As I have commented elsewhere in this blog, eft interventions create not only an improved sense of contact with one’s primary partner, but also an improved sense of differentiated identity within the primary relationship. That is, unpacking the negative cycle down to the the essential feelings underneath, not only reconnects a couple to the attachment feelings that bring them together, It also reveals to each partner where they are with themselves within the relationship. What eft brings to couples therapy is not only a profoundly powerful method/technology for working/bringing down the negative cycle between two partners… but also a process for two people to not only sort out what is happening deeply inside themselves, but even more… to share this vulnerable inside-truth with their partner. To open up rather than fight.
What I wish to emphasize here – is that this process is most healing when partners move back and forth between what is happening between, with what is happening within; that there is a conversation happening not only with ones partner but also with oneself, and that both conversations are evolving. As I have said elsewhere in this blog, with regards to the conversation with oneself, it is most helpful for each in the marriage to conceive of their conversation with themselves as “their personal project.”
To make a “personal project” out of self-reflection implies a “certain taking responsibility” for oneself to do that inner probing and sorting out, irrespective of whether one’s partner clamors for it. This is not where many couples begin eft couples therapy, but it is where the therapy best comes to its close. In a way, the sorting out of oneself – and the sharing of each step along the way with ones partner – this is the biggest gift that one can bring to a marriage.
For two years now I have been facilitating an ongoing weekly men’s group designed along EFT lines. With one exception, all the men in this group are in eft couples therapy outside of the group. Two years into the group’s existence, the therapeutic benefits of the group have been remarkably positive.
To begin with, the group has become a rare environment where men can talk and open up about the challenges of their marital relationships within the context of eft couples therapy. This is an absolutely unique environment of cultural-therapeutic support, coming from outside of the marriage, for work within the marriage – this, in a western culture where men tend to be hugely isolated in the face of marital hurt and difficulty.
The group is composed of eight men, along with me as the lone facilitator. As in all other men’s groups that I have facilitated, the men were largely outer-styled avoiders in relationship with core-styled pursuing wives. At the beginning of the group there was a great deal of mutual comiseration about the challenge of pursuing, expressive wives who were experienced as overwhelming and “impossible.” Although the mutual support was valuable in terms of ending isolation, it was not helpful to the extent that it supported male tribalism and a sense of their more emotional wives as “bad” objects. Over months and persistent psycho-education on my part, the groups culture shifted out of polarization… into a much more balanced exploration of the marriage-of-opposites, and their own part in activating and continuing the negative cycles, Over time, a great deal of empathy for vulnerable emotional wives has taken up residence in the room.
As the group has progressed over the months, defensive devaluing of partners has greatly diminished, and has given way to a sense of each man having a precious relationship to be cared for.
Of late, I have been struggling to work through negative cycles highly resistant to change. In particular, I have begun to focus upon the “key shift” that each partner needs to make that would allow them to feel less defensive/threatened by their partner’s behavior. With this in mind, I have begun to explore following up the eft sessions with brief individual phone sessions, with this or that partner, specifically to further tease apart and unpack why they continue to feel threatened by their partners behavior.
Communication is the primary potentiating and limiting factor in the healing of the marriage-of-opposites. As a rule of thumb, when we don’t know how to say a “certain something” that “certain something” does not get shared, or it comes out in a negative cycle way. Beyond that, when we do not have a sense of how to speak a feeling inside, or a need… the inner experience inside remains global, under-differentiated, inarticulate and poorly sorted out. If we do not know how to speak of something… we hardly know how to think about/consider/or feel that something – much less even begin to share it with someone else. Commonly, avoiders in this situation learn to repress/suppress what they are truly feeling inside; in essence they learn “not to go there,” and so much of what is felt inside never gets shared with others or even themselves. Pursuers, on the other hand, can end up repeatedly trying to communicate their feelings/needs inside but do so in a global, emotionally-infused way that threatens or scares off their partner. The acquisition of languaging skills that are both expressive and considerate of the other is a central task of eft couples therapy.
At some level inside each partner in the negative cycle is in some form of protest towards the other. On the outside the protest appears reactive and defensive. On the inside, the partner in protest is trying to maintain “a certain fidelity” to who they are inside. The problem is that the protest gets all wrapped up in the negative cycle and is not a functional sharing/communication of what is inside. It is the longing for connection all covered over with defense and self-protection. An opening to vulnerable expression is the only solution to this. By hook or crook, safety must first be created in order for underlying vulnerability to open out.
