The secret to supporting a husband who went to boarding school

Are you married to someone who went to boarding school and it's putting a strain on your relationship? You might be wondering how you can help your partner to change the behaviour which is creating problems for you as a couple. Or perhaps you just wish he could be happier.

It’s not easy living with someone who went to boarding school. We’re a difficult bunch.

We’re not all the same either. At boarding school we create a ‘survival personality’ to keep us safe, but we don’t all share the same survival personality. Find out more about how we create a boarding school survival personality.

Some ex-boarders can be massively ‘walled-off’, unable to express or even feel their own emotions. But others may be the very opposite finding it almost impossible to regulate themselves when their feelings run high (that was me).

Some of us are like wallflowers, hiding from other people, while others may come across as extremely confident and self-assured.

So your relationship may be strained because your partner:

• bottles up his feelings because he can’t express them

• uses alcohol, drugs or gambling to escape when things get difficult

• has problems with intimacy and vulnerability

• is volatile and easily triggered, raging at little things

• is socially awkward and embarrassing at social events or

• treats every social encounter as an opportunity to ‘show off’ his achievements at work or his intellectual prowess

So you see, because ex-boarders have different coping strategies, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. What we can be certain of though is that if your relationship is strained, you are both in pain. But it may only be you who is actually feeling the pain.

Maybe you’ve tried all sorts of things which haven’t worked. You might have tried to get him to open up about his feelings or to share something about what happened to him at school (apart from rugby matches and practical jokes). But he just clams up.

He walls off when you talk about how it’s affecting you. And even if he recognises that he has a problem, still you can't convince him to do anything about it.

It would definitely be easier if your partner was willing to consider some kind of therapy or coaching. A willingness to explore his feelings and how they relate to his experiences at boarding school would be a good starting point.

But of course a lot of men are unwilling to contemplate therapy. Many of my female clients complain that they have had lots of therapy, but he hasn’t had any at all. In fact getting him to come for couples coaching is her best shot at getting him to talk about his difficulties.

There are some things you can do, though, that you might not have thought of. These are just five things that might help you make a difference.

Your own self-care

Start with yourself. Remember the old saying ‘always put your oxygen mask on first.’ Even if you’ve been to therapy or you’ve got a coach, you still need to be looking after yourself on a daily basis.

This isn’t about bubble baths and candles. This is about your boundaries and your willingness to say ‘No’. It’s your own emotional regulation, your ability to soothe yourself. It’s the time you set aside for practices which feed and nurture you such as yoga and mindfulness.

When you are practising self-care you are in a better position to cope with the challenges you may face. And you are modelling it for your husband as well.

A little education goes a long way

There are plenty of books about male boarding school ‘survivors’ (there's a list at the bottom of this article), there are videos on YouTube, a quick Google search will throw up articles and of course there are more articles in my blog. Share what you learn with him. If he wants ‘solid evidence’, I would recommend Nick Duffell and Joy Schaverien’s books.

My first inkling that boarding school might be behind my depression was when I first came across the concept of the ‘boarding school survivor’ in a conversation with a man who had also gone to boarding school in his adolescence.

Later I realised that my survival personality was creating problems in my marriage. It didn’t save my marriage. But it did mean that when I embarked on my current relationship, my partner (who also went to boarding school) and I had an awareness of our own survival patterns.

Whatever your husband has been believing up to this point, it may help him to understand that he shares this experience with thousands of other men who went to boarding school. But be patient! These things take time.

Be curious and listen

It’s very easy to be judgemental about other people’s behaviour; even their beliefs. But it never helps. But you can replace judgement with curiosity and a willingness to listen without trying to fix him.

Be curious about your own reactions as well as your husband's difficult behaviour.

Here are some questions to help you get started. Sometimes you might want to ask your husband and sometimes it might be better to ask yourself the question.

• What was the trigger for this behaviour? (Which means what did you do, or maybe what did your child do that triggered the behaviour?)

• Why was it so triggering? What lies behind the trigger? Maybe a memory from school…

• What am I making it mean about me when he engages in this behaviour?

• How might things change if I recognise that this behaviour is part of his survival pattern?

These questions will enable you to do a little research, or what you might think of as archeology. You’re starting to uncover the connections between his past and his present. And you're noticing where you yourself are being triggered and why.

Learn to regulate and co-regulate your emotions

One classic pattern in relationships is where one partner finds it very difficult to regulate their own emotions and feels driven to express them without pulling any punches. This looks like unconsolable sobbing or angry shouting. We call it unbridled self-expression.

The other partner is the exact opposite: shut down, walled-off, unable to cope with their own emotions let alone those of their partner. The shut-down partner may resort to addictive behaviour such as alcohol, gaming or working long hours in order to avoid their own feelings and those of their partner.

This may not be your relationship, but if it is, there is work for you both.

If your husband has a tendency to shut down, when you try to offload onto him he will shut down even more. I’m afraid to say, it is up to you to learn to regulate your own emotions so that you don’t engage in unbridled self-expression.

I worked with a couple last year who fit this pattern to a tee. As she got better at regulating her own emotions, he found it easier to come out from behind his wall and engage with her emotionally. Eventually they sort of met in the middle.

It is in the middle that you can co-regulate. What this means is that you support each other with emotional regulation without ending up in co-dependency.

Help him connect with his inner child

Boarding school requires us to grow up too soon. Ex-boarders may seem like they’ve forgotten how to play. If your husband is super-serious it may help to encourage him to play.

My partner has a story about how he learned to play with his five year old. He simply watched another Dad playing with his little girl in the playground and in that moment it became clear: just have fun. There’s no need to be serious in a playground. So his inner playmate was still there, waiting to come out and play!

Ask him “What did you leave behind when you went to school? Was it your teddy, your paintbox, some other favourite toy? What might happen if you allowed yourself to revisit the things you left behind?”

If he’s not keen, take it slow. The more you push, the more he will resist. This is about seeding something that will lead to change. Be patient and wait for that plant to grow!

What next?

This article only touches on the complexity of boarding school syndrome and how it shows up in our adult relationships. Being married to a boarding school survivor is challenging, but if you want more love and intimacy in your relationship, it is a challenge you have to take on. I say that because boarding school survivors often end up with multiple failed relationships. I'm guessing you don’t want your marriage to become the next divorce?

To find out more about the impact of boarding school on adult relationships, download my e-book, coming home: Beyond Boarding School Survival.

Further reading

Nick Duffell, The Making of Them: The British Attitude to Children and the Boarding School System. Nick Duffell is a psychotherapist and the founder of Boarding School Survivors. He has written several books, but this one is a good place to start.

Joy Schaverien, Boarding School Syndrome. Joy Schaverien is a Jungian psychoanalyst who has worked with many boarding school survivors. She came up with the term boarding school syndrome to describe the pattern of behaviours she saw in her clients.

Men's Accounts of Boarding School, edited by Margaret Laughton, Allison Paech-Ujejski & Andrew Patterson

Charles Spencer, A Very Private School: A Memoir. Charles Spencer is the brother of the late Princess Diana. This book is an account of the abuse he suffered at Maidwell Hall in the 1970s.

Prince Harry, Spare. Although this book is about more than just his school days, it does include an account of his time at Eton.

Nikki Simpson, Finding Our Way Home: Women's Accounts of Being Sent to Boarding School. This book is a collection of stories from women who attended boarding school.