From Richard P. Fitzgibbons
Men and women experience great happiness and joy when they find someone to whom they can entrust themselves. This happiness can last in some couples for a lifetime. However, most couples experience conflicts which can temporarily weaken their safe feeling or ability to trust. When trust diminishes, emotional walls unconsciously go up which then limit giving and receiving love. Subsequently, spouses feel less happy and may experience loneliness and irritability toward their spouse. This type of stress also can lead to transitory tendencies to control or to withdraw. Fortunately, damage to trust can be resolved if promptly addressed through a process of understanding, forgiving, seeing the good in one's spouse, and re-committing to trust and to love again.
In contrast to these transitory stresses on marital trust are the serious difficulties which arise when a spouse manifests ongoing controlling and disrespectful behaviors. Unfortunately, not a small number of spouses today bring into their marriages strong selfishness, deep unconscious trust wounds from hurts with a parent or the serious weakness of modeling after a controlling parent which lead them to act in a controlling manner.
The tendency to control a spouse can emerge slowly in response to hurts or character weaknesses or it can be present at the very beginning of a marriage. This serious personality conflict creates a great deal of tension and unhappiness in a married life. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1606, speaks to this challenge, "Their (marital) union has always been threatened by discord, a spirit of domination, infidelity, jealousy, and conflicts that can scale into hatred and separation."
The ability to trust, that is. to feel safe and secure with one's spouse, is the foundation for giving love as well as for receiving love. Without a strong foundation in trust or without attending to and maintaining trust, a rift can develop in marriages and families. Therefore, trust needs be protected and strengthened at every stage of married life.
Let's look at weaknesses in trusting, which are often unconscious, which are a major cause for controlling behaviors. However, in our clinical experience the most common cause is selfishness. The more a spouse gives into selfishness, the greater the drive to have everything go one's own way and the greater the lack of respect shown to one's spouse.
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