There is a concept in psychoanalytic thinking of the “bad object.” The notion is rooted in the black and white thinking of early childhood, where the world gets divided up into “the good and the bad.” Often times, this oversimple breakdown of life survives within each of us, even as we grow up and mature into a much more realistic view of life. One prominent place it continues to live inside of us, and in our society at large, is in the area of shame. In public discourse, for example, accusations of shame commonly boil down to projecting “badness” onto the person shamed. Few things in public life are more painful than having ourselves attributed with such labels of badness.
This is especially true in marriage. In choosing our primary partner, we hope to establish an emotional home base where we are protected from the threats of being shamed and diminished so common in the outer world. At least with our chosen partner we are hopeful of being seen as essentially good… good and worthy. In my experience, this is a nearly universal longing in all marriages.
But a truism about marriage is that this is exactly where we are revealed in all of our limitations. And yet, it is exactly with our partner that we most need to be seen for best in us. In marriages dominated by the negative cycle, the opposite happens. Our partner mirrors back to us the ways they are disappointed in us, and we in turn mirror back our disappointment in them. This “death by a thousand cuts” can easily do in any marriage… even marriages with fundamentally good potential.
Shame by itself is also a normal part of life, as in shame over this or that misstep. The place where shame becomes hugely damaging (to self and other in relationship), is when it rises to the level of toxic shame. In toxic shame we are not just ashamed of a misstep in the world or with our partner, in toxic shame we are essentially ashamed of ourselves, our own being in the world, our inherent nature. There is a common phrase in todays world where one claims something shameful of ordinary scale… we say “that’s my bad.” I actually find this non-catastrophic acknowledgment of misstep as helpful in marital healing. By contrast, in situations of “toxic shame” the feeling is one of “all badness” … that I have no worth, that there is no goodness or love within me, that I am “bad-bad” in that way that young children can concretely feel. Couples amidst the negative cycle are highly at risk of evoking this feeling of “bad-bad” in each other, at times passing it back and forth like a “hot potato!
