Effective couples therapy does not mean that the negative cycle inherent in the marriage-of-opposites is forever ended. While it is true that eft couples work most commonly results in a large reduction of negative cycles and greatly improved marital relating… underlying vulnerabilities to disappointment and misunderstanding remain. This is certainly the case for the large majority of couples I have worked with. It is also the case between my wife and I in our marriage-of-opposites.
In this vein, the continuation of a good marriage requires “work.” I hesitate to use the the word “work” because of the grim connotation it carries for many long struggling marriages. What I have in mind here is a “mature showing up” for the hard conversations that emotionally alive couples must be willing to have. But this is very different from the taxing/soul-sucking negative cycles that most couples first bring to couples therapy. Rather, these are conversations predominated by a sense of safety and trust between partners, even though they involve challenging individual differences, and vulnerable hot spots for both partners. The outcome of these conversations is not one of grim forbearance; instead it is a process filled with rewarding connection and support. In essence, the continuing “work” of a good marriage is inherently rewarding and reinforcing of attachment… ultimately joyful, not work at all!
That there is something about each of us that is rejectable. This is the essence of shame. And this is why some degree of shame haunts all human beings. Try as we might to always be in a validated or winning position in our lives, there is always some exposure to losing or not prevailing. Even among those most blessed among us, there are still those painful moments of failure. More than that, the culture around us is constantly presenting pictures of winners versus losers, success versus failure, those admirable versus those despicable. Reward and punishment becomes mixed in with cultural pictures of value versus devalue in ever complicated ways.
Shame is a social hurt. It has to do with inclusion versus exclusion. Primitive categories prevail; if your “bad’ versus “good”… your excluded/unwanted/rejected and seen as having no value or worth. Psychological well-being is inextricably tied up with the sense of social belonging… and the sense of social belonging is tied up to being able to mount within oneself a sufficient sense of “good/worth/value.”
One intervention that I have explored of late is to ask each in the marriage to reflect on, and write down notes about, the vision of the life that they wish/want/desire. Then, I ask the couple to take turns, each one having a session to share their vision while the other listens and asks questions about the vision being shared. The task is to be curious and inquire about the vision being shared by the other in the moment, and to inhibit any urge to counter with ones own.
There are several reasons to do this take-turn exercise. The first is to make explicit the underlying differences in visions that are implicitly present in daily life, often not overtly acknowledged, but constantly in niggling competition. The problem is that these unclarified visions end up being experienced as implicitly threatening to the other… and form an underpinning of the couples negative cycle.
The task here is to see the other… unto themselves! This then opens up a pathway of both curiosity and empathy, in place of the sense of reflexive threat that happens when what the other desires is automatically experienced as taking away from what oneself desires. This allows two in a marriage to listen to each other in a way very different than happens in an enmeshed and fused marriage where the others wishes are taken in through the filter of what they mean for our own wishes.
Commonly, the eft process of working the negative cycle, is discussed in terms of the goal of creating more attachment contact for couples. Seldom is the eft process written about as a powerful method to grow differentiation/individuation in marriage.
This is a huge topic that deserves repeated reflection; how do our inherently struggling psychologies impact marriage, and how might marriage help or hinder us with our struggling psychologies? First a comment to frame this discussion… it is my understanding that interior psychological struggle is inherent in the human condition!
The insight that I have in mind here is… that one aspect of marital success or failure has to do with how well a marriage helps each in the marriage with the long standing hurts and difficulties that long predate the marriage, typically related to family-of-origin situations in each partner’s histories. Examples are a disorganized partner with a highly organized partner, or a traumatized partner with a partner from a constricted middle class history.
We always hope that our lives following marriage will be enhanced compared to our lives before – that our marriage is value-added! Often this is the case. However, it is all far too common in marriages fraught with conflict/mistrust/insecurity that each in the marriage does not feel their partner “has their back” or each feels safer and better within themselves because of the marriage. Often, the opposite is the case, each in the marriage feels less safe with their inner struggles in connection to their partner than they feel when alone. Sometimes it can be that both in the marriage live remote from each other, each in their own private hell.
In this vein, many of the couples that I have worked with over the years have felt so unsafe/insecure with vulnerable exposure to their partners, that they deeply protect their private inner lives to such a degree… they have almost no inner sense of what a secure home life with their partner is like. In many of these marriages the only picture of good marriage that the couple has access to is one with less conflict, detente from the ongoing war – with no sense of what a truly safe secure primary relationship is like.
