Punishing your partner comes out of a place of fear to gain control over your partner and the situation. This is not coming out of love and the result is dividing and conquering the relationship. So as a couple you will divide and one person thinks they’re winning because they’re conquering their partner and it makes them feel in control.
What this breeds is resentment and hostility in both parties and if this patterns continues where one or both parties are punishing the other, the relationship develops an expirary date.
Stale Mate
Using punishment creates mistrust in the relationship. The person being punished will pull away emotionally and physically while the punisher becomes more controlling and demanding in the bedroom because the punishee has now rejected all attempts of physical intimacy.
If the punishee decides to punish too, the relationship is put in a position of a stale mate.
Masculine Verses Feminine
When a couple are stuck in a cycle of punishing, the once feminine woman becomes masculine in an effort to protect herself emotionally and psychologically while the man becomes feminine as he becomes more emotional because his emotional and physical needs are not being met.
In reality, neither of the party are getting what they need from the relationship.
Winners and Losers
There are no winners in this scenario.
Both parties lose and become either distant or more aggressive towards each other. What started out as two people lovingly connected ends in two people who wishing they were single!!
Children
Now let’s add children to this picture.
Children internalise the way their parents model parenting let alone relationships. The way their parents model relationships, children internalise this model and take it into their adult relationships. The end result is the child enters a relationship where they play the role of either the punisher or attract a partner who will become the punisher.
What the parents have done is set their child/children up for another dysfunctional relationship like the one they have. It is easy to see how dysfunction or abuse and neglect in a relationship is repeated in generation to generation.
