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.
