"Gone Girl" Goes to the Darkest Reaches of Irrelationship

The Monstrous Co-Creation a Marriage Becomes

Posted October 9, 2014

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/irrelationship/201410/gone-girl-goes-the-darkest-reaches-irrelationship

• (This is an analysis—not a review—of?Gone Girl.?See the movie before reading this analysis; it is full of spoilers)

David Fincher's (2014) adaptation of Gillian Flynn's (2014) novel,?Gone Girl, is a parable—albeit extreme—of the darkest elements of irrelationship. Irrelationships are learned relational patterns that may haunt people whose?childhood?caregivers were unable to meet their emotional needs—and who may even have looked to the child to meet their own (e.g., Amy Elliot). Amy was her parents’ caregiver. In this role?caretaking?initially became confused with love, and was later perverted into something monstrous and all-consuming.

Amy Elliot (Rosamund Pike) was always (at least) a step behind the fictionalized version of herself. That is, until her parents wrote the book where "Amazing Amy" gets married. By this time, Amy had met Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), a handsome, charming, and successful writer for a men's magazine who, posing as a reporter, asks the real Amy to marry him at Amazing Amy's staged engagement party.

Five years later, their?marriage?is in shambles. The recession has left them jobless and they have abandoned their successful New York City lives to take care of Nick's dying mother in rural Missouri. The caretaking pattern that Amy involuntarily engaged in with her parents has reared its ugly head in her marriage, and she is having an increasingly hard time pretending that everything's OK (it's not).

When the movie begins, Amy disappears—she is gone. Or is she? The stage is set, and there is a trail of evidence—including an opening voiceover where Nick says that he'd like to crack Amy's skull open and pick apart her brain to answer the eternal and elusive question within couples: what are you thinking?—that leads back to Nick as the killer.

Now we know, early on, that Nick did?not?kill Amy Elliot Dunne. But what he did do was join her in repeating a brutal (irrelationship) routine where it was his job—his role—to act as if what she was offering him in the marriage (her heart, her soul, her eternal and undying love) was?enough?(it was not). It was Amy’s dream that Nick would play?captive audience?to her?performance?and that a fantastical marital bliss would endure the storms of every day life (financial problems,?boredom, resentment, etc.).

There wasn't much to it when she was a child. In fact, Amy's parent's were simply making up a wonderful?fantasy?girl (who brought them all the good things in life), while neglecting the real one. But, she did keep up with the fantasy version of herself. She went to the best schools (Harvard, Oxford), became a successful writer for a popular magazine, and married the handsome and charming Nick.

Nonetheless, in order to approximate?happiness, Amy needed an audience who would at least act as if what she was offering was?good enough. And that was exactly what Nick was increasingly unable to do (he'd been emotionally absent for at least two years, and had been having an affair with one of his young creative writing students for over a year).

article continues after advertisement

Did they choose each other to play out these roles? Were they more invested in maintaining a safe distance from emotional entanglements (intimacy,?empathy, vulnerability, etc) than they were in forming and maintaining a loving partnership? Were they set up by their histories?

Amy's parents not only stole her childhood, they squandered her inheritance, and willingly contributed to her (and Nick's) financial ruin. Nick's parents, too, put him (and his sister) through the wringer. His father's behavior destroyed his family, and we get a sense that his mother's acceptance of said behavior was intolerable to Nick—all reference to Nick "being like (his) father" was met with hostile revulsion. And yet, Nick had brought his own resistance to accepting what his wife—and their life together—had to offer. And this played out in destructive ways—just like those of his father.

Nick's failure to play the good audience to Amy's performance was met with her well planned and executed attempt to destroy him—the finale being her own?suicide?implemented to look like murder. Her plan was to frame Nick for her murder; which, in Missouri, means that he himself would be executed.

This is where things were headed when Nick was given the opportunity, on national TV, to tell Amy exactly what she wanted to hear: that he would succumb, that he would comply, that he would play the good husband (Audience) to her good wife (Performer) routine. And she—mouse takes the cheese—was unable to resist.

Even knowing of Nick's deep insincerity, Amy returns to her angry, resentful and hateful husband who—even though her return vindicates him and saves his life—wants nothing to do her. He tells her that he will leave her as soon as he is able. But Nick has underestimated his wife's expertise at playing her role. Amy is pregnant with his child. She has created an airtight "deal" with Nick that will hold him captive to her performance.

Now we know that Amy’s ultimate performance is the role where she play-acts at being a human. In this performance, she plays wife and mother. Her script requires Nick to play the captive audience stuck in the role of husband and father. He now knows the consequences he'll face if he tries to break free from the monstrous creation that their marriage has become.

We say that irrelationships are?prison cells—straightjackets. It would be hard to find a better example of this than the Dunne family (abetted by a community and a society that wants nothing more than to believe that what they’ve witnessed has a “happy ending”).

An irrelationship is a pseudo-partnership. It may look intimate, but it's actually carefully constructed—usually without the participants' awareness—precisely to?avoid?the?openness, spontaneity, and reciprocity that characterize true intimacy, while enforcing the relational rules and roles of early childhood. And this repeats in our adult relationships—it may be why we end up in one bad relationship after another. And every time, it feels just like going?home. Maybe that is why, in the final moments, as Nick is telling his sister about Amy’s?pregnancy, and she is crying in anguish over her brother's horrific fate, he seems to change. He looks relieved; at least, resigned. It seems that Nick is realizing (a la Poe’s, "The Purloined Letter") that?the letter always reaches its destination, and that this is a fate that was not imposed?by?but co-created?with?his partner. We call that irrelationship.