Perpetrators of Pain and Victims of Pain

In their book Mistakes Were Made, Tavris and Aronson described a fascinating experiment about the perception of pain. The researchers devised an ingenious device which allowed them to measure the actual amount of pressure being applied to a finger. Even when the amount of pressure was identical, persons who were on the receiving end of the pressure always perceived the amount of pain as greater than the persons who were inflicting it. As Tavris and Aronson stated, "Pain felt is always more intense than pain inflicted, even when the amount of pain is identical."

Although the experiment was about physical pain, the same principle applies to psychological pain as well. This happens all the time in close relationships. When one partner (the perpetrator) does something the other partner (the victim) perceives as hurtful, the perpetrator almost always minimizes the amount of pain caused, while the victim emphasizes how much pain they experienced. Needless to say, this disparity in the perception of pain is endemic to addicted relationships. The alcoholic/addict either fails to see the hurt he is causing or insists it wasn't that bad, while his partner is either crushed by the hurt or enraged by it.

This same dynamic continues in recovery. I saw that happening the other day when Jim and Diane were in my office. Jim, who was quite promiscuous when he was drinking and using, had come home about 2 am after going out to dinner with some clients from out of town. He had not called Diane to let her know he would be coming home quite late. Jim, who has been clean and sober for nearly two years, insisted there was no reason for Diane to be upset about his lateness and failure to call. "I didn't do anything I shouldn't have; I was just doing my job entertaining important clients."

Diane, who attends Ala-non regularly, was furious. "After all those years I waited for him to come home when he had been out drinking, Jim knows how much I worry when he comes home late like that and doesn't call to let me know he'll be late. How can he be so insensitive to my pain?" And so the first part of the session continued with Jim defending himself and Diane accusing him of not caring about her. As Tavris and Aronson state, "Perpetrators are motivated to reduce their moral culpability; victims are motivated to the maximize their moral blamelessness."

Both perpetrators and victims are faced with the dissonance between their view of themselves (perpetrator: I am a good person who doesn't want to hurt anyone. Victim: I am a good person worthy of being treated with care and respect.) To reduce that dissonance, perpetrators and victims use different strategies. The strategies used by persons doing something that inflicts pain on someone else are the strategies all of us who are alcoholics and/or addicts use over and over again. Our first step is to deny that we did anything wrong at all or that it was understandable given the circumstances. If that strategy doesn't work for some reason, we then move on to admitting our wrongdoing but minimizing it or making an excuse: "It wasn't that bad;" "I was drunk and overreacted;" or "You made me mad when you said I was wrong." Finally, when our backs are to the wall and we can neither deny nor minimize responsibility, we try to make a quick, minimal apology ("Sorry!") and then move on to something else as quickly as possible.

The last strategy is one many of us use when we get into recovery. We do our fearless moral inventory, make a list of those we have harmed, and then move on to make amends. But once we have made those amends that should be the end of it as far as we are concerned. Whatever we did is in the past; but it's time to move on, and whatever happened then shouldn't continue to have negative consequences in the present.

The partners of addicts and alcoholics see things much differently. Remember pain felt is more intense than pain inflicted. Partners continue to feel the pain of events long after they have happened. They have very long memories and do not readily trust they will no longer be the recipient of hurtful behavior. All it takes is one seemingly small incident to stir up all their distrust and hostility.

Another way that partners of alcoholics and addicts see things different is their understanding of why the alcoholic/addicts did what they did. Whereas the alcoholic/addict insists her behavior made some kind of sense at the time, her partner is unable to make any sense of it, even long after the event. "Why did she do that--what was she thinking?" are questions that every victim of hurt asks and become a central aspect of the victim identity. A major reason that Ala-non is so helpful for partners of alcoholic/addicts is the clear emphasis on using the program to move out of the victim mentality.

Sometimes those of us in recovery talk as if our behavior is so different from "normies." But the reality is that everyone uses one set of strategies when they are the person causing harm and a different set of strategies when they are the person experiencing harm. AA and related 12-Step programs address this issue from the "perpetrators" viewpoint, while Ala-non and related 12-Step programs address it from the "victims" viewpoint. It is helpful for both partners in a recovering relationship to be mindful of their own strategies and to realize their partner's strategies are different but understandable.