Compartmentalized Relationships
by Steve Watters on 09/26/2007 at 1:52 PM
Did you hear the story about the Bosnian couple who met online -- only to be repulsed when they met in person? It wasn't that they found each other unattractive. Apparently they were attracted enough to marry each other at one point. But they were looking for someone else when they each went online under fake names and had an "affair" with each other -- each complaining about their miserable marriage and thinking they had finally found their soul mate.
Realizing they had only found the person who had disappointed them in marriage, they decided to get a divorce -- claiming marital unfaithfulness.
There's a lot you could say about this story, but here's the question I'm perplexed by: How can a man simultaneously show love and disdain to the same woman -- and vice versa?
Consider what the couple was quoted saying about each other:
I thought I had found the love of my life. The way this Prince of Joy spoke to me, the things he wrote, the tenderness in every expression was something I had never had in my marriage.
To be honest I still find it hard to believe that the person, Sweetie, who wrote such wonderful things to me on the Internet, is actually the same woman I married and who has not said a nice word to me for years.
This story reminded me of one the writer Ethan Watters told in his book Urban Tribes. He described how strange it was to have a woman find him to be a good confidant in which to share a story about some jerk who offended a friend of a friend of a friend of hers. He found it strange that he could be simultaneously perceived as a confidant to this woman and also be that jerk she was describing.
I suspect it takes a lot of compartmentalization of our thoughts and words to pull off these kinds of tricks. While you may not have seen any examples quite this dramatic, have you seen compartmentalization in relationships where someone can come across substantially different based on the setting? What do you think causes that?
1. BDB said the following at 2:19 PM on Sep 26:
What causes compartmentalization?
Well, education for one thing. Any kind of training - military, business, emergency preparedness, etc. where people are trained to make decisions within a limited time frame requires people to learn to compartmentalize. If they can't compartmentalize, then in a stressful situation, they become paralyzed and unable to make a decision.
It's also a good idea to separate work from personal life. It's especially good to not bring personal problems into your work relationships. That requires some discipline to compartmentalize.
Sometimes it comes back to the surface later, though, or stress gets buried and not dealt with; showing up in other areas of life.
2. David said the following at 3:00 PM on Sep 26:
Reminds me of the Pina Colada song...
3. Steve Watters said the following at 4:57 PM on Sep 26:
David wrote: Reminds me of the Pina Colada song...
Good point (and frankly I never knew what that song was talking about until just recently). The big difference is that in that song, the couple appreciated the new side they discovered to their relationship and stayed together. This poor couple chose not to discover the potentially good part of their marriage.
4. Becca said the following at 6:30 PM on Sep 26:
This reminds me of the fantastic movie The Shop Around The Corner, starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan (except of course that story ends happily!)
5. Jennifer E. Jones said the following at 8:27 PM on Sep 26:
Part of me finds this story a little hard to believe. I mean, at some point in all that online catting wouldn't someone say something that would click (i.e., She talks about her friend Cindy and he thinks, "Oh, my wife has a friend named Cindy." Or, she thinks, "He went to Harvard. That's funny. My husband went to Harvard.") Basic demographic details should have given away the secret.
How little did they know one another as spouses that they could engage each other under the mask of anonymity and still be clueless?
That aside, I think all couples to some extend do some compartmentalizing. We focus on the good aspects of someone's character and down play the annoying quirks. Otherwise, how could we stand to be together?
We get in trouble in our relationships when we compartmentalize the red flags and other obvious warnings that this person isn't for us.
6. Jess said the following at 10:03 PM on Sep 26:
And what draws the line in compartmentalizing? I agree a bit with Jennifer. I enjoy my fiance when I delight in his wonderful qualities. If I were to focus on his negatives, where would that get me? Because we are fallen, we all have those things that hurt, annoy & bother others. Why focus/dwell on those? It like counting our blessings instead of complaining about what we don't have....
7. Naomi said the following at 10:16 PM on Sep 26:
It's really easy to be "transparent" online considering where you can bare it all without the pain of first impressions or appearances.
People actually think that marriage is all about -- how they could be so inlove.
But we all know that God has made us spirit, soul and body. We may satisfy the body and nourish the longings of our soul, which is our emotions... but you know, a dead spirit is a dead spirit.
It's a part of us and should be a consideration when we get married. (In other words, online relationships like normal face to face dating can be soulish... and everything that's temporal... is always in danger.)