Confusion.
Hurt. Silence. Missed opportunity. It is one of the ironies of modern life that
many couples today are living together as complete strangers. Or worse, in great
unhappiness. The data on divorce lead us to conclude that intimate relationships
have been failing apart for the last 20 years or so. The truth is that couples
have never learned reliably how to sustain pleasure in intimate relationships.
The difference is it never mattered so much before.
Here
at the close of the 20th century we have the luxury of living in splendid isolation.
Unlike in more "primitive" cultures, most Americans no longer live as
part of a large family or community where we develop a sense of comfort and safety,
a network of people to confide in, to feel at home with. This, I have come to
believe, is what has drawn many people into cults--the need to feel part of a
bonded community, There is a sense of being at home emotionally as well as physically.
Our culture provides for meeting all other needs, especially the need for autonomy,
but not for intimacy. Within this framework, couples today must provide for each
other more of the emotional needs that a larger community used to furnish.
Compounding
the wide-scale deprivation of intimacy we actually experience, our cultural talent
for commercialization has separated out sex from intimacy. In fact, intimacy involves
both emotional and physical closeness and openness. But we wind up confusing the
two and end up feeling betrayed or used when, as often happens, we fail to satisfy
our need for closeness in sex.
Shifts
in our general views about what makes life worth living have also contributed
to a new demand for intimacy. For many generations the answer lay in a productive
life of work and service in which the reward of happiness would be ours, in Heaven.
That belief has broken down. People want happiness here and now. And they want
it most in their intimate relationships.
Here,
it's clear, we are unlikely to find it easily. Couples today are struggling with
something new--to build relationships based on genuine feelings of equality. As
a result, we are without role models for the very relationships we need. And rare
were the parents who modeled intimacy for us; most were too busy struggling with
survival requirements. Yet the quality of our closest relationships is often what
gives life its primary meaning.
Intimacy,
I have come to believe, is not just a psychological fad, a rallying cry of contemporary
couples. It is based on a deep biological need. Shortly after I began my career
as a family therapist I was working in a residential treatment center where troubled
teenage boys were sent by the courts. Through my work I began to discover what
had been missing for these kids: They needed support and affection, the opportunity
to express the range and intensity of their emotions. It was remarkable to discover
their depth of need, their depth of pain over the lack of empathy from significant
people in their lives.
It
is only in the last 20 years that we recognize that infants need to be held and
touched. We know that they cannot grow--they literally fail to thrive--unless
they experience physical and emotional closeness with another human being. What
we often don't realize is that that need for connection never goes away. It goes
on throughout life. And in its absence, symptoms develop--from the angry acting
out of the adolescent boys I saw, to depression, addiction, and illness. In fact,
researchers are just at the very beginning of understanding the relationship of
widespread depression among women to problems in their marriages.
When
I brought the boys together with their families, through processes I had not learned
about in graduate school, it transformed the therapy. There was change. For the
adolescent boys, their problems were typically rooted in the often-troubled relationships
between their parents. They lacked the nurturing environment they needed for healthy
growth. What I realized was that to help the children I first had to help their
parents. So I began to shift my focus to adults.
From
my work in closely observing the interactions of hundreds of couples, I have come
to recognize that most of what goes wrong in a relationship stems from hurt feelings.
The disappointment couples experience is based on misunderstanding and misperception.
We choose a partner hoping for a source of affection, love, and support, and,
more than ever, a best friend. Finding such a partner is a wonderful and ecstatic
experience--the stage of illusion in relationships, it has been called.
To
use this conceit, there then sets in the state of disillusion. We somehow don't
get all that we had hoped for. He didn't do it just right. She didn't welcome
you home; she was too busy with something else; maybe she didn't even look up.
But we don't have the skills to work out the disappointments that occur. The disappointments
big and little then determine the future course of the relationship.
If
first there is illusion, and then disillusion, what follows is confusion. There
is a great deal of unhappiness as each partner struggles to get the relationship
to be what each of them needs or wants it to be. One partner will be telling the
other what to do. One may be placating in the expectation that he or she will
eventually be rewarded by the other. Each partner uses his or her own familiar
personal communication style.
Over
the disappointment, the partners erect defenses against each other. They become
guarded with each other. They stop confiding in each other. They wall off parts
of themselves and withdraw emotionally from the relationship, often into other
activities--or other relationships. They can't talk without blaming, so they stop
listening. They maybe afraid that the relationship will never change but may not
even know what they are afraid of There is so much chaos that there is usually
despair and depression. One partner may actually leave. Both may decide to stay
with it but can't function. They live together in an emotional divorce.
Over
the years of working with couples, I have developed an effective way to help them
arrive at a relationship they can both be happy with. I may not offer them therapy.
I find that what couples need is part education in a set of skills and part exploration
of experience that aims to resolve the difficulties couples trip over in their
private lives.
Experience
has demonstrated to me that the causes of behavior and human experience a complex
and include elements that are biological, psychological, social, contextual, and
even spiritual. No single theory explains the intricate dynamics of two individuals
interacting over time to meet all their needs as individuals and as a couple.
So without respect to theoretical coherence I have drawn from almost every perspective
in the realm of psychology--from psychodynamics to family systems, communication
theory and social learning theory, from behavior therapy to object relations.
Over the past 25 years I have gradually built a program of training in the processes
of intimacy now known as Practical Application of Intimate Relationship Skills
(PAIRS). It is taught to small groups of couples in a four-month-long course in
various parts of the United States and now in 13 countries.
There
are no specific theories to explain why the course works. In time that will come,
as researchers pinpoint exactly which cognitive, behavioral, and experiential
elements (and when and for whom) are most responsible for which types of change.
Nevertheless I, my associates, and increasing numbers of graduate students have
gathered, and are gathering, evidence that it powerfully, positively influences
marital interaction and satisfaction.
Studies
of men and women before and after taking the course show that it reduces anger
and anxiety, two of the most actively subversive forces in relationships. judging
from the hundreds of couples who have taken the PAIRS course, partners in distressed
relationships tend to have more anxiety and anger than the does the general population.
Once they have taken the course there is a marked reduction in this state of anger
and anxiety. What is most notable is that there is also a reduction in the personality
trait of anger, which is ordinarily considered resistant to change. Learning the
skills of intimacy--of emotional and physical closeness--has a truly powerful
effect on people.
We
also see change in measurements of marital happiness, such as the Dyadic Adjustment
Scale. Tests administered before the course show that we are seeing a range of
couples from the least to the most distressed. And we are getting significant
levels of change among every category of couple. It is no secret that most attempts
at therapy produce little or no change among the most distressed couples. Perhaps
it's because what we are doing is not in the form of therapy at all, although
its effects are therapeutic. In addition to improvement in many dimensions of
the relationship, achieving intimacy bolsters the self-worth of both partners.
Love
is a feeling. Marriage, on the other hand, is a contract--an invisible contract.
Both partners bring to it expectations about what they want and don't want, what
they're willing to give and not willing to give. Most often, those are out of
awareness. Most marriage partners don't even know they expected something until
they realize that they're not getting it.
The
past is very much present in all relationships. All expectations in relationships
are conditioned by our previous experience. It may simply be the nature of learning,
but things that happen in the present are assimilated by means of what has happened
in the past. This is especially true of our emotions: every time we have an experience
in the present we also are experiencing it in the past. Emotional memory exists
outside of time. It is obvious that two partners are conditioned by two different
pasts. But inside the relationship it is less obvious. And that leads to all kinds
of misunderstanding, disagreement, disappointment, and anger that things are not
going exactly as expected.
The
upshot is statements like "I can't understand women," "who knows
what a woman wants," and "you can never please a man." All of the
classic complaints reflect hidden expectations that have never surfaced to the
point where they could be discussed, examined, kept, or discarded.
To
add insult to injury, when one partner is upset, the other often compounds it
unintentionally. When, for example, a woman is unhappy, men often feel they are
expected to charge out and fix something. But what she really wants is for her
partner to put his arms around her and hold her, to soothe her, to say simply,
"I'm sorry you feel bad." It is a simple and basic longing. But instead
of moving toward her, he moves away. And if when you are upset you don't get what
you want from the person you are closest to, then you are not going to feel loved.
Men, too, I hasten to say, have the same basic need. But they erect defenses against
it for fear it will return them to a state of helplessness such as they experienced
as children.
At
the heart of intimacy, then, is empathy, understanding, and compassion; these
are the humanizing feelings. It is bad enough that they are in short supply among
distressed couples. Yet I have observed that certain careers pose substantial
roadblocks to intimacy because the training involves education not in humanization
but in de-humanization. At the top of the list is law. Built primarily on the
adversarial process, it actively discourages understanding and compassion in favor
of destroying an opponent. Careers in the military and in engineering also are
dismissive of feelings and emotions. Men and women who bring what they learn from
such work into a love relationship may find that it can't survive.
An
understanding of intimacy has its own logic. But it runs counter to conventional
wisdom and most brands of psychology. They hold that to understand the nature
of, and to improve, relationships, the proper place to start is the self. The
thinking is that you need to understand yourself before you can confide in a partner.
But I have found just the opposite to be true.
An
exploration of the self is indeed absolutely essential to attaining or rebuilding
a sense of intimacy. Most of the disappointments that drive our actions and reactions
in relationships are constructed with expectations that are not only hidden from
our partners but also ourselves. From our families of origin and past relationship
experiences, we acquire systems of belief that direct our behavior outside of
our own awareness. It is not possible to change a relationship without bringing
this belief system into our awareness.
But
a man or a woman exploring their personal history experiences some powerful feelings
that, in the absence of a partner to talk to, may make one feel worse rather than
better. So the very first step a couple must take to rebuild intimacy is to learn
to express their own thoughts and feelings and carefully listen to each other.
A partner who knows how to listen to you can then be on hand when you open up
your past.
Exploration
of the self is an activity often relegated to psychotherapy; in that case a psychotherapist
knows how to listen with empathy. But that is not necessarily the only way and
at best is a luxury affordable only by a few. It is not only possible but desirable
for couples of all economic strata to choose to confide in each other and build
a relationship with a life partner rather than with a paid confidant. Both partners
have an ongoing need to open up the past as well as share the present. But there
are skills that have to be learned so that such interaction can be safe. Both
partners need to learn how to listen without judging or giving unwanted advice.
Disappointment in a partner's ability to hear is what often sends people to a
psychotherapist in the first place.
All
of us bring to our intimate relationships certain expectations that we have of
no one else. On the positive side they usually involve undivided attention--words
and gestures of love and caring, loyalty, constancy, sex, companionship, agreement,
encouragement, friendship, fidelity, honesty, trust, respect, and acceptance.
We are all too alert to the possibility that we will instead find their exact
opposites.
If
we are not aware of our own expectations (and how they are affected by our history),
there is no hope of expressing them to a partner so that he or she has a shot
at meeting them. More often than not, we engage instead in mind reading.
Mind
reading is often related to a past disappointing relationship experience. We tend
to expect what we previously had the opportunity to learn; we make assumptions
based on our history. And when in personal history there are people or situations
that were the source of heartache, resentment, or anxiety, then any action by
a partner in the present that is similar in some way often serves as a reminder--and
triggers an intense emotional reaction. I call this "emotional allergy."
As with other forms of prior sensitization, the result tends to be an explosive
reaction--withdrawal, counterattack--and it is typically incomprehensible to a
current partner.
If
I had to summarize how to change the hidden expectations that work to distort
a relationship, I would boil it all down to a few basic rules:
o
If you expect a partner to understand what you need, then you have to tell him
or her. That of course means you have to figure out for yourself what you really
need.
o
You cannot expect your partner to be sensitive and understand exactly how you
feel about something unless you're able to communicate to him or her how you feel
in the first place.
o
If you don't understand or like what your partner is doing, ask about it and why
he or she is doing it. And vice versa. Explore. Talk. Don't assume.
Expressing
your feelings about a given situation and asking for your partner's honesty in
return is the most significant way to discover truth in your relationship. Instead,
most communication between intimates is nonverbal and leans heavily on mind reading.
The only thing you have to go on is your own internal information, which could
easily be skewed by any number of factors. This is also why genuine responses
are so important. Telling your partner what you think he or she wants to hear,
instead of what is really going on, complicates and postpones a useful solution
to the problem.
Confiding
is much more than being able to reveal yourself to another. It is knowing with
absolute certainty that what you think and feel is being heard and understood
by your partner. Instead, we tend to be passive listeners, picking up only those
messages that have a direct bearing on ourselves, rather than listening for how
things are for our partner.
Listening
with empathy is a learned skill. It has two crucial ingredients: undivided attention
and feeling what your partner feels. Never assume that you know something unless
it is clearly stated by your partner. And you need to understand fully what your
partner's thoughts and feelings mean to him or her. Instead of focusing on the
effects of your partner's words on you, pay attention instead to your partner's
emotions, facial expression, and levels of tension. The single biggest barrier
to such empathic listening is our self-interest and self-protective mechanisms.
We anticipate and fill in the blanks. One of the simple truths of relationships
is that often enough, all we need to do to resolve a problem is to listen to our
partner--not just passively listen but truly hear what is in the mind and in the
heart.
What
more often happens is that, when we experience threats to our self-esteem or feel
stressed, we resort to styles of communication that usually lead to more of a
problem than the problem itself. The styles of communication that we resort to
during stress then often prevent real contact from happening. If your partner
tends to be a blamer, you will distance yourself. You develop a rational style
of relating, but no feelings are ever dealt with. Not only is no love experienced,
but at the emotional level nothing can get resolved.
Most
people tend to react to stress with one or more of four communication styles:
o
Placating. The placater is ingratiating, eager to please, apologetic, and a "yes"
man or woman. The placater says things like "whatever you want" or "never
mind about me, it's okay." It's a case of peace at any price. The price,
for the placater is worthlessness. Because the placater has difficulty expressing
anger and holds so many feelings inside, he or she tends toward depression and,
as studies show, may be prone to illness. Placaters need to know it is okay to
express anger.
o
BLAMING. The blamer is a fault-finder who criticizes relentlessly and speaks in
generalizations: "You never do anything right." "You're just like
your mother/father." Inside, the blamer feels unworthy or unlovable, angry
at the anticipation he or she will not be getting what is wanted. Given a problem,
the best defense is a good offense. The blamer is unable to deal with or express
pain or fear. Blamers need to be able to speak on their own behalf without indicting
others in the process.
o
COMPUTING. The computer is super reasonable, calm and collected, never admits
mistakes, and expects people to conform and perform. The computer says things
like, "Upset? I'm not upset. Why do you say I'm upset?" Afraid of emotion,
he or she prefers facts and statistics. "I don't reveal my emotions and I'm
not interested in anyone else's." Computers need someone to ask how they
feel about specific things.
o
DISTRACTING. The distractor resorts to irrelevancies under stress, avoids direct
eye contact and direct answers. Quick to change the subject, he or she will say,
"What problem? Let's have Sam and Bridget over." Confronting the problem
might lead to a fight, which could be dangerous. Distractors need to know that
they are safe, not helpless, that problems can be solved and conflicts resolved.
Each
style is a unique response to pain, anger, or fear, which keeps us from understanding
each other. Knowing that, the next time you find yourself resorting to blame,
you can conclude there is something painful or scary bothering you and try to
figure out what it is. If it's your partner who is blaming, you can conclude he
or she is possibly not intending to be aggressive or mean but probably afraid
of some development. What's needed is to find a way to make it safe to talk about
the worry; find out what is bothering him or her.
How,
then, can you say what is bothering you, or express what you really need, in a
way that your partner can hear it, so that your message can be understood? This
is a basic step in building the relationship you want. For this, the Daily Temperature
Reading is particularly helpful.
After
partners have been heard and understood, they may need to work on forgiveness.
Of course, some things are unforgivable, and each partner has to decide if that
line has been crossed and the relationship is worth continuing. If it is, there
has to be a recognition that you can't change the past. No relationship can recover
from past disappointments and mature unless both partners can find a way to let
go of grudges. This is one of the most important relationship skills couples can
develop.
In
a relationship, letting go of grudges is something you do for yourself, not just
to make your partner feel better. It is done by making simple statements of facts,
not statements of blame. "You took me to your office party and you got so
busy with everyone else you didn't introduce me to anyone to talk to me all night.
You acted like I didn't matter and that your boss was the most important man in
your life."
In
the beginning, the course works best in the safety of a group, which prevents
the isolation of couples and keeps partners from getting defensive and negative.
But once they've practiced this, and it's a simple act of confiding, couples continue
it on their own far more easily.
This
is not just an exercise of the emotions. There is a cognitive restructuring taking
place during these exercises. What is really going on is that one partner is,
probably for the first time, learning the meaning of another's experience. That
by itself enhances their closeness. All it requires is listening with empathy,
and the experience becomes a source of pleasure for both of them. At the same
time, there is conceptual understanding of what each is doing that deprives the
relationship of pleasure and what they need to do to make it better.
Because
the past continually asserts itself in present experience, both partners in a
relationship are obligated to explore themselves, their beliefs, needs, and hopes,
and even uniqueness of personality through their family's emotional history. Most
people operate in the present, using messages and beliefs silently transmitted
to them in their family of origin. Or they may be living out invisible loyalties,
making decisions based not on the needs of their partner or present relationship,
or even their own needs, but on some indebtedness that was incurred sometime in
the past.
Particularly
at issue are messages we acquire about ourselves, about life and love, trust,
confiding, and closeness. Those things we take as truths about love, life, and
trust are beliefs we had the chance to learn from specific people and situations
in the past. It is on this information that we make the private decision to ourselves:
"Nobody cares." "It doesn't matter what I think or say, you're
not interested in me." If, for example, you grew up in a family where your
mother or father drank or was depressed, or was otherwise emotionally unavailable,
you may have drawn the conclusion that no one was really interested in you.
It
is vital to know the lineage of our beliefs because we transfer onto our partners
what we were dealt in the past. One of the decisions often made unwittingly is,
"I don't trust that anybody is really going to be any better to me."
It can become a way of saying, "I'm going to get even for the way I was treated."
You wind up punishing your partner for what someone else actually did.
When
you displace the blame for past hurts onto you present partner, you are activating
a dynamic that psychiatrist Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, M.D., describes as "the
revolving ledger." At certain periods in your life, important people, or
even life itself, through events that affected you, ran up a series of debits
or credits in terms of what you needed. Time passed. You walked through life's
revolving door. And now you hand me the bill. And you hold two hidden expectations.
"Prove to me you are not the person who hurt me." In other words, "make
up to me for the past." "Pay me back." And, "if you don't,
if you do one thing that reminds me of that, I will punish you." The emotional
transfer is accomplished.
Freud
described this as transference and identified it as a crucial part of the therapeutic
relationship. In fact, it is part of our everyday transactions in relationships.
It is crucial to understand that this emotional transfer often does not take place
early in a relationship. It sets in after a couple has been married for some time--when
you are disappointed and discover what you expected or hoped to happen isn't happening.
That
is the point when we transfer the hidden expectations, especially the negative
ones, from our history, from any or all of our previous close relationships, whether
to parents, siblings, former spouses, lovers, or friends. It is one of the core
emotional transactions of marriage. And making it explicit is one of the psychological
tasks of achieving intimacy.
The
problem is, the person to whom you hand the bill is unaware of the account books
in your head. The result is endless misunderstanding and disturbance. In fact,
the attitudes you hold tend to be outside of your own, awareness. I believe that
they can be found through personal exploration.
Otherwise,
you find yourself thinking of your partner as the enemy, someone to hurt, someone
to get even with, to punish. And because you don't recognize the ledger as the
motivating power behind your behavior, you rationalize. You seek reasons to treat
your partner as the enemy. You are really just evening up the balance on someone
else's account.
Roger
called his wife Jenny at work. She was in the middle of a staff meeting and so
she was particularly abrupt with him. When she got home, she found a note from
him. He was gone. From somewhere in his past experience he was so sensitized to
demonstrations of lack of interest in him that her behavior constituted absolute
proof. One misstep--one hint that she was anything like whoever ran up the debit--was
all she was allowed. This is a common pattern in relationships. And the "proof"
of disinterest could be anything. Perhaps she didn't look at him. Perhaps she
was tired. Perhaps she was sick. One reason men are often intolerant of a wife
who gets sick is that she isn't there for them. It is a painful reminder of other
accounts from the past.
Not
only do couples maintain revolving ledgers, but they also carry over feelings
of indebtedness and entitlement from one generation to the next. Invisible loyalties
thus accrue in a family over the generations, whether or not we end up acknowledging
them. An artistic man buries his creative longing because his family legacy calls
for being a success in business. For each of us, behavior is greatly affected
by the family ledger of entitlement and indebtedness.
Every
couple needs to trace the source of behaviors and attitudes, many of which turn
out to have been handed down through their families of origin. Much unhappiness
in relationships can be traced to the fact that one partner learned as a family
rule never to express anger, or even perhaps happiness. Many people grow up learning
to subjugate their own needs and feelings to those of others. Still the feelings
influence present relationships, and until they can be brought into awareness
and spoken, it is very difficult to improve current relationships.
Once
a couple has done this and discovers where their beliefs come from, they can review
them together and decide which legacies they want to keep, which they'd rather
discard. They each work out their personal history so they do not punish the one
who's here now.
At
this point I find that couples do well if I introduce an experience in bonding
that is usually very emotionally powerful.
For
men, these experiences are revelatory. Men, because they are often cut off from
the emotional part of themselves, are especially often forced to piggyback their
need for intimacy on sex. They have no less need for intimacy than women, but
it usually gets suppressed and denied. Or they attempt to satisfy their need for
closeness through contact sports and roughhousing. They don't know how to work
things out in man-woman intimate relationships. But when they learn, they almost
always feel an enormous sense of wholeness and relief
In
growing up men have learned that the only thing they are supposed to need to be
close to a woman is sex. They discover that bonding is a valid need in its own
right, and needing physical closeness doesn't mean they are going to regress into
helplessness and never function again. It doesn't weaken you, it strengthens you.
But
this is not learnable merely by cognitive statement. Having the experience illuminates
the point and changes the thinking. The exercises are important because they integrate
the emotional acceptance, the behavioral change, and the cognitive understanding
that occur.
It
is no news that sexual problems in a relationship are frequently the by-product
of personal and relational conflicts and anxieties. For too many couples, sex
has become a substitute for intimacy and a defense against closeness. Most poor
sex stems from poor communication, from misunderstandings of what one's mate actually
wants--not from unwillingness or inability to give it.
In
the realm of sex as in other domains of the relationship, you cannot expect your
partner to guess what pleases you. You are obligated to figure out for yourself
what stimulates, delights, and satisfies you-and acknowledge it. It is not enough
to give and receive, you also have to be able to speak up or reach out on your
own behalf and take. Ideally, sexual love will be a flow of this give and take,
but it has to go both ways to keep desire alive.
Before
sex can be rewarding for both partners, they have to first restore the ability
to confide and reestablish emotional openness, to establish a sense of camaraderie.
Then physical closeness has meaning, and the meaning serves only to heighten the
pleasure of the physical experience even more.
Of
course, intercourse is not the only avenue to physical pleasure. There is a whole
range of physical closeness couples can learn to offer each other. Being together.
Hugging. Holding each other. Caressing each other's face. Massaging your partner's
body. In fact, taking pleasure in each other is a habit that some couples actually
have to acquire. But taking pleasure in your partner is the very thing your partner
needs most from you.
THE
DAILY TEMPERATURE READING
Confiding--the
ability to reaveal yourself fully, honestly, and directly--is the lifeblood of
intimacy. To live together with satisfaction, couples need clear, regular communication.
The great intuitive family therapist Virginia Satir developed a technique for
partners and families to maintain an easy flow about the big and little things
going on in their lives. I have adapted it. Called the Daily Temperature Reading,
it is very simple (and works for many other kinds of relationships as well).
Do
it daily, perhaps as you sit down to breakfast. At first it will seem artificial--hokey,
even. In time you'll evolve your own style. Couples routinely report it is invaluable
for staying close--even it they let it slide for a day or two when they get busy.
It teaches partners how to listen non-defensively and to talk as a way to give
information arather than to stir a reaction. Here are the basics:
Sit
close, perhaps even knee-to-knee, facing your partner, holding each other's hands.
This simple touching creates an atmosphere of acceptance for both.
1.
APPRECIATION. Take turns expressing appreciation for something your partner has
done--and thanking each other.
2.
NEW INFORMATION. In the absence of information, assumptions--often false ones--rush
in. Tell your partner something ("I'm not looking forward to the monthly
planning meeting this morning") to keep contact alive and let your partner
in on your mood, your experiences--your life. And then listen to your partner.
3.
PUZZLES. Take turns asking each other something you don't understand and your
partner can explain: "Why were you so down last night?" Or voice a question
about yourself: "I don't know why I got so angry while we were figuring out
expenses." You might not find answers, but you will be giving your partner
some insight about yourself. Besides, your partner may have insights about your
experiences.
4.
COMPLAINT WITH REQUEST FOR CHANGE. Without placing blame or being judgemental,
cite a specific behavior that bothers you and state the behavior you are asking
for instead. "If you're going to be late for dinner, please call me. That
way the kids and I can make our own plans and won't be waiting for you."
5.
HOPES. Sharing hopes and dreams is integral to a relationship. Hopes can range
from the mundane ("I hope you don't have to work this weekend") to the
grandiose ("I'd really love to spend a month in Europe with you"). But
the more the two of you bring dreams into immediate awareness, the more likely
you'll find a way to realize them.
BONDING
EXERCISE
Most
people put a lid on the hurts or fears of the past: "It doesn't bother me
anymore"; "It isn't that important." But I find that it is essential
to lift that lid--in the context of the current relationship--to close the revolving
ledger.
o
Choose a time when you are feeling somewhat edgy.
o
Put on some soft music in the background.
o
Lie down with your partner. Lie on your sides cradled into each other, both facing
the same direction.
While
your partner is holding you, quietly reveal something he or she does that triggers
a full-blown intense emotional reaction in you. It might be that she doesn't listen
to you. Or he interrupts you constantly. Or doesn't call when he's away. Or rejects
whatever you suggest. "When you do this, I am very upset." As you are
speaking, your partner is holding you and listening.
Now
tell your partner what experience out of your history your reaction connects to.
Perhaps his not calling infuriates you because it arouses the fear you felt when
a parent left or died. Or your first husband walked out.
Now
comes the remarkable part. Tell your partner what you would have needed to happen
in your history that would have helped. What actions would you have preferred
to have happened? What words would you have needed to hear?
Now
let your partner tell you what you needed to hear, while you take it in. Your
partner is free to say it in his or her own way: "I'm sorry that happened
to you"; "I wish I had been there."
And
now discuss the price you are paying in your current relationship for having this
emotional reaction to events of the past. Perhaps it is that you don't talk to
your partner, you withdraw, withhold, get even.
What
you talk about next is what you can then do to help yourself. "How can I
signal you neutrally to let you know when you trigger this response in me."
At
this point you are talking about what will help you in the future. You are jointly
and consciously outlining useful behaviors, constructing a relationship in which
actions and experiences have the same meaning and same effect for both of you.
This is essential for happiness to occur in a relationship.
PLAYING
DEAD
Rarely
in long-term relationships do we talk about what we appreciate in our partner.
Yet it is not possible to sustain a pleasurable relationship without that. I have
found that most couples need to rediscover what it is they value in each other.
I
have developed an exercise that can quickly restore a sense of priorities, of
what is important in life and in a relationship. Don't be misled by its simplicity.
I ask a couple to talk about what they never talk about together--death and loss.
This usually turns out to be an experience with a dramatic--literally and figuratively--emotional
impact.
Choose
a quiet time and a quiet place when there are no immediate pressures on you or
your partner. Plan ahead to set aside the time. Allow about an hour.
Lie
down on the floor, eyes closed, arms crossed or at your side, as if you were dead.
Take a few deep breaths and allow yourself to relax, but remain still.
Your
partner now gets to imagine that you are gone, and talk to you as if you were.
Your partner must speak about what he or she will miss about you, any regret,
etc. Give him or her time to get into the experience. All you do is lie still
and listen. Then switch places, while you speak about what you will miss.
Most
people are profoundly moved by the emotional discoveries they make about themselves,
their partner, and their relationship. They realize they have something they don't
want to throw away.
But
in the days to come, don't stop there. Use what you have learned to construct
a more rewarding relationship. Sit down in a spirit of goodwill, voice your appreciations,
make a specific request for behavioral change, and jointly negotiate the steps
that will preserve the emotional closeness.
Originally
published by Psychology Today:Sep/Oct 93
