Thinking back over the years to my own relationship history, and those of so many of the couples I have seen in therapy, I am struck by a paradox. It is falling in love that draws us to our partner, and leads us to have positive intention in so many ways towards our partner. At the same time, the deep emotional intensity of loving someone comes from such a deep internal place within, based upon our individual histories of love, it is inevitable that this very positive energy that draws us to our partner will also partially blind us from seeing how our partner’s individual history makes them love differently than we expect. Hence we come towards our partner with such wonderful hopes and yet at the same time we do not accurately see our partner.

EFT’s focus upon revealing underlying positive intention of partners to each other, with the goal of unpacking what is really going on with and between partners, is absolutely crucial to couples healing. A long term goal of eft couples treatment is to help the couple into the dance with underlying positive intention rather than the dance with surface disappointment.

Many people come into therapy seeking to be happy. Or rather they come to therapy because they are suffering and they are hoping to find a certain vision of happiness that will make the suffering go away. That they are suffering is genuine and is the best reason they are there, but that therapy will provide them the vision of happiness they seek is almost certain not to happen. The problem is, the “vision of happiness” is often an aspect of the continued suffering in the first place!

I am reminded again of the role that “learned helplessness” plays in our lives and our inner sense of self-contempt. That way we have things before us that require our effort and attention, and that frozen-in-amber feeling where we can’t find any good feeling associated with doing what needs to be done. And then the way that we avoid what’s before us, and then live with a daily feeling of things hanging over our heads. And then how we then don’t feel free to fully be in the moments of our days. And then the “inner failure feeling” that then starts to create a chronic feeling of self-reproach and wounded self-esteem. This whole pattern throws of us off in our lives… and at its worst, can leave us feeling like we barely have a life at all.

Coping with vulnerability and the threat of vulnerability is a fulcrum around which our lives revolve. It is also at the heart of difficulty in many marital relationships because one person’s strategy towards safety are often anything but safe for the other. Two strategies, in particular, stand out. Some among us will tend to feel safer in a relationship when they have a sense of an escape hatch or exit which reassures them that they will not be trapped in a relationship situation that hurts them. In essence, they are not reassured by the other, they are reassured by their ability to leave.
This is in contrast to others who are reassured by assurances that no one is going anywhere, that we are in this together, for better or worse. For persons of this ilk, their partner’s holding onto the exit is predictably intensely threatening. Commonly they will respond to this sense of threat with escalating or confrontive behavior, which is actually a young attempt to get their more distancing partner to come forward and reassure them. The opposite typically happens, with the distanced partner becoming more distant and self-protective. This kind of conflict is often at the heart of a couples negative cycle. Both begin to see the other as emotionally dangerous. And both seldom see that it is actually the same at the heart of it for both in the relationship… the overriding need to feel safe, only two different ways of creating the feeling both want.

Sitting in a cafe, I noticed myself drawn towards someone else in the cafe who happened to remind me of my first love 45 years ago. I instantly banished and shut down my thoughts, noticing that my creative flow instantly shut down as well. I tried to recover my original feeling but could not. Sitting with my thoughts as I ate my breakfast I became aware… “oh, this is the stuff of psychoanalysis, inner conflict.” Part of me was drawn to that person I glimpsed in the cafe, and another part of me felt threatened by my feelings of attraction. My defensive system instantly shut down my feelings of attraction, leaving me momentarily numb. Opposing impulses, internal conflict, and defenses is the raw stuff of psychoanalysis… and one of it’s many contributions to psychotherapy in general. I found myself musing about how this contribution squares with current day attachment-based psychotherapy. And, of course, it didn’t escape my notice that I coped with the emotional conflict through the well-worn defensive pathway of “intellectualization.” (to be continued)