I used to think that helping people see where they had been let down by their parents would help them to forgive themselves for their failings and understand their wounds and become more successful at living their lives. It's a great theory. Seems more than plausible. Then I tried it on my brother. I thought he deserved for someone who was an eyewitness to affirm that his emotional needs had not always been met . . . that there were reasons for his being so "challenged" by life and for him seeming to "struggle" so. It was a great theory. It couldn't hurt . . . I thought. One of my sisters tried to warn me against this effort, saying, "I would leave that kind of delving into his psyche to the professionals."

Well, I gave my brother all this affirmation of what I had witnessed as unfair things he had suffered growing up. I wanted to help him heal and know that I understood a lot of the hurt. Well, the best laid plans of mice and men oft do go astray. I helped my brother to dive deeper into his narrative of being a victim . . . all to no good end whatsoever. He was abusing other people's rights, and I thought that helping him to see where he had been a recipient of some abuse would unlock the mystery of how he got to be the way he was and help him free himself. Didn't work. Really didn't work! It's a great theory, but that doesn't mean it works.

For anyone who is behaving badly, we can usually almost always find a history of some kind of parental incompetence or abuse or neglect or abandonment. Then, you could probably find that those parents had deficits in the way they were reared. The parents were dysfunctional because the grandparents were dysfunctional. You can take it back, generation after generation, to Adam and Eve. It can all be very interesting, in terms of the insights we can gain for how pathology perpetuates itself. This kind of delving can really do wonders in showing us how problems originate. Novelists have always known this, and lots of great novels are based on tracing this kind of inter-generational dysfunction. Enlightening though it may be, it is not necessarily that productive in changing bad behavior in people. If it were, we could flood the prisons with therapists, and get everyone rehabilitated, and end recidivism in the correctional system - in which my brother has been a regular participant.

People who treat other people badly usually do have a sense that they have been treated badly themselves . . . and they usually are correct on that. That is the classic human rational for bad behavior. It can be non-productive to help then explore and dive deep into the realization of just how badly they were treated. I found that to be the case in sharing perspectives with my brother. There is something that does help my brother. He behaves best and is at his happiest when he is in the confines of a setting that actively regulates his behavior. He does well when he is institutionalized. He gets limited options for how he can behave. He gets swift correction for unacceptable behavior. He faces all kinds of constraints, and that does him a world of good. And it doesn't require that any of the staff there know all that much about how he came to have the emotional issues that he has. Staff in these places presume that there are all kinds of reasons for how their detainees got to be the way they got to be. At some stage of the game, that all gets to be somewhat beside the point, and you have to deal with the here and the now.

Seeya, started this thread because her husband is treating her poorly and even trying to violate her rights. If he were secluded in a room deeply depressed, but not misteating her, then I would say that providing him with empathy for his wounds might be a reasonable initial approach to trying to help him cope. Even then that approach is of limited value. Therapists have commiserated with me over all the wounds that life inflicted on me, but there comes a point where me rising up from being depressed is a matter of making the effort to do so. You can get addicted to mourning and bewailing all the hurt that came your way in life.

It was useful to learn that OP's husband was the product of the kind of home that we learned about . . . where mom dumped him with dad and went on to satisfy her own needs. That does resolve a lot of the mystery. It is interesting to know. It's very interesting to know. It can enormously help others to understand him. Will him pondering that help him to change his behavior towards his wife? Maybe and maybe not. Usually, what changes our current behavior is some pressure that makes it harder to continue doing what we are doing. This husband is not so disordered that he needs to be institutionalized. But he does need constraints on his bad behavior toward his wife. And it is largely the wife who will have to provide those constraints. She could call the cops, if he were beating her up. But that's not the nature of the problem. He's not really breaking any laws. But he's violating her right to the consideration that a wife deserves from a husband. Neither his parents, nor her parents, are going to impact that very much, as I think most of us agree.

The OP, in this situation, has to become cognizant of what she her rights are - like the right to not be kicked out of where she lives - and to put up some serious insistence that she does have rights, will not forfeit them, and intends that they be respected. When the OP willingly left her home to go couch surfing, she showed a lack of understanding of what is due her. Sounds like she has overcome that particular deficit in her knowledge about her own rights. I have faith that she will go on learning, as she sounds like a basically healthy minded young woman.

It used to be thought that doctors and psychotherapists could help alcoholics learn why they drank and, thereby, discover the key to gaining sobriety. That never worked too well and the 12 step programs of peer support came into existence. The main message to families was: "Don't enable." I was a big beneficiary of that message myself. My heavy drinking significant other was abandoned by his mother for a couple of years as a small child, and I used to feel so sorry for him over that. It was very interesting for me to learn that, but didn't show me much useful in how to help him in the present. I really believed that, if I just showered him with all the love and commitment that maybe his mom had not shown, that he would recover. There was no way I could foster a better relationship between his mother and him, as she was long dead by the time I met him.

In the end what helped me was this realization: I don't owe it to anyone to be tolerant of mistreatment from them because they had it rough when they were kids. In the end, what helped him was his realization that, if he wanted to have any kind of a life, he had to gird up his loins and - dare I say it - be a man.

Certainly, when he has faced difficulties, like awful health problems, I've never said: "Suck it up and be a man." There are times when everyone deserves to be comforted and offered solace. "To everything there is a season." In a marriage, we have to become good judges of what season we are in. We comfort our partners in sorrow; we exhort them on to greater effort when that is needed, and we admonish them to cease and desist bad behaviors. And we may have to do all three things on any given day.

The tone of this thread has sure evolved enormously. For a while, the OP was being told to "Wake up" and know that her husband was a lost cause . . . a narcissist. Now, having learned of his mother's abandonment and his father's insensitivity, he is this poor wounded bird having been invalidated in the worst way that a male can be invalidated and in need of being helped to mourn and heal the devastating assault on his spirit that he suffered as a vulnerable child. Maybe the answer is neither of these extremes.

I don't see him as the most fragile and vulnerable character walking around. He figures out how to achieve his ends - like finding a wife and having a job and getting that house. Even if his mother were to apologize and wash his feet in her tears, that wouldn't necessarily wake him up to the realization that you can't crap all over your wife and expect to have a decent marriage . . . you can't act like a jerk at work and think people will have any respect for you. Lots of people around him are overcoming their own childhood traumas. His parents probably had theirs.

So that's why I say to the OP: Figure out what are the makings of a well-rounded, satisfying life and pursue that . . . and put the expectation out there that, if he wants to stay in this marriage, the husband has to participate. Come up with plans for things to do on the weekend, as alternatives to him fishing and wife being alone or with girlfriends. Our lives are defined to a large extent by our interactions with others. Sounds like he tends to be a sour puss who complains about others all the time. So wife can role model a better option. People do learn from their spouses, which is one of the great things about good marriages. It has seemed to me that this husband is going to give this wife as hard a time as she will tolerate. It's not her fault that he didn't get enough maternal nurturing as a child. But he wants to be mad at someone, and who you live with makes a handy target.

While other people may cause our unhappiness when we are children, we are largely the cause of our own problems when we are adults. Yes, a lot of the time, it is our fault. This guy is sabotaging himself. He's apt to lose that job and this wife, continuing the way he is doing. Life is not going to give him special dispensations because he got a bad break as a kid. So I would encourage wife to not enable any bad behavior. Do not concede to ridiculous requests like leaving the house, or cooking 7 nights of the week. Do not accept that he has to go fishing to heal from the hurt that she caused him. Do not accept his interpretation of things, which is badly askew of reality. Instead, push back - vigorously - with a healthier alternative . . . like a barbecue that you both host for friends, instead of him going off to sit in a boat alone with his father fishing, telling himself a bunch of garbage about how his wife made him feel worthless, when she did no such thing. For an adult to behave badly toward his wife is not a case of him being "challenged." It's a case of him disregarding her rights as a person in this world. So wife must challenge the husband with her intent to have a decent life and her expectation that he respect her needs and requirements.