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Last edit of this page 23/09/2011

Careers and companies (and relationships) succeed or fail, gradually then suddenly, one conversation at a time. Susan Scott

Competitors for our daily time are far more assertive than we are about our marriage. Doherty

Home

Everyone needs a safe harbor, a place to go for refuge and someone to confide in, a person to whom they matter. Some refuse this human longing for connection. Some have never experienced it, so dare not hope.

Every day, however, all of us find that a quality of personal attention is one of the rarest things in a busy life. Most people most of the time do not ask questions of each other that invite a self-searching reply.

'How are you?' or 'What do you think?' is rarely given with an open, generous attention. A look as if gazing at a sunset rather than staring down a problem to be fixed. To receive that quality of attention is like a fresh, sea breeze on a stifling hot day. Like sitting in front of a fire as it snows outside.

These are sweet times being heard and understood. Of being known.

In a time poor life we put aside the questions and our inner-most answers until later, when we tell ourselves there will be plenty of time. We don't make the time to understand our own mental map of the world let alone that of our partners until we have to.

In the rush we overlook the predictable imbalance inherent in life - the 80:20 rule. In almost every endeavor, 20% of effort delivers 80% of the result. However, the common error is to spend 80% of our time on in-essentials that deliver only 20% of the bottom line.

Consider the 80:20 rule (the Pareto principle) applied to a couple and you get a sense of the hurdles people jump every day that misses their relationship sweet spot.

Differences

He wants physical touch, she gives words of affirmation. She wants words of affirmation, he gives acts of service. She wants quality time, he gives gifts. Source

One common source of difference arises from thinking that your love language is the same as theirs.

Usually this ends up as 'you just don't understand me' and 'you don't listen to what I really want, which I show by the things I give you.'

Here is a quiz to help you assess your love language.

Gender difference

From birth, baby girls are generally more sensitive to isolation and lack of contact. Two week old girl's cry louder and more vigorously than do boys in response to a mild pain stimulus. Apart from being socialized not to feel or show pain or fear, men generally struggle to understand their female partner's pain because men respond differently to pain stimuli from day one.

Boy babies generally startle five times more frequently than do girl babies and in response to a much lower threshold of stimulus. Boys generally have hair trigger responses and thus risk being hyper-aroused. At a basic physiological level boys guard against the discomfort of over stimulation, much as girl babies guard against the discomfort of isolation.

Consequently boy babies generally prefer intermittent doses of eye contact whilst girl babies generally soak up eye contact. You might recognize this in the different responses of men and women to the invitation to talk closely. Men's guarded, looking away is not a lack of interest. All the research shows that men want a closer and deeper emotional connection with their partners just as much as women but not if they have to act like a woman.

Talking makes men move away and women move closer.

When men feel connected they talk more.

Love is not about better communication. It's about connection.

There are four ways to connect with a man: touch, activity, sex, routines.

You'll never get a closer relationship with your man by talking to him like you talk to one of your girlfriends.

Male emotions are like women's sexuality: you can't be too direct too quickly.

The above information and quotes are from: "How To improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It" by Love and Stosny. Recommended reading. The two chapters entitled: 'the worse thing a woman does to a man - shaming' and 'the worst thing a man does to a woman - leaving her alone but married' might ring some bells for couple therapists and their clients.

 

The drama of couple therapy

A couple who have generally spoken to each other as if they are seated across a boardroom table are flushed and on the edge of their seats.

"Oh yeah," she shouts, "I'll take the money I brought into the marriage and bank it in my own slush fund."

"Sure," he screams, "and I'll put you on an allowance."

"N0 , you'll be paying alimony, you jerk!"

The next week, each reports that they pulled back from the brink and recognized what they'd be sacrificing if they lost their marriage. He says,

"We've very rarely argued like that, and it was really weird to have someone else watching."

This example is not meant to convey a vision of therapeutic sensationalism. What I hope it captures is the intensity of an interpersonal enactment, suspended in time. I as therapist am witness and director and protagonist, because I have provided the proscenium and participated in the process. I hope to illustrate in this paper the usefulness of a dramatic metaphor for the therapeutic action of couples therapy. Mary-Joan Gerson Source

Exits from intimacy

‘Australia is still a largely Anglo-Saxon country, and the inherent stoicism of that race has been shaped and hardened through successive generations until it lodges in most men like some mineral deposit. Australian men don’t talk, except at the pub, and they share little, if anything, of themselves. The story of Bali, 12 October 2002, and the Kingsley Football Club is that this trait has been dissolved, because no man who came back, or lost someone there, could possibly keep that pain to himself.'

In Australia, the majority of the decisions to end a heterosexual relationship are made by the women.

Increasingly I am meeting men, some with their mate's (both girl and guy mates) and others with on-line support, unilaterally deciding to end a relationship.

Many times the deciding partner has lost interest or passion for the relationship (for any number of reasons) over a long period. Not months but years. Some believe they can quietly fix it on their own without a meaningful conversation, and so don't put up a red flag to signal their intended silent fix.

This conveys no warning of the inevitable crisis that follows a withdrawal from collaborative problem solving.

Example 1: a cautionary tale

Angus was in a low conflict relationship with Angela. They had been together for 15 years. Four years before coming to couple therapy, he had studied a book about how to work out whether to stay or leave a relationship.

He didn't tell her what was in his mind.

When she found out, Angela was flabbergasted that he had even been thinking about leaving for the last four years. There was no one else in his head or in his bed except perhaps the idea of how it could be.

He had not shared that dream either.

They were both busy people with deep commitments to social justice in their careers.

She was furious with herself (and with him) for not having known the state of her marriage. Like someone had died in her hands without feeling it.

He was wracked with guilt and grief that he couldn't make his heart do what he wanted it to do. Could not stop the pain of his decision to leave. Could not make himself feel in love with her. He wasn't even sure if he liked her. He hated the predicament but couldn't go on denying it.

Both felt the injustice of his coup de grâce - a mercy killing.

Angela wanted to be given a chance to right it.

It was too late for him.

Contrary to the dictum - love never fails, I was reminded of the line nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold. Being unable to make his heart want her, was un-bearable.

To be so unwanted was a daily, hourly torture for her.

So he had decided, by himself, to leave. It was either death or divorce for him.

He had tried anti-depressants but that wasn't the problem in his heart.

They had tried a separation to see if that would help but the courtship didn't begin anew.

He just didn't want her.

He had sometimes reached a place of serenity in the four years of weighing the pros and cons.

She just wanted to kill him hearing how he had come to this decision without her.

Partners in these situations say things like, "I hate you. I never want to see you again. Get out of my life. Don't ever come into our home again - I just couldn't bear it. I wish you were dead. It would be easier."

The sessions with them were - excruciating! Eviscerating. Reminiscent of this Francis Bacon portrait.

They had come too late to turn it around. But they had children to consider.

She pleaded with him: 'How did it come to this? Why couldn't you tell me. Was I so unapproachable? You blamed me for being harsh on the kids and now you're hurting them so much more by leaving us. I don't know what else to do? Tell me what should I do?

There was a useless historical answer to her anguished questions. Over time they had avoided psychological intimacy by using these rules on:-

how to avoid intimacy

• don't talk
• never show your feelings
• always be pleasant
• always be right
• never argue
• make others guess what you want
• keep busy and
• keep the TV/computer on. Source

The five top regrets of the dying underlines the cost of these rules at the end of life.

For example regret number 3.

I wish I had the courage to express my feelings. Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.

We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win. Source

More on site about mending a broken relationship, and about ending a relationship with love and dignity.

More usual than this unilateral decision to leave, is the partner who decided to leave only after having approached the other to come for help many times in the past.

They had been greeted and/or perceived they were met by a variety of No's like withholding or withdrawal; angry denials; blame; cynicism; proud self-sufficiency or self-righteousness; rubbishing counselling or the idea that 'talking to someone' was a solution. (You will read on that 'rubbishing' link my concerns about the impact of counseling/therapy in a troubled marriage. You can read on this link that communication training is not a proven solution either.)

So they eventually gave up asking.

Then they gave up hoping.

Then one or both come to therapy as a last resort, after the horse has bolted.

Meeting clients at this point in their power struggle, I think how did you avoid a regular check in on the health of your relationship?

Answer: follow the rules above!

Try these quizzes to jog your thinking on compatibility; the big three; the pre-marriage traits and the 15 item relationship quiz on site.

Partners who are left as a result of a decision by their partners including the 'He's Just Not That Into You' thing, can feel completely baffled by the other's choice to exclude them from the process that took them to the decision.

'I thought we were a team.'

They go back and search the trail that led there.

They grab at explanations like hormone imbalance; mid-life crisis; depression or affairs; mental illness; personality disorder; addictions and that 'useless counsellor you see each week on your own'. Any of those and more, may be part of the problem.

However, more often than not, truth is they structured their lives to avoid intimacy using the rules above.

Going for help

To one degree or another, most couples in a power struggle structure their lives in such a way that true intimacy is virtually impossible. The differing ways couples find to do this is often ingenious.

Sometimes the things they do seem "natural" or unavoidable because couples are frequently in denial about why they don't spend time with one another. Most often, however, couples are not really conscious about why they do what they do. From an exercise on exits from intimacy on site.

Going for help is best preceded by choosing a competent couple's therapist.

Here's my best guidance on how to do that.

Please consider that guidance

It has come from many years of experience both as a provider and a consumer.

 

Example 2

Ed agreed to do anything to save his marriage following a penultimate crisis of Dena's.

She said, 'I give up! It's over', whilst calmly packing some clothes, her laptop and walking out of the house.

This followed another blow up and her previous attempts 'trying to get through to him'.

Ed was rattled. This time she had got through to him. Finally out in the car, they sat down and really talked.

He told her that for months he had been thinking about hanging himself in the garage.

This was totally out of left field for her. Shocked, speechless for a moment, she felt simultaneously responsible and disgusted with his revelation.

Torn between empathy and outrage, she couldn't stop the explosion of: 'where the kids would find you, you f... b...?!!!!!!!'

Ed was suffering from clinical depression and neither knew it though both knew of depression - the wall to wall media coverage had not escaped them. Applying it to themselves had.

He came, or perhaps was dragged into our first session unwilling to take a seat for the first five minutes, suspended between fight, flight and frozen. Both had survived ghastly childhoods and then wild young adulthoods, acting out the damage of their parents' legacy, and making it worse.

Over time they had done an incredible job mending the mess of their lives, building a business and managing a family of seven kids - two and three from previous marriages and two babes of their own.

They were successful, intelligent, articulate, fiercely independent and aware - contradicting the myths about people who seek help from shrinks.

Yet incredibly, neither had sought help during or after the breakdowns of previous relationships nor in forming this one. They used the 'go it alone' strategy.

They came with Ed defined as 'having the problem'.

However, each knew they as a couple were in trouble within themselves but wouldn't own up to it.

Automatically we deny our inside view of hurt or broken, and focus instead on the more compelling scene of the damage we do and is done to the relationship.

That's like a hidden or an inner relationship power struggle.

It requires great courage and honesty to expose the vulnerable and tender parts of ourselves. 'The paradox of how we become more whole by acknowledging our parts.' These guys had that courage in spades but they needed a safe place and a method to explore tenderness together.

From reading my web site, Dena had understood that couple's therapy was one of the most effective treatments for depression and better than medication:

The research project has affirmed our perception of the complex interweaving of contexts - social, political, economic, cultural, gender, class, individual - interactions that shape the experience labeled as depression. During the second year, without any treatment, the depressed individuals who had taken part in couple therapy remained less depressed than those who had taken antidepressant drugs. London Depression Intervention Trial. More from the UK on this bio psychosocial jigsaw.

Dena was the pursuer and Ed the withrawer. She feared isolation and pursued him to talk. He hated conflict, feeling ashamed when it broke out and so withdrew. The demon dance ran the show. The pattern was the problem. Just like the boy girl differences at birth, the physiological differences reinforced their disconnection - he managing shame by averting his eyes and she managing fear of isolation by pursuing closeness.

Example 3

Piglet sidled up to Pooh, "Pooh?" asked Piglet.
"Yes", answered Pooh, taking Piglet's hand.
"Oh nothing", said Piglet, " I just wanted to be sure of you."

'We need help because you won't listen', said Jane

'We need help because you won't admit you need help', John replies.

It is not obvious but this is John and Jane's method of being sure of each other.

Of course it doesn't work to bring them closer but neither does it separate them despite the threats.

John drags Jane to the session after another crisis following one of her frequent threats to leave.

Previous attempts to get help in their situation replayed the competitive, finger pointing control issues that had dogged their relationship for years.

They were polarized into the extremes of role driven behavior and the 'I'm right, you're wrong' stonewalling of competitive argument.

Jane's vacillating approaches to get him to change seemed to move the goal posts. One day it was 'sit down and show some curiosity about my life'. Another day it was 'you don't have any friends and you need them'. In a sense, having already threatened to leave the relationship, she was waiting for him to accept her decision in the face of his failing the next goal post test, or until their kids were a bit older or the mortgage to be smaller.

Incompetent couple's therapy in those circumstances would have turned into another power struggle to get John to accept that it was over.

All her complaints frustrated his attempts to comply with the immediate issue and to remedy the bigger issues that had decided the fate of their relationship in her mind.

It stifled spontaneity and honesty because any partner threatened with abandonment, will feel too scared to say or do anything that might prove to be the wrong thing when faced with the partner's next move of the goal post. One of her complaints was that he was too rigid. Catch 22.

So he came to therapy angry and she came with the 'so fix him' attitude. My initial job was to name this as a crazy-making power struggle.

The pattern is the problem

Both had contribute to the mess with predictable, separation engendering patterns in an otherwise functional relationship. They were great parents; had many close friends; had intelligence, love and commitment!

Like many of the couples who consult me, Jane and John were perceived by friends as an ideal couple.

How is this possible?

It's more than just window dressing. The couples depicted above were pillars of strength in their friendship and community networks.

Their private selves, however, were not shared openly.

What they thought they did in relationships and what they actually did were two different things.

The unconscious relationship:

Most of our actions and inactions are decided in the back of our mind before we become aware of them. Our public persona, and our private and our secret selves create cross currents of contradictions and ambiguities. These three selves make for a number of versions of reality or explanations for our behavior after the fact. They often feature in our internal dialogue.

This chapter from the book John Cleese on Families may give you a laugh and some insight into this issue.

Not all of those selves are mapped accurately by oneself or one's partner.

We think we know some of our beloved's secrets and later discover that we didn't really get the significance or enormity of it in their life.

Then quite suddenly, we wake up to the impact of it in our relationship and its effect over time.

Typical examples are having had an abusive alcoholic or a problem gambler parent; having a sibling with major developmental or psychiatric problems; having had sexual interference or molestation as a child; having to keep a secret from one or other parents, and early traumatic loss of place, of a sibling or parent.

We even keep secrets from ourselves, con ourselves and sometimes lie to ourselves.

Too often we only hear what we assume the other is going to say in response to our concerns, not what they actually think or even have said. This cascades quickly into arguing about assumptions of what is in the other's head or what the other really meant.

Both end up not feeling heard.

In my view of those arguments, it is more effective to admit at the outset, 'I assume you are going to say/think this in response to what I am about to say', than to short circuit their response with a pre-emptive response to what you had already assumed they would say.

It can get so normal, that one will swear on the bible that the other did say or think what they had assumed they would say or think before they even said or thought anything. This may also be one of a number of memory biases like source confusion (did I hear it, think it or say it).

Sounds crazy?

You would not believe dear reader, how common an argument pattern this is, usually so nuanced and subtle that it buries the underlying power struggle from view.

Example 4

Another kind of assumption is this: Gabby was dumbfounded in a session that her partner Steve of 25 years, did not know her father had been a violent alcoholic who physically abused her as a child.

She had had that discussion with Steve in her head so many times she swore he knew it.

In one of our sessions, Gabby realized that in fact she hadn't spoken it out of feeling ashamed of her childhood, and so he could not have heard it, and thus didn't know it.

As a result he never got why Gabby froze up when he had a quiet yet firm tone in his voice. It reminded her of her dad.

As a result Gabby had become falsely subservient to Steve's wishes. She blamed him for having made all the major decisions in their lives. This blocked them.

Most of their conflicts were about a conversation that hadn't happened and needed to.

Example 5

Kerry and Alex had been together for 9 years when they consulted me.

Initially they met when both were married with kids who were then aged 17 to 29. Their first years were clandestine, furtive meetings out of town, hungry for each other and desperately alone in their marriages.

When they came out, Alex's family rallied around except for his eldest son, who would have no part of embracing a gay father. Kerry's family sided with his wife, appalled and betrayed, and 'forced' the kids to decide where they stood.

The following five years of their relationship were dominated by managing the family schisms they so dearly did not want to happen but could not avoid.

As a consequence their sexual relationship, which had sustained them, started to falter under the weight. It alone could not carry the burden of repairing the multiple conflicted relationships in their extended families, which ultimately included grandchildren. They were stretched to their limits trying to make amends for or repair the hurt in their wives and children.

Ultimately Kerry sought a clandestine outlet away from home. We worked for nearly 12 months on the intimacy and extended family problems, before the secret was revealed to me. Alex had suspected it for the year before challenging him in the week before the secret burst into our sessions.

The betrayal took up a year of repair alongside dealing with the underlying breakdown of psychological intimacy. They had been unknowingly following many of the rules on how to avoid intimacy above - always pleasant and never argued, for example. They truly believed that they did speak about their feelings but the core of it was that they made each other guess their needs.

Example 6

Jackie and Bill, a couple of 25 years with three kids, asked me, 'is this as good as it gets? How long can this go on'?

Jackie early 50's, had been ill with a debilitating pancreatitis for the last year. Recently she had viral pneumonia. There was no clear diagnosis though one physician suspected rheumatic fever. As we dug around listening for the meaning of her illness, Bill wondered about her pattern of protecting him from knowledge of the kid's illnesses. She claimed he worried too much. Jackie knew this pattern was at work at the moment in her own illness, not wanting to burden Bill with worry about her health.

It turned out that Jackie assumed Bill would leave her if she became ill. True she had always shielded him from the kid's illnesses but she rarely allowed herself to show ill health to him. She thought this came from overhearing her parent's arguing when she was a kid. Her father, unbeknown to both, had suffered a series of minor strokes (TIA's only diagnosed years later) when she was pre-teen and her mother had become increasingly agitated by his then inexplicable confusion, agitation and forgetfulness. She had threatened to leave him because she couldn't cope.

Jackie remembers this clearly, though her parents later denied it, claiming they had always known it was due to Dad's stroke from TIA's.

As she spoke, from the back of her mind Jackie was suddenly confronted by a fear, something she had not ever admitted to herself - that she might leave Bill if he became sick. And then she said her craziest fear was that she would leave him if she didn't get well, assuming he couldn't cope, thereby continuing to protect him.

A powerful and unacknowledged fear that had been leading their relationship over a cliff. Once spoken, creative problem solving could begin. It was the unspoken fear that had blocked them from working together and thinking laterally.

A self-care or a relationship health check respects these patterns and exits from intimacy, softens the approach of trouble and invites unexpected change to be less catastrophic. It may even avoid that tyranny of privacy, which some folk endure until they can no longer postpone life or the truth.

Prevention and risk management

Here are 161 ways to spend quality time with your partner for those without a romantic bone in their body and an article on exits from intimacy.

As a risk management strategy, we take our cars in for regular service, our teeth to the dentist each year, so why not our relationships for a health check. Blaming the car for its faults or complaining about your gums doesn't fix it. Biting on decay can hurt, but blanking out on a troubled relationship feeds old patterns and ultimately can break hearts.

When we are afraid of the risk of failure in intimate relationships, both genders can dumb down to denial. They forget what works elsewhere in their lives.

Denial is a form of willful ignorance, a refusal to see with the heart. However, the experience of rejection itself, interferes with a person's self control. They become impulsive and self destructive. Rejection drops a person's IQ by about 25%, reduces their ability to reason and increases aggression. The same applies to being bullied.

For more on ostracism and the silent treatment.

Mid Life

It is still a question of what matters at the end of our life versus what I want now?

The mid or late life crisis, often described as natural events, are a direct result of this kind of gradual self neglect. Most of us follow our immediate concerns and wait until the question crashes into our 40s or 50's with a crisis. Late in the game, we then appear desperate to catch up on the essentials we neglected years ago.

Issues of aging are age old dilemmas and still they require fierce conversations and time to think. Those phone calls from 9/11 passengers and our Bali survivors say it again and again as do those in the middle of catastrophic illness.

At the end of the day, truth is, it's how well we have loved and cared for each other that matters.

Finally, that is all we own - not the house, the job, the money, not even our bright future.

The time is now.

Truth works but many of the schools and organizations in which we live 8 or more hours a day, 5 or 6 days a week are built on both in-authenticity and lack of time to think for ourselves. We are encouraged to think what others are thinking.

Some of us grow up to expect the same of family and even of an inner life. End result is a sense that we are somehow faking it, our lives more like a movie cliche than the lived experience of an authentic self.

One way to think about an alternative to these crazy-making patterns is an intentional or a conscious, mindful relationship both with our self, our life and with our loved ones. A relationship that is both planful and playful.

Yet, suspecting the truth of this this we can still be distracted by more pressing commitments, until it is too late and often too late for just one of the partners. Or in relationship to ourselves, just one of our organ systems decides to fail. A business goes bust in similar ways.

This page, 'the saga continues' has an amusing angle on the mid life crisis, growing old isn't for sissies, or visit the midlife club.

Boys fix it - girls feel it

Women might bitch and moan day and night about everything else in their lives, yet never confess the most essential things, the things their lovers really need to know. Source.

The verbal and emotional ascendancy of most girls over most boys early in their development in Australia, sets in glue the stereotype of 'boys fix it - girls feel it'. Just hang out at a co-ed school to get a sense of the enormity of this gender disjunction and allow your heart to come alive when you notice an exception.

The unexceptional result is the impasse that leads to so much marital misery:

If she doesn't tell me what she's not saying I can't fix it.

To which she replies or thinks,

I don't want you to fix it, I just want you to hear me and/or feel what I'm not saying!

This grows into the common domestic squabble called,

UPROAR: where insinuations of worthlessness are tossed back and forth like a hot potato with escalating vehemence in order to avoid intimacy. Source

Australian men tend to be more solution focused than feeling focused. We are more often a well trained provider with a great mask than a woman's best friend. Many of us growing up had few if any models of what manhood was about.

Studies done in the 1970's before the 'new nurturant father' came on the scene, revealed boys averaged 7 minutes a day with their fathers. It is now up to 2.5 hours per weekday on average and 40% of that in play and 20% more time with their sons than daughters. Source

Blokes with more 'feminine' characteristics are more often found in happy marriages than ones that are just stoic, great providers who believe that everything they do is 'for the family'. However, metro sexual can be as impenetrable a mask as the 'good guy', 'tough guy' and 'hard working guy' masks.

In their day to day work, men are interested in risk management and systemic thinking - because it saves time, injury and repetition. They generally do not want to become rule driven automatons at work or in their relationships. But too many are baffled by what some women don't say.

These are gender roles that require vulnerability on each side to share the responsibility for both feeling and fixing in a relationship.

With effort and introspection we can come to feel content enough to let go of desperate striving and angry scrambling for ascendancy and concentrate instead on controlling the one thing we can ever really have power over: ourselves. Source.

Men usually welcome the possibility of animated peer review and a collaborative, blame free fix for the crap in their lives. They prefer those methods at work and teach those methods to their children in play. Visit manhood online and XY online and mensline for some positive views on 'men's business'. Read the battered husbands book on line.

I have lost count of the number of men who have engaged in bitter self-recrimination in my office after the loss of a child. Beating themselves up over how they didn't spend enough time with them before they died.

One guy asked me 'so should I not leave for work at 7.00 am?' I said 'it's not about the amount of time but about being emotionally available to them when you are there, being good company for them and of good company to your partner.'

This is a strange concept - emotionally available - 'how do you fix that?'

It means being open and vulnerable, meeting one another without defenses, without guarding against feeling hurt, rejected or a feeling of not knowing how to relate. Allowing the feelings to be there and confiding them to the other.

Defenses and defending against feelings, close the doors to those we love and leave them not knowing who they are living with or who their parent is. Each of us is more isolated as a result.

These make for insecure attachment bonds to which we respond predictably, with criticism and withdrawal. Where this is a problem I find some men just don't get it and some women insist that they (the women) are available when they are not. Increasingly I am seeing this role reversed.

Too many clients of mine say their dad's were too busy and always grumpy at home. I expect this will soon be about the mums. These are the same dads who later weep in my office when it is too late. And sometimes this in a household where the mum works full time AND is the home maker, activities coordinator, cleaner, cook, laundromat and dad puts his feet up to watch TV after a long hard day at a non family-friendly workplace.

This too I am seeing role reversed with the mums too tired to do anything but put their feet up and the dad's run off their feet with both home and work.

One ends up exhausted with the small stuff, nags and criticizes the other, is increasingly in their face, withdrawing from hugs and cuddles.

The other says less, becomes more grumpy and with angry outbursts, withdraws further to the shed, the club or to work. General unhappiness increases, appreciation decreases. Incredible to me that our divorce rate is still so low at 4 adults per thousand per year (0.4% not 30%!).

Endurance

The average relationship waits six years before seeking help with a known problem that both people contribute to. Many of my clients have waited 20 years before getting help.

There is wisdom in endurance. Issues take time to cook. Reciprocal patterns take time to nail. However, in this game the early bird does catch the worm: marriage education and relationship coaching are always going to be superior to therapy.

Usually the 'problems' were present and a source of conflict or avoidance of conflict in some form at the outset of the relationship. Paradoxically arising from the very attributes, which first attracted the partners but later became a problem e.g. one with a good career becomes a workaholic; another close to family of origin ends up having no space from the in-laws; one desirably independent later is perceived as self-centered; one a total extravert and charmer later unable to entertain themselves; the charming street angel later reveals a home devil and one, captivatingly vulnerable later becomes toxic and wounding.

Anticipating this upside down and left field quality of a late awakening to 'relationship problems' on your doorstep (the 'this-happens-to-other-people-not-to-us' syndrome) - some folk make a pre-nuptial agreement for regular sessions with a relationship coach, facilitator or therapist. They do this especially during the first three years when new relationships are most likely to manifest terminal mistakes.

A study commissioned by the Institute for American Values affirms their belief in the endurance ethic of stubbornly outlasting marital problems.

Of 645 unhappily married couples, it showed that most people in that sample who stuck it out did not end up feeling trapped in an unhappy marriage five years later. Of 645 unhappily married couples, 167 had divorced in the five year period. Only half of those were then happy. Whereas, two thirds of those who hung in an unhappy marriage were better off than before.

On most measures of psychological well being the stayers showed more gains than the divorced group. For them there were three successful ways of making the turnaround to a happier marriage 1. marital endurance 2. working on it and 3. improving one's own happiness through personal development. The three common causes of their unhappiness were:

(a) everyday stresses

(b) 'men behaving badly' (possibly their agenda item but for a contrasting agenda try women behaving disgracefully)

(c) chronic conflict, poor communication and emotional neglect.

Caution is required in reading these results. For example you can't infer what would have happened to the divorced group had they stayed together by comparing them to those who stayed.

Links to 12 qualities of 'successful' marriage; how to mend one in trouble and how to start one on sound footings. And about turning points at the threshold of change.

My world view in brief

'Happy people are most often characterized by a kind of uncalculating and outgoing generosity' John Kay.

 

'Happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, and the end of life ... but this end is only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness.' from John Stuart Mill's autobiography, on line.

'The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.' Anne Morrow Lindbergh b. 1906 - 2001

Forget about learning how to argue better, analyzing your early childhood, making grand romantic gestures, or experimenting with new sexual positions. Instead, recognize and admit that you are emotionally attached to and dependent on your partner. Sue Johnson

I have worked as a clinical psychologist and a trauma therapist for the last 40 years and as a couples therapist. I am an agnostic Buddhist and humanist psychologist of Jewish and Scottish descent. The model I most identify with is process work and the one I practice is Emotionally Focused couples therapy (EFT-C).

Here the place to start if you are considering employing me as a couple's therapist or how to choose a therapist if considering another.

© 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 ZPJ Fox All Rights Reserved www.peterfox.com.au

Please visit my iPad and iPhone friendly site couple-therapy.org

 

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