Jane & Bob: Fighting Our Demon Egos

By David W. McMillan, Ph.D.

Jane and Bob are consulting me via ZOOM. I am staring at Bob’s face on my computer screen as he talks to me. I can see Jane sitting beside him.

The Challenge

            “I can’t do this,” Bob said. “I try. I make it work for a while, maybe fifteen minutes. I listen like you taught us. I push back my agenda. I make room to hear, understand and feel her feelings. For a time, I see the world as she sees it and then, she accuses me of one more thing and I say ‘I wouldn’t have done that if you hadn’t...’ I would have told you about the plans I was making if you were speaking to me, but you weren’t. You were angry and pouting, not speaking to me, because you saw one beer can in the trash. I wanted to get your ideas and thoughts about the trip, but how could I when you wouldn’t talk to me. This is not my fault.”

            “There is nothing you did which you regret?” I asked.

            “I can’t think of anything. I know David, you’ve said that ‘wrong’ is a treasure, ‘gold’ you said and ‘right’ is crap. I want to discover something I could do better or confess a mistake I made. I hear that if I lead with my vulnerability rather than my defensiveness that Jane will be more receptive and less defensive.”

            “She did admit that she overreacted about the beer can,” I said.

The Gift of Wrong   

“Yes, she did and it made all the difference in the world. I see that her ‘wrong,’ her confession was gold to me and us. I’m grateful for her courage. She won the battle with her ego but I’m losing mine. And I need help. I want her to stop picking these fights with me.”

            “You can’t…”

            “I know,” he said, “I can’t control her. I can only control me. I’m so tired of hearing that from you, David. I can say it for you before you speak it. I know when its coming. It’s the same with Jane yelling at me for reading her emails with her sister. I wasn’t trying to read them. I went to her computer to look for a weather forecast and there it was on the screen staring at me.”

            “You promised you would not read my stuff,” she said. “You promised to respect my privacy.”

            “But there it was,” he said, “I didn’t go looking for it and there was that word ‘Divorce’ in the first line. I had to look in that file to understand what was happening to my life, my family, to you. I couldn’t ignore what I saw.”

            “You could’ve stopped reading and come and asked me, but that’s not what you did. You told me to stop writing emails or speaking with my sister. You demanded it. You wanted sex. And I was not going to be your whore. You have a right hand. Use it.”

            “Those sound like words of a divorcing woman,” I said.

            “Well, I won’t stand for him demanding sex from me,” she said. “That would be rape. And, in Tennessee, if a husband forces himself on his wife, that’s now a crime.”

            “Let’s see if we can stay with the subject,” I said. “Bob you were admitting a fault.”

            “I was?” he questioned.

            “Well maybe that’s wishful thinking on my part but I heard some part of you making a confession that you were losing the battle with your ego and you wanted my help.”

            “I did say that and I also said I wish that Jane wouldn’t attack me over nothing.”

            “It may be nothing to you, but it’s something to me. How do you think it feels when you trivialize my feelings?”

            “How does it make you feel?! I’m up to hear with your feelings. Put on your big girl pants and grow up.”

            “Can we get back to your confession Bob?” I asked.

            “I guess,” he said. “But I’m tired of confessing.”

            “Are you willing for me to offer a defense for your ego. It serves a good purpose as well as being a demon.”

            “Okay, if I must,” he said.

            “When we are born, we have what’s called ‘mirror exchanges’ with our parents. In these exchanges we are asking our parents whether or not we are lovable. We continue asking this question throughout our lives. When our parents’ approval will no longer suffice, we use our ego to help us answer that question, ‘Yes, we are lovable.’ Our egos define us. They are our warrior selves fighting for our right to belong, to be on the team, to fit in, to be a valued person, to be a sexual partner. Our ego speaks words like, ‘It’s not my fault;’ ‘That’s not fair;’ ‘I wouldn’t’ have done that if you hadn’t of…, ‘yes but…’

            “These are words of a typical adolescent. We need that protection as we are defining ourselves. But as a mature adult, these words just complicate relationships instead of protecting us, they prove how untrustworthy we are; how unlikely we are to be able to carry our own emotional weight; how difficult it will be to avoid blame in problem solving with us.”

The Blame Cycle

            “But most of the stuff she gets mad at me for I wouldn’t have done if she had done her part,” he said.

            “That’s the point,” I said. “You and Jane can continue to play the adolescent blame game linking your mistakes or your broken promises to the behavior of the other and no one will be held accountable and you will dig a deeper animosity hole with each word. To stop this cycle of blame, someone has to say ‘you are right.’ ‘I made a mistake’ or ‘I broke my promise and there is no excuse, no justification, no explanation that will make what I did okay. I was wrong and you are correct to call me on that.’

            “Whoever offers themselves up to the other as ‘wrong’ has found the courage to release themselves from their ego’s protection. Their wrong often will stop the blame cycle and not only bring peace, but perhaps an intimate exchange of confessions. The other might then say, ‘Yeah, thanks for that. And I made it hard for you to keep that promise by what I did. I’m not innocent here either.’

            “Such kind, messy, compassionate exchanges are the raw materials of intimacy.”

            “But when I make a promise,” Bob said. “I have good intentions. I didn’t mean to read those emails. I couldn’t stop myself. I did the best I could to stop reading when I did. I stopped because the words I read hurt so much.”

            “See you didn’t stop out of consideration for me,” Jane said. “Or because you promised. I can never trust you.”

Character Assassination

            “Hold on Jane,” I said. “I want to get back to the ego but I have to take a detour into character assassination. We want to keep our focus on one event just as we would with our child. We want to say something like, ‘That was a mistake. Yes, you were wrong to do that, but that’s all it is. It was one thing you did that was wrong, but that one thing does not define who you are. I know your heart, Bob, and you do have a good heart. You keep growing and getting better. I know you love me.’

            “When you say ‘always’ or ‘never,’ you generalize about him and his character. You define him by one event. This is character assassination and it is cruel and mean. No one deserves to be labeled because of one thing.”

            “You’re right,” she said. “I can get dramatic. And I know Bob probably did do his best, but if that’s his best, how can he make promises he can’t keep?”

“Yes,” I said. “Bob failed at knowing himself and accurately predicting his behavior.”

“I never imagined this situation when I made that promise,” Bob said. “But now that it happened, I can tell you, I’ll never read your emails with your sister again. Reading them hurts too much.”

“I believe you,” Jane said. “Dr. McMillan says no one changes for someone else so I guess you mean this.”

Back to the Ego Struggle

“I do,” Bob said, “But can we get back to helping me with my ego. It protects me and captures me at the same time. I’m afraid to be defenseless and say ‘I did that, no excuses.’ I can’t hold the guilt all by myself, especially when I think some of it belongs to her.”

“And it does,” I agreed, “but your words, ‘I did my best’ or ‘But what about your promise,’ those words announce that you are pushing blame at her and that you can’t handle the weight of responsible accountability.”

“I don’t know if I’m strong enough to carry that weight,” Bob said.

“I don’t know if you are either,” Jane said. “That’s why I can’t trust you.”

“Jane,” I said. “Would you back off? He’s exposing his belly to you and you are kicking him.”

“Yes,” she said, “I guess I was.”

“But she’s right,” Bob said. “I’m not sure I am strong enough. I feel like a wuss.”

“Well, remember, no one changes unless they see that change would be better for them than what they are doing.”

“How can carrying guilt alone be good for me?” Bob asked.

“Like insects we have antennae. But our antennae are emotional feelers. We can feel when we are about to be attacked. We know what’s coming at us when we hear the words, ‘It’s not my fault’ or ‘you made me do it’ or ‘what did you expect’ or ‘I wouldn’t have done that if you hadn’t provoked me’ or ‘I did the best I could.’ Anytime we hear those words, our defenses tend to take over. We become a porcupine with quills and we bristle ready to do battle. The words ‘I was wrong. I have no excuse. That was my fault,’ are often magic, powerful words. When we hear them, we lower our defenses. We sometimes feel compassion. Sometimes when you claim your wrong; you get kicked in the stomach like Jane kicked you a minute ago. But often, you receive compassion and sometimes, a generous exchange of confessions occurs and you both grow together.”

How Confession Ends the Cycle

“I’m sorry,” Jane said. “You are brave to admit all this. I’m scared to trust. I was scared to trust before I ever met you. I surrounded myself with my perfection, paragon defenses, my straight As and my righteous judgments. I’m having trouble climbing down from my pedestal. I guess that’s my ego.”

“This is a mess you two made,” I said. “When one of you claims your part of the mess without excuses, it opens the door and invites the other to join you. It is in this shared mess, where you find love and compassion. When your ego protects and defends with justifications, you can’t be trusted. Real change only comes when there are no excuses.

“And when Bob found the courage to stop linking his behavior to me,” Jane said. “When he called himself a wuss, I had compassion for him. I felt safe enough to confess my part in our mess and I wanted to join him there, to hold him and have him hold me.”

Being Careful to Avoid Triggers

“The problem with the ego comes not just with our defensiveness,” I said. “It is also triggered by how others approach us.”

“What do you mean?” Jane asked.

“Marietta went to the store yesterday,” I said. “She bought ice, drinks and Off insect repellent for the mosquitos. We were having brunch. She got home without the Off. I expect that she felt stupid. Perhaps she left it in the grocery cart or she didn’t pick it up from the self-checkout counter. She asked me if I might know where we have another can of Off. She admitted that she didn’t get home with it.

“Where is it?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she responded, perhaps feeling more inadequate with my question.

“Didn’t you buy some?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“What happened to it?”

“I don’t know and I don’t have time to go back and get some more.”

“Well, you should’ve brought it home.”

“I know,” she said.

“This was one of those moments before a party where we feel the oncoming stress and we pick at each other or I pick at her. I could’ve done better.

“We should always be aware of the words we say that will produce an ego blow. My cross-examination of Marietta failed with such words.

“Now that she was home without the Off, what difference did it make where the Off was or what happened to it? She felt bad enough. I didn’t need to pour it on. But I did.

“Probably I was feeling inadequate too and I pushed my inadequacy onto her. She did well, not attacking me back.

“Our antennae for ego attacks are easily triggered. Though managing our ego is always our job, no one can do it for us, I made Marietta’s job of managing her ego very difficult and she did a great job avoiding her tit-for-tat balancing urge to attack back.

“If I had been more aware of how the impeding-thirty-minutes-later party was creating stress for me, I might have said, ‘Oh this party is pushing us to the limit. I’ll put some fans in the grotto and blow the bugs away. Thanks for going to the store.’

“But I’m not always my most self-aware and I tend to project my fears onto her and attack her. Thank God for Marietta’s patience with my cross-examination.

“When do you know you are in for a fight?” I asked them.

“He sighs,” she said. “That’s when I know his ego is coming after me. He sighs then he says ‘yes but’ It is the ‘yes but’ that announces the fight is on. He’s coming after me.”

“She sighs too,” he said. “Then she folds her arms, frowns and looks away or sometimes she just walks out of the room and I know she’s put me in cold storage.”

“These phrases like ‘yes, but’ and our body language are strong tells,” I said, “Our emotional antennae can’t miss these signals. And once we pick them up, as Jane said, ‘the fights on.’ It takes great courage to not respond to this invitation to fight. Yet, that’s the job. No excuses. We don’t have to respond in kind. We can change the momentum by putting a hand on a shoulder or by discovering what mistake we made.

“I just had eye surgery. They gave me an eye patch to wear the first day and at night for the next four nights. I wore it to the post op follow-up visit the day of the surgery. The doctor took it off to examine my eye and wrapped it in tissue paper. When we left, I put it in the cloth zipper bag with the eye drops I was to use for the next month.

“That night, when I looked for my patch, it wasn’t there. I was frustrated and angry. The tissue wrapped eye patch fell out of the zipper bag on the floor of the car. Marietta cleaned debris from the car floor and threw it away. I initiated the blame cycle.

“How could you throw it away.”

“Why did the doctor wrap it in Kleenex?” she said.

“Why didn’t you check the tissue to be sure nothing was there?”

“Why didn’t you zip the zipper?”

“I saw it happening, the blame cycle fueled by my fears and feelings of inadequacy. I had to stop it and I knew how.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I should’ve zipped the bag so it couldn’t fall out. That was my mistake.”

“We constructed our own eye patch with scissors, plastic and tape and I made it through the next four nights with my makeshift patch.

“My mistake, my ‘wrong’’ was magic. It ended what promised to be a miserable night and perhaps miserable next few days. I felt like this ‘wrong’ I had discovered; my wrong was like finding a precious diamond. I used it to push back my ego and to stop the blame.

“Our battle with our ego demon is furious and constant and I think if we choose to take on this challenge we will improve.

“And then sometimes we find mystical strength in our fight against our egos. We look up at the stars and contemplate our insignificance in the universe. We peer over the edge of the Grand Canyon and we notice how small we are and how short our lives are compared to this geological wonder. We watch clouds and project images of our ancestors floating over us and fell insignificantly significant. We study string theory, take psychedelics, watch a baby being born and we realize that our true specialness, our most magnificent self exists as a very small part of the human story; that in our smallness, we discover compassion and communion with others, who are waking life’s path beside us. Our life, seen in this context, is tiny and important, only as part of a fabric in which we are a tiny thread. From this perspective our defensive ego seems silly.

“Life is the gift of co-creativity with other humans and nature. As small as we are, really, we won’t be noticed when we are gone. This insignificance shows us the privilege of dancing, feeling, hurting, loving and co-creating with others. From this rare, grace-given perspective, our ego becomes obsolete. We don’t need a defense. We belong, just as they do. We are lovable, just as they are. We matter as much as they do and no more. No excuses, no ‘Yes buts,’ no blame. We are invited to play. Aren’t we fortunate?”