Learner Therapist (54) … 1 person 4 roles

Torrey Orton
February 17, 2015

Parent, sibling, peer, partner

 

Many couples have been illuminated by the following idea: we all get to play any one of four roles in relation to each other – parent, partner, peer or sibling. If we are competent partners we know that our other half may at any time need us to be their peer, parent or sibling for them, and that we may need the same from them. Our need for others to relate to us in these roles may be upon us before we are aware, usually signalled by role specific behaviours like being needy (parenting), competitive (sibling), cooperative (peer) or interdependent (partner).

While it is totally normal not to be available in the appropriate role at the appropriate time because of our engagement in role needs of our own, what is more confusing and confounding is discovering that our respective capacity in the roles may be very different because our original learning was unbalanced (so a role got less developmental attention than is required to grow it to workable levels). We may not even really know the role because our upbringing did not contain it. An only child, for example, is likely to have an underdeveloped sibling competitiveness, unsurprisingly and wholly unknown to them, and unknowably so, too!! It is beyond their experience, existing perhaps only as a sense of aloneness exposed when in the presence of other families’ siblings.

So, who am I for you today?

The most obvious role is parenting. We need this throughout life whenever we approach significantly novel steps or stages in our paths, especially unpredictable ones and even more enervating those which we could have predicted but failed to. The parent for the day is needed to be unreservedly supportive, to be unconditionally accepting – a hard row to hoe under any conditions.

Sibling associations most clearly come into view when we relate to partners as brothers or sisters, deferring to them or competing with them while being bound together in a wholeness which affirms us all. Similar dynamics may be found in work place, spiritual and leisure associations with all the variety and less control since we do not understand such settings as family. Other cultures see them as always family in the sense that the various expectations of leaders, for example, are bounded by parental expectations.

Peers are our equals more or less. The equality comes from shared experience not shared outcomes, aspirations or inspirations. If you are 10 years older or younger than your partner, the peer potential is low, even within families, where 10 years makes often for an unshareable childhood by the same parents and siblings. They bring to us a kind of experiential corroboration which parents and siblings cannot – that of the world outside the family but inside the same history! The extent of moving home in one’s life, increased by any distance which makes neighbourliness with old acquaintances only sustainable by conscious action is a demonstrable destroyer of such peer potential in our lives.

First amongst equals, our partner - the one who makes us whole and for whom we do the same in return. In fact we are inextricably implicated in our partnership needs, even more clearly so by our lack of a partner. Of all four roles this is the most fundamental and it seems at the same time the most perilous, hence perhaps the importance of the others as backstops for the ones which pass through even the keeper. Who would invest in a role which has a reliable 40% chance of failing? The other three roles provide fail safes against the almost inevitable failure so easily imagined that its play in our awareness and not is one of the major themes of literary and moral history – deception and infidelity.

…and, who are you for me?

Probably by this point you are noticing that these roles may be covertly in play throughout our lives, most clearly so in the major everyday interpersonal settings like work, sports, religious, and various avocational and political groups. They are the means of establishing and maintaining deep bonds in the relatively distant relationship worlds of post modernity. These may resist the pleas of justice, honour or prudence, as we can see in various instances of groups which prefer their publically guilty members to the rights of victims of various abuses. Add identity dynamics to such group and we have the material of gross discriminations against out groups, especially easily stigmatised ones.

Learning to act right (12)… Choosing to end a marriage

Learning to act right (12)… Choosing to end a marriage
Torrey Orton
July 14, 2010


Here's another tale of growth occurring, as it often does, on the back of division and depression. This one emerges from an explicit conflict between two publically accepted versions of right behaviour in the mind and heart of a friend charged with modelling right behaviour for others. David presents this conflict in clear and unflinching terms. More importantly, he's unblinking in assessing his own struggle to do the right thing. Like many such struggles, his tale bears tinges of the unresolved or the uncompleted aspects of the conflict. Doing it can never be fully over it, perhaps.

Choosing to end a marriage

In the late 70s I found myself struggling to deal with my marriage which was at a terminal stage. The major struggle involved dealing with two ethical considerations which were in conflict.


I was a Baptist minister working as an independent Christian education consultant, which meant that I was not engaged in pastoral care of a congregation but I was a member of a local church where I and my family worshiped.


I was part of a tradition and culture that expected any minister to set an example to others of upright Christian living and this was reinforced by my mother, a very strict, conservative practicing Christian. This meant that a minister's marriage had to be sound and above reproach – or at least to appear to be so no matter what the reality might be. This expectation weighed heavily on me to such an extent that I took far too long to acknowledge that the marriage was anything but sound.


While working with a church in the USA (in the early 70s) I was exposed to a different tradition and culture, one that took a different view of what it meant to be an example. This culture perceived that the important thing about setting an example was to be open and honest about personal failings and about the struggle to live up to the expectations of what 'being a Christian' meant. I was attracted by this perspective yet I did not find it easy to take on board as part of my ethical framework.


When the marriage eventually got to the point of crumbling I found these two ethical considerations were creating an internal dilemma as I faced the question of what action I was going to take.


I found myself having to make a choice about whether to leave the marriage or not. When I reached a point where I felt that a decision had to be made I struggled to find the willpower (courage?) to actually do it and looked for help from external sources. The following extract from my journal at the time describes the experience:

An advert in the Saturday paper for a furnished country cottage caught my attention but did not produce any action. Sunday morning's sermon not only had a strong note of "Be strong and trust me to meet all your needs" but was illustrated by a story of a woman who separated from her husband by taking a country cottage!!! My response was not to do anything till Monday, taking the risk that it would still be available. Before phoning I had a time of prayer and Bible reading from Psalm 144 "You......rescue your servant David. He is my protector and defender, my shelter and saviour, in whom I trust for safety." With this reassurance I rang the landlady, arranged to view the cottage and then took up the rental.

Although that helped me to finally make the choice to leave the marriage it did not create a situation of subsequent clarity. My journal reflects an ongoing struggle for almost a year before I was finally content that I had made the right choice and was able to adjust to a new way of life.


Looking back some 30 years later I can still recall the pain of the struggle to resolve the ethical considerations described above and am fascinated that I could not earlier find the strength within myself to implement the choice I eventually made. Perhaps this is an indication of the deep-seated indoctrination that occurs within the conservative Christian tradition and the consequent struggle that is experienced by anyone wanting to find freedom from it.


David J Scott - 280610