A Marriage Therapist's Blog
Thoughts on Marriage Counseling
Archive for February, 2008
Create rituals. What is a ritual? I’m talking about celebrations, traditions, and routines that are a regular part of your marriage – or maybe even your whole family.
Developing family rituals provides meaning for family interactions and helps clarify roles and responsibilities within the family.
I’ll give you an example. One couple that I worked with has a ritual that I really like. For them, Sunday night is ice-cream and games night. The whole family participates and they invite friends too. They have a variety of ice cream flavors on hand and set up the containers in something like a buffet line. Sound like fun to me. The point is that every member of the family looks forward to all week long. It’s an important part of the family’s identity, and it gives the husband and wife a feeling of pride, of working together, and a sense of connectedness.
Another couple I know recites their wedding vows to one another every year on their anniversary. Then they take a limousine ride to a hotel – just like they did on their wedding night. The next day they go on a vacation – just like they did for their honeymoon.
Traditions also help to preserve the couple’s parable, or “story.” Families are eager to share their memories and experiences; the process of telling their stories seems to bring them together as they laugh and remember.
Many couples don’t talk much about their goals. Well, maybe they have a goal to own their own their home or the desire to retire by a certain age. But beyond that, people seem to be so busy with daily life: job, kids, chores, and paying bills that they feel like they don’t have time to think about their goals. Yet, these are the marriages that can be at risk when their kids leave home and the nest is empty.
So, how to avoid the empty-nest crisis? One good method is for you and your spouse to cultivate a deeper sense of shared meaning. In other words: what are you two of you about? What’s your parable? Do you have goals as a couple?
Those of you in business, I’m sure, know about writing a business plan. A business plan describes a company’s goals and expected course of action for some time period, perhaps over the next few years. You usually need to show your business plan to investors or to lenders. I say that if this kind of planning ahead is such a good idea in business, why not apply it to your personal life too? Why not sit down with your spouse and write a marriage plan, or maybe a family plan? You’ve just given yourselves a new shared meaning. And as you work to achieve those goals, you start to feel more like a team then just two individuals.
Empathy. What does that mean? By my definition, you are empathizing with your spouse when you understand exactly how they feel, and you even begin to feel the same way. If you would like to make your marriage even better, take this as a personal challenge: when your spouse is talking, try to put yourself in their shoes. Then imagine how you would feel in whatever situation they are describing. Chances are that by realizing how you would feel, you’ve just figured out how your spouse feels. Now go ahead and validate them. For example, “I’ll bet that made you really angry.” Or maybe, “you must be really excited.” When your spouse says, “yes, that’s how I felt,” when you’ve nailed the feeling, score one for yourself. That’s because when your spouse believes that you completely understand how they feel, you have accomplished something wonderful. You have been empathetic, and you have achieved an emotional connection. You are truly united at that moment. This can a very healing experience, by the way.
Of course, empathy gets a little harder when you are the subject of the emotion, for example, during a disagreement. This is when you get to take your skills to the next level and become an empathy master! You have to resist that tendency to be defensive. Those kinds of explanations can come later, after some tension has been defused. First, can you figure out and then say how your spouse is feeling about you? Can you say, for example, “I can understand that you were annoyed when I forgot to call you.” This can be a real tension-reducer.
Every couple has some issues that they disagree about. If you would like to make your marriage even better, you can polish your discussion skills. How can you do that? Here are five good ways recommended by author John Gottman:
- Start Softly. It’s important to start the discussion in a calm and respectful way. It’s good make I statements, not You statements, and describe the problem without making a judgment.
- Make and Receive Repair Attempts. Throughout the discussion, remember to point out the aspects that you agree about. This helps to deescalate tension. Maintain a sense of humor. If you realize that you’re wrong about something, don’t hesitate to say so. Apologize if you say something you regret.
- Soothe Yourself, Soothe Your Spouse. It’s hard to think rationally when you’re angry. So it’s best for an angry person to soothe himself or herself before continuing the discussion. Take a break. Go for a walk. Then come back and continue the discussion when you’ve calmed yourself.
- Compromise. In a happy marriage, there is going to be a lot of compromising. If one person gets their way most of the time, the other person is going to build up resentment. If you’re going to compromise, you can’t close your mind off to considering what your spouse wants.
- Be Tolerant of One Another’s Faults. No one is perfect. If you expect perfection, it’s going to be difficult for you and your spouse to solve problems. Instead, focus your thoughts on your spouse’s positive aspects so that you can live with their imperfections.
Many couples who have been married for some years know that it’s important to have a regular Date Night. This is a time when you get away from the kids and the television and do something romantic, like seeing a movie and a going to a candlelight dinner. Some couples who make the quality of their relationship a high priority will have a Date Night on a regular basis - such as every Saturday night.
Well, believe it or not, scientists have been studying the Date Night phenomenon with experiments, laboratory studies, and (I kid you not) brain-scan data! And they have found out something very important: you need variety and new experiences in your Date Nights. You don’t want to be going to the same restaurant over and over again. You need to try new things such as a new restaurant, maybe a new hobby that interests the two of you, or going the amusement park.
The experiments have shown that new experiences will activate the brain’s “reward” system of dopamine and norepinephrine in the same manner as in the early phases of a love affair. You are actually altering your brain chemistry in a way that allows you to feel a more romantic love.
So if your relationship is feeling routine - if the butterflies have flown the coop - try doing some new things together on a regular basis!
Many couples tell me that their marriage would be better if they didn’t have so many disagreements. In fact…is there any couple that would like more disagreements in their marriage? No, we want less conflict. Fewer arguments, in other words. How can you do that? Well, one really good way to begin that process is to identify the roles that you and your spouse play when it comes to talking about issues that you disagree about.
Most often what we see is that one spouse plays the role we call the “pursuer” and the other is the “withdrawer.” The pursuer and the withdrawer.
What is a pursuer? Here are some of the things I hear pursuers say: “He ignores me. He’s hardly ever around. He works too much. He never listens to me. I’m not very high on his priority list. He doesn’t listen to me. I feel like we’re just roommates.” Does any of that sound like someone you know?
Now, what does a withdrawer say? Check these out: “She takes little things and blows them way out of proportion. She brings up things that happened 10 years ago. Sometimes I feel like I never get it right. I’m not sure I could ever make her happy. When she gets angry I just shut down and want to get away.”
Have you figured out whether you are a pursuer or a withdrawer? What about your spouse? Typically the woman is the pursuer and the man is the withdrawer.
So once you and your spouse know which roles you play, how do you use that knowledge to improve your marriage?Answer: if you’re a pursuer, you can work on “softening” the things you say, such as changing critical statements into I statements that talk about how you feel. For example, “I feel lonely when you work so late” is much softer than “you work too much.” This kind of phrasing improves communication and makes your spouse less defensive. If you’re a withdrawer, you can resolve to try to stay more engaged in discussions, which becomes easier once the pursuing spouse begins to soften her communication.
Number 3 in the Marriage Therapist’s Tips list is to let your spouse influence you. Let your spouse influence you. I don’t want to be sexist, but in this case I’m talking more to the men out there. Women, in general, have no problem being influenced by their husbands, but some men have a difficult time accepting influence from their wives.
What does it mean to accept influence? Here’s a classic example: the “toilet seat issue.” The typical woman gets irritated when her husband leaves the toilet seat up. How long would it take for the man to put it down? About half a second, right? A man can score major points with his wife just by putting the seat down.
I’d like to point out that this is a case where you can actually “win by losing.” That’s because when a man accepts influence from his wife, his wife is much more likely to “go easy” and not be harsh the next time that couple is discussing a difficult marital topic. And that makes it much more likely that the marriage will thrive.
Marriage Therapist’s Tip# 2 is to build up appreciation and fondness for your spouse. Now, I’m sure that when you and your spouse were dating and for the first few years of your marriage, you had nothing but fondness and admiration for one another. That may be a distant memory for some of you now. In fact, in an unhappy marriage the spouses even feel some contempt for one another. Let me ask you a few questions as a quick check on how you feel about your spouse. Can you name three things that you admire about him/her? When you are apart, do you often think fondly of him/her? When your spouse comes into the room, are you glad to see him/her?
So now you’re asking, what can I do to increase the fondness and admiration in my marriage? It’s easy! Tell your spouse what you admire about him/her, and do it often! If you want to get started on this tonight, think of one thing you appreciate your spouse and then tell them about it. I bet you will get a good response, and it will be more likely that he/she will be more responsive to you.
You can improve your relationship by becoming an expert on your spouse’s life, because happily married couples are intimately familiar with each other’s lives. What do I mean by intimately familiar? I mean you know whether or not he likes pickles on his hamburger. You know why her boss is being a jerk lately. You know who he’s going to vote for next November. You know when her mother’s birthday is and what kind of birthday cake she would like.
Why should know your spouse that well? Because couples who are that into each other are able to survive marital stresses such as the birth of the first child, the death of a parent, or a serious illness.
It’s pretty easy, really, to become an expert on your spouse’s life. In marriage counseling, I recommend that couples spend at least 20 minutes every evening just talking to each other and finding out what happened during the day, finding out what she is excited about, finding out what he is stressed about.
So: do you think you know your partner well? Here’s a pop quiz: do you know who his or her best friends are? If not, make it a point to find out tonight. Your spouse will appreciate your interest.
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