A Marriage Therapist's Blog
Thoughts on Marriage Counseling
Archive for April, 2010
Anger exists in every relationship. How it is expressed and dealt with, though, are unique to each individual and couple. Some people deal with their anger by repressing and stifling it. Others express their anger in more indirect and subtle (yet highly destructive) ways, such as corrosive criticism and passive/aggressive comments and behaviors. Other couples may be more direct and overt with their anger, resulting in yelling and frequent fighting. For some, anger and rage are so uncontained that they become explosive and, in the worst case, physically violent.
In Imago Relationship Therapy, anger is accepted as an emotion that exists in every individual and relationship. Exploring how couples express (or repress) anger is essential in order to reduce its destructive impact. I teach couples tools such as containment, which permits anger and resentment to be expressed and released in a relationship without hurting the other person. While the root of the couple’s anger is also significant, containment first works to help create space and a safe climate for anger to be expressed and heard without judgment, defensiveness, or criticism. Containment also teaches more objectivity around your spouse’s anger in that his/her anger won’t harm you, and that therefore you don’t have to be wrapped up in his/her emotional state or reactivity.
Containment is only one of many tools that Imago Relationship Therapy offers to help couples experience and express anger more constructive ways. The result is living more honestly, fully, and intimately with your partner by converting anger—a potentially harmful emotion—into its original, life-giving and loving form.
Last week I listed the first five of ten key characteristics—in behavior and attitude—in a “conscious marriage”, as described in Harville Hendrix’s book, Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples. This type of marriage is based on honesty and awareness, and is geared toward safety, healing, and growth. Imago Relationship Therapy assists couples in moving toward this type of relationship and in taking the necessary steps to cultivate real, lasting, and rewarding change.
The remaining five characteristics of a conscious marriage are as follows:
6. You embrace the “dark side” of your personality. You acknowledge that you (like every other person), have traits or qualities that are negative and not constructive in the relationship. This process also requires accepting responsibility for these traits. The more that you are able to do this, the less you will assign or project these negative traits onto your spouse. In a conscious marriage, you recognize and accept responsibility for the dark side of your nature.
7. You learn new techniques to satisfy your basic needs and desires. Instead of employing unconscious, ineffective strategies to try and manipulate or coerce your partner into meeting your needs and wants, you utilize new techniques. You realize that it is possible to work with your partner and that he or she is not against you and can actually be a resource for you.
8. You search within yourself for the strengths and abilities you are lacking. In a conscious marriage, you realize that one of the reasons that you were attracted to your spouse is that you saw strengths and abilities in him/her that you lack. You also accept that being with your partner and looking to him/her to be what you lacked gave you a false sense of wholeness. You learn that you are capable of developing the strengths, abilities and wholeness that you truly desire.
9. You become more aware of your drive to be loving and whole. You recognize that despite imperfect parenting and social conditioning, you do have the capacity to love without conditions and to experience unity with your spouse, others, and the world around you. You rediscover the need for this and that over time you lost touch with these qualities.
10. You accept the difficulty of creating a good marriage. Previously, you believed that your marriage was not good or failing because you didn’t pick the right person. In a conscious marriage, you realize this is unrealistic and illusory and that it is your responsibility to be the best partner that you can be. You accept that marriage is hard and that it requires determination, commitment, compromise, discipline, and a lot of really hard work!
I love it when counseling is scientifically tested and shown to be effective!
The largest, most comprehensive clinical trial of couple therapy ever conducted has found that therapy can help even very distressed married couples if both partners want to improve their marriage. The study also involved the longest and most comprehensive follow-up assessment of couple therapy ever conducted.
“It takes only one person to end a marriage but two people to make it work,” said Andrew Christensen, a UCLA professor of psychology and lead author of the study, which appears in the April issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, a publication of the American Psychological Association.
The study included 134 married couples, 71 in Los Angeles and 63 in Seattle. Most were in their 30s and 40s, and slightly more than half had children. The couples were “chronically, seriously distressed” and fought frequently, but they were hoping to improve their marriages.
The couples received up to 26 therapy sessions within a year. Psychologists conducted follow-up sessions approximately every six months for five years after therapy ended.
When the therapy sessions were over, about two-thirds of the couples overall had shown significant clinical improvement.
Another key concept of Imago Relationship Therapy is to develop a conscious marriage instead of an unconscious marriage where so much remains unidentified and may feel out of control or “beyond you.” In Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples, Harville Hendrix defines a conscious marriage as, “a marriage…created by becoming conscious and cooperating with the fundamental drives of the unconscious mind: to be safe, to be healed, and to be whole (p. 90).”
Again, this is a goal of Imago Therapy. Some of the key aspects of a conscious spouse (in both behavior and attitude) are listed below. I will mention five key indicators in this post and continue with the other five next week. (Again, these are taken from Hendrix’s book, Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples.)
- You realize your love relationship has a hidden purpose: the healing of childhood wounds. Underneath surface needs and desires lie much deeper unresolved childhood issues. Recurring arguments or confusing aspects of your relationship may make more sense to you as you begin to discover their meaning, and a greater sense of understanding and control is gained.
- You create a more accurate image of your partner. Instead of fusing your partner with your primary caretakers (their deficiencies and the resulting needs that arose out of those deficiencies), you begin to see him or her more clearly. You “get” that he or she has a unique reality—not as your savior—but as someone who is also wounded and wanting to be healed.
- You take responsibility for communicating your needs and desires to your partner. You abandon the childhood notion that those who love you most should be able to discern or intuit your needs or “read your mind.” In a conscious marriage you accept that, in order for your needs and wants to be known and understood, you have to communicate them. You accept that it is not your partner’s job to automatically know them and respond to them without your clear and honest communication.
- You become more intentional in your interactions. Instead of reacting without thinking, you train yourself to speak and behave in a more constructive and aware manner.
- You learn to value your partner’s needs and wishes as highly as you value your own. In an unconscious marriage, you assume that your partner exists in life to meet your needs and wants. As a conscious spouse, you let go of this narcissistic perspective (which is appropriate at a certain developmental stage as a child) and focus your energy and efforts on how to meet your partner’s needs and wants.
Again, none of these differences occur overnight or without concerted time, energy, effort and a commitment to grow and change. The transition from an unconscious to a conscious marriage is not easy and often uncomfortable and painful. Yet the rewards are great—including a more loving, supportive and intimate relationship.
I don’t play golf, but I do occasionally watch it on TV. I almost always watch the final day of the Masters tournament, and I did so today. The golfing was fun to watch, but what really struck me was the contrast between Phil Mickelson, who won the tournament, and Tiger Woods, who was in contention for a while but didn’t finish well.
Of course Tiger Woods has been all over the news due to revelations of sex-addictive type of behavior. He apparently has had sex with dozens of young women, despite being married and having two children with his wife. In other words, he has been unfaithful to his wife over and over again.
Phil Mickelson, on the other hand, appears to be a thoughtful, loving, and attentive husband to Amy, his wife. Amy Mickelson was diagnosed with breast cancer some months ago, and Phil immediately left the pro golfing tour to be with her during her treatment. He only returned to the tour when Amy was well enough to travel with him. Amy traveled to Augusta, Georgia, the site of the Masters tournament, but apparently stayed in bed (due to her illness) until the very end of the tournament. She came to the final hole to see her husband win the tournament. Phil walked off the green and embraced Amy for a least a full minute. It was very moving to see, and I couldn’t help comparing him to Tiger Woods and how Tiger treats his wife.
Last week, I explained a bit about Imago Relationship Therapy, a type of couples counseling that I have found to be very effective in improving a couple’s communication. In this post, I’ll describe the core practice of Imago Therapy, namely, the Imago Dialogue. In this dialogue the couple engages in a three-part structured conversation. I teach the dialogue’s structure in counseling sessions, and we practice it extensively in my office. Eventually the couple is able to use the dialogue at home, away from my office.
The first part of the Imago Dialogue is listening to and mirroring (repeating back) a spouse’s concern. Mirroring is important because it provides an opportunity for the listener to convince the speaker that the listener heard and understood everything that was said. The second part of the Dialogue is validating, in which the listener insures that he/she understands the partner’s point of view without judgment - and without necessarily agreeing with it. This requires the listener to suspend his or her critique and to try to understand the other person’s perspective. (This is not easy!) The third part of the dialogue is empathizing - or truly feeling what your partner is feeling as if you were the one experiencing it.
The goal of the Dialogue is to be as fully attentive and respectful as possible during communication and, ultimately, to help each other heal and grow. This is not an easy process at first, but it can be learned with practice. The couple’s job is to commit to this challenging (yet highly rewarding) practice in order to become attentive and attuned to one another and to become witnesses to one another’s intimate experience and healing.
I read a great piece by David Brooks in the March 30 issue of The New York Times. Rather than summarizing it in my words, I’ll just quote Mr. Brooks.
Marital happiness is far more important than anything else in determining personal well-being. If you have a successful marriage, it doesn’t matter how many professional setbacks you endure, you will be reasonably happy. If you have an unsuccessful marriage, it doesn’t matter how many career triumphs you record, you will remain significantly unfulfilled.
This isn’t just sermonizing. This is the age of research, so there’s data to back this up. Over the past few decades, teams of researchers have been studying happiness. Their work, which seemed flimsy at first, has developed an impressive rigor, and one of the key findings is that, just as the old sages predicted, worldly success has shallow roots while interpersonal bonds permeate through and through.
My postscript would be simply to point out that the best thing you can do for yourself is to get (or keep) your marriage healthy. Marriage counseling can help!
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