Couple Support

Do You Like the Role(s) You Play in Your Marriage or Relationship?

You are not going to do well in your marriage or relationship if you don't like your part. It's like the predicament of an actor in a play who can't get into the role that s/he plays and therefore doesn't play it well. Odd then that many of us who don't really don't like ourselves in the marital role that we are playing, do nothing but complain about it and then like ourselves even less.

There are any number of reasons why people don't like themselves in their marriage or relationship role: They are submissive when they don't want to be, nagging when they hate nagging, long suffering in silence, when what they want is a strong, take-charge role.

They are cautious and careful when they want to be spontaneous and take chances. They are slaves to work when they desperately want to play and cold and distant when their impulse - and the role they want to play - is warm and affectionate.

When people don't like themselves in their roles, not only do they do them poorly, but if things don't improve, they almost certainly leave the relationship. They don't necessarily pack up and move out. But they almost certainly withdraw in favor of roles where they like themselves much better. They pour their energy into friendships with friends who like them and encourage them to be themselves. If they are good mothers and fathers then, failing at the marriage, they strive to become even better parents. If they do well at their trade or profession, they stay at work as many hours as possible.

If "I don't like myself in this relationship" is your problem as well, there are steps you can take. You can literally resign from the play (get divorced). You can do what you may already be doing: play your distasteful role as lightly and minimally as possible, while investing yourself wholeheartedly elsewhere.

And a more creative option: You can approach your partner to see if your partner also doesn't like the role that s/he plays in this marriage or relationship. A tip: Don't go to your partner full of blame. Remember: You don't like yourself in the blaming role. Besides, it isn't your partner's fault that you play the role you do. You could quit, you know.

Tell your partner without blame that you simply don't like yourself in the role or roles that you play in the relationship. (E.g., "I hate that I am distant and cold with you, when what I want is to be close and affectionate.") Then find out if - surprise - your partner also doesn't like the roles in which s/he finds herself and see if together you can make changes so that both of you can get to like yourselves more - and succeed better as partners.

Please comment: Describe a role that you sometimes (often?) play in your relationship that you don't like. What role would you like instead?

Tip for Couples: If You Want to Stay Together, Avoid Hopeless Talk

Here is something obvious that is still worth saying: If you want your relationship to succeed, stay away from doing or saying anything that would leave you or your partner feeling hopeless about being together. By definition, hopelessness is the end—right? There is no where to go from hopeless—except out. Nevertheless, a lot of couples push each other toward hopelessness. Do they know what they’re doing?

For example, you are flirting with hopelessness if you chronically complain about things that can’t be changed, especially about your partner’s character or personality or things your partner did long ago that hurt or infuriated you. You want hopeless? Complain to your wife that you should have married the other girl and not her. Complain to your husband that you should never have let him buy that condo, and when he says, “What can we do to make up for it now?” say “Nothing.”

Complaining is not the problem. The problem is complaining when you offer no remedy—i.e., you leave your partner nowhere to go but into hopeless—or indifference, which is definitely not good either.

If you need to complain about his old affair, do so in terms of something that could be helped, e.g., the insecurity about his love that you still feel occasionally. And if he says, “What can I do to help?” have something in mind—not deadly nothing. Instead you could say, “Be very loving to me today; it helps.”

When you provide a remedy, you help your partner—and yourself—feel hopeful: We can forgive each other; we can go forward; we have reason to stay together.

Steps to a Better Marriage – the Vision, Part 2

To rebuild a marriage that has gotten lost over the years, you need a clear, compelling picture of the relationship you want. Inevitably old hurts and resentment stand in the way of success. However, they need not defeat you, if your goal has sufficient strength. Whether or not it does depends a lot on the clarity of your vision. The more you can see and hear that vision enacted the greater its strength.

How do you build such a vivid, compelling vision? Refer back to the previous post . A general outline of the marriage you want has emerged as you and your partner work together. The next task is to fill that outline in – so that your vision gains the specificity almost of a film script.

We are talking about a marital vision that could, in some aspects, be acted out – it is that clear. Why such clarity? Because a marriage lives in words and action, much like a play. If your marriage has become its own version of a bad play, then to make a better play (marriage) you need good scripts.

One way that you can create good marriage scripts is to be on the lookout for exchanges between you and your partner that do work. Even when the relationship is overall pretty bad, there are some exchanges that succeed.

Analyze those exchanges. What did each of you say or do that made particular moments in your life together work? Once you find out, work those exchanges into your vision. Example: “We need to greet each other at the end of the day routinely the way we did last night.”

Slowly but surely, your vision of the relationship you want to build becomes real as you collect examples from your current life of “the way we want to be together.”

More vision-building suggestions next time.

To Build a Better Marriage, Start with a Detailed Image of What You Want

If you and your partner set out to make your relationship better, it would be understandable if you focused primarily on the problems that you wanted to solve. It would be understandable but not the best approach.

To improve your marriage, you need to focus beyond the problems and difficulties that you have with each other. You need a picture of the relationship as you want it to be - the more detailed and vivid a picture the better.

To see only problems is to focus exclusively on the negative. Of course, attending to problems is essential. However, in the absence of a clear direction, it is risky: Couples can easily get lost in their troubles, when troubles is all that they can see.

The “clear direction” that is needed is the picture of the life together that you really want. That positive vision carries energy and hopefulness, which will be very useful when you tackle the difficulties you have been having with each other. From the perspective of the vision you want to realize, problems are obstacles in the way that you are determined to remove – much easier to deal with than problems with no clear vision of anything better.

A vague, general picture of a desired relationship carries little weight when the marriage is in trouble and the problems are large. What you need is a vision so clear and so detailed that someone could practically walk into it and start living.

How can you possibly develop such a vision? We will explore that question in the next post.

Expectations Make Change Easier - or Much Harder

When you are seeking a better relationship, expectations can be either an obstacle or an advantage. Which it is depends on your expectations. Do your expectations about your partner support positive change or undermine it?

In our relationships, most of us don't like many surprises, especially negative ones. Rather than leave ourselves open to surprises that might be unsettling or hurtful, at a certain point we reach conclusions - about our spouse and our marriage, for example. We then form expectations based on those conclusions.

If we were to conclude - my spouse is a selfish person, we would expect selfish behavior from that person and we would almost certainly find it (while overlooking instances of generosity).

What we experience is, to a large extent, determined by our expectations. We find what we expect to find.

If you are so fortunate that your expectations of your partner are mostly all positive, then that person's positive behavior will stand out for you. His or her negative behavior will quite likely either be overlooked or given an innocent explanation. (“She's just having a hard day.”)

On the other hand, if you and your partner set out to improve the relationship and you come to that task with a predominantly negative view of the other person, change is likely to be slow in coming - unless you are determined to abandon old conclusions and teach yourself to notice his or her positive behavior (some of which was  there in the past - guaranteed).

Scrutinize your expectations. Are they working for you, or should you work to let them go?

The Voice That Says Yes - the One That Says No

People come to relationship counseling both hopeful (or they wouldn’t bother to come at all) and fearful (or they wouldn’t need to come). You can represent these tendencies as the yes voice and the no voice. Both are strongly in evidence when couples in damaged relationships set out to try again.

In you are considering an investment of time, money and faith in starting over, expect there to be a part of yourself that wants that change and believes in the possibility of it coming to pass. Expect also that there will be another part of yourself, suspicious and wary after much pain and disappointment, that wants nothing to do with starting over.

Expect the latter part to be full of warnings and dire predictions. Count on it to be against your “setting yourself up for getting badly hurt again.” This part of you can be counted on to pounce on any backsliding in your partner’s behavior with “See, I told you so!” passion.

If your yes side and your no side are of equal strength, you are likely to drive yourself nuts with indecision. It would be understandable if you tried to resolve that indecision with a grand leap in one direction or the other. Don’t.

If optimism grabs the upper hand prematurely and you suppress your no voice, you will likely only scare it into even louder objections than before. You could find yourself leaping ahead only to quit rashly before the impulse to try again has had time to prove itself.

What to do? Accept the fact that neither your yes nor your no voice are going to go away – at least not soon. They both are, so to speak, family. Give each a full opportunity to explain herself fully – the argument for going ahead and the argument for giving up. Make sure that these two sides really listen to each other.

If you decide to go with yes and work at repairing your damaged relationship, make sure that your no side is reassured with a practical plan for getting out in a specific length of time, if your minimal conditions for relationship improvement have not been met. No vague promises here – your no side needs to be reassured by a definite exit plan from the relationship.

All of this is going to take time and work. But it will be work well spent - and much better than either refusing to give the relationship another chance, if you believe that one is justified, or putting on some blind “trust, no matter what” attitude and leaping blindly – perhaps off a cliff.

Partners Who Won’t Accept Compliments

Compliments can do wonders for a relationship – when they are offered – and accepted. The problem is often with acceptance. Some partners don’t like compliments and won’t accept them.

Sometimes the refusal is outright. More often it’s a discount (“I didn’t do anything.”) I spent January in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, in part working on the Couples Vacation Intensives program I’ve started. There the common response to even a compliment is “De nada,” which loosely translates “It’s nothing.”

A cultural discount. It makes me want to say, “No. Don’t tell me it’s nothing. If it was nothing, I wouldn’t have bothered to thank you. It’s not nothing. It’s something: You did me a favor. You were helpful. I appreciated it. What you did made a difference to me. So don’t tell me it’s nothing.”

The point is - if only in acknowledgment of my experience, say thank you. Accept my appreciation for what you did. Don’t dismiss it with “It’s nothing.” (Tip: With the partner who is inclined to reject compliments, say – do it for me, so that I can have the pleasure of my gift being accepted.)

What’s going on here with the refusal to accept compliments or appreciation of any kind? To me, it’s like some people’s refusal to acknowledge Christmas or celebrate their birthday – in some cases a defense against the pain that still lingers from awful Christmases or no-present birthdays: If I don’t even acknowledge the holiday, I won’t have to hurt about it.

Also, some people find more control and, therefore, less risk in giving than in receiving. If I am on the receiving end of your praise or appreciation, I might be really moved by what you say. I might get choked up. Then what? Safer for there to be no compliments or at least to always be the one who hands them out.

Okay. But when two people have pledged to work together for a more positive relationship, then part of that working together needs to involve compliments – in part overcoming the reluctance to be “sappy” and give compliments freely and being willing to stand still, take them– and actually feel “I am being given to.”

Related reading: The article collection on Appreciation at marriagesupport.com.

Appreciations Really Matter

Appreciations really matter. Experiment for yourself: In relationships, you get more of whatever you notice. If you restrict noticing your partner to what you don’t like, guaranteed – you will gain more reason to complain and criticize.

On the other hand, if you discipline yourself to notice your partner’s kindness, generosity or helpfulness, the relationship will become more positive and in that way - improve.

If your partner is deliberately trying to be helpful, appreciations communicate that she is succeeding. If she is “only doing her job,” your saying thank you adds a new dimension to routine: “It may be what you just do, but I’m telling you – it means something to me that you do it.”

How do you appreciate? Well, for sure you say “thank you.” If your relationship is just beginning to turn toward the light after being really dark and negative for a while, anything more than a simple “thank you” may seem fake.

However, once “thank you” becomes part of your relationship vocabulary once more, go further – of course name what your partner did that you appreciate. Then add what it meant to you and how you felt. “When I came home and you had already started dinner, I felt really cared for. It was almost like you already knew that I had had a tough day. Thank you.”

Some partners would love that statement. Others would be out the door before you had finished. We’ll consider them in the next post.

In terms of appreciation, how would you characterize your relationship?

Repairing? Notice Every Positive Act

How do you restore a relationship gone bitter with blame and criticism? Slowly, patiently, one small success at a time.

Through your behavior, you have to invite each other to behave in a new and more positive way. You have to anticipate generous behavior in your partner and in yourself. You have to encourage positive behavior by appreciating anything of the sort– large or small, impressive or modest.

Have the ultimate goal in mind – as remote from realization as it may seem. The ultimate goal: You and your partner build a new relationship, in which each of you gets to like and respect yourself in a positive role or roles that the other person also appreciates.

In terms of your own behavior, whenever your partner reaches out to you with any degree of helpfulness, appreciation or warmth (any one of those – not all of them!) appreciate it.

Never mind that what your partner has done isn’t all that you want or maybe even much of it. Never mind that your partner’s behavior  doesn’t warm the room or even brighten it. It is a ray of light, nevertheless. It points in the right direction. That is what matters.

It also matters that your partner is acting at his or her own initiative – not responding to a request or yours – and certainly not to a demand.

Notice any positive action of your partner’s. Appreciate it – but don’t overdue it. “Thanks. That was helpful.” “Thanks for noticing.” Then add a smile. Especially the smile.

And no damning with faint praise. No sarcastic “At least you did that much” or anything remotely disappointed sounding. Just thanks and the smile.

The person on the receiving end of your thank you might well think:

• I took a chance and did something helpful.
• It was noticed and appreciated.
• It wasn’t criticized.
• I didn’t fail.
• I might try again.

You could call that a good start.