Topic: Couples

One privilege I have as a couples' therapist is a front row seat to watching how one spouse can

• inspire,
  
• encourage,
  
• empower,
  
• believe in,
  
• support
  

the other spouse in a way that

• uplifts,
  
• grows,
  
• develops,
  
• creates "more" in the other person. More confidence, more risking, more relaxing, better sleep, more laughter, just...well...more good stuff.
  

Saw this today and loved it:

His eyes had caught the light, and he said it slow and I was too young and I’ve gone back to that moment, the way it flashed, a thousand times.

“One thing you can count on is the way I’ll love you.” ...
The way he has loved has made his wife a woman. This is what a man can do to a woman.

The way he loves her has made her live.

I don’t care how cold the wind blows. He has always come and in air that’s only smiled, he’s strengthened the stalk of me, opened the petals of who I am and I have fit my skin.

I look him in the eye. Why? Why would he?

“I love you.” He says it simply.

Ann Voskamp
A Holy Experience

Marriage is not about finding the right person. It's about becoming the right person.

Psychology Today has a great article on marriage which I devoured the other day. It’s a fabulous piece that will likely be hard to read for those spouses who want to fix their relationship by having their partner fixed. It encourages spouses to take responsibility for their role in the relationship. It empowers people to choose to relate to the other in light of the “big picture” of their relationship, not in the heat of the moment, with impulsive defensiveness or quick retaliation.




I can’t resist quoting a few gems from the article…which I would encourage all marrrieds or might-someday-be-married folks to read. This is a thought provoking gem:

Sooner or later, there comes a moment in all relationships when you lie in bed, roll over, look at the person next to you and think it's all a dreadful mistake…I call it the first day of your real marriage….It's not a sign that you've chosen the wrong partner. It is the signal to grow as an individual—to take responsibility for your own frustrations. Invariably, we yearn for perfection but are stuck with an imperfect human being. We all fall in love with people we think will deliver us from life's wounds but who wind up knowing how to rub against us.

In mature love… "we do not look to our partner to provide our happiness, and we don't blame them for our unhappiness. We take responsibility for the expectations that we carry, for our own negative emotional reactions, for our own insecurities, and for our own dark moods.”

…it's too simplistic an interpretation that your partner is the one who's wrong. "We tend to point our finger at the person in front of us. We're fairly crude at processing some information. We tend not to think, 'Maybe I'm not giving her what she needs.' 'Maybe he's disgruntled because I'm not opening up to him.' Or, 'Maybe he's struggling in his relationships with other people.' The more sophisticated question is, 'In what ways are we failing to make one another happy?'"

"Sometimes marriage is going to be a source of pain and sorrow," says Givertz. "And that's necessary for personal and interpersonal growth." In fact, it's impossible to be deliriously happy in marriage every moment if you are doing anything at all challenging in life, whether raising children, starting a business, or taking care of an aging parent.
Disillusionment becomes an engine for growth because it forces us to discover our needs. Knowing oneself, recognizing one's needs, and speaking up for them in a relationship are often acts of bravery, says Page. Most of us are guarded about our needs, because they are typically our areas of greatest sensitivity and vulnerability….At the same time, taking the risk to expose your inner life to your partner turns out to be the great opportunity for expanding intimacy and a sense of connection. This is the great power of relationships…

The only elements that identified those who eventually divorced were negative and self-protective reactions during discussions of relationship difficulties and nonsupportive reactions in discussing a personal issue. Displays of anger, contempt, or attempts to blame or invalidate a partner augured poorly, even when the partners felt their marriage was functioning well overall….In other words, the inability or unwillingness to suppress negative emotions in the heat of the moment eliminates the possibility of a transformation of motivation to a broader perspective than one's own. Eventually, the cumulative impact of negative reactivity brings the relationship down.

"We're all difficult. Everyone who is married is a difficult spouse. We emphasize that our spouse is difficult and forget how we're difficult for them."

(bolded emphases mine)

So…try this. Next time you are disgruntled about your relationship, deliberately make a choice to examine your role in the dynamic and determine what impact you have on your spouse that helps to create their reaction.

One book that I find amazingly helpful for folks who almost forget what it is like to speak in a way that invites constructive dialogue with their spouse is the book, Talk to Me like I’m Someone You Love. It’s a great spiral bound book with “flashcards” along with explanations about how/when to use them. A few examples:

• Taking responsibility: "I realize I'm overreacting. Can you give me a minute to get sane again?" 


  
• Apologizing: "I know I've really hurt you. What can I do to help you trust me again?" 


  
• Loving: "You are precious, and I get that I haven't been treating you like you are."
  

 Can you imagine what sorts of responses those invite?

This morning, Kris Laudien and I chatted on CTV Morning Live about January being known as “Divorce Month”…a month when there is an increase in calls to lawyers from couples seeking to end their marriage. It was great to talk about something I am passionate about (look at CTV News player link entitled, “January: Conquering Divorce Month” in the center column)

January is also known as Couple Counselling Month for couple counsellors and the couples we work with. It is our experience over the last decade and more that we have been operating as a counselling clinic, that there is a greater number of calls from people wanting counselling in January. As people look back at the previous year and evaluate goals for the next, they realize that they want changes in their marriage.

There is another option between sticking out what is, or getting a divorce: a third way…developing a different, more satisfying marriage.

Marriage is the most important relationship in our lives, and yet we often expect it to take care of itself.

• we don’t expect our teeth to manage without a dentist;
  
• we don’t expect our cars to go without regular oil changes and other routine maintenance, with the odd repair done when needed;
  
• we don’t expect our houses to clean themselves, or the laundry to magically appear clean in our drawers

…but often couples expect their relationship to run well without deliberate maintenance or tending.

Without that maintenance or repair work when the cracks are manageable and easily reparable, the cracks can develop into fissures and crevices that create distance and coolness between the couple. Spouses stop being a safe place to land for each other, so they start protecting themselves…which in itself creates distance and further coolness as the relationship is no longer primary, but rather self protection takes precedence. And it spirals down until one day one looks at the other and says, “I can’t even remember loving this person. I don’t want to be here”. Maintenance and maintaining a healthy marriage can prevent a spiral into marital unhealth.

Now…make no mistake…all marriages have seasons and normal “ups and downs”…and I’ve heard officiating ministers, on more than one occasion, tell a bride and groom at the alter to take a deep breath and remember this moment of love and commitment as one that, in all liklihood, will need to be recalled at a moment when it’s rough. To be prepared to recall it in a moment that it’s hard, in a moment where one or both spouses want to attack or pull away or “throw in the towel”. To know at the moment of celebratory love that there will be difficult moments ahead…and that is OK…it doesn’t mean to give up, it means to try differently.

Marriage is valuable and lifegiving and remarkable and hard and incredible and stressful and empowering and frustrating and sacrificial and potential-filled…and, ultimately, humans are hardwired to desire it.

It’s important to proactively protect and build up this most-precious of relationships…to expect hard times, to expect to work hard to find strategies to work through them, that ultimately, years later will have a couple realize the strength that was developed in the relationship because of the weathering of those storms.

So, go out on a date, have an extra cup of coffee with deliberate conversation after supper, work through a book, take some online relationship-health quizzes and talk about the results. A fellow promoter of marriage health dropped off some handbills today promoting a “Love and Respect Marriage Conference” occurring on February 10 and 11, 2012 at Grant Memorial Baptist Church…a workshop/retreat like this, from engaging and interactive speakers, can be a real boost to a marriage with some struggles, and can recharge a tired marriage, or vitalize a marriage that is already strong.
Have you had a marriage tune-up lately?

If a couple is unable to have a fight and so bring up what is on their minds, they are dealing with each other by withdrawal techniques... With each avoidance, the area that cannot be discussed grows larger until ultimately they may have nothing they can safely talk about. When a couple cannot fight, all issues which require defining an area of the relationship are avoided. The couple will eat together and watch television side-by-side, but their life has little shared intimacy.

I was at a wedding on Sunday…it was beautiful. Wonderful. I love weddings.

Powerful to all witness together the commitment of a man and woman to each other through thick and thin…as I look over the grey topped heads of those who know what that really means, and sit beside youngsters who are wide-eyed at the process, looking on in wonder and seeing hopeful and sincere commitment in full color. After the music, the bride walking down the aisle with her parents, the groom and the bride meet at the front, an opening blessing, and the minister begins telling a story…

He tells the story of William Shackleton, an explorer who puts up an ad in 1914 asking for brave men who are willing to risk life and limb for an adventure…successful return unlikely. He had 5000 men apply, and from that selected a crew to travel with him on an Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. It was a difficult journey that did not go smoothly. The boat became trapped in ice, and after months was crushed and then sunk by ice. After months on ice floes, the crew travelled in lifeboats to Elephant Island, an inhospitable place. Shackleton and a few men got into a boat and worked to make it to the mainland…only to have to climb over difficult terrain and a mountain to get help. Several attempts were required to go pick up the last 22 men on Elephant Island.

All 22 men from Elephant Island made it back…but it was risky and brutally hard and long.

Strange way to start a wedding meditation.

The officiant compared marriage to this adventure…frought with danger, huge risk, requiring bravery...but possible.

Shackleton was determined, and didn’t give up. Against all odds, multiple challenges, and severe adversity, Shackleton determined to bring them all back alive: persistently, steadily, doggedly, indefatigably.

Marriage is hard. Really hard.

• It means hanging in there during tough times.
  
•  It means showing up.
  
•  It means crossing the room, even when everything in you wants to turn away.
  
• It means open up a hand to reach for another, when everything inside pulls one’s fingers to stay tightly clenched tight.
  
• It means taking a deep breath and working to understand and connect when every fiber of one’s being wants to defend oneself.
  

I spoke to one young friend this week, married only a few years, and she told me how she is just starting to get the “hard part” of marriage. She loves her husband deeply…but remarked how she could see that there were a few points even now, early in their marriage when she said, “There have been a few times when there was a tiny crack…and I had to make a choice, or we had to make a choice, about which route to take about that crack. I can see how there was a choice to make, and making it was going to determine what would happen to that crack over the years.”

She made reference to their premarital counselling, and how some of those conversations came back to remind them about the hard but valuable road of investing in the relationship.

There is much in our culture that makes it difficult to marriage to last a lifetime. External pressures exist now that didn’t used to, and supports aren’t always as present as in days gone by.

It can be hard--brutally difficult--to make it through the crises of marriage…to enjoy the fruits of intimacy and closeness of having a partner in life’s journey.

William Shackleton worked and struggled with his commitment to do what it took to make sure everyone got home safely. It wasn’t easy, it was risky, but he persevered against all odds.
Here’s a toast to the couples who have that same sort of zeal to preserving and improving the life of their relationship…to bring it home safely to the end of life in a way that enhances the lives of husband and wife, children and community.

I think this is beautiful:

I realized for years I’d thought of love as something that would complete me, make all my troubles go away. I worshipped at the alter of romantic completion. And it had cost me, plenty of times. And it had cost most of the girls I’d dated, too, because I wanted them to be something they couldn’t be. It’s too much pressure to put on a person. I think that’s why so many couples fight, because they want their partners to validate them and affirm them, and if they don’t get that, they feel as though they’re going to die. And so they lash out. But it’s a terrible thing to wake up and realize the person you just finished crucifying didn’t turn out to be Jesus.
I was interviewing my friend Susan Isaacs after her book Angry Conversations with God came out. We were in front of a live audience, and I was reading questions to her off of index cards submitted by the audience…one of the questions was whether she believed there was one true love for every person.
Susan essentially said no. And she said that with her husband sitting right there in the audience. She said she and her husband believed they were a cherished prize for each other, and they would probably drive any other people mad. But then she said something I thought was wise. She said she had married a guy, and he was just a guy. He wasn’t going to make all her problems go away, because he was just a guy. And that freed her to really love him as a guy, not as an ultimate problem solver. And because her husband believed she was just a girl, he was free to really love her too. Neither needed the other to make everything okay. They were simply content to have good company through life’s conflicts. I thought that was beautiful…
When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.

Rather than diminishing the other to think of them as “just” a guy/girl…it elevates him/her to be fully who they are created to be…rather than squished into this box of being expected to look and act like you expect.

The essential element of a healthy marriage is not that you don't fight.  All couples fight...The essential element of a healthy marriage is "emotional responsiveness"... [this] means you have enough trust and emotional connection that you trust each other enough that even though you fight and you have differences, you know how to turn towards each other; reach for each other when it really matters.

The most basic question in marriage is: ..."Are you there for me?  Do I matter to you?  Am I special?  Will you cherish me?  Will I come first with you?  If I need, if I call, will you come?
...if you have that sense that you have the safe emotional bond, you can deal with almost everything....

The good news is:  we not only know what it, is we know how to make it happen.

Dr. Susan Johnson

This video resonates with the work we do.  A number of us have been in workshops with Dr. Susan Johnson or one of her close colleagues.  We have her books on our shelves, and have attended externships in her model of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT).  We rely heavily on EFT as one of the models that we use at Bergen and Associates...the body of evidence done through research suggests that it works....to quote Dr. Johnson: "we not only know what a healthy marriage is, we know how to make it happen"

 

"The Master's [of marriage] are repairing things effectively...they have crummy arguments, and they don't follow communication rules, and they get defensive, and upset...but at some point...they can have a conversation where they can talk about it...repair...How can you make it better?...

We could not predict the effectiveness of the repair from the nature of the repair attempt...

What made the difference was the person receiving the repair attempt...how much emotional money they have with that person....if I've really been a good friend to her, If I've been putting in emotional deposits...that determines if she is going to accept my repair attempt...started us really looking at the quality of the friendship in the marriage."

John Gottman

The major goal in having a good marriage is answering the question well:  "HOW ARE YOU GONNA FIX THINGS?"

It is not about doing things effectively, it's not about improving communication skills...it's about relating to your spouse so as to prepare the spouse to be receptive to your good-enough apology when you need to do it.

For more on Relationships 101, read more about what makes for a good relationship...based on thousands of couples providing hard evidence to researchers.

One more in the series Stayin Together 101...preparing your kids to stay together in their future marriages...you are more important than you know for the next generation!

Contempt is the sulfuric acid of love

John Gottman

It's a myth that if you solve all of your problems you'll automatically be happy. We need to teach couples they will never solve most of their problems

John Gottman