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.
