We all carry within us emotional sensitivities… psychological wounds where we have felt abandoned, rejected, misunderstood, devalued or shamed in our attachment histories. Following Sue Johnson, we refer to these emotional injuries as “raw spots.” Typically, we carry the hope within that the support and safety with our primary partner will heal our raw spots… it is painfully disillusioning for so many of us to discover that it is precisely our partner who most triggers these raw spots within. (to be cont)

After many decades of working with couples I have come across a significant minority of situations where persons in the role of pursuers or avoiders in one relationship, switch these roles in succeeding relationships. A person might be a pursuer in one relationship but an avoider in a subsequent relationship, and visa versa. This contrast is pause for reflection… as it challenges the notion of pursuing/avoiding as personality traits and points to the two types as external adaptations to varied relationship situations. (to be continued)

Most pursuers live with an inner experience of compelling inner need towards their partner. Commonly, in their pursuing they seek emotional response and rapport. Not uncommonly, they are partnered with someone who is not connected-up with their need for empathic response from their partner. These individuals can, in fact, be very attached, but have difficulty speaking from their heart to their partner. It is this difference that is at the core of the marriage-of-opposites.

This is the simplest picture, but things can be more complicated than this. Some pursuers have “burned out” with disappointment in their partner’s response to them and have become closed to their own longing to reach for the other. These shut-down pursuers can become detached and withdrawn from their less emotionally wired partner. Sometimes, at first glance at the beginning of therapy, a couple can look like a detached-detached marriage, and only after time does it become obvious that one is, in fact, a pursuer underneath the shutdown. 

Likewise, emotional avoiders generally not in touch with their own vulnerability, can become overwhelmed with vulnerability when things in real outer world have gone awry… leaving them feeling painfully anxious about failure in their outer world. For avoiders, the experience of the anxiety is typically more about the fear of not being on top of things in their real life, in contrast to pursuers whose anxiety is generally about the presence or absence of heartfelt contact with their partner. What avoiders do seek from their partner, however, and it is typically highly important to them… is a sense that their partner deeply appreciates them for what they have done and accomplished. 

The EFT Process in First Sessions

Commonly EFT couples therapy begins with a question such as “what is hard between the two of you?” or “how are you both hurting?” or “what is happening between you?” The point is to begin to bring forth how the relationship dance goes… and the process of the “negative cycles” in the marriage.

Next, I ask the couple to give me an instance or two where this negative cycle has happened. With each specific instance, I go into granular detail… “you said this, the other said that, and you responded how, and how did the other respond to that, etc.” I want to get down the dance steps of exactly how the negative cycle unfolds. Even these beginning questions tend to be organizing of a couples’ marital experience, and this commonly provide some relief… and hope! This sorting out the negative cycle is a process that will be repeated many times over the course of the therapy. Laying out the negative cycle in all of the numerous hard moments in the marriage, becomes a skeleton upon which to hang/guide the therapy. Commonly in EFT, it is customary to video or audio record the session so as to be able to study exactly how the back and forth interaction goes. 

As I mirror back to the couple the dance steps of their cycle I begin to include and inquire about the feelings inside for each partner. “They said this, you responded with this, but what were you feeling inside that drove your response?” I begin to supplement the back and forth responding from each partner by inviting a sharing of what the feelings are inside, and how the reactive responding is driven by the feelings inside.

Commonly, the feeling inside is driven by some sense of threat, and I point out how the negative behaviors are attempted self-protection of the threatened feeling inside. In doing so, I highlight the understandability of how the threatened feeling inside gives rise to the particular defensive behaviors in each partner.

Commonly, in these early meetings, whenever possible, I highlight the positive intentions present in each partner… the positive intentions that gets lost, misunderstood, and not recognized in the negative cycle.

As the sessions progress, I begin to spend more time with each partner probing into and organizing the emotional feelings inside. In this process, following the seminal works of John Bowlby and Sue Johnson, the emotional triggers within each partner are traceable to “attachment injuries and insecurity” both earlier in life and in the marriage. Sue Johnson, in particular, has highlighted how, at the core of things, both partners are filled with attachment seeking and longing. That attachment is the motor that drives couples to be together… but also that attachment is inherently vulnerable, thereby leaving couples’ easily triggered, ready to go into defense… and that defense begets defense, resulting in the negative cycle. 

In these early sessions we begin to discern the difference between the defensive behaviors of the cycle, and the emotional trigger that happens underneathe. Unpacking for each partner what is threatened and triggered inside begins to activate empathy within each partner for the other, empathy in place of the negative cycle. Images of the other as rejecting or attacking begin to be counterbalanced begin to be replaced by well-meaning images of the other as vulnerable, fearful and defended.

Note, I have increasing found it valuable to have a one-on-one session with each partner in the first weeks of the couples therapy. This provides me a special opportunity to better understand the triggering process within each partner in the marriage, and how the respective life histories contribute to triggering vulnerability. These individual meetings, which will happen periodically throughout the therapy, allow me to support each partner in understanding and grappling with their own triggering process. In this vein, I ask each partner to begin to formulate an individual project, which is theirs to work on… that will ultimately feed back into the marriage in a positive way. This lends itself to two vectors of healing in the marriage: one, the healing of the negative cycle between the partners, and two, the healing within each partner in relationship to their own emotional injuries inside. The tying together of these two vectors of healing deepens the EFT work, and better guarantees that the benefits of the therapy will last a lifetime. More about this later!

Targeted Followups

There are moments in eft therapy with couples that valuable new understandings start to emerge in the couples sessions, but still provide only a delicate glimmer of new ways of being or thinking about the marriage. Targeted followup conversations with each partner can provide an essential bit of additional support to consolidate these new behaviors and new narratives. These targeted conversations can provide a more granular understanding that can be powerfully tailored to each partner in the marriage. They enable a deeper integration between healing couples growth with the individual psychodynamics/historical injuries and immaturities within each partner.