteful.
– «Oh, so I am to blame for everything?!» Marina would wail. «After everything I have done for you... And you...»
The decibels rose and the emotions grew hotter, until Pavel would suddenly fall silent and announce cynically something along these lines:
– «In short, young lady, you are not a child, I take it, and not a fool, I hope, and the salvation of drowning men is the drowning men's own business.»
Marina would break into ultrasound, but Pavel would suddenly turn unreachably and unbearably sarcastic, aiming every phrase at her sorest spots and letting her feel with his whole manner what a fool she was after all.
– «Oh, is that so?!» Marina would "switch". «Well, I do not care that you do not like me! Not everyone was given good taste by God! And who needs you anyway! I will manage without you! Who wants a doormat like that!»
– «Go on, off you go! Good riddance!»
After standard rows like these Marina would usually slam the door and go off to sit in a bar and flirt with "real men", to register on various dating sites and so on. She did not particularly hide the fact that she was married. It usually came out at the date at the latest.
– «And where is your husband right now?»
– «He ate too many pears!» Marina would snap breezily, quoting the old rhyme. «Nothing is going to happen to that doormat, and I need a proper man!»
Her dating schedule turned out to be a rather tight one. Still, it spared her lawful husband the regular hysterics and rows. Pavel did not work out what was going on straight away; then for a while he refused to believe what was happening, going on playing the ideal husband at home. Jealous, distressed, but every time managing to rationalise and explain to himself that his Marina was an emotional woman, but a decent one. Until one day the doorbell was rung by a very well-groomed, beautiful lady who politely asked Pavel to rein in his wife, since she had lost all shame and was meeting her husband at their country house.
Pavel forced his face into a polite, friendly grimace and, as befits a hospitable host, invited the stranger in, offered her tea and gingerbread and listened politely and attentively. She had photographs and videos that were irrefutable evidence against Marina, and on top of that a remarkably calm way of speaking that gave the person she was talking to confidence. A very pleasant woman!
– «And what do you think I ought to do in this situation?»
– «Pavel, you are a grown-up, sensible man. And you know your wife far better than anyone else», she answered softly, with an encouraging smile.
Pavel knew his wife well enough to understand that there would be no avoiding the hysterics and that arguing was pointless. He was unbearably ashamed in front of this well-groomed woman that he was so spineless and could do nothing. He wanted to calm her somehow, to give her some hope. After all, the ten times he had apologised to her really had come to nothing.
– «I can see that you love her in spite of everything. She is very lucky!» the woman said with a touch of sadness.
– «I will do everything in my power», Pavel assured her, «and if anything happens, do call me.»
– «You are a very good man; if there is anything at all I can do to help you...» and the woman walked out of the flat. From the window Pavel watched her get elegantly into a luxurious Volvo and dissolve into the evening traffic.
It took him time to reach a decision. It was a very painful and frightening decision, and there was no one to support him in it or to help him. He wanted to howl and to throw himself at the wall, but he still made himself calm down and be consistent. When Marina came back from a long weekend "at a friend's", there were two suitcases standing in the hall, and Pavel was slowly finishing his tea in the kitchen.
– «Pavlik?...» Marina began cautiously.
– «Hello, come in. Would you like some tea?»
– «Pavlik, are you throwing me out?» she brought herself to ask outright.
– «No. So, shall I pour you some tea?»
– «Pavlik, what is going on?»
– «I had a visitor. She was very upset that her husband had taken to meeting my wife rather often. She asked me to influence you, but I know that I cannot.»
– «Pavlik, I...» — he stopped her with a single gesture.
– «All I can do is give you what you want — freedom from me.»
– «Pasha, do not start, all right? We have been living so well lately, without any scenes...»
– «And there will not be a scene. Since you do not want tea, I am off. And please, let the one with the Tesla go, if it is not too much trouble. He has a lovely wife, and she is suffering a great deal.»
Without listening to her objections, Pavel went out into the hallway, laced up his shoes, threw on his jacket, checked that the essentials were stuffed into his pockets, took out his keys and, as if nothing had happened, put them on the shelf by the door. Marina was babbling something, again and again on the point of shouting and cutting herself off. He tried not to look at her. Picking up the suitcases, he wheeled them towards the lift, trying to make his walk look exactly as it always did. The main thing was not to look back. He really did love her very much.
At first Pavel stayed with a colleague from work. Though "stayed" is putting it boldly. He would come to his corner, lie down facing the wall and try not to howl out loud. His colleague tried to shake him out of it, to drag him off to some pub, to introduce him to girls... It would have been easier to turn a river backwards or to move Mount Elbrus. Gradually Pavel began to feel ashamed; he started helping his colleague around the house, carrying bags for his mother and mending all sorts of small things. At work, too, he gradually began to come round and to talk to other people. He drifted with the current, making no attempt to change or improve anything. He did what needed doing, asked as hard as he could for new assignments and looked for someone to help with something. He listened politely to every piece of advice so as to go on not following it. He discussed neither women in general nor Marina in particular. He simply existed, day after day, mechanically, simply because that was how it had to be.
He was not counting the days, so he did not know how many had passed before she came to him. Beautiful, as always. Tender, affectionate and warm. He did not know whether he was allowed to hold her or ought to run, whether he could thaw or whether, on the contrary, he should hide deeper in his shell.
– «Pavlik, forgive me,» Marina asked plaintively, «come home... Please...»
Pavel said nothing. He did not know what to answer. He did not know what to do. Thoughts swirled and jostled in his head, keeping each other from taking shape; it seemed he could take in only fragments of them: confused, ragged, chaotic. But he could not take his eyes off his Marina, and she, it seemed, could not take hers off him.
– «I want Forrest and Jenny to be together again. "Like peas and carrots", remember?» she said, and his head suddenly cleared. He knew exactly what had to be done: forgive her, hold her and never let her go again.
Counsellor’s commentary
Marina is the epileptoid personality type. She is very sociable and emotional, feminine and dreamy. At the same time she can seem infantile and helpless. People of her personality type need a partner who takes the lead, someone beside whom they can feel like a weak woman to the full, and so Pavel is not the optimal option for her, even though he looks after her to the utmost.
Pavel is the compulsive personality type. This is likewise a passive personality type, one that does not seek to lay down rules for others or to expand. Compulsive people strive above all to be correct, and so he wants it all in order to be the ideal husband and the ideal employee. A distinctive feature of this personality type is that compulsive people are, as a rule, one-love people. They really do need a heartfelt contact with their other half. Compulsive men are inclined to romanticise and to "eternal" faithfulness. But at times they are too soft and prefer to leave the initiative to the woman.
A union of this kind we call utopian, because it is rarely met with. It will be more a case of best friends than of spouses. Neither of them has much to give the other beyond a sense of safety and calm. There is little development here.
For her he is too lacking in initiative; for him she is too helpless. This is a rare model of relationship in which people are together more because they see no way out; they have little to give each other and little with which to improve each other — a dead-end model. Sympathy does arise, but it is like a boat without oars. Two people are sitting in it, and where the boat is drifting is anyone's guess. A great deal depends on outside circumstances.
If both of them are in the depths of despair at having no relationship and regard themselves as unworthy, then they may join up as a couple on the basis of that despair, and a relationship begins. Most often she moves into the active position, and the relationship starts to look like one between a hysteroid woman and a compulsive man. He becomes the faithful husband, she the flighty young lady who comes home from time to time. Then there is a great deal of closeness and a great deal of contact between them.
From the outside a couple like this looks very unhealthy. They tend to activate each other in the psychotic dynamic: she winds him up in order to activate his brain. In the end he goes a little off his head, slips into psychosis, and she follows him.
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