Many highly accomplished individuals utilize their accomplishments as emotional compensations for core emotional hurts. Commonly these accomplishments embue them with a sense of self-importance that fends off terrible historical memories of vulnerability and feelings of not mattering. Current evidence of accomplishments fends off interior core insecurities where love and security are uncertain. Not uncommonly, this pattern of psychological defense results in failed emotional contact with current marital partners. Partners to highly accomplished individuals can often feel missing intimacy and emotional connection with their accomplished partner. This can result in characteristic negative cycles where the accomplished partner feels criticized and not appreciated on the one hand, while their partner can feel emotionally abandoned and not met on the other hand. This is a common marital dance for couples who seek therapy.
These marriages often run into the biggest difficulties when aging in the latter half of life. As accomplished partners slow down near retirement… they commonly feel less support and self-protection supplied by their careers, leaving them more vulnerable to anxiety and depression, without the interpersonal resources that their less accomplished partner has cultivated. This can lead to a role reversal in the marriage.
