Relationships

I go through phases, depending upon what’s happening in my personal life, with my clients, and probably with the moon. Recently, I’ve been dealing with several tough marital couples who are experiencing problems with their relationships. Thus, I’ve been spending time pondering both on relationships and how two people communicate, or not, with each other.

Firstly, I believe very strongly in the overwhelming importance of open communication in a relationship. One book written for therapists, which elucidates many inchoate beliefs that I hold to be true, is a book called Successful Marriage by W. Robert Beavers.

One quotation, which I like from this book states, “To be successful in intimate relationships one must be reasonably open and honest, have equal power, and resolve rather than ignore differences”.

I even wrote that one on the small blackboard in my previous MHMR office, which invited comments from the other professionals with whom I work. More than one therapist commented that the quote was accurate in emphasizing reasonably honest, as total honesty can be destructive to a relationship.

However, I believe in being very open in a relationship. If something is bothering one member of a couple, affecting how she/he relates to the other, then that content is “seeping out around the edges” anyway. However, if there are skeletons in the past that are “finished business”, dredging them up so that there are no secrets is probably going to be more destructive than beneficial to the relationship. “Oh, by the way, I’ve been having an affair with the neighbor, but it’s over now”. Even in the Twelve Step program, we talk about making amends when to do so would cause no further harm.

What happens often in a troubled marital relationship is that an angry spouse will strike back with what should be “finished business” out of the past to hurt the other in the midst of a heated argument. It is important to learn how to fight fairly and not to go for the jugular vein or “hit below the belt”. Reopening old wounds is not fighting fair.

Learning to own one’s feelings and ask for what you need rather than assuming your partner should read your mind is very important. For example, a wife might say, “I’m feeling very insecure right now since you’ve been spending so much time at work. Although it’s just probably my crazy thinking, I keep flashing back to when you had that affair with the neighbor ten years ago. Now I know you’ve told me nothing like that has happened since, and mostly I believe you, but I’ve begun to think about it again since I’m spending more time without you around. How about if we make it a point to do something special this weekend to reassure me you still love me? I feel I really need that right now”.

Now such talk probably sounds pretty idealistic for most married people reading this column, but even a fraction of that can go a long way towards resolving emerging or re-emerging problems in a relationship. Also, it is important to remember that people can love and hate, or experience any other two dialectical emotions, at the same time. We are by nature emotionally ambivalent creatures and that is okay.

Another interesting thought from Successful Marriage goes as follows:

“Spouses usually desire divorce for the same reasons they desired marriage. The same behavior patterns of the partner that attracted are those most apt to be attacked in later years. I think this is because we tend to marry in an effort to finesse the need for growing up. If I am shy, perhaps my outgoing lover can carry my social needs; if I am always on stage, aggressive and histrionic, perhaps my quiet, sensitive lover can feed the constant hunger for attention within me. But as years go by, it becomes apparent that the other person’s attributes are not satisfying the internal emptiness; marriage is no protection against the requirement to grow up”.

My primary theoretical orientation used to be that of a family therapist. Basically what that means is that I did not isolate one individual for treatment, even in individual therapy, but rather focused upon the impact, which significant others had on him/her. Family therapists believe that an individual seeks out a relationship with another individual at about the same level of “differentiation” or emotional maturity. If one person in an intimate dyad grows, then the other must follow suite, or the growing person will leave the relationship sooner or later.

In the past few years I have been working with many women who have “outgrown” their husbands. Usually these are homemakers who were emotionally and financially dependent upon their husbands and busy rearing children for the first several years of their marriage. They allowed the marriage to isolate them in a way that, at least they felt, stultified their emotional growth. But then, usually when they were in there 30’s or 40’s, these women began to feel restless and empty, to feel as if there was something out there that they were missing out on. They are no longer satisfied with their old role in the home, especially once all the children left home for college, or even started kindergarten.

If, through the years of marriage, the couple have worked at maintaining open channels of communication, the probabilities of successfully resolving these restless feelings are good. That’s assuming both people have a great deal of patience, and restlessness is antithetical to patience. I’ve said before that even good relationships go through tumultuous periods, which may last several months, even into years. But as long as both people want to resolve their differences, or as is more like to be the case, manifest a great deal of mixed feelings about ending the relationship, I’ll tell them, and help them, to “hang in there”.

Unfortunately, what usually happens is that the woman decides she cannot share important feelings with her husband. He symbolizes the stagnation of their marriage. He is the oppressor who has limited her growth. Then she turns to someone else, usually a lover or a therapist, and sorely needed communication between the two married people dwindles to a trickle.

In summary, sharing good times, bad times, doubts, successes, if necessary scheduling times to just sit and look at each other, if no one has anything to say, are valuable steps to maintaining a good relationship. Secondly, “honesty is a policy”. Openness should not be used as a weapon to hurt each other. Thirdly, patience is a real virtue. Divorce is like committing suicide; it’s always an option, but once you do it you can’t take it back.