Couple Support

Tip for Couples: A Better Use of Your Feelings

When I am upset with you, I either hide my emotions or assault you with them. What I don’t do is share what I am feeling. You are the same way. Unfortunately, when we are upset with each other sharing our feelings is exactly what we should be doing, if we are to resolve our differences.

Neither hiding our feelings nor letting them take over and blasting away at each other helps when we are upset.

Hiding your feelings leaves your partner knowing that something is going on but not being able to work anything out with you, because you won’t acknowledge your condition. Blasting away at your partner usually sends your partner into flight or fight mode; she hides or counterattacks.

Sharing your feelings and assaulting your partner with them are very different. They also affect your partner very differently.

Two positive things happen when you share your feelings, neither of which happens when emotions run wild. You provide your partner with useful information about what is going on with you and why, in a manner that your partner can absorb.

Plus when you share your feelings, you also experience them yourself, not in an out-of-control way—as when, for example, you are thrown into a rage—but in a way that helps you feel stronger and more in command of yourself.

As a relationship counselor and coach, I see a relationship going nowhere when two people blast away at each other in my office. On the other hand, when they manage to stay centered and talk about what they feel with each other, the impact is exactly the opposite. Here are two people genuinely working on the relationship with each other and clearly getting somewhere positive.

Every Good Marriage Is a Threesome

Most unhappy marriages are two-somes; there’s me, there’s you, and that’s it. We probably argue a lot, because there’s my wants and needs and your wants and needs and nothing else—nothing to keep us from competing all the time. I need to make sure that I get what I need, and you don’t take it all.

On the other hand, most happy marriages are three-somes—the same me, the same you, plus of course the same wants and needs we each have. What distinguishes happy marriages from unhappy ones, however, is the presence of the additional element that creates the three-some—we. I, you, and we.

“We” is our sharing what we have together. “We” is what each of us points to as worthwhile, when the relationship is working. “We” is also what we have nothing of except resentment and pain, when each of us is tempted to leave.

Keep the “we” in mind—and in your heart—and feed it regularly with shared times that please you both and give you both meaning.

One way that both of you can keep “we” in the foreground of your attention is to approach decisions, differences and potential conflicts with the formula “I want, you want, we need.”

Keep each element of the three-some in mind when you are dealing with differences. For example, “I want to drive straight home. You want to stop along the way.

We need a speedy drive home and an out-of-the-car experience, too. How about if we stop at that road side farm stand, buy some vegetables for home and eat a snack at one of their picnic benches? Then we can both feel good about the trip.”