GAMES FOR HYSTERICAL COUPLES – GAME 4: REVERSE HEADACHE (PART 4)
This game may seem drastic or childish. One of my patients, to whom I suggested a variation of it, replied skeptically, “But that’s playing games!” What he meant of course is that it was a kind of manipulation entailing “tit for tat” behavior. It seemed excessive and revengeful to him. “If I have to do something like that to get her to want me, then it wouldn’t be real; it would be contrived.” There is an element of truth to this complaint, I told him—but I make a distinction between playing a game simply to gain revenge and playing a game designed to end a stalemate and achieve closeness. The former I call a subjective form of acting-out, while the latter constitutes objective acting-out. The rationale of objective acting-out is to oppose subjective acting-out (the wife’s headache maneuver) in the only way that will truly reach her—by acting out back to her. Sometimes you have to go to another person’s level of game-playing before you can transcend it and reach more-authentic relating!
*100/196/1*
