Quick Links: Infidelity summary * fidelity 101 * fidelity 108 * fidelity 2 * fidelity 3 * fidelity 4 * begin mending * forgiving * couple education
Last edit of this page 02/10/08
It ain't over till it's over
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in. Leonard Cohen
Happily married couples aren't smarter, richer, or more psychologically astute than others. They have simply hit upon a dynamic that keeps their negative thoughts and feelings about each other (which all couples have) from overwhelming their positive ones. Gottman
Marry and with luck
it may go well.
But when a marriage fails
those who marry live at home in hell. Euripides 408 B.C.
1.0 To begin mending or repair a tired or broken relationship:
- Together, agree to begin.
- Assume that each is acting in good faith and with a good heart.
- Your partner is likely doing their best too and carrying the most they can bear.
- Choose tiny steps. Intend the smallest imaginable change first and together.
- Organize your lives, cooperatively, around that intention.
- That can be a mammoth task in itself.
- Talk with tact, scan ahead.
- React if you must but with forethought and later.
- Put good manners first, rehash garbage last.
- The odds of 'saving a marriage' are very high - the US divorce rate is 0.38% and Australian 0.46% - that is, 4 adults per thousand adults divorce each year! US Source & Oz source.
- The 30+% divorce rate is a statistic not a fact. Result - a lot of dead marriages remain intact.
- Communication changes can make the difference between dead and thriving:
- Change saying 'you make me feel' to saying 'I feel ... when you ...'.
- Change 'don't wants' to 'would likes' and change complaints to requests.
- Change hoping and hinting to saying it with 'I' and guessing or assuming to asking with 'I'
- Use how and what questions not why; label your feelings; verbalize emotions instead of acting them out - more practical changes here.
- Apologize even if you are right (the "right" or "happy" dilemma) or run a courtrooom of a marriage instead - "I'm right you're wrong".
- Give up the struggle to change them into someone you want and they are not.
- Stop destroying every real feeling that remains. It doesn't work and is grotesque.
- What if; if only; why me, and you should - let them go.
- Deal with the problems at hand. Stay solution focused.
- Apply the do-what-works strategy - if it works, go on, if not, do something else.
- When faced with an always deceive strategy (hair splitting, infidelities and lies) the tit-for-that strategy is more successful. "It is a positive strategy (because it always starts of with cooperation), that is also prepared to hit back when deceived (because it defects when the other person has done so), but is also forgiving (when the other start cooperation again, it does so too) and transparent/predictable (because of its simplicity and consistency)." Source
- Take mutual responsibility for the pursuit/withdraw and criticize/defend dance. Consciously manage these routine arguments as they unravel, without escalating and as soon as you become aware of the first steps.
- Ease into the process - it takes at least as many months to repair as the number of years you have been together. Deeply ingrained habits support relapses every time you give them room to move and air to breathe.
- Almost every walking corpse of a marriage has a remnant spark of life whose flame is as lightly rekindled as it is blown out. That is both a source of hope and painful repetition.
- Easing into mending may require other agreements such as: ending threats to leave; name and close habitual exits from intimacy like blaming or rescuing family members and responding to 'urgent' phone calls.
- Better manage escape routes like kids, leisure, work, internet and TV,
- Stop beating each other up over the past and finally,
- Stop being strong. Yield to professional help especially when dealing with traumatic grief. Men in particular seem to cope with high levels of stress but in fact take a lot of hits and then one final blow knocks them over.
- If you are also dealing with the loss of and/or trauma to a child, loved one or a community - it may take longer to mend and not necessarily recovering from the loss. One can grieve and mend at the same time.
- That takes courage, one day, one hour sometimes one minute at a time. Traumatic losses may be overwhelmed by concurrent crises and multiple secondary losses. It may take a community response to help you through and that's okay too unless your pride is in the way. Healthy attachment is the basis of individual and community recovery and resilience.
- Have you so emptied yourself of the relationship that nothing your partner can say or do even scrapes the sides. The container that once supported your relationship is now like a sieve - everything you or they put in pours out the bottom? Start to plug the holes together.
- Unable to stop fighting? Then: 1. agree on a stop signal that both will respect (for example reciting a limerick or make a process comment such as 'here we go again, let's stop before it gets out of hand'). 2. agree to continue exploring the issue/s underlying the dispute at a better time, when not tired or drinking. 3. make a specific time to do that and honour it. 4. apologise then and there for the wrongdoing that you contributed that allowed the fight to begin turning nasty again and do that WITHOUT RESTARTING THE FIGHT. 5. recognise mistakes made that led to the stop sign being called and set procedure for addressing that moment next time it happens. 6. if the stop sign itself becomes part of the fight, then use an internal measure for approaching the danger zone, so that each will know internally, when it is too unbearable to maintain principles of a fair fight, and go back to 2 above.
If that internal measurement also becomes a racket, then truly it is time to get help establishing a peace zone.
- Fight problems arise when one or both partners fail to assert their own feelings and wants constructively while at the same time, maintaining a genuine caring and respect for the other.
- Most fights are repetitive patterns with a familiar beginning, middle and end where one or both people do not feel free to apologise and change their regretful behaviour.
- Anger is neutral but can be expressed in destructive or healthy ways.
- Fair fight principles: Establish the ground rules and honour them. Self-soothe and support calm deliberation rather than emotional escalation. Express feelings with words, story and ownership i.e. 'I statements' and not with actions. Be specific about what's bothering you and concrete about solutions proposed. Deal with one issue at a time. Don't hit below the belt nor aim to wound. Avoid accusations and righteousness. Don't generalize or pile on unrelated issues. Stay real, avoid make believe. Collaborate to prevent stockpiling, brooding and recycling issues. Collaboratively manage patterns of withdrawal or clamming up, of stonewalling, of expressing contempt, making negative interpretations and wild generalizations.
- If you are fighting to destroy every last real feeling you have for each other, forcing the other into the position of leaving, then you have probably shredded almost the last vestiges of your own dignity and self-respect. From this place one can learn humility and forgiveness but it takes a big and tender heart. Lay down your weapons; think; fast and wait. What nourishes you may also destroy you.
- Unable to stop the past intruding?
- Then set an appointment each week and do the pain thing in an agreed way for 90 minutes max, guided by the fair fight principles above. Jointly manage the process to a conclusion at each session and over the whole time, in how ever many months it takes to get well with each other about the past.
- Start small. One manageable issue at a time.
- In between, put the lot back under the carpet until next week's agreed time. If it is elephant sized, don't go near it until the next appointment. If you can't leave it alone, get professional help as a couple - it's not a question of who hit who back first. It's systemic - somewhat like an in-law problem.
- To do the above may not require a miracle, only updated skills.
- For example:
- Agree on what is a negative and what a positive interaction in your relationship. Then count the frequency of each over a month. Then decide how to increase the ratio of positive to negative to at least 5 positives to 1 negative. Then, do it in a sustainable way! That may require a course at Relationships Australia; or Family Relationships online. Go as a couple and acquire the skills together, no matter who has the gold stars for clarity in communication. That is evidence of mutual good will, and of letting go. Then,
- Organise a private hour with each other, each week for as many months/years as it takes to be well with each other. This is sacred time. Anticipate derailments and self-sabotage. Observe how these mishaps are co-created. Agree on how to deal with those troubles without blame or rancour, owning your part of the breakdown no matter who hit who back first' That is evidence of working together with what ever comes up.
- Use this hour to take turns giving 20 minutes to each other. No trading, not according to 'need' - all of the 20 minutes to each, each time. For example, giving your undivided attention to the other as they speak or sign (even cartoon, sing or dance) about experiences that are important to them today. The speaker is to use 'I' statements wherever possible. The listener follows the other's breathing by synchronising their breath with the speaker's. Apart from mirroring breath and offering gentle eye contact, nodding or other non-verbal indications that the listener is attending, the only leading response allowed to the listener is something like, "is there any thing else you want to say about that?" This is not a time for the speaker to beat up the listener, nor the listener to go digging for information, judging, criticizing, nor for either to later summarize nor inflict retribution for what occurred or didn't occur in each other's 20 minutes.
- Forgotten how to talk, laugh and play for 20 minutes?
- I heartily recommend Interplay as a safe, straightforward place to learn to meet again. This is not about having deep and meaningfuls! Couples who thrive do engage in screaming matches. They don't resolve every problem. When Betty is upset with Allan, she heads for the mall. Then they regroup and go on as if nothing's happened. Never in forty-five years of marriage have they sat down to have a 'dialogue' about their relationship. While this may sound like a couple in trouble, Gottman found that they pass the love-lab tests and say honestly that they are both very satisfied with their relationship and they love each other deeply. More from Gottman at 4.0 below.
- In this same frame of mind, write on each of seven slips of paper one kindly, appropriate and affordable surprise that you would like to receive from your partner. The simpler the better. Each exhibiting respect and due care. Make the wish clear so that one can follow without asking for too much clarification. Place all 14 in a cookie jar. Then each week take turns pulling one out of the jar and follow the instructions therein. You might end up giving what you wanted to receive. If you don't want that outcome, have two cookie jars and take turns picking an item from the each other's jar each week or fortnight. Replenish with same or new at the end of each 14 weeks. Here are 161 ideas to stimulate your imagination.
- Feelings arise from a pattern of familiar sensations and thoughts in the person who owns the feeling. Few feelings arise alone, mostly they are a mixture of feelings more accurately called an emotion.
- When your partner says they are feeling happy, sad, upset, excited (or the poorly differentiated, 'you make me' feel happy, sad etc) ... ask kindly, 'how do you know you are feeling that' or 'what is happening in your head that tells you this' or 'what are the body sensations leading you to that conclusion'. Sensations that are interpreted as anger, for example, may include hot, cold, fidgety, itchy, trembling, dry mouth, a sense of bursting, wanting to get out, to run, to fight, suffocating, drowning, etc?' Then share with your partner the thoughts and sensations you have when you experience that same emotion in your body. How could each convey and read this from body language alone? Remain mindful of your body sensations, which later coalesce into a feeling.
- Pause a moment and think before reacting to your partner. For example: I always assume you won't understand, that you will jump to conclusions before you hear me out and have prepared your rebuttal before I finish speaking. In my movie we have our backs to each other turning snow balls to later throw. Every time I turn around your back is to me. I feel like screaming and in my movie I do until my legs give way and I fall into a heap on the ground and still you don't face me. The other might share this, in my movie you just go on and on, repeating what you have already said but more stridently each time as if I'm stupid. I assume this time is no different. I want to get away from you almost before my movie starts rolling. I imagine myself strangling you if I allow the movie to run its course. So I try and wrap it up quickly and get away or find a quick fix. In the end I imagine I am alone.
- Without blame, own up to your assumptions about what you think is in the other's movie or what they are thinking, feeling or doing at the present time or during a recent event. Do this before you react to your assumptions about what they are saying or doing at the moment or have just told you they had said, felt or did in a recent situation. Describe the inner movie that informs your assumptions or pre-suppositions about their behaviour.
- Reason on its own, leads only to a conclusion not to movement. It is our emotions and the language we use to describe them that prompt action. In almost any significant relationship decision (or indecision), emotion will always win out over reason when the two conflict. Gently begin a conversation about the head and heart decisions that underlie your relationship's journey and its everyday life. Do it in a way that shows respect and due care for the quiet emotions behind each other's choices. If you can't speak them, write them, draw, dance them, sing them, play a DVD movie that resonates with them, find a poem or a play that speaks to those emotions. Here some tips for describing emotion.
1.1 To begin again after many false starts
In order to make room for creation, (God) had to first create a void inside itself, a space in which to make something from nothing. Creation's first act was withdrawal and contraction or tzimtzum.
To begin healing we have first to clear our lives of debris; withdraw from the inessentials, and allow space for creativity to come in. We have to take time and give time.
Complete the free character strengths test at authentic happiness. You will have drawn on those strengths to make it this far. There may be other strengths you can lead with. Take some of the other tests there as a check up on your positive mental health.
Rebuilding a broken or tired relationship will occur one conversation at a time. Many will have to soften their habitual, harsh start ups to an argument; self-manage their automatic reactions; self-soothe their feelings, and offer each other the validation that comes from a marriage of good attention with empathy.
This may require tough love.
Validation and healing require a good enough balance of the following 7 attributes of tough love: kindness, restraint, harmony, ambition, humility, connection and correction (i.e. discipline and boundaries). Each contain elements of all seven - for example, "restraint in kindness" is not going overboard rescuing people; "ambition in restraint" is sub vocally cheering someone to get up off the floor without lifting them yourself; "humility in correction" is knowing that but for the grace of god you would have made exactly the same mess of your life. Each of those 7 attributes together make a total of forty-nine traits. Exiling one of them is like taking the yeast and sugar out of wine making. Understanding the direction of those 49 points on the compass and applying them is a life long journey.
If we are our own and each other's best friend we draw on the right mix of those 49 traits for understanding and problem management. If our experience is heard and validated by our partner without blame or offering a fix - simply reflected in a mutual bright resonance, the process has begun. That is the principle of reciprocity.
However, if the basis of the relationship was not ever friendship, then you will have to grow that first.
I guess that the majority of tired or broken relationships do not have friendship and shared values as foundations. That may seem hard to believe but in a culture that accessorises just about everything, it is not surprising. The problem was there in the pre-marriage preparation or lack of it. Emotional intimacy, passion and commitment are different though related animals - a quick quiz on site.
1.2 Is it too late to develop friendship and its values
There is probably no experience more terrifying than disclosing ourselves to significant others whose probable reactions are assumed but not known. Jouard
Perhaps you just don't like your partner or their values enough to want to be their friend. That will exile (or result from the exile) of some of these traits above for example, connection without kindness; correction (discipline) without love; determination without humility. In Luria's kabbalah this breaking of the seven vessels attended the act of creation. The journey to healing is in knitting those fragments together again.
If you dislike someone, the way they hold their fork will make you furious. But if you like them, they can turn their plate over in your lap and you won't even mind. Source
Loving and liking your partner are related experiences but they are not the same. (The book 'Best Friends and Marriage' by Stacey Jean Oliker is free on line.)
If it were a life threatening illness, some would consider tearing up all their commitments except to children, partner and family, to parts or all of work and to anything else that stood in the way of giving recovery the best shot.
Mending a broken or tired relationship has to begin with that same quality of will or intention. Getting to that shared goal with a calm and equal determination is the hard part. Some just talk the talk. Actions speak - implicit messaging is compelling evidence of change.
These resources on site: forgiveness and meditation point to inner abilities of incalculable value for getting there.
They are among the first and the last places people go in a broken or tired relationship. To manage this sometimes crazy place we have to access an indwelling understanding of our situation - sometimes in our sleep, in meditation or in day dreaming and in the struggle to forgive ourselves and in the crises we co-create.
1.3 Actions speak louder than words
Gottman discovered that successful repair attempts, like tiny bridge-building gestures in the midst of a dispute, ranging from an apology, to a "hey, we're getting off-topic!" to a goofy grin, were crucial chords in composing marital harmony. No matter what style of interaction a couple favoured, Gottman found, a simple five-to-one ratio of positive to negative interactions indicated a marriage that would last. Source.
So, who makes the first move? What to do when walking away itself is built on the stale resentment of earlier false starts? Bridging a stalemate is no easy task. It is near impossible without good will and a little trust building.
It is best to move forward in tiny steps by each giving, without thinking of to whom. Let the trust also rebuild in tiny steps on a gentle gradient. Predict two steps forward/one back and manage the process with good intentions.
Walking the healing talk rather than just talking the talk requires congruence. Owning the wounds at the core of self instead of projecting them into the world of other's actions. Tough love is a recipe for that.
Change requires readiness, opportunity, choice and will. The stages of change are: precontemplation, contemplation, decision, action, relapse, and maintenance.
1.4 A mutual commitment to growth
Stopping the rot requires committing another one (1) hour per week enjoying each other's company.
Sometimes that is spent in exploring what leisure activities might be enjoyed whilst taking a walk or turning off the TV over dinner and chatting. Here are 161 ideas to draw on.
Ship-wrecked couples usually have so completely lost touch with each other that they fill the time with anything else but each other. There are few rituals of connection but many ritualistic exits, like storming out or sulking, rescuing family or friends, work and doing 'good works'. More on site about exits.
Dear reader, you won't be surprised to know how hard it is for almost any marriage to find that one additional hour. Even 20 minutes can be a stretch. Many couples say they can do it but week after week of therapy sessions and it still doesn't happen. Most marriages whither from this chronic lack of due care and attention.
There is no better reason for how it died than from a lack of food, air and water. Simple neglect.
The nuclear family is deficient by design. The original use of the word 'family' described a group of slaves. My hunch is that this very deficiency makes consumers of us all and commercialises gratitude.
More on how to build intimacy in a family on site.
Masters & Johnson owed much of their success with chronically dissatisfied couples to locking them up in a motel room for two weeks, with occasional outings to the clinic to attend marriage group therapy sessions. The couple was given significant amounts of time in shared, focused activities with some coaching. It tended to overcome their lack of due care, until they got home. Those who didn't maintain the changes found old habits crept back. Whereas the survivors and thrivers had learnt and kept the new habits. Aristotle had this problem worked out a very long time ago - we are our habits.
I once suggested to a couple in a huge mess who were not short of money or time, that they take exactly that two weeks away just for each other, without distractions. At the following session they were pleased to tell me they had booked the two weeks. The first at a resort with lots of diversions and the second staying with their grown children nearby 'who needed them'. Not quite what I had in mind. I reminded them that they were in intensive care and that he had to get under the sheets without bringing the whole family into bed at the same time.
1.5 Feeling heard
Healthy couples, one might assume, can listen and echo each other's feelings naturally. But in fact, claims Gottman, married couples, whether miserable or giddy with happiness, almost never interact this way. "People said what they thought about an issue, and they got angry or sad," he wrote in The Marriage Clinic: A Scientifically Based Marital Therapy (Norton, 1999), "but their partner's response was never anything like what we were training people to do in the listener/speaker exercise, not even close."
Such exchanges occurred in less than 5 percent of marital interactions, he wrote, and they predicted nothing about whether the marriage would do well or badly. What's more, Gottman noted, data from a 1984 Munich study demonstrated that the (reflective listening) exercise itself didn't help couples to improve their marriages. To teach such interactions, whether as a daily tool for couples or as a therapeutic exercise in empathy, was a clinical dead end. Source
Contrary to the above, Roger's restatement rule can sometimes be helpful: feedback in your own words what you heard the other express. Check the accuracy of hearing its content, underlying feeling and meaning before expressing your own views. If you are way out in hearing what was meant then try again until there is a reasonable fit between what is expressed and what you have heard and can feedback. Then it's your turn.
Gottman's view of this practice is bleak - in practice only conflict mediators use it, he says. More on Gottman's repair recipe at 4.0 below.
The benefit of reflective listening is that it takes time; slows communication down; increases empathy and helps remove hidden assumptions. External link to more about listening skills.
By contrast, dialogic communication is more focused on the present, encourages use of paraphrasing and metaphor and asks the person to 'say more'. The aim of dialogue is to nail the internal logic or the mental map that makes the whole experience sensible to the speaker and then feed that back to them as if you were inside it yourself.
More on mental maps on site.
Dialogue is more demanding than Roger's active listening. An article about intentional dialogue on site drawn from material in a book titled 'Love Your Porcupine' (which I cannot find on the web, last seen here).
On Martin Buber's I-thou dialogue on site.
On building a thinking environment at home and work.
1.6 Tell it like it is
Telling the story of the relationship and the story of changes in the relationship with 'I' statements, one at a time without interruption can help the other get inside your experience and validate you. Here's a listening self assessment.
Listen to how they depict their experience and notice body language for clues to the meaning of that experience to them, rather than focusing only on what is said or disputing their interpretation. This is about understanding their values and mental map rather than imposing your own. More on mental maps on site.
This life line exercise could be done in conjunction with the life events scale, both on site links. Re-telling the story as a fable, a metaphor or even a kid's fairy story, once upon a time can help you get distance from pain and disappointment.
2.0 How relationships break down
Conversation ... is a competitive exercise in which the first person to draw a breath is declared the listener. Nathan Miller
Good communication is not rocket science. We mess it up simply by ignoring the ground rules. The wry quote above attests to the common breach of the cooperation rule.
Effective couple and parenting communication is something to be shared and consciously managed. Not a competition. Not left to happen by accident and not left up to the person who is good at it. There are wide differences between people on when, how and if to share the process. There are differences in skill, EQ and awareness and there are hormone differences: oxytocin is a purring kitten and testosterone has no time to cuddle. There is variation in reactivity - some calm no matter what, another shoots first and thinks later, another broods without thinking of the consequences. Poor thinking prolongs the arrival of late-arising problems. Try this on-line assessment of your time to think.
However, the basics are not that difficult to handle provided you are not arguing about perceptions (if so go to my mental maps page first) or struggling to cope with the emotions that erupt in the slow process of unpicking a tangled knot (if so start by taking responsibility for soothing your own emotions and develop other affect management skills).
- Effective communication requires respect and due care.
- These demonstrate availability and are the foundations of trust.
- Attentive listening saves time, flags trouble early and conveys respect.
- The quality of that attention determines the quality of the other's thinking.
- Empathy (walking in the other's shoes) is the most effective way of sharing power and rebuilding trust.
Progressive failure in these forms a gap. This grows into a gulf or an enduring disconnect, which then accumulates stuff left unsaid or unspeakable. It fills with the debris of countless unresolved things, little things, which in totality may appear unbridgeable, even unforgivable. If you think your partner is thinking crazy about this stuff, reflect on the quality of attention you give in listening to their thinking and vice versa.
Troubled relationships start this long journey by diminishing or exaggerating:
- mindfulness, respect and honouring of difference;
- the values of connection, time and money;
- both trust and care that the costs of everyday challenges will be shared fairly;
- the quality of attention required of good friends, which diminished or exaggerated
- insults dignity and erodes trust.
- Mistrust brings misery and other indignities to the surface.
- Eventually self-respect and integrity are damaged.
- During this process, clear thinking about the consequences of these failings takes a walk,
- sometimes not to return for decades.
- What happens next is often less important than how we react to it.
One of my clients was a mindfulness and respect nazi, exaggerating the values of connection - a one person, personal development police force. Their partner managed by ducking for cover when the love of their life was on the rampage, which of course just escalated the reciprocal process. Over time this will wear any couple down. Working out who started withdrawing and who pursuing is like sorting out a fight between kids - who hit who back first.
The mess accumulates .... gradually .... one conversation at a time .... and usually ends abruptly.
Many couples endure this journey. The unhappiest can have the biggest turn around:
2 out of 3 unhappy marriages (in a survey of 5,232 couples) had become happy 5 years later. The researchers conducted focus group interviews with 55 formerly unhappy husbands & wives who had turned their marriages around. They found that many currently happily married spouses have had extended periods of marital unhappiness, often for quite serious reasons, including: • alcoholism • infidelity • verbal abuse • emotional neglect • depression • illness • work reversals. Survey review on site.
Marital research suggests there are only two dysfunctional adaptations to marital issues: one that is dysregulated by escalating negativity, and the other that is dysregulated by having no affect expressed. The pursuer/distancer pattern is an example of both present at the same time, one exaggerating and the other diminishing connection. More of that research archived on site.
2.1 Respect
Respect is an attitude of admiration or esteem that circumvents reason and logic. Dignity is the quality of being worthy of that respect or esteem. They are vital to intimate relationship. Perception is everything here as elsewhere.
The lack of respect or the presence of chronic disrespect breaks a person's will to maintain the vulnerability that is essential to intimacy.
Chronic disrespect harms any relationship. It leaves each feeling mean, powerless and out of control. Learned helplessness is the result in children who are constantly criticised. Uncorrected, learned helplessness teaches a child depression, as a way of life.
Although that is self-evident and all would agree it should be avoided, disrespect persists in troubled relationships. The consequences are minimized by the mind with for example, denial but the body aches with its burden.
Just by a flick of the eyes upward as if to say, Stupid b...! and through petty cruelties and unaware forgetting; in payback, withdrawal or blame. Ordinary, good people start to behave badly - worse than kids and family pets.
Some of the most hellish behaviours I have met in troubled relationships, are committed by folk that any decent person would be proud to call friends. In their own home they act like the house guests from hell, blaming each other for the poop accumulating in their own pants.
At this point we have closed off accountability, softness and vulnerability in order to defend ourselves. This will keep the crap coming.
Somewhere in here we might come to think and act as if the person once dearest, is less than human. As if they did not exist - that they are 'other'. That is a line crossed at considerable cost to safety.
Kind people with tender hearts travel here and lose their way. Not the whackos from another neighbourhood, but people like you and me. Often the marriages that end here do so quietly, slowly and with a bathetic whimper. (Bathos - something so pathetic as to be humorous.)
The good news again: the most unhappy marriages report the most dramatic turn-rounds. Among those who rated their marriages as very unhappy, almost 8 out of 10 who avoided divorce were happily married 5 years later. More from this survey on site.
The healthiest make a noise about the trouble at home, recognising the problems, not too proud to express vulnerability, take ownership nor ask for help. More on how to choose a therapist on site.
2.2 Pride
Some folk are crippled by false pride and a sense of entitlement. They build an edifice of brilliant pretense and righteousness on the outside. One that makes the ramshackle building look great from the street. Outsiders see the edifice of a perfect couple, an ideal family, something to aim for themselves.
Inside the mess, however, anticipating more emotional pain, each can feel trapped and turn to the dark side in order to further shield their vulnerability and pain from view. Forgiveness is off the menu. This is a disabling shame.
Healthy shame is short lived, self-correcting and does no injury to a core sense of high self worth. Forgiveness naturally follows.
Sometimes, I am fortunate and get to work with these guys. After hearing their story, I observe how perfectly they have role played marriage but have neglected their relationship over many years. I say so in a matter of fact way. Quickly, automatically, I get a shared list of reasons for this. These are window dressing excuses on which they can agree. They expect the list to be a lay-down misere for winning an argument with me. It is what they show to the street outside their home. It's not the therapist they're arguing with.
Some friends and relatives believe them. Unfortunately so do some others who also come for help - those who have made the mistake of comparing their insides to these guy's outsides. They often say, 'everyone around us seems so happy and together. Why is it just us that's always in trouble.' So I tell them the ramshackle building story of the 'perfect couple'.
Everyone struggles at times with intimacy. That's normal. It's a personal development workshop. Everyone has a personal journey no matter how perfect they appear.
Marriage is hard enough without the burden of low expectations (a quote from 'Sleepless in Seattle'). This is contrary to a view that the secret of happy marriage is low expectations. That is one interpretation of Wilcox and Nock's article on dual earning, egalitarian marriages titled: 'What's Love Got To With It' linked here and discussed here.
Lowering some expectations some of the time in some marriages makes good sense, but as a way of life in a 20+ year marriage with kids, it is really hard work for everyone.
Lucky for me it is not my job to patch up my client's shop windows and make a more convincing street front for covering up the mess. I get to go down into their basements and gasp at their facile, face saving disclaimer that there is nothing down there. Their shouts of, 'Back off buddy!' however politely conveyed, me thinks he doth protest too much.
Then I remember the incredible front I put on my own crumbling story. How I hid my disabling shame with a desperate facade in my 20's and 30's. No wonder people looked at me incredulous at the brittle bonhomie and effervescent, joie de vivre. I still remember how important it was for me to convince friends, aghast at my behaviour, that everything was alright. I mastered hiding behind a stage-managed openness. By letting it all hang out I thought no-one would look behind the shop front.
Without vulnerability and healthy shame, both intimacy and mercy are diminished, even absent.
Looking back on their journey to health, my mended couples wonder how they go to be so cruel to each other and damaging to themselves.
Fear and neglect are strong forces in a troubled marriage. They can project a lot of front to the contrary.
More about functional and dysfunctional patterns on site here and on defences and fighting on site at this page.
2.3 A marriage of equals
Let me put this one to rest - Vickee quoted below puts it well. Reading between her lines, one could guess that she and her man share a sense of humour. Her proactive approach to accountability makes a difference in the time/availability squeeze of a typically busy family.
I have found the only way to insist the spouse participate more in home/child/relationship care is to make it inconvenient if they don't pull their share. Stop doing their laundry. Stop cooking for them (if they arrive home late). Hire out their portion of the chores and charge them on their discretionary budget for it. Don't ask permission, just do it! If they don't put away stuff, have a 2 day rule - then the items get either tossed or thrown into a cardboard box. When the item is finally missed say "It's in the 'Thoughtlessly-left-for-clean-up-by-the-servant-we-don't-have-box'" and smile. I used to just throw everything away, but that almost caused a stroke (and divorce).
I also leave lists, and an 'accomplish by X date' indication. If it isn't done, I hire the work out. No asking. And I don't nag, never have. We have the chores broken out. If I have to, say, vacuum, the job is worth $50. I vacuum and write myself a check. If dh complains, I tell him the job is now worth $75 for aggravation. If he forgets to load the dishwasher too many nights in a row, no problem; I go out and buy a new set of dishes.
A few years ago, I was beside myself with anger over the huge amount of the work load I was doing. Then I decided to pay myself for doing the work. I now do all my tasks cheerfully, knowing that even if I end up doing more than my share, there is a reward at the end. For example, I am flying to Las Vegas next weekend for 4 days/3 nights to visit family and Do Nothing for Four Blessed Days. For the past year, dh has worked a tremendous amount of hours. Okay. I understand these things happen. I cheerfully subtracted some tasks from dh's chore list. However, we decided that my reward for cheerfully taking on the extra tasks would be 2 trips by myself for 4 days each (to visit friends, to avoid hotel costs) as soon as dh's work load normalized. It normalized last week, so off I go.
The one thing I don't 'keep track of' is how much time I spend with our sons v. dh. That time dh has lost is punishment enough on its own. At 4 and 5, both boys are little enough that they want me all the time due to seeing so little of their dad. And that is it's own sad punishment. It breaks their dad's heart.
Is there an egalitarian marriage? No, probably never. But you've got to get it honed to the point that one of you isn't pissed all the time. Whatever it takes; hire out the chores, get rid of stuff so you don't have the clutter, have children involved in less 'extra' stuff; whatever it takes.
Good luck to all of us. We are all just sneakin' along the highway of life. Posted by: Vickee | March 03, 2006 at 05:21 PM
Sometimes it's the other partner who does the insisting. One of our friends is a commercial cleaner, starts work at 4.00 am finishes by midday. His wife, an accountant, is lucky to be home by kids bed time during the week. In the peak of her business cycle he employs a cleaner for an hour each day and returns home to a tidy house. He hires out her chores when they are not done after a specified time and charges all of it to her discretionary budget. That money is then saved for family holidays. Peace!
2.4 Witnessing - lights on nobody home
I ask how much self-witnessing my troubled couples have when they get into a big mess.
Almost all report losing it and having zero witness present in the moments when they do the most damage, often over the smallest things.
Keeping at least 2% of awareness aside to observe our own behaviour is achievable. That 2% is the maximum genetic difference between us and chimpanzees and they can behave badly too.
When my clients start misbehaving in the office, they struggle against me as I try to pull them back into line. Much like the drowning who attempt to climb aboard the swimmer who has come to their aid. Or the child who carries a chronic psychosomatic illness for a dysfunctional family and is afraid to give up being sick in case the family falls apart without the focus on their illness.
I get their attention with a 'whoa, stop right there!'. I ask the couple to think about what they are inflicting on themselves and on each other. They pause. I teach them how to pull back from the brink and repair the damage. How to listen and how to think again. How to soothe their own emotions.
I reflect, you would never get away with that kind of behaviour at work or with your best friend? So why drag each other through it at home. Why teach it to your kids and to your pets? They nod agreement, whilst watching each other's claws.
They look a bit shame faced like parents on an episode of Supernanny, CAUGHT! and most then come back to the work at hand, thinking what a bastard this therapist is.
And then, too soon for their nodding agreement to have meant much, they try it on again. This goes on for some sessions but each time with a little less conviction, except for those who don't make it. 85% of those who learn to effectively repair these moments, stay happily married. Gottman.
2.5 Effective couple's therapy
It begins with a relative stranger hearing both sides and translating it into the ordinary language of lived experience.
This is a radical honesty, telling it like it is with profound respect for all. It is not theory building nor diagnosis nor apportioning blame but re-presenting the internal logic or mental map of each person in a fresh way. Often I get, 'but I've been telling him/her that for decades - s/he just doesn't listen!' Sometimes that's the pot calling the kettle black.
Here are some articles on incompetent couples therapy.
One bloke asked me to see he and his partner because they had heard I was a 'real bastard'. They wanted a dose of straight talk. If only it were that simple, I thought. Any high EQ person could give it to them. I remember the tea lady in one of the offices I worked who wore that radical, high EQ honesty on her sleeve. She would tell it like it was from the top of the organisation to the bottom - no one was spared. Not surprisingly, she and her team were replaced by automatic machines and that refreshing, egalitarian honesty was quickly replaced by the more usual guarded, small talk next to the drink dispensers.
Radical honesty from a stranger invites each to breathe IN their partner's experience, undefended against the hurt and good heart behind the unhappy times. This may open to a new comprehension. For the first time, making sense OUT of what had previously appeared alien.
In and out like a new way of breathing with each other. Maybe even of divorcing the old, recycled wounds rather than kicking out a partner.
Another client told a friend (who later became a client also) that I was 'really annoying'. The example she gave was a session where I had obviously reached my limit with she and her husband's nasty arguments and at the start of another one I said, 'this is boring and I won't go down this track any more. If you want to do this go home.'
Her first reaction was annoyance, 'dammit, we're paying you to listen.' But as she thought about it over the intervening weeks, and realised she was bored too and also didn't want to do it anymore. Many months later she got that moment was another turning point when she began to decide on leaving the marriage. There were other issues as well, which impelled her to that decision.
In another couple that moment might have been the turning point for rebuilding a relationship. For her the coaching of new behaviour I was offering was a challenge she didn't want to take up with her husband.
Understanding and action grow together. Expect two steps forward and one back. As many years as it took to build the mess it may take that number of months to rebuild and to learn intimacy anew.
Some folk have just carried the habits from their family of origin, straight on into marriage without review. That's a lot of months to undo. And too many of us start building a family already electrified, like a storm set to go off with just the right set of differences. More pre-marriage education on site.
Couples therapy involves: first attending to self-care, safety and containment; then relieving and managing symptoms of marital distress; then managing differences and the battle for ascendancy (my way or the highway); if possible resolving or at best managing chronic conflict; building communication and conflict resolution skills into the future, and transferring the learning across to parenting, career and into the work place, where appropriate.
Here are my 13 observations of spousal relationships.
2.6 Consensus
There is so much to do and so little time in which to do it, so we must go slowly.
Consensus is a process. Each participant matters. A decision is made. Even if that means no decision at this time - it is a decision that each can live with, each fairly choose to live with and that can be reviewed.
Consensus requires truth with oneself; quality time; honest dialogue, even fierce conversation with neither a part of the issue nor another person marginalized.
It's hard work. No wonder we prefer majority rules and group think. But with an intimate couple, majority rules is kind of crazy. A majority of one? And yet troubled relationships sound like a competition for the ascendancy of one, or of one way.
That is the power struggle at turning points in an intimate relationship, be it partnering or parenting. Empathy is the most effective method for sharing that power and rebuilding trust.
If we have come from a family, school and work environment where we were not encouraged to think for ourselves, this process will involve a lot of growing up. Likewise if we have spent our life thinking for and pleasing others and not attending to our own thoughts and needs. More on turning points on site.
Consensus embraces dissent and difference. That inclusiveness gives confidence in bearing the cost of change. Consensus is compromised or absent in a troubled relationship.
Lacking consensus we cannot make important decisions jointly. For example a decision to, stay in this dialogue until both of us feel understood, is a big ask without consensus.
Compromise, burying or forcing then become the rule rather than the exception. The one who cares the most is most likely to compromise, bury or bend to the other's will.
This only works for so long. Then gridlock and impasse take over. As a result more time and effort is spent on blame, distractions and appearances.
At about this time, some threaten to leave. Others renovate their home or apartment. Some have moved into the dream house only to discover it is filled with the baggage from the old one. Some bring on the next child. Some divorce. It all gets messy. Sometimes some of these methods repair the problem - the right outcome for all the wrong reasons.
I must have saved clients collectively, millions of dollars over my 30 years as a therapist in their cancelled apartment and house renovations. They have grown something within themselves that they like more. The extra space is within.
Know the Universe as your self, and you can live absolutely anywhere in comfort.
Love the world as your self, and you'll be able to care for it properly. Tao Te Ching
For example, one couple who had been considering an extreme apartment makeover cancelled it, having repaired their 15 year marriage for about $1700 in my fees (10 sessions) - a fraction of the design and building costs. In Australia, a two seater leather recliner costs more than that. Yet dear reader, you will not be surprised that the smaller expense has the higher emotional cost and thus is usually last on the list of must haves.
The only thing we ever own are our actions.
2.7 Stuckness
In a family with (unmanaged) parental conflict, the eldest might gain love and approval by being a caretaker; the middle child - the angry rebel, trusting no one with her vulnerability; and the youngest tunes out family tension by focusing on his own needs and achieving in school. (These) survival positions necessary in childhood, become part of the dowry that individuals bring into adult relationship. Roles (that) become frozen in the form adopted in childhood, stultified and inflexible, when applied to the present situation ... become a hindrance and a major element in perpetuating an impasse. Family Process
This appears in repeating communication patterns such as one initiating conversation and the other reacting; one deciding the other undermining, one reaching out and the other withholding. More on these maximizer/minimizer patterns on site.
Some get stuck in particular communication styles that are mutually invalidating. In particular: passive (I don't matter) or aggressive (you don't matter) or passive/aggressive (mixed messages that obstruct and foster chaos).
These patterns are picked up in the family of origin and then applied to marriage as if it was the same venue. They can also evolve in otherwise healthy relationships from physical or emotional exhaustion; chronic power/responsibility imbalances and radically different access to resource (education, status, employment and family wealth).
Doggedly sticking to any of these patterns when they are clearly not working to build consensus, creates the impasse. These lead to questioning each other's motives. Then good will can no longer be assumed to underly the stuckness.
Each becomes reactive to unrelated events that resonate with the impasse. Events previously ignored become case material before a grand jury. The trial can be undertaken as a matter of survival, exhibiting a prosecution that would put even the worst Courts to shame.
2.8 Sex
"How many times a week do you have sex?" He says, "Hardly ever! Only two, maybe three times a fortnight." She says, "All the time! Two, maybe three times a fortnight."
All of the issues in the article above apply in bed and confounded by the dilemma of 'same bed different dreams'.
Wanting sex whilst ignoring the health of the whole relationship is mistaking the part for the whole and tends to nourish a climate of distrust and hurt. Sensual and sexual touching in a climate of hurt and distrust can become revolting. Some couples are able to persist with sex despite those obstacles and eventually arrive at disgust. That penultimate decay in the sexual relationship may bring some for help as a couple. Clearly, viagra or other diversions won't do it if your pants are filled with "poop", so to speak.
Sex is to marriage as the canary is to a coal mine or frogs are to the environment - a bellweather marker that is exquisitely and uniquely senstive to the climate of intimacy in all its dimensions. There is an overehlwming amount of information and misinformation on the web about sex in committed relationships. My penny's worth is in my 13 observation of spousal relationships. Here is chapter one from 'Passionate Marriage' - one of the clearest on this topic, for example: 'we want someone else to make us feel acceptable and worthwhile. We've assigned the label "intimacy" to what we want (validation and reciprocal disclosure) and developed pop psychologies that give it to us while keeping true intimacy away. We've distorted what intimacy is, how it feels, how much we really want it, and how best to get it. Once we realize that intimacy is not always soothing and often makes us feel insecure, it is clear why we often back away from it.'
Any one of these 161 ideas for quality time can work in an atmosphere of tenderness and respect. None require the assistance of a therapist. However, if not one of them warms both of your hearts then truly, you better get help to repair damage to the foundations.
Staying and mending is usually (but not always) a better option that leaving and repeating. You can forgive and move on.
How to choose a therapist on site.
2.9 Ultimatums
Ultimatum (n.) A final proposition, concession, or condition; especially, the final propositions, conditions, or terms, offered by either of the parties in a diplomatic negotiation; the most favourable terms a negotiator can offer, the rejection of which usually puts an end to the hesitation. Brainy Dictionary
An ultimatum is a threat of overwhelming force as a punishment for non-compliance with an order. It is often delivered by a stronger party to a weaker one, as for instance, by a parent to a child: 'If you don't eat your broccoli, I'll take off my belt and teach you a lesson.' Although such commands would seem to be peculiarly inappropriate when delivered by one sovereign nation to another, they hold a place of privilege in the histories of both World Wars. Quoted from Lillian Corti, Professor of English at the University of Alaska. Archived source.
Ultimatums are mostly a lose-lose strategy. The only ultimatum that can work in marriage is a mutually agreed one, discovered collaboratively and executed cooperatively. Mutual growth is the prize of a healthy negotiation like that. Mutual resentment is the poisoned chalice of a one sided ultimatum that fulfills it's purpose.
Resentment from that source is an investment in unfinished business for both people. One likely carried for years, whether you become separated or remain together. A win-win solution takes time and mutual respect to formulate and in some cases also with the help of a neutral third party, who has been given the power by both to slow the proceedings and find a collaborative outcome. If the third party is not honoured with that gift s/he cannot help.
3.0 Unlived life
For some of those that cannot or will not commit the time or energy to the task of mending it can be a question of what do I really want.
Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance. Resistance plays for keeps. Resistance recruits allies. Resistance never sleeps. Pressfield
The unlived awakens core questions like, Is this all there is? Is this what I want. What is my passion?
One of my clients put their conflict as: you can't do what you want if it hurts other people and if you don't know what you want you can't do anything. The frustration produces thrashing and pacing like a caged animal.
A chronic absence of self-knowledge and the fear of 'getting a life' can still end a committed relationship. Even though most relationships survive self-knowledge and the getting of a life.
You can lead the mind to water but you can't make it drink. More on mind on site.
Others harbour conflicting desires of equal value - a life of my own and yet not to hurt anyone. These are two part conflicts. Some of us make life more difficult and have multi party conflicts.
From a couple's therapist point of view it is much easier when at least one person knows what they want and can articulate it.
Often therapy with broken marriages is just getting to clear statements of how it actually IS - in both the rational and the emotional terms of those conflicting desires.
It is not often about the loss of love that is felt but rather the crap that has slowly buried it alive. I think this is why the most unhappy marriages reported the most dramatic turnarounds: among those who rated their marriages as very unhappy, almost 8 out of 10 who avoided divorce were happily married 5 years later. Source on site.
Feelings buried alive seldom die. Bitterness marks their grave. Renewal can grow in its soil. Bitterness and blame are hard to listen to, so we have to soften to it in opening their grave.
3.1 Unrequited love
Limerence is a state of mind characterized by intrusive thinking, longing, uncertainty, hope, misperception, fantasies, and passion. wikipedia
This link will take you to an intimacy, passion and commitment quiz on site. With good skills and good will, almost anything can be negotiated. However, it's a big ask when you find your responses are at opposite ends of those scales (assuming the responses were not twisted by anger or bitterness). This is one recipe for unrequited love.
Unrequited passion is an acute longing for reciprocation. It seems odd in this day and age to be writing about the unrequited. Yet at its simplest this describes the heart of some exhausted or burnt out marriages and of some exhausted lives. The lack of reciprocity, of mutuality and of sharing has worn one of the partners down or one of the body's organs to a frazzle.
Whilst the other partner 'just doesn't get it'. They can misinterpret their beloved's fight for or flight from the relationship, perceiving it as a pointless thrashing and pacing to and fro, rather than the loss in facing the mortal limits of one life.
The fear of loss (even loss of a passion not yet lived) drives much pleading and anger, fight and flight from committed relationship. Trying to have your cake/s and eat it is looking for a bargain. There is a stage in grieving called bargaining where giving up is perceived as failure, rather than surrender. Acceptance of the loss marks a sea change in these lives.
We can then describe life AS IT IS without a protection racket on ourselves or on behalf of the other.
Until then a disheartening, unequal love shapes perception and the blindness of both. Each works to fit around the ache and each might describe their relationship as hard work.
It is too strong to say these relationships are one sided and yet they have a kind of involuntary emotional celibacy, like a musical note left hanging, unresolved. Like this solo pleading:
Do you want to see me crawl across the floor to you?
Do you want to hear me beg you to take me back?
I’d gladly do it because
I don’t want to fade away.
Give me one more day, please.
I don’t want to fade away.
In your heart I want to stay.
It’s all wrong, but it’s all right.
The way that you treat me baby.
Once I was strong but I lost the fight.
You won’t find a better loser. Bell Bottom Blues by Eric Clapton
I have noticed many ways of dressing the unrequited as something that it is not: too busy with a career; intrusive in-laws; sick children; multiple affairs; lack of money; no direction; regret or self-pity; onerous debts; judgements and criticism of and from spouse or family; feeling never good enough; not trying hard enough; too scared to risk and been hurt too many times before.
Each of these has a kernel of lived truth. Yet at some level each can boil down to an unmanaged or unmanageable difference in passion. Passion. Without passion we have no principle of action, nor motive to act. Helvetius
An unrequited passion to fulfil a particular ambition in life; a long held dream denied; to find that one kiss. Each can lead to making compensatory demands on a committed relationship or of a career that they cannot meet. Both life and a relationship can seem to not reciprocate.
Heart is the organ of fire.
Difference in its flame is normal.
It is how we manage or bridge the difference that matters.
Troubled marriages neglect to build and maintain the bridges.
3.2 The dead marriage society
Unmanaged and unspoken, almost everyone living in a dead marriage will eventually hunger for the fresh air outside their morgue. The exceptions are often where the partner lives through their kids, over involved in their teenage lives and inappropriately.
Their marriage like a corpse in the middle of the house, that nobody talks about but everyone steps around, reluctant to make any changes in their life less it disturb the dead. Carpe deum!
One of the kids may develop ill health from the stress of absorbing that unspoken grief but unable to articulate it in any other way than through the body. This is called somatising or a psychosomatic illness and the family ought be referred to a family therapist. More often the patient is taken to hospital for regular and intrusive diagnostics.
Perhaps some 'helpful' person advises the couple to break up to reduce the stress on the child - crazy stuff and even crazier, it sometimes works.
The complete text of 'Some Reflections Upon Marriage' originally written 1700 and other feminist gems ancient and modern.
3.3 Broken promises
'Judgments, criticisms, diagnosis, and interpretations of others are all alienated expressions of our needs. If someone says, "You never understand me", they are really telling us that their need to be understood is not being fulfilled. If a wife says, "You've been working late every night this week; you love your work more than you love me", she is saying that her need for intimacy is not being met. What is critical in meeting needs is awareness of the needs and the feelings and emotions generated by these needs.' Quoted from the worldpsychology site.
If we don't know what we want or often express it in alienated ways, we cannot fulfil the promise of intimacy. More on differentiating wants and needs on site at 2.3.4 on Fidelity2
However, if the marriage has crashed because a commitment to fidelity was unilaterally torn up, then more tearing may not be such a good idea. 90% of first marriage divorces involve someone else in one's head or in one's bed.
Extensive information about betrayal begins at Fidelity 101 including more on how to get over infidelity without losing your relationship.
If none of the above fits the jigsaw then you might consider the possibility of a personality disorder - article on site.
3.4 A broken heart
Never say no to a great idea simply because it is impossible. Schuller
One of the toughest things to convince a broken heart is that their hurt carries unresolved pain from years past. That to heal, one has to first stop the bleeding, then get nourishment and then gather up all those broken fragments of self, mending each one and melding all into a circle.
This means re-visiting past hurts, childhood memories, early choices and family influences. The recipe is making friends with the abandoned parts of our selves.
Most men are socialized to minimize awareness of this process and most women to maximize it. Each can miss the point on which hurt turns. This is the axle and rim dilemma of a wheel. In fact both turn at the same rate and cover the same ground, but one appears faster than the other and one surface appears to take all the beating. One makes a lot of noise, the other is almost silent when lubricated, but can bring the whole show to a halt if neglected.
Broken marriage clients never cease to amaze me in their capacity to turn the corner by retrieving aspects of themselves they had given up in order to get or to stay married. Sounds simple but many obstacles and distraction stand in the path of one's own truth. Like a mountain climb that struggles to begin because the elements conspire to stop us taking the risk.
Life is round. It's not a scribbly line that connects up little compartments or caves that we keep separated by the years. We may hope these will never collide and flood our underground tunnel system. But when the heart is cracked and broken, it's a lot more than a flood. It is a watershed that brings up all the debris. There is always hidden treasures in debris, but you have to get your hands dirty.
We insist that the problem is now. Just now and nowhere else. And it is. And it is not. Most everyone wants a recipe except that one.
I measure every grief I meet with narrow, probing eyes, I wonder if it weighs like mine, or has an easier size. Emily Dickinson
Here's a thoughtful article from a reluctant traveler.
4.0 Gottman's repair model
John Gottman has been researching this topic for nearly three decades. Here are articles on marriage research. Here is Gottman's web site. This is his model:
- Move Gridlock to Dialogue - teaching the couple to use basic compromising skills, avoiding crazy buttons that instantly escalate the argument ("You are just like your mother!"), and using video review of the couples' arguments in the office are all important. However, since over 60% of marital problems are not solved, but managed, start talking about ways to manage these issues in the future, just like you manage a chronic illness like diabetes. The conflict is not about the topic they are discussing; rather, the real problem is some underlying or symbolic meaning, tied to a dream or fantasy of their future, that they feel they simply can not compromise on without invalidating their dreams.
- Teach recovery after a fight - Gottman has found in his research that fighting in and of itself is not the problem. In fact, couples who do not fight at all are more likely to end up divorced. You may not be able to teach them to avoid fighting anyway, and reflective listening skills ("What I hear you saying is...") likely won't help since no one uses them in a fight. Instead, the best bet is to teach them how to recover after a fight.
- Teach six basic social skills recognizing (and avoiding) the 4 Horsemen: softening startups; accepting influence (especially for men); soothing physiological arousal (relaxation techniques can help partners calm down during heated arguments, but once they are upset, it may take over 20 minutes for the body to slow itself down to calm levels); recognizing (and responding to) repair attempts; compromise.
- Effective repair is easier to accomplish when there are Rituals of Connection, or standard and every-day ways the couple connects and feels bonded to each other. This means decreasing negativity during and after fights, as negativity is the best predictor of divorce over six years (85% accuracy), and effective repair skills increases prediction accuracy (97% accuracy), as among even highly negative newlyweds, 85% of those who effectively repair stay happily married.
- Fade out the therapist - Gottman starts with 90 minute sessions, then eventually moves to once every two weeks, then month, and finally to "therapy checkups" to help the couple function on their own without the therapist, and avoid relapsing into previous problems.
- Women are more likely to begin with Harsh Startups - an abrupt and negative introduction of an issue, while men are more likely to become Flooded and Stonewall, and to rehearse stress-inducing thoughts. Some (such as Rampage) criticize Gottman for not realizing that gender differences in most relationships make women less powerful, and thus more likely to begin an argument more harshly as a way to communicate "I can't take it any more"; however, such criticisms often ignore why gender differences that leave men feeling they have to "Buckle down and take it" when arguments become emotionally overwhelming or even abusive to them. Quoted from this site where there is more.
4.1 More on Gottman' research
Gottman emphasis is on distinguishing the masters of matrimony from the disasters, learning the elements of successful wedlock from those folks who are getting it right. He has tested newlyweds, couples in their first seven years of marriage, forty- to sixty-year-old couples, and those in violent marriages. What he found was surprising and sometimes counterintuitive.
The presence of anger, he deduced, did not indicate an imminent divorce or marital unhappiness, indeed, some of the most happily married couples went at it hammer and tongs. Nor was repression necessarily problematic, as long as both members of the couple abided by a tongue-tied approach. Instead, he found that the best markers of a bad marriage were certain familiar, and often gender-linked dynamics in marital disputes.
A "harsh start-up" (the abrupt and negative introduction of an issue) by the wife was associated with bad outcomes, for example. In response, men tended to become physiologically "flooded," closing down emotionally and physically as a self-soothing mechanism.
Ultimately, Gottman found that four behaviours (which he termed "the four horsemen of the apocalypse") were most associated with long-term unhappiness: criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling (retreating into silent unresponsiveness), and contempt. Contempt, he found, was especially corrosive and highly predictive of marital disintegration.
One of Gottman's most widely publicized conclusions was also one of his most widely satirized, the "yes, dear" hypothesis. For a marriage to work, he concluded, the husband had to be willing to accept the influence of his wife when it came to working out marital disagreements. Women, whatever their other problems in relationships, had little trouble allowing themselves to be swayed by their spouses, but men sometimes did, and male recalcitrance doomed a relationship to disintegration. Source
'The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert' by John M. Gottman, Nan Silver. (Amazon reader's reviews)
5.0 Divorce
Divorce didn’t typically reduce symptoms of depression, raise self esteem or increase a sense of mastery. This was true even after controlling for race, age, gender & income. Even unhappy spouses who had divorced & remarried were no happier on average than those who stayed married. From the five year follow-up of 5,232 couples, review on site.
In most respects, unhappy spouses who divorced & unhappy spouses who stayed married looked more similar than different (before the divorce) in terms of their psychological adjustment & family background.
While unhappy spouses who divorced were on average: • younger • had lower household incomes • were more likely to be employed • were more likely to have children in the home, these differences were typically not large.
My how to build a family - on site.
The things you didn't ask before you got together, but are never too late to ask - on site.
There is a ton of stuff out there on the web about kids, parenting, attachment theory, grief and divorce. The web sites of the Australian Institute of Family Studies and the Family Court of Australia and a Canadian women's divorce resource are worthwhile places to start.
In so many ways, Australia punches above it's weight. The response of Australian kids to divorce is measurably different from comparable countries:
'The Australian Temperance Project, began in 1983 and set out to track 2,443 children from infancy to age 17 or 18. It recorded their development, behaviour, temperament and educational attainment at regular intervals. Out of the 1260 teenagers who kept with the study, the 262 who experienced parental separation or death were compared with a group from intact families. By the time they were talking to us at 17 or 18 there were virtually no significant differences between the groups. There is overwhelming evidence that what damages children is not the break-up but conflict.' Margot Prior, Psychology Professor at Melbourne University, the study's co-author.
6.0 Web based workshops
There are lots of great pages on the web for working on yourself and as a couple at home. Today, I like The Illuminated Life® Workshop and the Six Steps of Focusing.
© Ziji Fox 2006 All Rights Reserved www.peterfox.com.au
Navigation page for my pre-commitment Relationship Education study cycle
