GAMES FOR PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE COUPLES – GAME 4: ROLE REVERSAL (PART 1)

Players: Husband and wife. Activists: Both. Setting: Bedroom.

Aim: Jolt each other out of their passive and aggressive defensive postures by mimicking each another.

Game Plan: Husband and wife lie virtually naked in bed. The husband wears an article of the wife’s clothing—could be a hat, a blouse, panties, or shoes. The wife wears an article of the husband’s clothing—hat, pipe, jockey shorts, T-shirt. They play out their continuing sexual conflict, but each impersonates the other, deliberately aping and exaggerating the other’s behavior.

If the couple were my aggressive female patient and passive husband, about whom I wrote in the beginning of this chapter, the wife might sit up in bed with her eyes closed and pretend to meditate. The husband might hit her (lightly) with his fists and complain that she is such a nerd. The dialogue might go something like this:

“Can’t you see I’m meditating?” (Wife impersonating the husband.)

“Oh, you’re such a nerd.” (Husband impersonating the wife.)

“Leave me alone. I’m meditating.”

“I don’t know why I married such a nerd. Why couldn’t I have married a real man?”

“Quiet! I’m trying to achieve cosmic consciousness! Stop trying to do dirty, earthly things to my body while I’m looking at universal harmony.”

“When I think about the kind of man I always dreamed of marrying and the one I ended up with, I want to puke!”