A Marriage Therapist's Blog
Thoughts on Marriage Counseling
Posts Tagged ‘Communication’
Wouldn’t it be great if you could take your spouse’s criticism and use it as an opportunity for additional knowledge, instead of as a source of conflict? How could this improve your marriage?
Author Harville Hendrix provides four general principles about criticism:
- Most of your partner’s criticisms of you have some basis in reality. While this may be a bitter pill to swallow, most spouses are experts at spotting and knowing their mate’s weaknesses and character flaws. If you are able not to react or become defensive, then these interactions provide an opportunity to acknowledge your own disowned traits and to grow and change.
- Many of your repetitious, emotional criticisms of your spouse are disguised statements of your own unmet needs. This interaction also provides an opportunity for your spouse to gain information about his or her childhood wounds and unmet needs. Write down the specific criticism as well as a) feelings and thoughts that emerged when the spouse acts this way, b) feelings and thoughts that may be deeper than the ones first realized, and c) if these same thoughts and feelings were present in childhood?
- Some of your repetitive, emotional criticisms of your partner may be an accurate description of a disowned part of yourself. It is often true that a criticism of another is a valid statement about oneself. While this takes courage, ask yourself the question, “In what way is my criticism of _______ (partner) also true of me?” It is much easier and more comfortable to spot a negative trait in your partner and criticize it than to separate it from your partner, own it, and address it within yourself.
- Some of your criticisms of your partner may help you identify your own “lost self”. Often, if a criticism is not a projection of a negative trait within you, it is an expression of an unconscious lost part of yourself. If you find yourself criticizing your spouse for being too much of something (too playful, too carefree, too dedicated, etc.), you are often identifying undeveloped or repressed parts of yourself that you wish you developed. When you see your spouse expressing these traits, you may become quietly jealous and resentful. Again, the key is to glean knowledge from these criticisms and use this information to grow and change toward a more full, conscious, and enriched self and relationship.
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.
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.
News flash! Men and women really are different! Duh. You don’t need me to tell you that. You also don’t need me to tell you that how men and women communicate is often quite different. Another “duh.” Yet, I wonder how many couples actually take the time to consider and explore the meaning behind what is communicated?
The book Love and Respect, by Emerson Eggerichs, provides a great illlustration of how the same phrase can mean two totally very things to a man and to a woman. Consider a couple who are getting dressed for an event. She looks in her closet and says, “I have nothing to wear!” Translation: “I have nothing new!” He looks in his closet and says, “I have nothing to wear.” Translation: “I have nothing clean!”
Let’s play out this illustration to see how something so seemingly minor as meaning can affect the daily interactions in your marriage. Imagine again the wife exclaiming, “I have nothing to wear!” Hubby looks at her closet (chock-full of clothes), feels confused by her seemingly-irrational comment and replies, “Honey, you have plenty of things to wear!” She snaps at him because she perceives a lack of empathy and understanding, and she feels even more irritated! Hubby still feels in the dark about this whole clothes thing and is more confused by her strong retort to his seemingly helpful comment. The conversation ends and both continue on, feeling unclear about what just happened. Sound familiar?
The great news is that neither person is wrong. Each person just means something different that often doesn’t make sense to the other. The woman assumes that her husband knows what she means, and the husband assumes his wife understands him. Don’t assume. If you feel confused, hurt, or disrespected by something your spouse says, take a posture of honesty and curiousity. Simply ask, “When you said ______, what did you mean?” Let him or her know how it originally sounded and felt for you. The payoffs: You learn about each other, your spouse feels more understood and cared about, and you will most likely alleviate further misunderstanding, hurt, and conflict.
Think back to your childhood. Do you remember a time when you got in trouble or were punished for something you didn’t intend to do? Take a moment now to put yourself back in that situation and recall how you felt as your parent (or caregiver) reacted without even trying to understand what actually happened. Did you feel angry? Misunderstood? Hurt? Unnecessarily criticized? Unfairly treated? Disrespected?
Most likely, you can identify with this. You might have even have sworn that you would never do this to someone else. The unfortunate reality is that many of us end up doing this to our partner or spouse! Sadly, a sudden and often intense reaction (that can end up feeling like a punishment to the other person) often precedes a full understanding of the situation.
Here’s a “for instance”. A friend of mine described an outing she had with her husband. They went on a bike ride, sharing quality time and enjoying the sunny weather. Everything was going well until her husband accidentally cut her off on the bike path, resulting in her losing her balance and falling. She verbally lashed out at him. Yes, of course, she was hurt, but did her husband did not intend for that to happen.
So what went wrong? My friend assumed that her husband cut her off intentionally. Instead of assuming the best about him and giving him the benefit of the doubt, she assumed the worst. She didn’t gain any information or try to understand whether or not he meant to cut her off. You might be thinking, “Well, she still fell and got hurt, whether he meant to cut her off or not.” Yes. But that doesn’t justify her yelling at her husband about it.
The effect of not giving your partner or spouse the benefit of the doubt has its consequences. In the above example, the husband felt extraordinarily hurt and angry due to feeling completely misunderstood, unfairly criticized, and disrespected.
Bottom line: While it might be difficult at times, practice assuming the best about your partner or spouse. Give him or her the benefit of the doubt in all situations—even when you are adversely affected—until you have information or understanding to prove otherwise. When your partner or spouse does something that makes you feel like lashing out or criticizing, take a deep breath, count to 10, and remember that giving him or her the benefit of the doubt is a way to diffuse tension, misunderstandings, and potential retaliations. And it’s also a powerful act of love and respect. And I guarantee that in the end, you’ll feel better about yourself too.
It’s perfectly normal for there to be occasional disagreements and conflict in healthy relationships andmarriages. While this type of interaction is probably not ideal, it truly is part of the reality of being in a committed relationship. Living side by side with another human being who may have a very different background and different ideas about life and money and family means that misunderstandings and miscommunications are inevitable.
What is interesting (if not completely awesome) is that while some conflicts are unavoidable, research has shown that having a reserve or reservoir of positive, caring exchanges and interactions can soften the blow. In fact, it can even help you to avoid overreacting to a misunderstanding. Think about it: if your spouse took the time to stop and notice something you did, or asked about a current stressful situation in your life, you will most likely feel more loved, attended to, and supported. Or consider if you and your partner shared a mutually loving and positive interaction or experience which increased your reservoirs of goodwill—such as taking a walk or hike together, working on a project around the house, cooking a meal together, having a “date night”, etc.—you will most likely feel better and closer and more willing to overlook momentary miscommunications or irritations.
So if it is true that this reservoir of goodwill serves as an antidote to potential squabbles, why not practice filling your spouse’s resorvoir? It’s free and painless and while it may feel like a drop in the bucket, it’s can be so much more. Enough drops over time create a reserve that can be drawn upon when conflict does arise. I think of it as “saving for a rainy day.”
A few additional notes:
- Challenge yourself to notice — not as a task or a chore but as a positive choice. It’s amazing how much you will begin to notice if you intentionally look for different and new ways to affirm your spouse.
- If you cannot find anything on which to positively comment, or any activity to share with your spouse, try to learn: ask questions and get to know your spouse better. What matters most? What are some favorite hobbies or activities? What does a day in his or her life really look like? What are his/her goals, hopes and dreams?
- Make sure that you find the best times to have these exchanges. Find out when your spouse is the least distracted and most open and able to receive what you have to share.
- Last but not least, it’s not about you. The goal is to focus on your partner’s reservoir of goodwill regardless of how well or how equally you believe that your own reservoir is being filled. Give to give more, don’t give to get.
- Grand Piano Strings
- Photo © 2009 Jay Slupesky
The research journal Personal Relationships has published a study about - and I am not making this up - whether it’s possible to predict if a couple will stay together just by looking at what words they use in their instant message (IM) conversations. The answer they came up with is yes, it is indeed possible.
The study showed that the use of certain pronouns and emotion words is an indicator of relationship satisfaction and stability. Some words indicate happy relationships and some other words indicate unhappiness.
So, what are the words? I’m glad you asked.
For women, the use of the word “I” indicates satisfaction with themselves and the relationship. Men’s use of the word “me” indicates more of a dissatisfaction. Hmmm.
Men’s use of positive emotion words (e.g. “happy”) indicates satisfaction and stability, and women’s use of positive negations (e.g. “not happy”) indicates dissatisfaction. One additional interesting tidbit is that the use of sarcasm (e.g. “oh, great”) is a bad sign when used both men and women.
So I’m wondering: did they really need a research study to figure this out? I think I could have told them - and saved them all the time and money they spent on the research!
- Sunset Over San Francisco
- Photo © 2009 Jay Slupesky
Some people have trouble asking their spouse for things they want. It can be something little or something big, but for some individuals there are reasons to keep their desires to themselves.
Perhaps the subject is what to do next weekend and you’d really like to go to Tahoe. Maybe it’s that you want to have sex tonight. Or it’s that you want to rearrange the living room furniture.
What keeps people from being open about what they want? I can think of three things:
- They are avoiding conflict. If they say what they want it may lead to an argument, and that would not be good.
- They feel they don’t “deserve” what they want. This sounds like a self-esteem issue to me. Some people feel that they must sacrifice their needs and desires for the good of the relationship.
- They are afraid of being turned down. The possibility of the spouse saying “no” is scary. This happens most often, I think, in the area of sex. The man (for example) may want sex, but he doesn’t ask, because his wife might say no, and that would be hard for the man to deal with. So he avoids the possibility by not bringing the issue up in the first place.
I find that people who don’t ask for things typically build up resentment over their needs not being met. This resentment is bound to come out, either quickly in a big blow-up, or slowly, with contempt on a day-by-day basis. Neither is good. I almost always try to convince my clients that it’s best for the relationship to speak freely about your desires. It’s counterproductive to do anything else.
- Flock of Dunlins in Flight
- Photo © 2008 Jay Slupesky
Have you ever given your spouse the silent treatment? Or have you ever been on the receiving end of the silent treatment? In my experience, a person resorts to silence when they are angry and/or hurt and either (1) unable to communicate their feelings, or (2) want to punish their spouse. Or both.
The person who is choosing silence has temporarily claimed some power in the relationship. Things are going to be on hold until he or she decides to end the silence. The other person may be protesting the situation and making repeated attempts to repair things, but it only ends when the silent person wants it to end. That’s a position of power that the silent person may feel they normally are lacking.
To be on the receiving end of silence is no fun. In fact, it’s painful. Some clients have told me how they develop physical symptoms and/or acute depression after a few days of no communication with the person they love.
When I encounter this situation in my counseling office I usually ask the silent person a few thought-provoking questions. These are:
- What benefits are you receiving from this situation?
- What will make you decide to end the silence?
- What effect do you think this is having on your spouse?
I think the first question is the most important one. It usually takes some time for the person to figure out the answer, but when they do, they usually realize that are making a big mistake.
- Contrail Over San Francisco Bay
- Photo © 2009 Jay Slupesky
When I meet with couples whose marriages are in crisis, I see people in severe emotional pain. Why is it so painful when your relationship is troubled? What is it that keeps us awake at night?
According to psychological “Attachment Theory” we are all born with a need for emotional closeness and connectedness with others. As children this need is satisfied by our parents, but as adults we need love and responsiveness from another adult.
Back to the couple whose marriage is troubled: the secure attachment with another adult is damaged and may even be close to ending. We’re not getting the love that we need from another adult. That is painful enough. The thought that the relationship might end can be scary.
By the way, the need for secure attachment explains a lot of the anger that occurs in a couple’s relationship. When we perceive a threat to our happy relationship, we protest. Unfortunately, the protest often takes the form of anger and harsh words (which damages things even more) rather than a a clear statement expressing a heartfelt need (which should result in more intimacy). That’s why good communication skills are so important.
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