Couple Support

Marital Unhappiness – When the Way He Sees His Wife Has Little in Common with the Way She Sees Herself

When I’m working with a couple, I sometimes find it helpful to meet with each partner alone for a session. I often find that the way they see themselves does not match with the way they are seen by the other person – so much so sometimes that I want to get them together and say, “Let me introduce you to each other.”

An example: I remember a session with a woman who complained bitterly about her husband’s coldness to her. She told of missing simple affection and cuddling together in the evening. She cried while confessing that sometimes she wanted to be held and comforted and felt so lonely and abandoned when this never happened.

Clearly this was a woman who was in touch with her need for basic physical connection with her spouse and saw herself as soft and vulnerable. On the other hand, her husband, during his individual session, described his wife as “sharp” and “accusatory.” He claimed that she regularly interrogated him. Never once did he even hint at softness or vulnerability.

What was going on? Quite possibly the wife was all that both she and her husband said about her. She did want affection and at times comforting, and she was sometimes sharp and accusatory (especially, perhaps, after she didn’t get the affection she needed but did a poor job of asking for).

And undoubtedly, because of their individual past experiences, she more noticed her vulnerability and need and he more noticed her sharpness and aggressiveness.

These two needed to have a problem-solving conversation, free from mutual accusation and defensiveness. The discussion might have begun with the wife saying to her husband,  “The way I want to be seen is not the way that you see me. What can we do about it?”   

In Marriage Sympathetic Understanding Lessens Fear

When your partner’s behavior scares you, what can you do? 1) You can pretend indifference – It doesn’t bother me. (This usually involves some form of withdrawing from your partner – not a good option.) 2) You can work on yourself until your fear is under control. (An excellent option, but not most people’s choice.) 3) Or you can control your fear by controlling your partner - or trying to. (Many people’s first choice: Hard on the relationship though. )

Example: Tracy reminds her husband, Bill, that this is her night out. She is going to visit with Beth, whom she hasn’t seen for a long time. Tracy’s decision worries Bill. Beth is recently divorced and bitter toward men. Bill is convinced that Beth in particular does not like him.

Bill tells Tracy that she isn’t to go. They quarrel. Tracy is determined that nobody is going to tell her what to do. The hotter she gets, the more worried Bill becomes. It is a bad scene. Tracy storms out. Bill’s angry threats follow her.

On the other hand, if Tracy and Bill had taken the pains to build a really trusting relationship, Bill might have confessed to his wife that he was afraid that her friend, Beth, would bad mouth him and maybe even influence Tracy to leave the marriage.

Beth would not have ridiculed Bill’s fear. Instead she would have been sympathetic – not to Bill’s viewpoint, which she thought was completely unfounded, but to the painfulness of it for him.

The fact that Tracy met Bill’s fear with understanding in itself made Bill feel more secure. She might also have volunteered that she would not even talk about their marriage with Beth, or Bill might have asked for that reassurance, and Tracy might have granted it.

Look at the difference: In the first instance, two threatened people scare each other even more. In the second instance, the same two people work together to solve a problem: She wants to visit with her friend, and he wants to feel secure in their marriage. Each partner helps the other get what s/he needs. The marriage is tested and comes out healthy and strong.

To Learn New Relationship Skills - Drop the Anger

To Learn New Relationship Skills - Drop the Anger

Many marital problems can be traced to the absence of much needed relationship skills. When couples set out to learn the skills they need, they often face a formidable obstacle – the accumulated anger and resentment of one or both partners.

Take the couple that needs to learn how to have an intimate conversation with an open, easy sharing of feelings. Typically the wife shares feelings with her women friends all the time, and the husband never shares them with anyone. At first glance it looks as if all the learning is going to be his.

The husband may well be willing to learn and might well succeed, except that he goes into the task tense, resentful and convinced that all he will get from his efforts is another scolding from his wife - the worst possible conditions for learning.

The wife has wanted non-sexual intimacy with her husband for a long time and, in her view, has never had it. She is openly and vocally angry. Unfortunately, her anger makes it very unlikely that she will get the intimate sharing that she wants so much.

Theirs is the pattern of the angry, scolding “school marm” wife and the sullen, resentful “dumb student” husband. If they are going to succeed they need to set aside the heavy load of dark feelings that they both carry and approach the task at hand simply as learning something new.

The husband’s work involves a new attunement to feelings and the language to describe them. The wife’s work involves learning to encourage and support – plus taking a chance on expressing the tender, vulnerable feelings that her long-standing outraged anger has shielded her from.

In Marriage, to Change Your Behavior Try Curiosity Rather Than Self-Blame

When your behavior toward your partner falls way short of your own standards, instead of berating yourself – try curiosity. Ask yourself, “Why do I act this way and when? What does my behavior say about my needs and my fears?” Ironically, when you skip self-judgment and go for curiosity instead, the information you get may actually help you change.

Many of us have the habit of self-justification. If our spouse criticizes us, we feel compelled to answer. We’ve got to explain ourselves, set the record straight, correct our partner’s misperception – that sort of thing.

Here’s a typical example. The wife says, “I wish that you had loaded the dishwasher last night before you went to bed.” The husband responds, “Yes, but did you see that I picked up the kids’ mess in the living room?”

If, like me, you are given to this kind of “explaining my side” self-justification, what do you figure it’s about? When I look into my own behavior, I detect a residue of the old shame that I used to feel when my parents criticized me.  Rather than just let it be, I have to respond – or at least I used to.

Recently, I’ve been experimenting with not saying anything. That’s no improvement, if I’m still responding – but in my head, although not out loud. An alternative, which I am exploring is to deliberately focus on my wife (e.g., sympathizing with the experience of hers that led to the criticism.) Doing so takes the focus off me and makes it easier to skip the self-justification.

Try this “self-inquiry” process yourself. Get interested in understanding your own behavior. Then experiment with modifying it. You may find that this is a much better approach than blaming yourself and feeling bad.

Want a Harmonious Marriage? Then Help Each Other Feel Safe

Is there a single piece of practical advise that, if followed, would save any marriage from disaster? Probably not. But here is one that comes as close as any, in my opinion: Understand and respect the areas in which your partner is vulnerable to fear and the areas in which you, too, are vulnerable to fear. Do your best to keep yourself safe and help your partner to do the same.

When we get married, we bring our fears with us, although they may not be on obvious display until we are well into the marriage and our partner does something that sets us off.

You may see your partner flirt with an attractive someone at a party and suddenly experience the fear of being abandoned. When you want to deliver a legitimate complaint, your partner may experience the fear of being judged and refuse to listen to you.

One partner’s fear-driven behavior typically scares the other partner. Arguments full of accusation and passionate defense that generally follow leave both partners even more afraid than before.

Eventually partners get so wary of each other that the relationship becomes crippled. This unhappy outcome is not inevitable, however. Partners avoid it when they understand and accept their own and each other’s fears and work together to make their relationship a zone of safety, They can then afford to be generous and caring toward each other, because each looks out for the other’s welfare.

An Experience of the Open Heart

Yesterday was an absolutely gorgeous Maine summer day – low humidity, slight breeze, deep blue, cloudless sky. Not long after sunup, I put my kayak on the car, drove to Kettle Cove and kayaked around Richmond Island, a particularly beautiful island not far from where I live.

As I rounded one end of the island and faced into the open ocean, the wind picked up slightly. To my left shaded cliffs and spruce woods behind rose up dark against the sky. Then a meadow golden in the early-morning light. I paddled into the rising sun. Diamonds of light sparkled on the water all around me. Waves breaking on the rocks and the sound of my paddling were the only sounds I heard.

I was overwhelmed by the beauty and the preciousness of it all. I felt deeply grateful to be where I was and felt like crying.

Was I sad? That’s what I thought on the drive home, when I reflected on the experience. The standard view: When you feel like crying, it’s because you’re sad. But I don’t think I was. I think that the beauty of ocean, island, solitude and sky touched me deeply and opened my heart. The desire to cry was just what followed.

I am not moved this deeply by my experience often. What if, in this world of seemingly permanent conflict and cruelty, my heart closed permanently – and I was never moved to tears again? What can it be like for people who have permanently shut their hearts and turned away from the world?

The Relationship Dance - Are You Partly Responsible for Your Partner’s Behavior?

Your partner is so prickly with you! She is so ready to hear “control” in anything you ask her to do. Whatever you ask her to do, she does the opposite. Your partner reminds you of nothing so much as a rebellious adolescent.

How disagreeable of her! I sympathize. Have you ever considered, though,  that she way she is with you might be partly because of how you are with her? 

Let’s ask your partner about you. She says that you are overbearing, controlling, sometimes even threatening. She says that you act just like her father.

The rebellious adolescent and the parent: Whenever you see a couple stuck in interlocking roles like these, you can be virtually certain that, even though they may not know it, they are “dancing together”  each influencing the behavior of the other.

How can you end the dance? You must stop blaming your partner for the way s/he is behaving long enough to self-focus and ask yourself the magic questions that can break the spell: “How is my behavior influencing his/hers? What is my part in this?”

When you see how your behavior influences your partner’s behavior, you can change yours. You can step away from the dance. Without your participation, the dance must end.

Starting Again After a Long Stop

It’s hard to start again after you’ve been stopped for a long time. I’m thinking right now about posting to my blog – this one! My God, it’s been four months that I haven’t posted anything. Four weeks would be bad enough, but four months!

Much embarrassment and a touch of shame here. Blogging is such a public medium, and here I am revealed for anyone who is interested to see: Big deal – he’s going to write extensively about marriage and commitment and love. And a few months later he’s gone.

“Well you know,” I mutter, wondering why I don’t just disappear, “I had a lot of clients to see, and I started work on a book (Is this one going to peter out, too?), and then it was summer. Garden to get started. Lawn to mow. The kids became available – wanted to spend time with them.”

Are you noticing what I’m noticing? Self-justification very quickly sounds like weak special pleading. Is it better to say nothing or very little like – “I was away, and now I’m back.” I’m not sure.

I do know that starting again after you’ve stopped for a long time can be hard in many areas. The temptation is not to bother. Avoid the risk of embarrassment, shame and all the “what if…?” fears that are bound to arise.  Don’t do it.

In counseling, one area where I see this “afraid to start again” phenomenon is with couples who haven’t been sexual together in a long time: The temptation is strong to stick with a celibate relationship rather than endure awkwardness and the risk of failure.

In this case, as in mine, maybe the best course is to openly acknowledge your uncertainty, refrain from making “this time I’ll succeed” promises – public or private, do your best to make resuming what you had given up a little deal, not a big one (“Of course I’m a little scared; anybody would be”) and then just go ahead.