Committment Phobic
The man complains that she is pressuring him to marriage or that she is controlling. The woman then feels guilty about her reasonable request, and backs off.
A go-between is on call for her own family. If she were not, she would be far less likely to put up with this sort of nonsense. She would cut her loses by cutting the boyfriend loose, take her lumps, and begin to look for a more appropriate mate.
Go-betweens may derive some sense of importance and identity from being needed, their own needs for personal growth are not met and their autonomy is stifled. This lack of self-actualization is the hallmark of all dysfunctional family roles. Children in this role function much like an extra-marital relationship, giving something to one parent that the other parent is unable or unwilling to give.
The job of the circuit breaker is to prevent very emotional family conflicts from escalating into overt violence. They distract two warring family members just when their arguments are about to reach a boiling point.
It turned out that at home, whenever an argument started to escalate, the patient's younger sister would start crying, and the mother would stop arguing with the violent daughter in order to tend to the younger one, thereby short-circuiting any further escalation.
Sis had her timing down to an art form.
The switchboard relays messages between other family members who are playing the major roles when these other parties are not speaking directly to each other.
The parents of some individuals who are playing the primary roles may sometimes seem to be completely estranged from their offspring, but the apparent estrangement is somewhat misleading. The not seeing or speaking to each other part is real, but it rarely means that communication between the estranged family members has ceased altogether. Instead, messages are relayed through third parties who carry them back and forth like a carrier pigeon.
In large dysfunctional families with lots of warring relatives, playing the switchboard can take up a lot of time. Occasionally the switchboard becomes a full time job and the person starts to get stressed out by the duties, or does not have time for their own life. They can sometimes start to look like the go-betweens in this situation.
Usually, however, the role is not so time consuming.
Psychology Today
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