As couples therapy progresses, and two people begin to get along better… each partner, typically, is careful not to say or do things that are going to trigger their partner. At the same time both partners in the marriage work within their own individual selves to manage their own vulnerable propensity to get triggered. This all happens as security in the marriage grows and open communication has come to replace the negative cycle. Negative moments are increasingly taken as “misdemeanors” and not as “felonies.” Partners work both not to offend or to be easily offended. 

There is a particular way each of us wants to be appreciated… a way that is personal to us. This gets so buried in the negative cycle it seldom gets heard. Typically what the other person hears is something negative, something along the lines of how the other fails to appreciate! The desire ends up coupled with criticism, and seldom gets lovingly taken in by the other. This then sets off a negative cycle in place of an important sharing that could bring the couple much closer. As the therapy evolves there are valuable moments when each in the marriage has the opportunity to vulnerably speak the particular appreciation they long for. When this is shared in a vulnerable as opposed to blaming way, the chances of positive reception and significant healing are very high!

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.