When interacting within the marriage-of-opposites, each in the relationship is generally in an interacting calibration process with the other typically in relation to a variable sense of anxiety/threat. The core-styled typically calibrates outward… how much more do I need to raise the intensity/volume? The outer-styled typically calibrates inward… how much more do I need to pull back interaction/engagement?

Leaving unaddressed for the moment, the reasons why opposites so often marry, it is generally true that the most painful moments in marriage-of-opposites happen during “conflict escalation.” While the baseline differences in the marriage-of-opposites are discouraging enough, it is primarily in the experiences of escalation that the relationship begins to feel impossible and evoking of feelings of intense anger, hate, agony and fear. By the time most couples come into therapy they have already acquired a long history of destructive relating at this escalated level. 

There are three initial goals that are worthy to keep in mind in the first half of the marital healing process, and they bear repeating over time. They are the marital version of “keeping the eye on the ball.” 

These three goals are interwoven. The first is to learn how to reduce the frequency of marital escalations. The second is to reduce the intensity of the escalations when they do occur. The third is to recover from the escalations faster once they have occurred. Creating progress in these three areas is generally a prerequisite for the deeper marital healing to come latter in therapy.

A useful understanding for couples to meditate on is that the “escalated relationship” is not a true measure of the “real relationship;” that the value or lack of value inherent in the “real relationship” is only discoverable when escalation has been inhibited, and then and only then, is it possible to discern who our partner is, who we are, and the essential nature of our being together. 

Nothing growing can happen within a couple until one or both in the relationship makes the shift from reacting to responding. It is only when two people are responding to each other that there are two individuals available to talk to each other. To be an individual within a couples experience requires a degree of self-possession and a degree of being able to bear the other. It is only when we can bear the other that we are then able to truly communicate, otherwise we are in some form of automatic reacting, some form of fight or flight, domination and control. To “bear the other” requires the presence of “potential space” within; that is, an inner experience where we can experience a range of possible responses to the other, rather than a singular reaction. The mature experience of “potential space” generally leads towards a “dual empathy” towards the experience of the other as well as the self. In responding rather than reacting, ones actions are then altered by this “knowing of self and other,” and are adjusted to some form of constructive intention. 

Generally, life is sweetest when both in a relationship have grown the capacity to respond rather than react. However, it is not uncommon that one in a relationship has grown this capacity in advance of the other. Though not optimal, the presence of potential space within even one in a marriage can hugely facilitate constructive and positive relating in the relationship, though at some cost to the more capable partner. This is a “stepping up” process for the partner capable of “holding and bearing the other” that is often times painful because it requires this person to relinquish their own infantile longings in the relationship, in favor of “making the best of what is” in the relationship. To recommend it, the long-term benefits that can follow from such the “mature stepping-up” stance are huge, not the least of which is our partner’s eventual growth of their own capacity to bear, hold, and love the other.

As a practical matter, or perhaps as a kind of spiritual practice, it is a good thing for each in the marriage to practice “stepping up/holding & bearing the other” irrespective of whatever their partner does or does not do; that the covenant in the marriage is even more a covenant with the self within. Paradoxically this tends to create the best “interacting/relationalness/thereness” within marriage. 

For so many of us, intersubjectivity is what we most seek in marriage, and is that which eludes us the most. Intersubjectivity is the experience of two people in true rapport, true shared understanding, the true sense of being on the same psychological page together. What I have in mind here is “mature intersubjectivity”, wherein both persons are psychologically seperate and distinct, but come together out of combination of both empathy and accurate representation of personal differences. This is a related but very different experience from “immature intersubjectivity” which is based on fusion, overidealization, romantic fantasy, infatuation, and projection; a coming together of sameness that includes little or no representation of individual differences.

In most marriages that I have studied, the experience of intersubjectivity is so long sought, and yet so seldom found. Why? What’s the deal here? More precisely, what is the process of failed rapport? 

To begin with, it is my experience that most marital partners feel good intentioned about what they bring to the marriage. Additionally, most partners feel hurt and rejected by a partner who does not recognise their good intentions, but instead recognises their failings. It appears that things break down somewhere between the underlying seeking of recognition for ones good intentions on the one hand, an underlying attitude that both partners carry, and… the fact that neither partner very often gives the other partner the particular recognition they are seeking. This common situation has the quality of “sticky enmeshment.”

The “sticky enmeshment” involves the degree to which both in the marriage are not fully seperated individuals in their interactions with each other, or are easily thrown off from their individualities by the stresses of daily of living. In large part, the enmeshment is driven by a way that one or both partners is actively in need of some form of “supportive acknowledgment” from the other throughout the day. It seems that both partners unconsciously seek the supportive acknowledgment as their primary means of fending off feelings of shame/badness/undesireablity that each unconsciously carries from within. What appears to happen instead is that each partner feels supported in their shame by the other, rather than in their value.

There is another aspect to this situation of mutual need that is not met. That is, each partner unconsciously seeks to feel supported in their anxieties, or in “that which threatens” by the other. Note that often this need is left unconscious because each in the marriage has their own reasons for not even wanting to talk or be aware of these anxieties; as if to talk of “that which threatens” makes the anxieties more threatening. Nevertheless, unconsciously, each expects support from the other. And again, somehow, each gets far less support than they truly need.

There is some way that not being able to master “that which threatens” on the outside is intertwined with an interior “that which threatens” shame on the inside. (to be continued)

It is crucially important for the core-styled to grow the capacity to contain their aggression/anger/outrage in relation to their more avoidant outer-styled partner. This, of course, entails learning to manage feelings of disappointment and to reign in the tendency towards emotional escalation, all of which go to the heart of the core-styled’s personal project within the marriage-of-opposites.

The hard part to all of this is that improvements in emotional containment on the core-styled’s part do not necessarilly guarantee that the outer-styled partner will become emotionally present and available. It does, however, contribute to an emotional environment wherein emotional availability may eventually emerge, especially if both in the marriage are assisted by a therapeutic process.