The goal of Emotion Focused Therapy, whether for couples or individuals, is to grow the capacity for “secure attachment.” In large part, the accomplishment of this goal depends upon the acquisition of “object permanence.” Object permanence is the ability of a child to know that an object continues to exist despite being out of sight. The parallel in emotional development is to internally experience that one is loved in a relationship even when the evidence of love is not right before you. When emotional object permanence is uncertain it is difficult to sustain secure attachment. In these situations fears of abandonment and difficulties in emotional regulation are common. The expression of these struggles can be both overt or covert. In the case of pursuers the expressions of overt distress are commonly evident on the surface as emotional escalation. In the case of avoiders the expressions are covert and hidden, commonly expressed as withdrawal or inhibition of attachment reaching. How does one grow the capacity for object permanence or secure attachment where it has been missing?

The growth of attachment security is a natural by-product of the eft process. More specifically, it follows from the  work of the eft tango. The eft tango begins with unpacking instances of the negative cycle in the marriage. In a highly granular way, we reconstruct the steps of the conflict… “he said this, you said that, and in turn they reacted in this way, and in turn you reacted in that way, etc”. We then inquire depth-fully into these moments of reactivity. We look to discern the underlying emotions from the reactive emotions. To separate out the surface fight from the vulnerable feelings underneath. We begin to clarify how the reactive behaviors on the surface are understandable defensive attempts to protect from imagined vulnerable injury underneath. This process drops the interaction from the fight-flight reactive behaviors on the surface down to the true vulnerable feelings underneath. Communication from underlying “vulnerable feeling to vulnerable feeling” opens out the sense of positive attachment feeling within the couple. Paradoxically, the marital fight becomes the doorway into the marital attachment. (rewrite this)

“Reparative fantasy” is the notion that we often do not live in the simple reality of our lives but instead in the simple fantasy of how we want our lives to be. This is, in fact, quite common for most of us and it serves as a major defense against the emotional pains and traumas of our lives. The fantasies we typically hold onto are idealizations about ourselves and those we love, either as things are in the present, or often as things are going to be in the future… in essence, the idealized future to come. These fantasied idealizations often play a powerful role in marital disappointment and unhappiness!

Not uncommonly, threats to each partner’s reparative fantasy serve as triggers to repetitive negative cycles in the marriage. For example, some men are highly invested in sexual validation from their partners as a means of warding off underlying feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt. Such men are vulnerable to going into negative reactivity towards their partner if their behavior fails such a need for validation.

Although it is true that “emotions underlying attachment” are the prime movers in relationship, “how we think about our relationship” reflects our defensive needs to self-protect in our relationship. Our habitual thinking about our partner reveals our anticipations that “hurt is coming”… “so protect, protect, protect!” Of course, these “self-protective attitudes” are actually what sets up disappointment in our partner and activates their “self-protective attitudes in turn… resulting in one more negative cycle, ad infinitum!

Increasingly, I find it essential to get at how each partner thinks about the other, and the underlying assumptions that support these likely polarizing views. It is my experience that these “conclusions about the other” are partially constructed out of “distorted thinking.” These negative conclusions about the other become underlying assumptions about the other that greatly block the couples healing process.

In the CBT treatment for depression… central emphasis is placed on how the client’s thinking about themselves, and the events of the day, contains cognitive error that sets the client up for a depressive outcomes. Likewise, couples set themselves up for negative cycles in marriage by each partner’s out-of-kilter/distorted/defended ways of thinking about the other. Following the unpacking of the patterns of emotional reactivity in the negative cycle, which is at the core of EFT couples work… it then becomes important to recognize and take apart the negative conclusions each partner makes about the other. Over time, this becomes important because healing moments in the actual couples sessions can quickly be dismantled by these ingrained conclusions in the hours and days following the session.

It is so important that the EFT couples work permeate very deeply into the individual consciousness of each partner. That each partner ask themselves, “how do I contribute the the negative cycle in the marriage?” It is always true that each partner has blockages within, and “blind spots” about how they contribute to the negative cycle process. While many of these blockages can be engaged in the couples meetings, the full understanding of the blockages and how to work them through often requires depthful individual followup by the therapist.

The question is… what is the crucial “additional understanding” that each partner needs to have open-hearted healing interactions with their partner? This insight is arrived at in both the couple’s and individual conversations. An important aspect of this process is that it is felt as a “light bulb going off in the head.” A sense of something new! It is important for long term marriages that they are not only a place of safety but also a source of new self-discovery. As a therapist with couples it important to be able to periodically inquire about this process of fresh discovery in the marriage.