A Marriage in the Ring

Debra Vajcner wants married couples to stop fighting long enough to consider the hypothesis that somebody else is to blame for their problems.

The 44-year-old Santa Ana marriage counselor has spent the last 12 years working under that belief, helping married couples understand why they fight, and how to stop.

“We can’t really get involved in a relationship until we get over the basic trauma of what happened to us when we were young,” said Vajcner, president of the Orange County chapter of the California Assn. of Marriage and Family Therapists. “We had a lot of violence going on in the home when we were growing up, but it wasn’t talked about.

“One out of four girls have been molested; one out of seven boys have been molested. So when you have that kind of background, or you’ve grown up with alcoholism or abuse, it’s very difficult to get into a marriage and live happily ever after.”

Instead of examining and healing the wounds of childhood, Vajcner says, adults too often engage in addictive behavior to mask the psychological pain, “rather than looking at what happened in our lives that stops us from being happy, content and loving.”

The divorce rate in the United States has leveled off since 1988, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. But it remains the highest rate in the world. Nearly half of all marriages end in divorce or permanent separation.

Divorce rates are about 10% higher in Southern California than the national average, another fact for unhappy couples to consider, Vajcner said.

Much of the marital disharmony she sees is exacerbated by the high financial demands of the Southern California lifestyle. And when work does not go well, men often take it harder than women.

“Men have a lot more difficulty admitting a failure or rejection from the standpoint of work. That has a lot to do with men’s identities. When men are depressed, it can have a lot to do with a work-related situation that is undermining their self-esteem.”

Men are also less likely to talk about their problems openly, which can cause the women in their lives to interpret their anger and depression as a sign of disapproval, Vajcner said.

“Women do tend to think, ‘There must be something wrong with me that I’m not good enough for him.’ And the man often encourages that feeling by criticizing the woman, using his criticism as a defense mechanism instead of being honest about his problems and saying, ‘I’m fearful here.’ ”

A continuing cycle of argument can develop, Vajcner said, with every new disagreement pushing the couple further apart.

“In really dysfunctional marriages, one person is usually telling the other person: ‘You’re an idiot, you’re worthless, you’re stupid, you’re incompetent.’ And the other person accepts it, and they continue going on this way.

“Two things happen in dysfunctional relationships: enmeshment and abandonment. Enmeshment is where the message is: ‘You must think like me, act like me, talk like me and be like me. And as soon as you stop, I’m going to abandon you. I’m going to do something to make you know I’m not with you. That’s going to cause you some guilt, and you’re going to go back to: think like me, act like me, talk like me and be like me.’

“This is the real formula for a dysfunctional relationship. It causes constant turmoil.”

Successful marriages require a balance of power, Vajcner said. “In functional relationships, people honor their differences. Then they develop goals to work on the commonalities. For example, my husband is very much a naturalist. He’s out there digging in the backyard, and I’m into interior designing. But our commonality is renovating old houses. I do the designing and he does the contracting. It’s a wonderful commonality.”

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Troubled marriages often can be saved, Vajcner said, if each partner is equally willing to try.

“There’s no sense of staying in a marriage unless both people are cooperating. If there’s physical abuse, alcoholism, molestation, get out. But if there’s some anger going on--maybe you’ve gone through some financial problems--does that mean you have to end in divorce? No. Try to work it out.

“But it takes commitment. It takes a long time to get over some traumas. You have to undo the abuse and increase the self-esteem of each person and then see what you can do to increase the communication and love. It takes commitment from both parties.”

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Profile: Debra Vajcner

Age: 44

Hometown: Palm Springs

Residence: Orange County

Family: Husband, David Cowling

Education: Bachelor’s degree in sociology, University of Redlands; master’s degree in counseling, Cal State Fullerton; licensed marriage, family and child counselor (MFCC); graduate studies in eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, and critical incident stress debriefing

Background: Group counselor for Orange County Juvenile Hall, 1974-76; graduate studies, 1976-78; Cypress College counselor, 1977-78; YWCA counselor, 1979-81; Rancho Santiago College (now Santa Ana College) counselor, 1981-83; MFCC intern, 1984-85; began private practice in 1985; has conducted workshops for adult children of alcoholics and adult children of dysfunctional families; author of “Breaking Free,” a 60-page booklet on assertiveness and self-power; Mariposa Women’s Center instructor since 1987; UCI Extension instructor since 1988; member of an Orange County crisis and disaster team since 1994

On marriage and power: “When one person in a relationship wants to have the power, they’re going to do everything they can to make that other person feel stupid. There should be a balance of power; egalitarianism between male and female. Accept your differences and know how they work to make your relationship equal.”

Source: Debra Vajcner; Researched by RUSS LOAR / For The Times