Psychologist and author Patricia Evans describes a model of an abusive relationship called the Teddy Bear Model. I found it extremely enlightening so I thought I would share it with you here.
It starts out with a personality disorder in Person A (can be a man or a woman, but in the case of spousal abuse, usually a man) in which A develops a compulsive need to have another person on which to project himself. This person, Person B, fulfills certain needs in Person A, supporting him emotionally, uplifting him, making him feel better, adoring him, and providing a place for A to dump all of his negative traits and his fears.
Now Person B can be likened to a teddy bear. She is always ready to play when A is playful, always supportive, always sympathetic, always understands him, always adores him. He can put Teddy on a shelf and she will always be there when he needs her. She’ll always be happy to see him and give him what he needs. In fact, he becomes so enmeshed with his Teddy that he feels she is simply an extension of himself.
So, A~ comes home from work one day and finds his Teddy there on the shelf waiting for him.
"Hello, Teddy, I’ve had a bad day. I hate my boss."
"Oh, I’m so sorry. Your boss is an ass."
"Yes, I’d like to kick his ass so hard he could floss with my shoelaces."
"Yes, you poor thing. You work so hard and you’re so good at your job."
"Okay, well bye Teddy!"
And Teddy waves and he goes happily out the door.
Except one day, when he says good-bye to Teddy, she says "Where are you going?"
And he stares at her. Did Teddy just ask him a question?
"When will you be back?" Teddy asks.
Yep, Teddy is questioning him. That ain’t right. Teddy is supposed to sit quietly on her shelf until he summons her. She has no business questioning him, she is nothing but an extension of himself! Teddy is acting up and must be reminded of her place.
"What the fuck is your problem? You’re always questioning me! Can’t I even go out without you hounding me and wanting to know every little thing?! I’m going out! I’ll be home when I get home!"
And he storms out the door. And Teddy is bewildered. What happened? Does he really think I'm always questioning him? I only asked him where he was going and when he’d be home, was that wrong? Maybe he thinks I don’t want him to go out. I’ll just have to explain that’s not what I meant. He just misunderstood why I was asking.
So the next day, she says to him, "I thought you might be upset with me because you thought I didn’t want you to go out. I don’t mind if you go out. I just wanted to know where you were going and when you’d be home."
Uh-oh, now Teddy is trying to explain her point of view. Teddy doesn’t have a point of view. She is an extension of himself.
"Geez, can’t you just drop it! Why do you have to keep going on and on about things? Why are you always trying to start an argument?"
One day, Teddy comes home from work full of excitement. She finds him sitting in front of the TV and she rushes to tell him her good news.
"Guess what! I got an award at work today for that software project I completed under budget last quarter!"
Silence.
"My boss said it was the tightest 60,000 lines of code he’s ever seen!"
Silence.
"I got $250 and a little trophy for my desk."
Without taking his eyes off the TV, he says "No-kidding-that’s-great."
Looks like Teddy has forgotten her place again. Her job is to support HIM and his accomplishments, not to brag about her own. She must not be allowed to think she’s too smart, else she forget how smart HE is.
Teddy realizes he doesn’t want to be disturbed so she goes off to the kitchen to start dinner. Ten minutes later he comes in and finds her rinsing the hamburger meat in the sink before mixing it in with the spaghetti sauce.
"What the fuck are you doing!?"
She looks up, confused. "I’m just rinsing off the grease. What do you mean?"
"You’re washing all the nutrition right down the drain! I can’t believe you’re too stupid to even fix spaghetti right!"
"Washing all the nutrition down the drain? It’s just the grease. It’s fat. The nutrition is the protein and that’s in the meat."
Jesus-please-us, now Teddy’s contradicting him!
When Teddy looks up, she’s startled to see him turning bright red, fists clenched, shaking with rage.
"What is it? I always fix it this way. I’ve been doing this to our spaghetti meat for years, I thought you knew that. You never said it bothered you. I won’t do it anymore if it’s that big a deal. I just thought we didn’t need all the extra fat..." Again, she’s babbling, trying to explain because he must have misunderstood.
"ANY MORON KNOWS THAT ALL THE FLAVOR IN THE HAMBURGER MEAT IS IN THE GREASE!! What an idiot! You’ve ruined the entire meal and I see you’re even burning the vegetables too. You’re so stupid. You just wasted about seven dollars worth of good hamburger meat."
And she begins to cry, looking around miserably at the vegetables and the "ruined" hamburger meat.
"I’m not eating that crap. If you had a half a brain you might be dangerous, you know that? I’m going out."
And he storms out the door. And Teddy begins to go over the course of events, trying to figure out exactly when she had enraged him. What had she done? She's pretty sure it wasn't really the hamburger meat, for clearly his rage was all out of proportion for a guy more generally the laid-back, relaxed sort of guy who takes things in stride--at least he used to be and still is around other people. She alone brings this out in him, if she could figure out what it was she did that made him so mad, maybe she could explain it to him and he would see that she didn’t mean it. It must have been a huge misunderstanding for him to become so angry that he called her names.
Another day, Teddy comes through the door balancing the baby on one hip and a grocery bag on the other. She’s in a great mood, still singing the song that was playing on the radio in the car as she goes into the kitchen to put the baby in his high chair and the groceries on the counter.
He is watching TV, sulking. He’s been in a rotten mood all week, still having problems with his boss. Now, here’s Teddy, all smiles and sunshine. Can’t she see he’s in a bad mood? She is an extension of himself, she must reflect what he’s feeling. She must offer support and sympathy. And instead she’s in there singing??
"Hey, keep it down, would ya? I’m trying to watch the game!"
"Sorry, hon." She pops her head around the door and says to him, "Would you mind getting the other bags of groceries from the car while I get the baby started on his lunch? He’s about to eat my arm off if I don’t feed him soon!"
What, she still doesn’t get it? Still with that damn cheery disposition. I guess she’s going to need a lesson on what kind of mood we’re in today.
He gets up and begins stalking around, looking for his shoes. He throws down the remote control, kicks the stroller out of the way and generally makes a dramatic presentation of his tantrum. But she is back in the kitchen now, happily feeding the baby, gurgling and making baby talk, and still with the damn singing! She doesn't even care that she's made him mad, the evil bitch.
A few minutes later, he stomps into the kitchen with the last of the groceries and faces her with an accusatory stance. "You didn’t buy any bagels, did you?"
"Hmm? Bagels? No, I didn’t." She doesn’t even look up, she’s still making funny faces at the baby.
"Great. Thanks a lot! You know that I always take a bagel to work with me in the morning, but you don’t care. You don’t care about anybody but yourself!"
Teddy most definitely should have known that he wanted bagels. She should always anticipate his needs. She is an extension of himself, she should already know what he wants.
"Did you want bagels? You didn’t mention it, I didn’t know. You used to take a bagel to work with you but then you went on the Atkins plan and you said you would just grab some eggs and bacon from the cafeteria at work."
"You are such a selfish cunt. You don’t care about me! You don’t care about the baby! You probably didn’t even buy any baby food or diapers, did you? I can’t even count on you to do the least little thing for me around here. I guess I’ll have to do it myself since you’re too selfish to consider anyone else’s needs."
And he slams out the door, presumably to the store to get bagels.
And Teddy falls into that familiar limbo world of disorientation that follows his tantrums. What happened? Did he tell me he wanted bagels and I forgot? No, I'm sure he said he was going low-carb this week and wanted nothing for breakfast. He didn’t give me a chance to show him he was wrong about the baby food, I did buy plenty of it. Does he really think I don’t care about my family’s needs? What did I do to make him think that?
Another time, she spends thirty minutes in the deodorant aisle of the store because she knows he needs deodorant but can’t remember which brand he prefers. Should she just pick one and then offer to bring it back and exchange it if it’s the wrong one? Should she call him and ask? Maybe she should just go home and check and then come back so she will be sure and get the right one. No matter what, he will think that she’s too stupid to remember his brand preferences or that she doesn’t care enough to know.
This kind of relationship almost always escalates over time until verbal abuse and temper tantrums are not enough to keep Teddy in line and physical assault becomes necessary. Teddy must not be allowed to be influenced by anyone but him, so her friendships and outside relationships are blocked or tainted. She’ll notice that he gets grumpy when she spends time with her friends or family, so she spends less and less time with them. Soon she is left with no support structure and no way to compare her disorientated confusion to reality and figure out what’s happening. Without some emotional link to reality in the outside world, she will continue to spin around in her mind and wonder what it is that she is doing to cause this. If she could only figure out what it is, she can fix it and then they can be happy.
When Teddy decides she’s had enough and tries to leave, he will do anything to keep her. He must not lose his Teddy. And she wonders, if he really thinks I am so stupid and selfish and unattractive and rude and inconsiderate--why doesn’t he want out of this as much as I do?
The necessary ingredients for this kind of abusive relationship are
1) Person A with a particular personality disorder that prevents him from seeing Teddy as a separate person. Because Teddy is the person he has enmeshed with and projected himself on, she is the only person he needs to control. Every other person he interacts with may regard him as kind, sensitive and charming. Also, this is a true psychological need on his part. If the illusion breaks and Teddy escapes, he will feel very uncomfortable and intolerably restless until he finds another Teddy to project onto. This is why abusive men always have a new girlfriend or wife, sometimes within days of the end of the previous relationship. Teddy is the only solution to his pain and much easier to get and more satisfying than therapy.
2) Person B, Teddy, with particular traits of her own. She is humble, generous, tolerant (forgiving) and has moderately low self esteem. Her self esteem will be further damaged by the abuse, making the Teddy illusion that much stronger and harder to break.
