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Healing the Marriage-of-OppositesHealing the Marriage-of-Opposites
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More thoughts on “how we think” about our partner and our relationship

August 26, 2023

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.

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Current Project

Commentaries on the Marriage-of-Opposites

  • Chapter 1: The Phenomenon
  • Chapter 2: Final Common Pathways
  • Chapter 3: The Problem Of Nondifferentiation And Developmental Levels
  • Chapter 4: Defensive Presentations – When Appearances Deceive
  • Chapter 5: The Impact Of Gender
  • Chapter 6: The Core- Versus Outer-Styled…Two Differing Projects

Orin Borders, Ph.D.

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