In this and posts to follow I will be sharing my digested understanding of the impact of Sue Johnson’s Emotionally Focused Marital Therapy approach to my own therapeutic work with couples generally, and the marriage-of-opposites in particular.
To begin with, the attachment model of marital treatment places the establishment of attachment safety ahead of separation/differentiation/individuation. Developmentally this makes sense as the creation of an attachment homebase predates the emergence of separation-individuation in the individual life cycle. The thinking in the attachment research going back to Bowlby is that the internalization of homebase safety is a necessary foundation for a secure moving out into the larger world. While many make their movement into the outer world without a reliable home base, the general understanding is that they suffer a costly attachment wound in the process.
Often in the marriage-of-opposites the therapeutic work begins with a core-styled pursuer’s intense anger at the outer-styled’s avoidant behavior. Not uncommonly the avoider shuts down even more as they recieve the pursuers angry confrontation, resulting in many conflicts going to escalated levels far beyond the original conflict of the moment. Intuitively, many therapists are then inclined to focus upon containment of the pursuers escalative feeling in order to create safety in the room for the avoider. As an initial approach this is probably necessary. However, from the perspective of the EFT approach, to continue with a focus upon the pursuer’s containment or impulse-control deficits is a mistake because the pursuer is reacting to the avoider’s fundamental abandonment of the attachment field-of-play. Hence, the challenge for the therapists is to manage their own countertransference evoked by the pursuers hostility and to nevertheless find their way to focus upon the avoider’s wounded/fearful/avoiding/blaming experience that causes them to crucially check out on an interactive marriage. In focusing much of the early work upon the avoiders inner experience the therapist is doing many things at once; first, this provides the pursuer with a tacit recognition of the legitimacy of their deep hurt related to the avoiders abandonment of connection, second, when done empathically it provides the avoider with a meaningful voice for there fear-based attachment wound, third, it invites empathy within the pursuer towards the avoider’s interior fear/hurt/shame thereby reestablishing an empathic attachment bridge where it did not exist before. Unconsciously, the pursuer has the hope that the therapy will “open up and bring forth” their avoider partner so that “they could then feel attached to them.” Commonly at these times the esclated anger in the pursuer melts away.
