"Wedding Day Blues":

Image courtesy of Liza Summer at Pexels TL;DR: If you’re working with an individual client who’s in a fight, or with a couple who are at loggerheads, consider the ways that structures of oppression like patriarchy and white supremacy might be the ultimate source of the conflict. By talking about the ways structures provide the context for an “individual conflict,” the therapist can help the client develop empathy for both themselves and the other. Understanding structural violence not only facilitates our compassion for other people’s behavior; it can also open up new ways to overcome internalized oppression and work through a conflict. “I got into a fight with Emily, and I don’t know what to do about it.” My client, Claire, a white woman in her thirties, absentmindedly braids the tassels of the blanket on her lap as she ponders the situation. “She blew up at me out of nowhere! I’ve done nothing but support her over the last six months. Honestly, I have no clue where she’s coming from.” “Why don’t you tell me about it,” I say, “And we’ll see if we can figure out what’s going on.” “Well, Emily sent me a text last week, the night before my summer solstice gathering. She just said she had a lot going on, and couldn’t come. But here’s the thing—she knows I keep the ritual small and intimate on purpose, and now she isn’t coming, it’s going to be all awkward and stupid. I feel like she ruined it, and didn’t even notice. “So I sent her a text saying that I deserved her support, and that she knew this ritual is a really big deal to me. That’s when she blew up. She said she’d been having a really hard time, and that it was me who wasn’t supporting her. “Hard time?” Claire fumed. “She has nothing to complain about! She had her big wedding, and since then she’s been completely free. She got laid off and she’s just been chilling out, gardening, doing a few chores. She knows this ritual is important, and she can’t even show up for a few hours to participate? I can’t believe her selfishness.” Claire was right—she had been showing up for Emily. Emily’s focus in the past year had been on planning her wedding, and Claire had honored their lifelong friendship by crafting designs for the invitations and staying up late the night before, hand-drawing the table place cards. She’d pitched in during the chaos of the day-of preparations, and then danced and celebrated late into the wedding night. When we’d met, two days afterward, Claire told me she’d had a fantastic time. But the next day, she confided, she’d had a feeling she couldn’t put words to. The heaviness that accompanied it had made her feel defeated and down. But when we met the following week, she’d moved on to other issues, and let it drop. Now, it seemed, that wordless ‘something’ had returned. Emily and Claire’s friendship had been enduring and mutually supportive. But this fight seemed to signify its possible end—Claire said Emily didn’t seem to care about the impact of her cancellation. In truth, Claire said, it wasn’t so much that Emily wasn’t interested in the ritual—it was that she didn’t seem interested in Claire at all. “Do you remember how you felt in the weeks after Emily’s wedding?” I reminded Claire. “You told me you had a great time. But then you felt really down. You told me you might just have to be the ‘ambitious one’ in your friend group, going your way, alone.” Claire nodded as I spoke. “But what if there’s more going on here than a fight between you and Emily over who is more supportive? What if this fight is about two versions of female ‘success’ and who is ‘winning’—who’s the better woman? About a year before this fight, Claire had entered a graduate program in architecture and was spending long days, and even some overnights, at the studio. Most of the students were men, and she talked about the pressure she felt to show them she could show up and work as hard as they did. When the professor critiqued the students’ work each month, she prepared for days in advance, so she could take the comments in her stride. At times in our sessions, she’d tell me how proud she was of her drafting skills and her emerging designs. But at the end of one of our sessions, she’d offhandedly remarked that it seemed like her childhood friends were happier than the grad students. They weren’t so serious and competitive. They knew how to have fun. There were periods of tension in Claire’s relationship with her boyfriend. At times he was very supportive of her work, showing up late at night with a picnic dinner, and leaving little cards for her, telling her how proud he was. But other times, he’d sulk. He wasn’t as driven as she was. He liked to go backwoods camping, or to music festivals. He smoked a lot of weed. When they’d first met, she’d loved the way he calmed her down, brought out her silly side. But lately, she noticed she’d stopped inviting him to the architecture happy hours. She’d come home afterwards to a note saying he was out with friends. They told each other it was healthy to have separate interests, to prevent becoming codependent. It seemed like there was an internal conversation happening for Claire, quietly in the background, about what kind of future she wanted, and how those choices might make her feel. “You see Emily as having something you want,” I continued. “You’ve told me you want a relationship that is strong, and publicly recognized with a marriage ceremony. You long for time to ‘be’ and not have to push so hard. And yet you feel shame and self-judgment for wanting something ‘traditional,’ when out in the world, you’re fighting for recognition in a field that is still predominantly male. You’ve worked as hard, or harder, than the other students, to prove your mettle. “You have an internal contradiction, and it could be that your conflict with Emily is making that internal split more apparent and uncomfortable for you. It sounds like you might feel left behind. Is that right?” “Yes! I hate to admit it, but my competitive personality is showing up. I feel like she’s beating me. I don’t like to say it out loud, but yeah—I feel left out. “I feel like my friend group is splitting apart. In the last six months, three of the friends I’ve known since childhood have gotten engaged or married, and one is pregnant. When we have our monthly potlucks, that’s all they talk about. No one even asks me what I’m doing. They just want to know if my boyfriend and I are still together.” What Claire was describing, in part, was the ways that some women—particularly those of the white middle and upper classes—start to self-select into ‘tracks’ in their late twenties and early thirties. Some choose family and kids; others choose grad school or high-powered careers; others try to do it all at once, sometimes relying on the paid services of other women, to help them manage their desires for a career with status and a family with kids. I’ve noticed my clients who are making these choices are often troubled by feelings of guilt, or competition, or shame. But what really gets them upset is the feelings about the feelings. It’s as if they’re blindsided by the intensity of their judgment and competition with other women, and then stunned by what these feelings reveal about their definitions of success. Part of why Claire turned away so quickly from that wordless ‘something’ was shame: she couldn’t tolerate being a person who was jealous that a friend got married before she did. Part of why Emily lashed out at Claire’s request for support was rage: she was rootless and lost in the wake of her wedding, unemployed and drifting, not the picture of success she’d imagined. She didn’t want to celebrate. She wanted to be left alone. It was clear to me that each felt disloyal for their resentment of the other. It felt taboo to acknowledge, but then festered, in the silence. What’s also at play here, for women like Claire and Emily, is the sense that they’re playing out a struggle that shouldn’t still exist. Part of their discomfor… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit therapysocialchange.substack.com