"Rafa Wants a Husband"

Rafa just cannot understand why she is still single at age 35 when all her friends are happily married. She sees herself as loving, generous, and unselfish. She is sensitive to the needs of others, much more so than her friends seem to be. Her friends seem to criticize their husbands; she would never do that. She would not force her mate to see a movie or play that she wanted to see but that he did not.

Getting married is especially important to Rafa because she was raised in a very traditional Middle Eastern household where the role of a woman is to be someone’s wife and mother. It isn’t that she doesn’t try to establish relationships. In fact, she has had many relationships with men; they just don’t last. For example, her last boyfriend, Aasim, broke up with her after six months. He claimed that she was too pushy and possessive. Rafa was pushing him to get married, and he was not ready for that kind of commitment yet. He was also concerned about her jealousy. Rafa hated it when Aasim showed attention to other women—even though the attention was platonic. Aasim has a number of women friends and keeps in touch with them frequently by texting. He also goes to lunch with them occasionally.

Likewise, Aasim has a number of female colleagues at work. Rafa often complained to Aasim that he spent too much time with other women and not enough time with her. Even though Aasim continuously tried to reassure Rafa that these relationships with women were nonsexual and that they were friends to him, not potential dates, Rafa continued to discourage these relationships. Rafa was terrified that Aasim would find these other women more attractive than she and desert her. She just did not want to be alone again.

But Rafa is rarely “alone.” She goes from a breakup to another relationship very quickly. She broke up with another boyfriend, Mattia, two weeks before she met Aasim and started dating him. One month before she started dating Mattia, she experienced another breakup, this time initiated by Nadim. The breakup with Nadim was fairly vicious, and again, Rafa had trouble understanding why it happened. She had done her best to make Nadim happy. She let him decide where they would go and what they would do on dates. She even let him decide what to order for her at restaurants. When Nadim would ask her what she wanted to do, she always replied, “Whatever you want.” Rafa just couldn’t understand how men could not appreciate what a giving, unselfish person she was.

She was always there for her most recent boyfriend. When he was having a difficult time, Rafa would listen to his problems very attentively and help him feel better. She would do this even when she too had a problem she wanted to discuss, but she always put his needs before her own. Instead of appreciating these qualities, the men she dated found them unappealing. At the time of their breakup, Mattia, for example, complained that Rafa was too mousy, that he did not know what she liked to do or even eat. He said that he could not get to know her and did not want a relationship with her. He found her submissiveness annoying, not endearing. He also complained, like Aasim, about Rafa’s possessiveness.

Mattia sometimes wanted to spend time alone or with his male friends, but Rafa resented this time away from her. In fact, the week before they broke up, Rafa and Mattia had a huge argument about Mattia’s friends. Rafa had gone shopping and was in the process of cooking an elaborate meal—Mattia’s favorite— but Mattia called to tell her that he ran into an old buddy who was in town just for the night and that he could not see her that evening; he was going to go out with his buddy. Mattia had no idea that she was planning to cook a big meal for him; he thought they would be going out for a burger at his favorite bar. Rafa became angry because of her wasted effort and told him how unappreciative he was. He in turn complained about her unreasonable assumptions and possessiveness. That argument led to their breakup the following week.

Now, after the breakup with Aasim, Rafa is again asking friends to fix her up. As she commiserates with her friends, she tells them that all she wants is someone to love her, that if you have love, you have everything. She wonders if she will ever find the right man.

Using Chapter 6 as your guideline, address the following issues or questions as they relate to Horney’s Interpersonal Psychoanalytic Perspective:

• Which of Horney’s neurotic trends (or basic adjustments) is Rafa demonstrating? What behavior demonstrates it?
• According to Horney’s theory, what is the cause of Rafa’s neurotic behavior?
• How could Horney’s theory explain the discrepancy between Rafa’s idealized versus real image of herself?

Rubric

Case Study Rubric