When marriages are in a troubled way, both partners in the relationship typically function at their worst. That is, each in the marriage is at their worst and responding to the other’s worst. The tendency among couples in this situation is to very harshly judge and devalue the marriage, and to catastrophize any conflicts that do arise as further evidence of the marriage’s essential wrongness/badness. Hence, conflicts that do arise simply as part of normal life, are quickly framed within the context of catastrophe, once again leading both in the marriage to function out of deep threat, emergency, and fight/flight.
A first order of business in marital healing is to create some beginning confinement of those situations where each in the marriage is at their worst. Secondly, the cultivation of any positive, enjoyable moments/activities is important to fill in the openings created by the containment of the negative, and to provide a hopeful sampling of goodness/attachment that can begin to counter the inclination towards the negative. In order to be enduring, these changes must be accompanied by an unfusing/unenmeshing of the relationship, so that the urge towards reacting is increasingly replaced by two differentiated individuals responding.
