Commonly there is an early phase in couples therapy where one or both in the marriage rail against their partner for not giving them what they need. Sometimes this focus upon “what is wrong in the other” can be brief, sometimes it can go on for months, and commonly it comes and goes in cycles throughout the therapy. Somewhere in the couples therapy journey, however, there is “a moment of truth” when each in the marriage must face what they themselves bring or do not bring to the marriage. This is that place where we ask ourselves, do I really bring to my partner “win-win interactions.” Note that win-win interactions start with with a crucial acceptance of what ones partner’s capacities are, so that there is good opportunity for the partners success in the interaction. Otherwise, the interactions are a set-up for the partners failure… and the relationship’s failure.
What I have in mind here is that dimension where we face ourselves in our marriage. Without wishing to sound religious, that place where “we talk to God” about ourselves and our participation in our own lives; that place of total honesty with ourselves. In what we bring to our partner, in our real knowing of them, have we really “been working with who they are” in what we bring to them, or are we just in one more reenactment of proving them incapable/wrong/bad?
Likewise, we must also ask ourselves the therapeutically useful question, what am I doing in a relationship wherein my own participation is not functional? And perhaps, if am choosing to stay in this relationship, what greater functionality may I want to ask of myself… so as to be able to like myself at the end of the day.
