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.Some couples manage flexibility on this issue; at times and in someareas the wife is dominant, at other times or in other areas the husband is, and inmany situations they function as peers.A marriage in difficulty is usually one wherethe couple is able to function only in one way and there is discontent with that way.Sometimes, too, one of the spouses makes paradoxical demands on the other.Often a wife wants her husband to be more dominating - but she'd like him todominate her the way she tells him to.When married couples are caught in a power struggle of this kind, it can continuefor years although neither spouse wants it.As part of this struggle they will use awide range of behavior, including symptoms, as ammunition in the situation.Erickson has developed a variety of procedures for resolving marital conflicts thathave become embedded as habitual, cyclical behavior.Two cases illustrate twoquite different approaches to what is essentially the same dilemma.A marriedcouple in the restaurant business together are in an unresolvable power strugglein the marriage, which takes the form of who should manage the restaurant.In thefirst case, Erickson resolved the problem by interviewing only the wife; the husbandwas not directly included.This man, let's call him Mr.Smith, was in his fifties and had ran restaurants all his life.He started out with a hot-dog stand in high school.During all the years he had arestaurant, his wife put him through his daily catechism about the restaurant.This hadbegun when they were engaged and continued right on through the marriage.As shereported it, she felt compelled to check each day by going down to determine whether hewas running the restaurant correctly.Her checking on him made him furious, yet he let herdo it.She would spend about two hours there checking on everything and having himrecite his report on what he had purchased and what arrangements he had made. She said she didn't want to dominate her husband in this way, and she would doanything to be able to stop doing it.Since she felt helpless about this and compelled to doit, I decided to utilize that feeling of compulsion by having her apply it to herself and shift itfrom him.I assigned her the task of quizzing her husband, as she was doing, but she wasto make a written list of the questions she always asked.Then she was to frame a parallellist of similar questions about her own activities.After she quizzed her husband, she wasto go off and quiz herself about what her own activities had been.She should posequestions as if from her husband and then answer them.Just as she would ask him aboutthe stock of this and stock of that in the restaurant, she would ask herself about thestocks in the home.She would reply, "I ordered seven quarts of milk for the household, Ibought two loaves of bread," and so on.The husband was still being quizzed, but this was always followed by her taking thehusband's role - except that she literally asked his questions herself and had to answer allthe questions.She had the whole management, and yet she was merely in a recitativerole.She reacted predictably; she got fed up with the whole procedure and stoppedquestioning her husband every day.The last time I saw her was quite a while after thetreatment ended.She told me she only goes to the restaurant when she is with somefriends and is going there to eat.She never queries him, and she never reports on thehousehold.But she runs that fifty-thousand-dollar house to his complete satisfaction.What is typical about this ease is the way Erickson arranges that someone with acompulsion go through a compulsive act that overcomes the difficulty.What isunusual is the way the husband is used in the treatment without ever beinginvolved.The wife who has managed her husband is managed into the task ofmanaging Much managing him managing her and drops a procedure of manyyears' duration, which has angered her husband and produced distress in themarriage.It is also typical of Erickson that he determines the husband'scompetence in running the restaurant before he relieves the wife of the task ofsupervising him.In another quite similar ease, Erickson dealt with husband and wife together.Heresolved a long-term marital conflict by a simple instruction that forced a changebecause of the nature of the situation.This husband and wife had been running a restaurant business together for manyyears and they were in a constant quarrel about the management of it.The wife insistedthat the husband should manage it, and he protested that she never let him do it.As he putit, "Yes, she keeps telling me I should run the restaurant.All the time she's running it shetells me I should do it.I'm the bus boy, I'm the janitor, I scrub the floors.She nags at meabout the buying, she nags at me about the bookkeeping, she nags at me because thefloor needs scrubbing.I really should Hire someone to scrub the floor, but my wife can'twait until somebody comes in and applies for the fob.So I wind up doing it myself, andthen there's no need to hire someone to do it"The wife took the reasonable position that she wanted her husband to take care of therestaurant because she would rather be at home.SIne had sewing she wished to do.Andshe would like to serve her husband at least one home-cooked meal a day with specialfoods he liked.Her Husband replied, "That's what she says.You can hear it, I can hear it.But smell he in the restaurant worm, row tomorrow morning"I learned that they locked up the restaurant in the evening at about ten o'clock, and they opened at seven in the morning.I began to deal with the problem by asking the wife whoshould carry Me keys to the restaurant.She said, "We both carry the keys.I always getthere first and open up while he's parking the car."I pointed out to her that she ought to see to it that her husband got there Half an hourbefore she did.They had only one car, but the restaurant was just a few blocks from theirhome.She could 2walk there a half hour later.When he agreed to this arrangement, it solved the conflict.Discussing this couple with some colleagues, Erickson put the matter as simplyas that.Having the woman arrive a half hour later than her husband resolved theproblem.Since this solution seemed more obvious to him than to his audience, hewent on to explain.When the husband arrived a half hour before his wife, he carried the keys.He openedthe door.He unlocked everything.he set up the restaurant for the day.When his wifearrived, she was completely out of step and way behind.So many things had been set inmotion by him, and he was managing them.Of course, when she remained behind at home that half hour in the morning, it left herwith the breakfast dishes and the housework to do before she left.And if she could be ahalf hour late, she could be thirty-five minutes late.In fact, what she hadn't recognizedwhen she agreed to the arrangement was that she could be forty minutes or even an hourlate.In this way, she discovered that her husband could get along at the restaurantwithout her.Her husband, in turn, was discovering that he could manage the restaurant.Once the wife yielded on that half hour in the morning, then she yielded on going homeearly in the evening and preparing a bedtime snack for him.This meant he took over thetask of getting the restaurant in shape for the night and closing up.The wife also was learning to manage the house, which was a more important activityto her.In their final arrangement she stayed home, but she was available for the cashier'sdesk or some other position if an employee Ce was sick or on vacation
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