REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS are key to a satisfying marriage. Research has
shown that satisfaction is a function of the distance between expectations
and reality. You can make yourself miserable with unrealistic expectations
of your partner. Marriage is often entered with each person expecting the
other to “make me happy.” The inevitable disappointment results
in a deterioration in morale that can only be reversed with relationship
work.
RELATIONSHIP WORK is essential to a good marriage. That work, though,
must be informed and effective. Most of us grew up with few if any good
relationship models and little, if any, good information about the care and
feeding of relationships.
Paradoxically, it seems that most problems (marital or otherwise) are
the result of mislead efforts, often strenuous efforts, that are originally
intended to make things better and to provide solutions. That paradox often
holds true in marriage where we too often make things worse while working
hard to make things better. We often work very very hard on improving
our partner (rather than working on ourselves). Yelling, nagging, whining,
and pouting are classic examples of intended solution strategies (to get
heard, understood, or appreciated) that in reality make things predictably
but repetitiously worse. The target of these efforts to extort caring and
attention can often be found hidden in the basement, in the garage, or at
work - places where “trigger” items get moved with the intention,
in turn, to “keep the peace” by avoiding open conflict. I strongly
advise that you determine the likely RESULT of your well-intended EFFORTS
before doing them and that you do NOTHING when what you usually do usually
makes things worse.
SELF-IMPROVEMENT is the place to start. It’s more feasible and easier
by far to change yourself than to improve or change the other. While reading
this material, try to think of examples of how you can improve rather than
taking stock of your partner’s obvious faults. It is often possible
to facilitate unilaterally a great deal of relationship improvement even
when the other isn’t or doesn’t appear to be cooperating. Behaviors
and attitudes tend to be “contagious” in relationships. For example,
you can often improve a relationship considerably by: (a) replacing participation
in sarcastic or polarizing exchanges with respectful listening and acknowledging
behavior or (b) replacing whiney or snarly complaints with pleasantly stated
information about what would make you feel good, friendly, and even affectionate.
Requesting feels more vulnerable as you do it than complaining, but it’s
much easier for the other person to care about.
When attempting to improve your relationship unilaterally, it is very
helpful to have a supportive consultant who will help you keep your eye on
your goal and not join you in a morass of tempting righteous indignation.
Righteous indignation is perhaps the favorite of a number of “sweet
sufferings” that can bring you closer to friends (and sometimes to
therapists) while alienating you further from your most important person.
Respectfully INVITING THE OTHER TO PARTICIPATE in changing together has a
much better payoff than attempting to force the other to change. Sometimes
and rarely it is possible to WAKE UP the other with a high impact CONFRONTATION
- preferably after obtaining some excellent support and advice on how to
do it effectively. One or two high impact confrontations are much more likely
to succeed than a series of low impact threats, whines, or beggings.
RESPECT is basic. It involves sustained awareness that you are dealing
with someone you love and know to be a good, well-intended, and intelligent
person - someone you chose to marry. Respect remembers that the other is
capable of thinking and feeling as an independent person with competence
and integrity. When we are respectful, we don’t try to coerce or manipulate
the other. We don’t insist that ours is the only good idea or the one
“right” opinion. Rather, we demonstrate a sense of wondering curiosity
and appreciation of the other. And yes, it does help to keep in mind that
each of us is from a different planet and that our own and our mate’s
“strangeness” is therefore understandable, forgivable, and worthy
of respect.
Know that “REALITY” is subjective whether listening or speaking.
When the other’s experience differs from your own, be respectful &
work with the two importnat realities - his and hers, not his versus hers.
Remember that each of you is a good, intelligent, well-intended, and - yes
- sane person even though those things are difficult to remember when it
feels like your own reality/sanity is thrown into question. One example of
different experiences of “reality” occurs when one person tosses
what seems like a pebble (e.g. “just sharing my feelings”) and
it feels to the recipient like a boulder (or, a “federal indictment).
The eminent theologian Paul Tillich observed that, “the first duty
of love is to listen.” RESPECTFUL LISTENING starts with curiosity -
the intent to understand, the intent to learn. When listening to understand,
it is often helpful, especially when the other is upset, to check out your
understanding by respectfully repeating back the essence of what you think
you are hearing - esp. the other’s feelings. This also signals the other
that you are in fact seeking to understand. Nothing calms & soothes the
savage beast better or faster than respectful listening. There is a great
sense of personal freedom, competence, and safety to be discovered by developing
the ability to listen respectfully to someone who is blatantly misunderstanding
and misrepresenting you (from your point of view) and to know that this
misunderstanding will soften once the other feels understood and appreciated
in the midst of his or her terribly upset feelings. Richard Pryor used to
say that he didn’t mind women leaving him; he just hated it when they
told him why! He didn’t know that listening respectfully to why would
have disarmed and made most of them decide to stay.
“Seek first to understand and only then (20 minutes to 2 weeks later)
to be understood.” EXPRESSING YOURSELF RESPECTFULLY is a skill and habit
that is automatic for most people in most settings but is far underrated
and underutilized in marriages and families. The field of psychotherapy may
have fostered the harmful idea that, “You must express your feelings,
especially your anger.” It’s true that doing nothing with repeated
painful feelings over time is bad for physical and mental health, but it
is important to take responsibility for how and when you express negative
feelings.
Frequent “dumping” of bad feelings on each other without
consideration of their impact is NOT the way to make things better. Generally
speaking, we seem most consistently respectful when speaking to those who
can most easily leave or avoid us - like total strangers, slight acquaintances,
or customers. Spouses, by contrast, cannot easily leave - but their enthusiasm
can and eventually will, and ultimately their love - a little at a time until
it’s all gone.
REMEMBER as you continue to read that the goal is to CHANGE YOURSELF,
not to gather new material with which to blame the other for lack of change.
You can speak or listen respectfully, for example, even if your spouse does
neither. Over time, they may follow your excellent lead, but they WON’T
likely respond well to statements of your righteous indignation or further
blame. Some researchers in Minnesota claim to have determined that both positive
and negative behaviors are “contagious.” Unfortunately, negatives
were estimated to be 5 times more contagious than positives! Be patient.
TAME YOUR OWN “LIZARD BRAIN.” When we feel highly stressed,
we can be “highjacked” by our own fight-or-flight-based feelings
- what I like to call our “lizard brain.” At those times we tend
to feel desperate and we tend to seek HIGH IMPACT behaviors. Often,
we choose the behaviors that were most painful to us in our childhood; what
has caused us the most pain feels as if it will have the highest and most
immediate impact in our current situation. Although marriage researchers
have identified a small number of happily married couples who “let
fly” with any and all of their feelings in an uninhibited manner, most
couples can’t do that without damaging morale. When under the control
of our “lizard brain” selves, we can spit toxic words at each other
- much like the dinosaur in Jurassic Park who spit & stunned his chubby
victim before devouring him.
When in control and not highjacked by your own lizard brain, it helps
to communicate negative feelings with “I-messages” that describe
feelings openly as your subjective experience and not as the final objective
word on reality. E.g., “I feel really scared when we go this fast,”
rather than, “Slow down, you idiot!” Or, “I miss you,”
rather than, “Why don’t you ever want to spend time with me?”
Two ways to check out the likely impact of how you express yourself are to
ask yourself how something would feel if said to you and whether you’d
say it that way to a total stranger. An interesting more general way to check
out how you come across as a spouse is to ask yourself the eye-opening question,
“How would I like to be married to me?”
OPEN-TO-LEARNING vs. CLOSED-AND-PROTECTED is a helpful distinction made
by Jordan and Margaret Paul in their book with the interesting title, Do
I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You? When open to learning, we are
curious - both about ourselves and about the other. When closed and protected,
we are emotionally tight and not interested in letting out or taking in anything
that threatens our ego. The word “protection” nicely acknowledges
that when we are closed and protected, we are generally defending against
some perceived threat to our self esteem - an understandable “good
reason” to be self-protective. Protections and defenses generally involve
either: 1- control (e.g. with loudness, logic, whining, escalating, silence,
etc.; 2- compliance (e.g. going along/giving in to avoid discomfort from
conflict; or 3- indifference (no longer caring). One very helpful feature
of the open/closed distinction is that it is fairly easy to ask yourself
at any given moment whether you are open to learning or closed and defensive
- even when things are over-heated.
If open, it can be constructive to interact with the other, esp.
by listening. If closed and protected, it helps to acknowledge to
yourself and to the other that you can’t be productive right now (speaking
only of yourself; not accusing the other) and to postpone interacting. Before
leaving, though, it is helpful to say approximately WHEN you’ll be available
later so that the other doesn’t feel abandoned. Much can be gained if,
as suggested by Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,
you “seek first to understand and then to be understood.”
REFRAMING was observed by a group of linguists who studied Milton Ericson
and several other famous therapists. With reframing, you assume (like you
do with the defensive “protections” discussed earlier) that there
is a positive intent, good reason, or desirable outcome behind any given
behavior, feeling, or attitude (yours or the other’s), and you seek
to find out what that is. The “good reason” may only be positive
from the perspective of the person experiencing the good reason, but that
makes it no less important to acknowledge. Once the positive intent is
understood, you are in a position to negotiate some “just as good or
better” methods for achieving that outcome - methods that are less toxic
or that have fewer "side effects." You can then negotiate respectfully with
the other (or with yourself when seeking better means to your desired ends)
to utilize the identified better methods to achieve the admittedly desirable
outcome.
Within couples, each is an expert on just as good or better way(s) to
invite him/her toward desired behaviors, feelings, etc. Each can ask the
other for better ways, for example, to inspire the other to want to be friendly,
affectionate, or cooperative. Inspired affection freely given is far more
satisfying, for example, than manipulated or extorted reluctant compliance.
One example of reframing is to listen to an angry person from the assumption
that their intention (“good reason” for yelling) is to make it
clear just how important something is to them - that they are hurt and/or
scared, desperate to be heard, and doubtful that you will listen. An assumption
of positive intent is likely valid and will generally result in more caring
responses on your part. If you are the angry one, reframing your own yelling
might consist of cooling down and then saying, “This is really important
to me; please listen.”
FORGIVENESS is much easier when you are open to learning and able and
willing to understand the other’s "good reason" (from their perspective)
behind something that has hurt, offended, or frustrated you. Acknowledging
the understandable reasons behind an offensive behavior tends to disarm the
offender rather than making him/her more defensive, and that sets the stage
for reframing and negotiating better choices in the future. It can be very
healing to any relationship to acknowledge and to show empathy for the
other’s felt need to protect themselves. Once that need is respected,
it instantly lessens in intensity. Friendly understanding goes a long way
toward melting defenses.
META-POSITION refers to stepping back emotionally from what's going on
so as to gain perspective and to minimize feeling pain and reacting defensively.
Empathy and forgiveness can be achieved more easily and more quickly from
meta-position. “Transcendence” of your own and/or the other’s
lizard brain (or “lower self”) is a spiritual version of meta-position.
Transcendence facilitates forgiveness of enemies - and of those who seem
temporarily to be the enemy - most notably spouses, children, or parents.
Some people have a very difficult time getting into meta-position because
of their intense emotions; and others have a very difficult time getting
out of it because of their avoidance of their discomfort with emotions. Both
need empathy and forgiveness for their limitations.
WIN-WIN SOLUTIONS TO CONFLICT are amazingly available when open respectful
sharing of feelings & needs is combined with respectful open-to-learning
listening. Once each partner has put on the table their most important thoughts
and feelings, and these have been respectfully acknowledged, then the two
can wonder together how to construct a solution that addresses all their
respectfully expressed and acknowledged important thoughts and feelings.
In relationships like marriage and family, where morale is key, there are
no WIN-LOSE solutions because winning at the other’s expense means dampening
the other’s good feelings - which equals LOSE-LOSE.
UNDERSTANDING CHILDHOOD WOUNDS. Harville Hendrix in Getting The Love
Your Want points out that we all have childhood wounds - vulnerabilities
that make us inclined to “overreact” to current interactions. It
helps to know that when we feel wounded or when the other acts extremely
wounded, the pain is often due more to our wounded sore spots than to each
other’s behavior. That makes it easier to understand and to forgive.
Hendrix describes how we tend to pick mates exquisitely designed to frustrate
our biggest unmet needs from childhood. That's the bad news. The good news
is that the same mates are most exquisitely designed to help us resolve those
same childhood frustrations.
Generally, one partner longs for the satisfaction that the other gave
up on long ago. For example, she’s longed since childhood for more hugs
and affection and has sacrificed her autonomy in the search for them. He
clings fiercely to his autonomy and long ago renounced as “weak and
foolish” his childhood needs for the affection that was unattainable.
Both have the same unmet need for affection, but he’s forgotten what
she can't forget. Paradoxically, each was originally attracted to what now
drives them crazy - she to his staunch and sexy independence and he to her
warm and sexy affection.
In an "UNCONSCIOUS MARRIAGE," in which each isunaware of these dynamics,
spouses often confuse and frustrate each other. In a "CONSCIOUS MARRIAGE,"
spouses understand what's happening, and each can make a decision to stretch
past his/her comfort zone to re-claim the abandoned need and to help meet
that need for each other. Also, each can understand their wounded partners
behavior and forgive it more easily. Consciously working together to heal
their childhood wounds, he can stretch himself to give and receive affection
- until both can enjoy it together.
Exercise: Interview your partner about his/her biggest unmet needs from
childhood; what your mate would most like to have received more of and less
of as a child. Try to understand and feel what that was like. Then ask how
you can best help to meet those unmet needs now - how you can best help in
the healing of your beloved’s childhood wounds. That kind of caring
is also contagious.
