MARRIAGE TIPS
Nathan Claunch, Ph.D.
Psychologist
and Marriage Counselor
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, which 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 are the result of mislead
efforts, often strenuous efforts that
were originally intended to make
things better - to provide solutions. That paradox often holds true in
marriage where we too often make things worse while working hard to make things better - for
example, working very very hard on improving our partner - rather than
ourselves. Yelling, nagging,
whining, & pouting are classic examples of intended solution strategies (to
get heard, understood, or appreciated) that in reality makes things worse -
predictably but repetitiously worse.
The target of these efforts to extort caring and attention can often be
found in the basement, in the garage, or at work - intending, 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 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 bolder (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, esp. 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 expressions of your
righteous indignation or further blame.
Some researchers in MN 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 the behaviors that were most painful in our childhood; what has caused us the most pain feels
as if it will have the highest and most immediate impact. 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 inJurassic 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 & 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 the fact that it is fairly
easy to ask yourself at any given moment whether you are open to learning or
closed & 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. With 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
&/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," where they
are unaware of these dynamics, spouses often confuse and frustrate each
other. In a "CONSCIOUS MARRIAGE,"
they 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.
Related articles can
be found at www.nathanclaunch.com under "conflict" and at
www.stopunwanteddivorce.com
Nathan Claunch, Ph.D., Licensed Psychologist &
Marriage Counselor
Counseling and Coaching for Individuals,
Pairs, Families,
Teams, &
Organizations
2225 Packard, Ann Arbor, MI, 48104,
734/663-9050 and
28220 Franklin Road, Southfield, MI
48034, 248/208-9415
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