MARRIAGE AND TYPE A PERSONALITIES: CONFESSIONS OF SPOUSES OF TYPE A’s
I believe that spouses of Type A individuals are invaluable sources of information about these complex people. Many of my counseling hours are spent with wives and husbands of Type A's, from whom I have learned to appreciate that most Type A's are walking paradoxes: powerful yet insecure; demanding yet sometimes quite generous and self-sacrificing; multitalented yet seemingly unable to change certain behaviors that they realize are destructive to self and to others. In the past several years, I have accumulated hundreds of descriptions of Type A individuals as given by their mates. Just the following few illustrate how the inner workings of Type A reactors are viewed by their significant others.
"My wife is the most confident-acting insecure person I have ever known."
"He has an office filled with plaques and certificates that document his accomplishments and the applause he has gotten, but he still feels unappreciated and unrecognized."
"He wakes up scared in the middle of the night, and every morning I have to give him a pep talk. Sometimes I feel like a cheerleader."
"When I hug him, he stiffens. When we make love, either he doesn't seem to know what to do or he acts like a robot stuck on one speed."
"I can tell when she feels ashamed of herself because she starts to justify and rationalize."
"When he worked for someone else, he lived in fear of his manager's criticism. Now he has his own company, and he lives in fear of his customers' criticism."
"She gets a gleam of joy in her eye whenever she talks about any hard times that friends or even relatives are going through; she's the most competitive person I know."
"Beneath all that control lurks anxiety and a feeling of chaos."
"My husband acts like he couldn't care less about you or what you think, but I'll guarantee you this: If you say anything negative to him about him, he will never forget it and he will never forgive you."
"I just wish she would stop torturing herself by comparing herself to everyone else."
"Relaxing makes her tense. She only acts like she's having fun if she's being stimulated in some new and different way."
"He tries to be a good dad, but his attention span is shorter than my children's."
"My wife lives in a constant state of frustration."
"He's ashamed of how prejudiced he is. Ministers aren't supposed to be that way."
"Being with her is like walking on eggshells. You never know when she's going to break into anger."
"He has learned to come home at a reasonable hour, but he feels guilty unless he's working at something that seems absolutely necessary to get done."
"When I see him with his family, he looks like a desperate little boy hoping to get noticed and patted on the back."
These spouses of Type A's know that Type A's, just like the rest of us, are haunted by inner pains and insecurities and that their behavior often masks their vulnerable feelings. The comments of these spouses serve as a backdrop to the following summaries of the psychological and medical research on the inner workings of Type A personalities. This research collectively suggests that Type A's are both born and made. That is, many of these people seem physically predisposed to respond to the world in this manner, and certain environmental factors can and do complicate this preexisting tendency.
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