Shame is often at the heart of the defensive tension commonly found in the marriage-of-opposites. It is often the threatened exposure of shame that sets off escalated conflict and polarization. However, the shame that each fears is commonly different.
The core-styled/maximizer/sensitizer often fear the evidence of their own loss of control, immature acting-out behavior, poor impulse control, and impaired personal boundaries. That is, that they will be seen as an impulsive, angry, acting-out child, forfeiting all right to their adult mature authority in the world. This quickly complicates into a feeling of public humiliation and the spectre of not being wanted by others, of having a “badness” that will lead to exclusion from the group.
The outer-styled/minimizer/leveler more commonly fear the evidence of their inadequacy, failure in the eyes of others, and inability to control their world. While the core-styled has often “stepped in it” and played “their feelings on their sleeves”, displaying obvious vulnerability suggestive of shame, the outer-styled’s ashamed feeling is generally far more hidden behind an exterior of sustained self-control and monitoring of social opinion. In essence the outer-styled fear/avoid/self-protect from “exposure”, resulting in a persistant “remove from self”, while the core-styled cannot help but end up in “exposure”, resulting in having to cope with the aftermath of vulnerability and loss-of-control highly evident to the outer world.
Perhaps at base both types fear the same thing, the unbecoming loss of control. The difference may live in the the two different areas of self-identification. For the core-styled the loss of control exposes “a feared truth” that they already know/believe about themselves; that “they really are” these primitive emotions that come pouring forth when threatened. In contrast, the outer-styled fear that they will fail to live up to their self-image of themselves as competent/capable or socially desireable. The emphasis is less on the fear of their primitive feelings and more on the fear of not sustaining positive outer self-image.
An example of this difference is often evident in the two types attitudes towards marital failure and divorce. The core-styled will typically be inwardly ashamed that divorce would reflect the “badness” of the primitive feelings within them and their inability to control them, the evidence of their “sin.” This is in contrast to the outer-styled who commonly fear divorce as evidence of their “failure to do it right” and their inadequacy, and that they are a looser in their own eyes and the eyes of society. Of course, each type partakes in both sets of feelings, it is simply that the emphasis of self-identity is different and opposite.
