self awareness for couples

by

Couple Counseling: What is the Most Common Problem?

Couples Therapy

The problems couples face are often caused by what is actually normal growth in their relationship. Couples grow through stages in a relationship, and when it happens that each partner is at a different stage, the result is often pain and confusion.  It is at these times that couples most often come to therapy, and it is often the biggest problem for couples. Couples therapy can help by guiding both partners to an understanding of what is going on between them and helping them both grow together.

Development in a Relationship

I am certified by the Couples Institute in California in couples therapy. I use the Developmental Model of Couples Therapy to help many of my clients. This is an approach to relationship counseling and therapy developed in the 1980s by Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson, of the Couples Institute in California.

This approach focuses on the development and growth of each partner individually in addition to the development and growth of the relationship. It identifies a number of stages in the evolution of every couple’s relationship. The first two stages of couple growth are Symbiosis and Differentiation.

Symbiosis – The Initial Stage

All couples start out here – feeling romantic, delighting in their newfound similarities, wanting to spend all their time together. This brings about important bonding, your becoming a couple.

Differentiation – The Second Stage

As time goes on, usually within the first two years, Differentiation begins: one person, or both, need to identify themselves as who they are as an individual person. Now is when you recognize that you have differences in feelings and thoughts than your partner, that you don’t always agree.  You may want to go out and explore their world, have time with old friends or start a new hobby.

When Stages Happen at Different Times

If this isn’t happening at the same for both people, the one not moving into this second stage often feels hurt or abandoned. “Why am I not enough for you anymore? Why can’t we be together all the time like we were when we were so happy?”  The resulting confusion, unhappiness, and stress is the most common time for couples to seek couple counseling.

A Real Problem Caused by Normal Growth

There’s that common problem I was talking about: the normal growth of one person moving to the second stage of the relationship while the other is still in the first stage. The person feeling left and hurt is in the first stage, Symbiosis, and the other has moved into the second stage, Differentiation. It would be so much easier if both people moved from the first stage to the next, but it often doesn’t always happen that way. So they show up in a therapist office, wondering what went “wrong.” Actually, nothing went wrong, they are growing as a couple, but unevenly.

Understanding What is Happening

Learning about these normal stages of growth helps enormously in understanding and normalizing what is happening for both people, and these are taught without judging either person.  There are lots of reasons why people go through these stages at different times, and that can be understood by looking at their relationships with their important childhood caregivers, usually their parents. For our purposes here, suffice it to say it is normal, but when one person is at one stage and the other moving into another, it’s a stressful time for the couple. There are more stages to normal couple growth which I can explain elsewhere.

Learning the Skills

In couple therapy, you both can learn the skills of the second stage: Differentiation.  These skills include you each acknowledging and stating your own feelings, needs, thoughts, and preferences even when they are not the same as your partner’s.  You learn you can maintain your own perspective and not attempt to change your partner’s to match your own. You can agree that as a couple you really are two different people. Being heard and being understood as a separate but still loved and accepted person is a wonderful experience, different than the first stage, but equally bonding.  It brings you two together in a new way, with new respect and clarity of who your partner really is and being seen as you really are. It can be exciting and enhance intimacy.

Of course, there can be conflict, and learning how to deal with conflict rather than being afraid to face it is another skill of living in an honest and vibrant relationship.

What does the therapist do in couple therapy?

  • Provide a safe environment where both people are able to speak  and be heard, and  where both sides come to  be understood and validated
  • Show how your backgrounds  (yes, your baggage) are being triggered and affecting the present, and what to do about it.
  • Help each person explore their feelings and thoughts without being blocked by taking their partners’ opinions. Learn to do this at home without the therapist being present.
  • Get clarity about what is going on so the couple can understand themselves and progress.
  • Discover patterns that are destructive or at least not productive.
  • Provide ideas about what to focus on between sessions.
  • Specific advice and guidance for your particular relationship

by

A Useful Tool for Every Couple: Minding The Store

Here is a very helpful tool to learn for a couple when  disagreements come. I  call it “Minding The Store”, as in, “Is anybody minding the store?”

“Minding the Store” is what is happening when one or the other person remembers to watch the process of what is going on between the two of you, and bring it to the other’s attention. That could sound like “” OH, we’re doing it again -we both need nurturing at the same time so neither of us is in a place to give it, and we are both getting piss-y.” Then, “Do you see it?”

If the couple has agreed to stop the conversation and step back together to look at their interaction at this point, without blaming, the results can be so helpful.  The task at hand is to own up to your needing nurturing, and maybe not asking for same very clearly, or whatever else you see about your contribution. And the other person also does this. Often this can bring on wry, cocked eyebrows or a light laughter, which is always helpful.

Suppose some one of you says  “Maybe we should take turns?” and  the other replies “I feel like a kindergartner, this is too silly.” “But I still want you to listen to me” “OK, lets take turns listening to each other.”  And so you do.

Problems magnify when no one is minding the store, and  that is perfectly understandable. This is your major support person, your life partner, and emotions run high.  Learning the techniques of watching your interaction, seeing it for what it is, and bringing it to the other’s attention is a very useful tool for couples.

by

Couples: What You Can Expect from your Partner, and What you Have to Get from Yourself.

I see a lot of couples in my practice and have found there are many myths people believe about what you can have if only you had the perfect partner. Many have a lot of disatisfaction with their partner because he or she is not providing what they think a partner/ spouse should provide.  I’ll list a few of these myths to clarify what I’m speaking about.

1.You can’t demand intimacy from your partener, doing so will likely  create more distance and less intimacy.  You can  talk about how close or safe your partner  feels with you, and that could be productive. You can think about why your partner doesn’t feel open with you, what you might be doing that pushes your partner to back away from you.  It is also possible that your partner’s resistance to being sexual or emotionally close isn’t about you, it’s more about what they brought into the relationship from their past: their baggage. You could be very useful to them in changing their hesitancy about intimacy, or maybe a therapist could help. But demanding is useless and feels bad all around.

2 .Your partner can’t make you happy, you have to do that for yourself.  What your partner can do is keep you exquisite  company while you figure all that out for yourself. A good therapist can also help.

3.You can’t expect your partner to be a twin,  to be someone  who believes the same things you do and therefore makes you feel sure of yourself.  That’s another one of those things you have to do for yourself. ‘

People who are fully grownup have the best relationships. Those grownups have have taken it upon themselves to find meaning in their lives, to like themselves, to come to terms with their families of origin, all these tasks and more that are the work of growing up.  You can find meaning in sharing your life with another, but you still have to do the work of your own life to be a good partner and have a good relationship.  Try looking into this instead of  wanting your partner to complete you as a person. I think you will be happier with the results.