Psychotherapy & Counselling for Individuals & Couples
We’ve just published an article on couples therapy & what to expect if you come to us to work on your intimate relationship .
It’s about a 7 minute read and hopefully should give some useful background to couples therapy in general and in particular the way in which both of us with couples.
Here are some related articles we’ve written on couples therapy:
In this post we want to look at relationship in confinement, particularly for intimate relationships, and the potential dynamics between the partners.
With the difficulties of COVID-19, these dynamics can be an extra challenge, because many of us are forced to be in closer contact with our partners than would normally be the case. So points of friction, which we might otherwise have swept under the carpet (or fled from) can become exacerbated.
We’ll look at this from a depth-psychology viewpoint, which is a useful model for the complexities that occur.
The image above shows a depth-psychology view of a relationship, especially of an intimate relationship between two people (of same or different genders). Each arrow (all 6 of them) presents a form of the relationship that gets invoked.
A book could be written about the model above, but we thought we would try to distill it for the current circumstance.
(Note, as with all psychological models, they are only that, models to help us understand. Reality itself is always far more nuanced and complex than any model describes.)
These six relationships mean 12 points of relating, across the two people, only 2 of which are completely conscious (and 4 partially conscious). No wonder things sometimes go wrong!
Let’s look at the four kinds of relationship, marked 1 to 4 in the image above.
Ego is the conscious sense of self – the subject of our experience. Ego is the one we present to ourselves and to others as the “real deal” (however, it may not be quite that simple).
The Ego has its “public relations” component, the persona, or mask, that we use to adapt to others and make a statement we’d like to make, that feels appropriate in a particular situation.
It’s the persona particularly that may be challenged in our interactions during unusual circumstances, such as the COVID-19 lock-down. It’s hard to be a senior executive when you must also be tutoring your kids or doing the laundry, all in the same workday.
We may have to reflect on our ego, and how the egos of the others we are living with are affecting us.
This is a huge topic, one we can only skim over here. It’s the subject of all deep psychological work: How can we have a dialogue, an open two-way relationship between our conscious ego and the vast (99% at least) of the psyche that remains unconscious to us?
Suffice it to say that successful work on ourselves is the precursor and best predictor of effective work on a relationship. We can work to change ourselves; we cannot work to change the other, for if we attempt to do this we will have fallen into the potential difficulties described in (3) below.
The Unconscious has an important historical component: much that has happened to us, good and bad, from childhood onward (and prior to our birth, as collective memory) is held unconsciously. It is these historical components that can hold sway over us, and can affect the functioning of the Ego.
A feature of the Unconscious is that it holds these repressed elements, as we mentioned above. Another feature is that it continually involves itself in projection.
“Projection is a psychic mechanism that occurs whenever a vital aspect of our personality of which we are unaware is activated. When something is projected we see it outside of us, as though it belongs to someone else and has nothing to do with us. Projection is an unconscious mechanism.
We do not decide to project something, it happens automatically. If we decided to project something it would be conscious to us and then, precisely because it is conscious to us, it could not be projected. Only unconscious contents are projected; once something has become conscious projection ceases.” †
Projection is a huge factor in the flavour of the Unconscious-Ego relationship, especially in an intimate relationship. We can never be without projection. But what we can do is start to become aware of what we projecting onto others.
There are levels in this: at a “micro” level we might be continually expecting our partner to behave in ways that we have programmed in from our childhood experiences with our own parents or siblings; or how things “naturally” work in society (“women do the housework”).
But at a “macro” level there the danger that the work we should be doing, we do not do: instead we project our lack in this area onto the other partner.
An example at this macro level is when a man has had a negative experience with his mother, and his feminine unconscious side (the so-called anima in Jungian language) has been wounded as a consequence.
Instead of investigating this resulting internal misogyny, he projects the “problem woman” out onto his partner – seeing her as lacking and negative in various ways.
Another factor that comes into play here is the contra-sexual side of each of us. Often we are not in contact with this, and it can play havoc in the Unconscious-Ego interactions.
“The contra-sexual element within us is so psychologically elusive that it escapes our complete awareness, therefore it always is projected, at least in part.” ‡
So a woman may project her “Shining White Knight” onto the man of her dreams, and only too late find that he is a primarily money-focused achiever who cannot give her what she wants (which is, actually, to have a relationship with that Knight living in her unconscious).
(Note this is unrelated to the genders of the partners – it applies in same sex as well as different sex relationships: we are usually, at some level, mainly at an unconscious level, trying to work out and redeem our contra-sexual side.)
In the example given, of the man projecting his negative mother onto women, the story does not end there.
She in turn, due to her unconscious predisposition, may “take on” this projection, feeling the very things that are projected onto her. (This is called projective identification.) So her ego response changes, as she begins to feel worthless.
However, that is probably not the end of the subject, because unconsciously she is probably bitterly disappointed and angry and will reap her revenge on her partner (again, unconsciously).
We are now talking of interactions that are unconscious with unconscious, and these are difficult to investigate, since neither party knows what’s happening! This is exactly when a third party such as a therapist can assist as they may see the dynamic playing out, because they are not personally involved (and have seen it before).
“There is little doubt that such projective identifications occur. They feel wonderful when one senses that one has come home through the agency of the Other; they feel diabolical if one feels possessed by the Other.
How many pogroms, martyrdoms, burnings, mass hysterias have scarred history, destroyed lives, because of … contamination between [the unconscious of two people]?” §
It is our intention here to offer a model for the complexities of relationships, which may in this difficult time be more in evidence.
The good news is that, often, if couples address issues they are having before there is a crisis, good work can be done in exploring some of the “skeletons in the closet”, and enabling the couple to feel relieved and better able to tackle the difficulties of the world they are facing.
As the psychiatrist and psychotherapist Iain McGilchrist says, you can take a poisonous gas (chlorine) and a dull reactive metal (sodium) and combine them chemically to form a harmless but very necessary white substance – salt!
A relationship, too, can undergo such an alchemical miracle, made from two possibly quite odd components!
If you wish are seeking to make a change in your relationship feel free to reach out to us for support.
† John A Sanford – The Invisible Partners, p10
‡ John A Sanford – The Invisible Partners, p11
§ James Hollis – The Eden Project, p54
One of the big themes we see in Counselling and Psychotherapy with both couples and individuals is a difficulty in accepting and dealing with difference, and the conflicts associated with this.
This post is a short meditation on difference.
Here are some examples from Counselling that could be signs of underlying difficulties in accepting difference:
Usually difference itself is not the problem.
Difference is what creates attraction, but it also creates tension. It can be what makes us complementary or the thing that tears us apart.
Usually difference itself is not the problem. The problem is that we struggle with how to handle difference. We become uncomfortable with it.
Generally, to deal with our discomfort around difference, we try to:
When we change ourselves we lose our authenticity and sense of meaning.
When we try to change another to be like us we are not seeing the other wholly. We may feel threatened by their different way of thinking or being.
Not only do we see these attempted solutions playing out in personal relationships, but we see it in business and even global political situations. And countries are very ready to go to war over political/religious difference.
The image we’ve chosen above is of a carved wooden monument set in a place of honour near the house of a clan elder in Madagascar. The idea is that it becomes a focal point for acceptance of changes – important events in village life where accepting difference is required for changes such as puberty.
(The monument is in the Met Museum, Fifth Avenue, NYC.)
As the description says:
Set side by side, these figures engage the viewer with their intense expressions and deeply recessed eyes. Their subtle stylization simultaneously unifies them and amplifies what makes them different, producing an eloquent statement on the fundamental complementarity of man and woman.
As the centerpiece of circumcision rights performed to promote the virility of each generation, the couple emphasizes the importance of the male-female partnership in assuring the community’s future.
The figures’ nudity, striking in a region where textiles are a fundamental element of identity, serves to further underscore these timeless and universal themes of fertility and regeneration.
The quote suggests complimentarity is an important aspect of the life of the community. (The bolding on “different” above are ours.)
Moving to a Taoist viewpoint (and continuing our recent theme on the Tao), here’s Chuang Tzu on difference:
Fish can live in water quite contentedly, but if people try it, they die, for different beings need different contexts which are right and proper for them. This is why the ancient sages never expected just one response from the rest of the creatures nor tried to make them conform.
Titles should not be over-stretched in trying to capture reality and ideas should be only applied when appropriate…
(Chapter 18, Perfect Happiness, in The Book of Chuang Tzu.)
Chuang Tzu was interested in the issue of difference in 300 BC, and even then referred to “the ancient sages”. We are dealing with a very old concern!
The paradox is that connection can only be felt with a space for distance. There needs to be an ability to come together and to pull apart (without breaking), to feel the full range that is a healthy interaction.
Imagine there are two wholes – nothing missing: these can meet and connect and not have to merge. There can be an experience of sharing without losing anything. To know another in this way, as different from you and whole in themselves, is a powerful experience.
To know another as different from you and whole in themselves is a powerful experience.
It is enriching to learn and grow through difference. It means interactions stay fresh and exciting because the other is not like you. There is a possibility for some new insight or experience.
When there is a merging there is a loss of identity, loss of needs, and often loss of passion. Many of us like the idea of merging and feeling completed by another but the reality is that we lose sight of the other and lose our own boundaries and sense of self if we do this for too long.
There can be no real connection without the ability to see another as whole and from a distance.
Disconnection happens when we move too far away. Here are examples of when this may happen:
In any experience or emotion it is though contrast that we know it exists. As Gestalt Psychotherapy says, experience is at the boundary between self and other.
For example, if you put your hand in a bowl of water that is exactly blood temperature then you do not know it is in water. There is no difference between hand and world (water).
And human connection is felt through our experience of the opposite. We understand joy because we have experienced sadness or sorrow.
If we can allow ourselves to understand another wholly, not diminishing their difference, and not trying to change them, we can feel connected, whole and invigorated by our relationships.
(The Madagascar Couple is at the The Met Museum. The quote from Chuang Tzu is from The Book of Chuang Tzu, tr. Martin Palmer, Penguin Books.)
In this post we hope to convey the subtle power of reflective listening – a safe and simple technique that couples can learn with us and practice at home.
When couples come to us saying they have communication issues it is usually due to one or two of the following reasons:
Here we’ll describe a simple method we teach to our clients that addresses the third issue above, communication itself.
If something is important enough to fight about this means it is important for the couple to work on. A healthy couple listens to their partner’s concerns. If it matters to one person then it is worth the time needed for the other person to understand.
Simply put, in bad communication we spend most of our energy getting our point across, or defending ourselves. We don’t listen to the other person. And since we already know what we think, we are learning nothing.
If the other person is upset it usually means we don’t really understand what is going on for them at a feeling level.
Reflective Listening is about getting to the heart of the misunderstanding, and finding out (underneath this) what’s actually happening for the other person.
In Reflective Listening done well we can have the uncanny feeling of suddenly coming to the position of a third person, of breaking through an impasse. The “argument” becomes dissolved because we’re no longer in it – we’ve dropped beneath it in a simple yet subtly powerful way.
As one partner might say (in a relieved and positive voice) “I had no idea you we’re thinking that!” or “I had no idea and it makes me really sad to hear you felt that way”.
Reflective Listening is effectively a slowed down conversation requiring time and attention.
This exercise can help build trust if used correctly.
Because it’s a conversation there’s a speaker and a listener. One chooses to speak first while the other listens. (Later, you’ll swap roles.)
Now it’s time to swap roles. The speaker becomes the listener and the listener becomes the speaker.
Once the second speaker is done, the first speaker may want to go again.The process continues in this open-ended way until both partners have completed what they wanted to say and both feel they have been listened to correctly (from the feedback they’ve received from the listener).
Essentially, it’s checking in with ourselves, because we have the time to think about what is most important to say. We are really listening and giving time to understand each other more deeply.
This process may take anything from 5 minutes or 30 minutes.
Once you have mastered the skill of Reflective Listening then you can use it in daily interactions, as a single sentence (“So what I’m hearing you say is…”). Just check in when you are not sure you understand what is happening for your partner.
Or you can ask your partner to reflect back what you have said, if you feel it is important and want to make sure they are not making assumptions or jumping to conclusions.
Couples who take the effort to follow the steps of Reflective Listening carefully can be in for some positive surprises. They feel differently after the process. It may take some time and practice at the beginning but it is well worth the effort.
Once a couple gets familiar with the practice and knows that talking is safe it can be used just to check that you really have understood what is happening for the other person. It ultimately saves a huge amount of time arguing and the pain of feeling misunderstood.
Reflective listening is simple but takes practice. It is a way of showing that you want to resolve an issue and not just “have your say”.
Reflective listening is a way of showing that you want to resolve an issue and not just “have your say”.
Some couples struggle at the beginning to break their negative habits of interrupting, dismissing and rushing in to fix a problem with a practical solution – rather than staying with their partner while the real answer unfolds. But keep practicing!
We are of course happy to help couples practice Reflective Listening, but you can also try this at home.
As we approach the summer holiday season (in Australia at least) it’s worth remembering that even in the best of times, with few exceptions, we as couples need to practice the principles of couple security.
In this post we’d like to comment on some of these principles, as 10 tips for secure couples.
The need is even greater for some when on holiday, with the potentially added complexities of increased time together and extended family.
With that in mind, here are some great examples of secure principles from the book Attached (Amir Levine and Rachel Heller), one we recommend to couples looking to find out more about Adult Attachment.
And we wish you a happy holiday!
This tip’s aimed more towards Avoidant types, who might think that, with potentially more family interactions, they need more “alone time” as a balance. And perhaps in some ways they are right, feeling that things (maybe including their partner) are too demanding, too busy, too noisy.
The key for an Avoidant type at this time is to communicate openly and honestly to their partner what’s happening for them. An Avoidant needs to be open and emotionally available even if only for some moments.
With the stress of organising social events, an overtly Anxious partner may decide it’s time to “check in” repeatedly on their possibly Avoidant partner. (Is all this stuff going to get done?) This action is likely to be counter-productive, and will reduce the trust the Avoidant person feels for the situation and for the couple’s security, because they’ll be overwhelmed.
The key is to make an agreement about how and when check-ins will occur, an agreement that suits both styles.
Especially in times of high family expectations, it’s easy to fall into defensive strategies such as belittling, acting hostile or disdainful, and minimising emotional sharing. Yet at this time there are huge bonuses to be had in acting encouragingly and in a supportive way.
A common Avoidant response is to find a partner’s advances needy and pathetic. The Avoidant tries to gain distance by discouraging and by trying to keep the partner “in their place”. The effect can be devastating on the other partner and on the relationship.
Alternatively, the Avoidant can practice finding the positive in the other. This ironically helps them too!
Knowing what your attachment style is a useful pointer to where you’ll be vulnerable to ineffective communication. What are the situations that trigger you, especially at this time of the year? How does your attachment style then play out? How do you lose out by following the game plan of your style?
Effective communication comes out of challenging the assumptions you’ve made.
This is another way of saying: Don’t act out. Don’t fall into the trap of engaging in secondary arguments that are about point scoring and winning or losing. These secondary arguments often leave the underlying issues completely unaddressed.
It comes as a surprise to some people that they can take responsibility for the well-being of their partner, and often (without a huge amount of effort) powerfully increase the sense of well-being in that other person.
This in turn increases their own sense of well-being, when they see they can evoke such positive effects. Another way of saying this is “Have each others’ back”.
Be courageous and honest in your interactions. Dig into feelings and be available to share them. The Three Simple Sentences are a great way of doing this.
Having a sense of partnership in solving a problem – be it who’s going to be invited to a social event or how the household chores are going to be done – not only solves the problem but builds couple security.
Stick to the issue – which is usually about one or both partners feeling under-resourced and not attended to.
Attend to your partner’s upsets before they escalate. Learn to attend to the moments in the other when their attachment style is triggered – and get in first to prevent the spread of fire.
Efforts spent in creating and maintaining secure couples attachment pays back dividends for all concerned (including other family members) and can be critical during holiday periods. We hope these 10 tips for secure couples are helpful!
We’re just back from the GANZ (Gestalt Australia and New Zealand) conference in Canberra where we gave a presentation on our eclectic approach to couples therapy.
It was gratifying to receive such positive feedback on our way of working, and a great opportunity for us to reflect on how we work and what it is that makes our approach to therapy so effective.
Not to be underestimated is the years of work we’ve done to achieve a quiet and grounded sense of happiness and security in our own relationship, and to see that something of that can “rub off” on the couples we work with.
In intimate relationships, so much of the interactions are rooted in out-of-awareness states, and this can work for couples in a positive way, grounding them in a real sense of couple security; as well as in a negative way when these interactions trigger disruptive patterns and cause suffering.
So here’s some background from the slide on “the cogwheels”, one that a member of the audience asked us to write more about.
It’s a simplified model that we find helps couples to figure out what’s going on in tense moments.
The large touching circles above represent the two partners in a couple interaction. Also shown is the cerebral cortex and the amygdala in each – the so-called two brains.
The cerebral cortex is the mammalian, developed, “adult” brain, responsible for higher functions such as sensory perception. It’s where we want to be in a couple interaction! The amygdala, on the other hand, is the primitive, reptilian brain, responsible for “fight, flight, freeze” reactions: it’s not where we want to be when interacting with our partner. (It’s the source of the “trigger” response, also called the “pathway of fear”.)
Lastly what’s shown in the diagram is the sensory thalamus: this processes incoming sensory data and decides whether there’s a threat involved.
If one partner experiences some kind of threat or danger in the interaction, the sensory thalamus can be quick to reroute nerve impulses to the amygdala. We say this person is “triggered”, and their behaviour is then usually a fast and reactive combination that is primarily defensive.
We say that one partner has taken the path of the “small cog wheel” (shown as the smaller dotted red line above). They’ve switched from large cog wheel to small.
The person is “triggered”, and their behaviour is then usually defensive.
The problem with this reaction (as well as the suffering it causes the person who’s switched) is that the reaction is quickly picked up by the other person, causing them to potentially also switch from large to small cog wheel. The situation quickly escalates and the intimate system becomes threatened (fighting).
When all’s going well, the “happy path” is shown by the larger dotted red line: the large cog wheel. A couple in this dynamic is doing well and both partners are enjoying their contact and interaction. The thalamus detects no threats on either side.
We can “catch” what’s happening in these couple interactions.
An important part of what we do in couples therapy is to “catch” what’s happening in the couple interactions, to bring these patterns into awareness, and to support the couple to use pacing and self-support to slow these interactions; to give the neocortex time to operate and to prevent amygdala reactions from controlling the scene. The experiential approach of Gestalt is well suited for this work.
(The cog-wheel diagram is adapted and simplified from Seidenfaden & Draiby, The Vibrant Relationship.)
We recently received a call from a man, from a troubled couple we’d previously worked with, to say that they were off on an exotic trip to get married!
The relationship had been characterised by stormy outbursts on the part of the woman, and subsequent anger and retreat on the part of the man. The beast that had been unleashed, when they’d decided to get together, had bewildered both of them.
And we were gratified that this man felt the work we’d done with them had contributed, in part at least, to this newfound intimacy and wanted to let us know.
“What made the difference?” we asked.
“Well” said the man, “It finally clicked that I didn’t have to take her outbursts literally. I started to see them as a cry for closeness and soothing. I started to see through them to the young girl who wanted to be held, told everything is ok, and shown that she is worthy of being loved.”
“It finally clicked that I didn’t have to take her outbursts literally.”
What a great place to get to! With this man’s insight and understanding the dynamic between the two of them was changed.
Of course, if it were always this simple, many more people would come to such realisations and their relationships would be immediately transformed. But the problem is that before this man’s realisation, his negative reactions were so quick, so out of his awareness, that he was unable to do anything other than what he’d always done – withdraw in hurt, to lick his wounds and consider his options.
And from the woman’s point of view, his seething anger and subsequent withdrawal were evidence of all her fears come true; that in fact she was not capable of being held, that everything was not ok, and that she was in fact unworthy of love.
Our work in the room had been about slowing down the whole process of their fast and painful cycles of attack and retreat – enough so that they could gain an insight into what each of them was doing.
Speed is a big negative factor in such out of control couple dynamics. When we are triggered into fight or flight reactions then our old brain (amygdala), on autopilot, takes action below the level of consciousness. And it takes action quickly, to help restore balance for the individual. This individual balance may, however, not serve the relationship.
That’s why it’s so valuable for couples to get involved in exercises (which we can offer) to slow the negative processes down and show the couple how the processes can be investigated and reconsidered.
And since this is not a gender issue, it is a valuable lesson for anyone. Each of us has a part that might be trying to get what we need in the way of love and soothing – but we often try in ways that are misread or misunderstood. The man in this case saw through the upset of his partner and was able to not take it personally. And the dynamic can be broken when either person, at any moment, can see through to the part of the other person that is crying out (maybe yelling or throwing a tantrum) for love and understanding.
The dynamic can be broken when either person, at any moment, can see through to the part of the other person that is crying out…
This man also felt confused at the responses of his partner to his actions. When the couple could slow down enough to see what was going on, both could see their part and not take it so personally.
If you can recognise this cycle in your relationship then outside assistance can help break the habit and unconscious responses to each other.
These can otherwise be so destructive and painful for both parties in a relationship.
How Long Will it Take? This is a question that many starting therapy, or any new endeavour, may ask themselves. The answer’s not straightforward, but having said that there are some guidelines.
Let’s assume you’re coming to therapy to work on your relationship (or an addiction, depression, or other ongoing issue) and that you’ve tried what you can to fix the problem – and still feel stuck. You are probably coming as a last resort rather than as the first thing you’ve tried.
And in a world of fast paced work and rapid transfer of information we all tend to expect quick results. We might otherwise feel we’re failing, or that the process isn’t working.
But the reality is: changing bad or entrenched habits is hard.
You may’ve been doing these things for a long time and the research suggests that habits form brain patterns that are hard to break. It takes time and concerted, conscious, consistent effort to change.
The good news is that we can change. Neuroscience talks of creating new neural pathways. New pathways allow you to change and create new behaviours, over time, that serve you better than the old ones did. It takes work and time to create these changes. No matter how well you do at first, if you don’t keep up the good efforts you can easily slip back into old behaviours.
You have to really want the change. Changing because someone else wants you to change, or because it seems like a good idea, will not create the desired result. You have to want it enough to do whatever it takes to get there.
The latest research suggests that it takes 6-9 months to create the new neural pathways that support a long term change in behaviour. That sounds scary but it’s really not so bad.
Just because it will take time to cement change, doesn’t mean you’ll not experience benefits immediately. If you are able to stop the vicious arguments with your partner, are able to stop smoking or to eat more healthily you will usually notice great benefits quickly. What we want is for you to sustain those changes over the long term.
When you notice benefits it makes it easier to stay with the work required. But there are other hidden factors too.
Your current behaviour is there for a reason, or you wouldn’t be doing it. This can be hard to swallow, but it’s true. Whether you’re a workaholic, 10 kilos overweight, or have anger management issues — your current situation is serving you somehow.
So take some time to think about this. Whether the need is relaxation but the behaviour is binge drinking, or the need is recognition but the behaviour is overwork, you first need to identify what need is being served by your current behaviour.
Once you have the answer, you can work out how to meet this need in another way, smoothing the path to change.
Therapy can create a supportive environment to explore what you really want, what you need to change, and ways to do exactly that.
It is also important to recognise change and progress as it happens. There will be many steps along the path to your goal and it is important to integrate the changes and build on your successes. It will keep you more focused on the target.
It’s known from positive psychology and neuroscience, that you’ll have more success when you move towards something positive than away from something negative.
Since we are only human too we know what it’s like to struggle with an issue and have to put in hard work to change. We know this both from personal experience and from the clients we have worked with.
If you are willing to put the effort in we are happy to help support you in your change process.
(Image: The Mahatmas Present Standing Point, Series II, No. 2a, 1920, by Hilma af Klint)
In our last post we talked about Going the other way. So here’s an example of how you might do this, using three simple sentences.
Three simple sentences can change the way we discuss our upsets. They can become a profound exercise if taken seriously and done with gentleness. The point is to speak openly and honestly and to be willing to discover something new in ourselves and in our partner.
This requires a little practice and it’s good for clarifying what is actually happening for us and how we feel (which usually has the advantage of bridging a gap in a disagreement).
So here they are:
They look almost too simple don’t they?
Let’s take a closer look at what each sentence does:
There are a few things to remember. This is a practice in taking responsibility, so the statements are all “I” statements. They are about us, not our partner. This is not an exercise in blame. It can reveal a lot about us and our vulnerabilities, so it needs to be agreed that we will support each other in this process.
And finally, a feeling is exactly that, a feeling. Usually one word, like “sad” or “glad”. A feeling is not “I feel that you are doing this, or I feel that you are being that”. A feeling is usually also felt in our body.
We rarely argue about what we think we are arguing about. Whether the issue is a small thing like not stacking the dishwasher “properly” or a bigger thing like having an affair, the way we argue is often ineffective in making a change, unless we can get to what we are really fighting about. It’s usually not the events, but instead something deeper. We only really argue about core values, but the events are pointers to these core values.
Let’s go through an example to demonstrate.
You and your partner are at a party. There are a lot of people and one person in particular you know and can see your partner talking with. This person is very attractive and you know they are in a relationship, but you have heard rumours that they have had affairs. You feel something and later you and your partner have an argument about it. It goes something like this…
Why would you be talking with that person at the party? You know they have no respect for their partner, and why would you put our relationship in jeopardy? What if they tried to kiss you or made a pass at you?
Your partner says you are being irrational, nothing would happen, that person is not attracted to them, and even if they were there would be nothing to worry about.
I don’t want you talking with them again at least not alone
you say. Your partner gets more upset and a bit defensive. From here it declines into an argument.
You may need to cool off… and then you can try to figure out what is going on using the three simple sentences.
You might reflect on this and think to yourself:
It may seem counter intuitive to share these feelings with our partner. But if they are willing to listen and if they are willing to try the three sentences then things have a chance of being seen from a new angle, and possibly resolved.
Your partner might say:
This is not always the easiest thing to do but it does tend to stop the argument and bring us back to what we are really feeling. What we are feeling can be seen and held in the relationship in a different way from blame and anger.
We suggest you try out the three sentences – even just thinking them through sometimes can help us get back into rational thinking. If you use them as a way of broaching difficult topics it can defuse disagreements before they become full scale arguments. They can help foster intimacy.
The three sentences take practice and initially need safety and an agreement to be gentle and try to understand each other. But when you know what you are really arguing about then things can be more easily resolved, and this reduces anxiety. It’s easier to talk about the fear of losing the relationship than being blamed for being jealous. In fact if our partner understands how we really feel they are more likely to feel moved than wrong. It’s more productive to talk about the discomfort of feeling our partner does not trust us than trying to figure out how not to inflame them.
It can be powerful to let our partner know what we think and feel, if it can be done without judgement. Then we have the opportunity to undo some of our negative beliefs and assumptions we’ve made up, and that don’t serve the relationship.
So try the three sentences to help build a deeper understanding of yourself and your partner and give us a call if you want some help to get started.
(Image: Lucien Guitry and Granne Granier, 1895, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – detail)
We wrote in Being Right and Being Wrong about the dynamics that occur between the partners in a couple relationship, and about going beyond right and wrong.
We want to go into more depth on this topic. Let’s start with A Course in Miracles, which says:
Reason will tell you that the only way to escape from misery is to recognise it and go the other way. (T–22.II.4.)
Despite repeatedly seeing that there’s something happening with our partner that’s locked and is producing undesirable results (arguments or worse), again and again we batten down the hatches. We take on siege thinking.
What if we could see another way? What could happen in our relationship if we could really do something different? Insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting to get a different result. So, what if we could really listen rather than trying to get our point of view across to the other person; what if we could forgive when we want to blame; what would happen if we could let our defences down when we most want to protect ourselves? A miracle could occur.
Why do we repeatedly do what doesn’t work? Because at some point, for a time, it did work. Growing up we had to learn to cope with situations we could not change, with people who had all the power – our parents or other carers. Creative adaptations are ways we learned to cope when we were young, to deal with our environment. In Gestalt we call these “creative” because they worked well in the original situation. But we tend to carry these ways of being on in our lives and expect that they will continue to work. In fact we may no longer even be aware of so doing – adaptations can become such habits that we believe there IS no other way.
How do we go the other way if we believe what we do works, if we’ve invested in it and it has worked before? We usually try to change the other person. We imagine if they change all will be well and that’s where we invest our energy. And that is what leads to arguments, held positions, stubbornness and pain. Going the other way means seeing what we do, how we defend, what we imagine we will gain; and doing the opposite. It means gently opening up to understanding ourselves and our partner better.
Going the other way means seeing what we do, how we defend, what we imagine we will gain; and doing the opposite.
Going the other way means first that we have to recognise and become aware of our beliefs about what we can expect from the environment… or our partner. For example, we may have a belief that if we are vulnerable our partner will use this against us later. Or we may think that if we said what we really feel, or disclose something that is important to us, our partner will judge us or worse, leave us.
Maybe we could keep the word “creative” and think about how to use it differently. We support the idea of creative disagreement as an important tool to understanding ourselves and our partners better. Then disagreement can be something welcomed rather than feared. Learning that we can grow closer through difference is often a surprise to our clients, but imagine knowing from experience that you can grow closer and learn rather than feeling that disagreements lead always to full blown arguments, where both get hurt and nothing is actually resolved.
What people fight about tells a lot about their core values and sense of themselves. If we are not afraid to have a difference of opinion then we can truly build intimacy in a relationship. We can discover all manner of treasures in our partner if we are willing to see how they are different from us. That is part of the beauty of a relationship: not imagining we know everything about the other person (or even that we should) but that there’s always more to discover.
But first we have to be willing to go the other way, which means to not defend ourselves against our partner, not blame them for our feelings, not ask them to change to make us more comfortable and less fearful or less jealous. It requires a deep willingness to look at ourselves and discover what the treasure is that we are trying to protect by fighting – and equally be willing to see what the treasure is that our partner is defending. This is where the love is, the intimacy, the delicacy of the relationship. And it requires time, care and attention to allow this to flower and grow.
So when we’re finally tired of suffering, when nothing else is working, there is this alternative – go the other way. This means to do the very thing that may seem the most counter-intuitive at the time. It means dropping the attack / defence position we’re holding. And it always entails dropping from the head (thinking) to the heart (feeling). It can only be practiced (rather than just thought about).
To do the very thing that may seem the most counter-intuitive at the time…
We’re not saying it is easy to change. It requires patience (towards ourselves and our partner) while digging to find our defences. It requires sensitivity and care not to crush blossoming openness and to trust when our partner is vulnerable. It requires a fierce courage to show all of ourselves when we think we could be criticised or misunderstood.
But we have supported many couples through this process and travelled this road ourselves. We have experienced this process first hand and have seen miraculous results. If you are willing to go this way, the other way, you too can find a new type of peace in yourself and with others. And if you want some support – you know where to find us!
(Image: A Knight At the Crossroads, 1878, Viktor Vasnetsov – detail)