A Marriage Therapist's Blog
Thoughts on Marriage Counseling
Archive for May, 2008
It is hard for many people to fathom why an abused woman would stay in her relationship. We might ask, “how can I help her to see that she needs to get out?” But let’s not judge someone until we’ve “walked a mile in her moccasins!” (Or let’s Trade Places like we talked about here a few weeks ago!)
Consider things from her perspective:
- She may feel financially dependent on her husband/boyfriend and believe that she could not support herself and her children if she were on her own.
- She may be afraid of:
- Greater physical danger to herself and/or her children if she tries to leave.
- Being stalked and beaten worse than before.
- Emotional damage to her children.
- Losing custody of her children.
- The unknown. (”Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”)
- Making formidable life changes.
- She may still love him. It sounds crazy, but emotional dependence is powerful. She may still see the “good” in him and think that he won’t hurt her again. In fact, during the “good” times, when he is not abusing her, he may seem like a great husband.
- She may have strong religious convictions and believe that divorce is wrong.
Again, it’s best not to judge someone until we put ourselves in her shoes. And let’s be careful not to blame the victim. After all, it’s not her fault that she’s in a violent relationship.
You might think that in California, in the 21st century, we would be smart enough, educated enough, and advanced enough that domestic violence would be a thing of the past.
You would be wrong.
I saw many victims of domestic violence during the year that I was an intern at Tri-Valley Haven for Women, a domestic violence shelter in Livermore. “The Haven,” as it is called by those who work there, is a valuable resource to the community because it houses, counsels, educates, and assists women who have been beaten by their husbands or boyfriends.
Now that I’m in private practice as a marriage counselor, I still occasionally encounter domestic violence in the couples that I work with. When that happens, I tell the man that he has to make a commitment to non-violence as long as the couple is in counseling with me. If the violence continues, I won’t see the couple together but may work with them individually.
By the way, some people wonder why so many women stay with men who beat them. That’s a great question, and I will answer it in my next post.
Some couples who come in for counseling have severe “trust issues.” I see this most often in younger couples who are not married. The couple may not have been together for very long, and most likely were in previous relationships where one or both had experienced a cheating partner.
In the most severe cases, a person may be obsessing over whether or not their partner is cheating, even if there is no evidence or reason to suspect. A nightly checking of the partner’s cell phone to scroll through the text messages, or looking for multiple calls to an unrecognized phone number, or breaking into the partner’s email account to look for any incriminating emails are all things some partners do to convince themselves that no cheating is going on.
There are a couple of questions to address here:
- What can be done when a person is obsessing over his/her partner’s trustworthiness? In this case, traditional treatments for obsessions, such as the “thought stopping” technique, can be valuable. Three simple methods to use are:
- Thought Replacement: when an unwanted thought enters your mind, immediately replace it with a healthy, rational thought. You can only think about one thing at at time, so crowd out the “bad” thought.
- Thought Stopping: when you catch yourself with the unwanted thought, immediately shout Stop! either aloud or only in the mind. Continue to shout Stop! until the unwanted thought ceases.
- Thought Disputing: Challenge the unwanted thoughts that come into your mind, asking: “Is this a rational thought? If not, what is irrational about it? What do I need to do to change this idea?”
- How can I really learn to trust the person I love? (I am assuming, of course, that the person really does deserve your trust, in other words, that they are not cheating.) Trust can be defined as “a measure of belief in the honesty, benevolence and competence of the other party.” How can you expect to spend the rest of your life with someone you will always suspect? Some believe that when you enter into a new relationship, you are starting all over again and can leave the baggage from a previous relationships behind. While that may be possible, it doesn’t always happen. The fact is that when you move onto a new relationship, hurts from the past are still present. Give yourself and your relationship time to build trust. If we have spent enough time with our partner to develop strong feelings for them, trust should be part of that. Do some research on the topic of trust: what does it really mean and how can each of us reach the goal of trusting together?
Trust is a vitally important part of any relationship. If you feel the need to do any of the checking mentioned above, how about trying some of these ways to start trusting your partner?
There is an interesting article in The New York Times today about a couple who took vows never to be apart, night or day. They always stay within 15 feet of each other. I thought about this and decided it would be impractical for just about everyone in our society. Jobs, if nothing else, would make it impossible for most people. The couple described in the article don’t have traditional jobs (they write books and live an ascetic lifestyle in a desert tent) so that’s not a problem for them.
In addition to staying next to one another, they also eat the same food from the same plate and read books together, not turning the page until both are ready.
Even though it’s probably impossible for most couples, part of me thinks it’s a really cool idea. The level of devotion and couplehood is very impressive. It certainly is in contrast to a lot of couples I meet in marriage counseling who don’t spend much time with each other at all.
Recently I’ve been counseling a larger-than-usual number of couples who have issues with lying in their relationship. Yes, that’s right: husbands and wives who lie to one another! I think most people would agree that lying is a sign of dysfunction in the relationship. If you can’t be honest with your life partner, something is very wrong,
Psychologists who study dishonesty say that a person who is lying is undergoing strain just by being dishonest. This stress can usually be measured by skin and heart sensors, as in a lie detector. Besides the stress of telling the lie, it can be mentally tough to continue the deception, as sometimes more lies must be told to cover up the fact of the original lie.
So why do spouses lie to one another? I’ve noticed three reasons:
- To avoid an argument. The dishonest individual is afraid to tell the truth because it is not what the other person wants to hear, and therefore, being honest could result in conflict. What is the solution to this? Learn how to communicate so that you can talk about things you disagree about without arguing. This includes being respectful of your partner’s position even if you disagree with it.
- To defend against low self-esteem. In this case, the dishonest person doesn’t like himself/herself too well, and believes the partner feels the same way (Freud called this defense mechanism projection.) This is hard to accept, of course, so the lying person inflates accomplishments and denies things that would make him/her look bad. The liar wants to convince others that he/she is not so bad after all. What is the solution to this type of lying? Individual work to increase self-esteem.
- To cover up cheating.This is the big one, of course. All kinds of cheating, including physical affairs, emotional affairs, and porn addictions, must be covered up. Solution? Stop cheating on your spouse.
One final thought. When a spouse gets caught lying, he/she sometimes will only confess to as little of the truth as possible, and continue lying about the rest. I see this happen over and over again in marriage counseling, and I have found that it is not a good idea. When the rest of the truth comes out at some point in the future, the damage is just as great as when the original disclosure occurred. It’s best to come clean and admit everything.
OK, today is our day on the blog tour of Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott to promote their new book Trading Places: The Best Move You’ll Ever Make in Your Marriage. We submitted a question to the Parrotts and are publishing the question here, along with their answer.
Q: Les and Leslie, Are there practical ways to keep the methods of empathy you suggest really front and center in our minds, even when times get tough? It seems as if we always get side-tracked and bogged down in an argument or tense situation and only afterwards does one of us realize that we forgot all about the ways we should have handled the conflict. How can we make sure that we think of the Trading Places steps sooner rather than later?
A: We can tell you what works for us. We have a little code that one of us will, hopefully, utter before a conversation gets too heated. One of us will simple say “90 percent.” Why? Because we know that research says that whatever a couple is fighting about, once they see the issue from each other’s perspective – once they Trade Places – the issue ill completely resolve itself 90 percent of the time. Isn’t that amazing?
Think about that! Forget about all the other bells and whistles that we “marriage experts” teach couples to resolve conflict. If all you did was practice empathy – accurately seeing issues from your partner’s point of view – you would eliminate 90 percent of your arguments. We can tell you this is true not only from research studies, but from our own marriage as well.
Once you see the nearly instant results of trading places during these tense times, you’ll be a believer. That’s why, for us, we do our best to use the trigger phrase of “90 percent” to help one another press the pause button and empathize.
Of course, another strategy that might help you trade places when you feel a conflict emerging is to take a proverbial “time out.” Before one of you gets to a place where you’re beginning to lose it, press the pause button. Agree to take a time out. But – and this is important – also agree on the time you’ll come back together. It may be 5 minutes or 5 hours, but be sure to set a time that you can count on reconnecting. And during your time out, as your gather your wits and become more objective, try to put yourself in your partner’s shoes. If you’re having a tough time doing that, write a list of questions you want to ask him or her to help you see the situation from his or her perspective.
The other day, I had a few hours between meetings with clients, and I went for a bite to eat. While I was sitting in a restaurant, I happened to overhear someone use these words: “If I were in their shoes…”
Have you ever thought about really being in someone else’s shoes? Not, literally, of course; being in someone else’s shoes is a euphemism for empathy, which is to know exactly how some else is feeling. That’s hard to do in a world where we taught to get in touch with our own feelings. Should we even bother to be empathic? And, if so, how can you do it?
This the subject of a new book written by Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott called Trading Places. The cover of the book has a clever illustration of a shoe whose front half is a man’s shoe and the rear half is a red high heel! The Parrots point out that empathy is an extremely important characteristic to have in a good marriage. Putting yourself in your partner’s shoes (or “skin”) is a way of understanding where they are coming from. This does wonders for reducing conflict between spouses.
Walt Whitman wrote, “I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I become the wounded person.” That’s empathy - actually feeling what the other person feels. Analyzing trades places in the head, sympathizing trades places in the heart, but empathizing does both. It is to understand from both the head and the heart.
So what does empathy (or “trading spaces”) do? I’m glad you asked. Here’s a list of a few things that empathy can accomplish in your marriage:
- reduce criticism
- eliminate nagging
- make conflicts shorter
- makes you better friends/partners
- reinforces commitment
- brings “grace” to your marriage
- makes for a longer life
- allows for dreams to flourish
As Dr. and Dr. Parrott say: “When you accurately see any situation from another’s point of view, when you can experience it like they do, you instantly take a different approach to it“.
On Tuesday, May 6, this humble blog will be the host of the Parrotts’ two-week “Blog Tour” in which we’ll post a question to them, along with their answer. So stay tuned! In the meantime, you might want to try out trading places with your spouse.
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