How to Save the Relationship - 3 Critical Changes to Make Before It's Too Late

First published and edited by Elephant Journal.

“How will I know if he really loves me?”

The late Whitney Houston sings in the background. The couple is looking at the floor, glum and stuck. They’ve been in the same situation of “not knowing” for two years. The relationship is not moving forward and yet neither of them want to break up. The same cycle plays out like a broken record, a relationship punctuated by regular dramas. Each blow up resets it to zero. They have split up and got back together more times than they can remember. It’s a tiring dance that can’t last much longer.

Been in this situation? I have, as have many of the clients I’ve worked with.

The start of the relationship feels like a meeting of kindred spirits. The other person ticks many of the boxes that had been left unticked in the past. They “get” us. They share our values. They care. They understand our quirks. They even have similar quirks. We feel like best friends and lovers. They are interested in us as and not just as a sex object. But the sex is intense. A dream gets ignited. A hope of a happy future with this person is born.

Then, the disharmony starts.

We see parts of them that don’t fit the person we fell in love with. We feel stunned, disenchanted, repelled. So, we walk away and feel unbearably sad. We talk to them in our heads. We miss them when we do new things. We revisit the relationship. That hope or dream is still alive and burning in our hearts.

We try again. And it happens again. And again. And again. Each time, we gather more evidence for why the other person is the “bad guy.” We stockpile this “evidence” to make a case for why we can’t commit to the relationship fully. We say, “If only he/she would sort out their issues then this relationship would improve.” Yet we don’t leave because we still hope, we still dream, and beneath all the disharmony, we still love. The relationship sways back and forth like a swing in a deserted playground.

Smell the coffee.

When we are only willing to commit if the other person changes, then things will never improve. Individuals attach different meanings to the word “commitment,” but essentially, it’s about saying “yes” to the relationship and deciding to step on board with both feet.

We shift from focussing on what they are doing wrong and look at the part we play. As Gestalt therapist Robert Resnick says, “relationships are co-created.” We are 100 percent responsible for our part and how we react to our partner’s “flawed behaviour.” We play our part in the dynamic. We defend, we blame, we withdraw, we meet for coffee, and then we play again. Since a relationship is a system, any small change will inevitably change the entire system.

Snakes and Ladders is a board game, not a relationship.

When we only engage conditionally, then, we keep the relationship suspended and uncertain. These are hardly the right conditions for either of us to take an honest look at ourselves and be open to behaving differently. It’s like a parent telling their child who is struggling at school that if she gets good grades then they will love her. She will most likely become so anxious that she sabotages her own success.

Feeling motivated to do better comes from standing on firm ground. When we are anxious about the security of the relationship and whether the other is “in” or “out,” we don’t feel safe enough to focus on what we bring to the table. But we try nevertheless. Then we stumble and we get told, “There you go, I told you so, you just can’t help your bad character.” 

We start to attack and defend. The pendulum swings. When we are more “in,” the other is more “out.” When the other is more “out,” we are more “in.” We are never on the same page at the same time. With each incidence, we hurtle back down the ladder and start at zero. But still, we stay. And things stay the same. Up and down and a merry-go-round. We are stuck.

Just step in.

Gestalt Therapy theory talks of polarities. Think yin and yang, day and night. Where one behaviour exists, the polarity also exists. Within a shy person, there is an extrovert. Within a compliant person, there is a bossy person. When we don’t acknowledge both polarities, then we behave in an unbalanced way. Relationships also have polarity behaviours. What’s the opposite of staying on the fence? You got it—commitment!

…And commit.

Committing means no more conditions and blame. It means stopping the dance of pursuing, distancing, and showing up naked in the ring in front of the other. It means closing the exits and giving the relationship a chance to thrive. It means seeing disharmony as something to overcome and learn from—not as an excuse to exit.

It means deciding to not play the same old relational record on repeat. It’s tiring, confusing, demoralising, and clearly not working. It means addressing our “madness” and how the other triggers that in us.

Still scared? Deal with it!

We feel cautious. Can we trust the other? What if we go for it and it doesn’t work out? As Gestalt Therapy theory says, “whenever we take the risk of doing things differently we feel anxious.” It can’t be helped. It’s part of life. We can only avoid uncertainty and anxiety if we die.

Stop looking for perfection because you won’t find it. We work on accepting that our partner is a flawed human being, just as we are. Stop looking for your soulmate, because you wouldn’t know them if they were jumping up and down naked in front of you.

Philosopher Alain de Botton, in his refreshing and down-to-earth The Course of Love, discusses the concept of the soulmate, which arose with the romanticism period of European history. Until then, families chose matches that were mutually beneficial. We are supposed to recognise our soulmate instantly. We search high and low for that special person that feels “just right.” But as de Botton says,

“None of this has anything yet to do with a love story. Love stories begin…not when they have every opportunity to run away, but when they have exchanged solemn vows promising to hold us, and be held captive by us, for life.”

Chemistry is for the school science lab.

Dr. Young, who devised Schema Therapy, says that strong chemistry with someone can be a warning sign that we are attracted because they are similar to the parents that wounded us. For example, the woman abandoned by her father who chooses unavailable men. Or the man with the depressed mother who falls in love with a depressive.

The relationship won’t reveal itself like a flower growing in shit. You need to do the work. Rake the shit and prepare the ground.

Here’s how:

1. Stop blaming and criticising.

Psychotherapist Susan Anderson has coined the term “outer child,” which is the part of us that blames and criticises the other. The part that sabotages relationships. Similarly, schema therapy describes the “angry child” mode. We all have one. It directs itself at us as and tells us we are crap. We can start to become aware of it, even track it. We can also monitor the amount of blaming and critical thoughts we have toward our partner, and balance them out by thinking about what we like about our partner.

2. Stop defending.

We can stop defending ourselves so readily. Sometimes, we can’t admit to stuff because we believe (deep down) that to do so makes us a bad person. We will do anything to defend ourselves from the shame, which comes from a negative core belief. We might believe that “making a mistake” or “being imperfect” makes us a bad, defective, and flawed person.

Conversely, if my self-worth is not attached to my behaviour then I can say, “You’re right, I’m sorry for taking out my bad mood on you.” I still feel confident that I’m a good and lovable person. If acknowledging blame means I am now an awful, despicable, condemned person then, of course, I will defend myself like my life depends on it.

Unfortunately, many of us were parented in ways that fostered shame. Gestalt Therapist Robert Lee conducted a study on the internalised shame on marital intimacy. He found that couples with high internalised shame scored low in both marital intimacy and marital satisfaction. So, start challenging those negative core beliefs and believe you are entirely worthy and acceptable.

3. Ditch the ‘”if” and stay with the “now.”

In the heat of the moment when the other triggers us and we feel intense anger, anxiety, jealousy, or whatever else, we can use the mindfulness technique of embracing the feelings without acting on them.

You might need to take some space in order to do so. I don’t mean leave the relationship though! Tara Brach, psychotherapist and mindfulness teacher, has a great technique called the “Yes” meditation. Rather than resisting everything that is “wrong” we embrace it.

If I’ve had a spat with my partner, I distance myself physically, close my eyes, and focus on my feelings and body sensations. Firstly, I notice everything I don’t like. I don’t like what they have said. I don’t like that they have “triggered” me. I don’t like that I have fallen for the trigger. I don’t like that I got angry. I don’t like the whole situation, in fact, I hate it. I’ve had enough! And then I practice saying “yes” to every element I don’t like. I notice there is more space and I uncover a tender spot in my heart. My feelings become less intense and I can reflect in a more balanced way on how I want to respond to the situation.

If you do this, I cannot guarantee that you will live happily ever after. Things happen, life changes, jobs change, kids are born, parents die.

I cannot guarantee you will stay together. But it’s highly likely you will reclaim your broken parts and feel more whole, which is a much better foundation on which to build a love story.

References:

Anderson, S. ‘Taming Your Outer Child: Overcoming Self-Sabotage and Healing from Abandonment’, (2015), New World Library, California.

De Botton, A., ‘The Course of Love’, (2017), Penguin, UK.

Lee, R.G. (1994b). The Effect of Internalised Shame on Marital Intimacy. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Fielding.

Yes, Our Parents Probably Screwed us Up a Little—Don’t Skip the Therapy.

Edited and first published by Elephant Journal.

“They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.”

~ Philip Larkin, “This Be The Verse”

Some clients arrive for their first therapy session skeptical, worried, or downright reluctant to talk about their childhoods.

I assure them I have no interest in getting them to do something they don’t want. Nevertheless, if they are willing, then I am curious—exploring their childhoods helps me to understand their concerns more fully. What they say is often something along the lines of:

“It feels indulgent, like I’m feeling sorry for myself when other people have had it so much worse.”

“That was then and this is now, and I don’t see how dwelling on the past can help me today.”

“I had a very happy childhood, and I don’t want to blame my parents.”

You probably don’t want to talk about your childhood because it fucked you up. And unprocessed childhood stuff can manifest as:

Negative Core Beliefs

The reasons given above are telling in themselves. Deeming oneself as “indulgent” suggests we have a critical inner voice. I could challenge you by asking, “What’s the problem with being ‘indulgent’ in your personal therapy session? What would that mean—to be seen as indulgent?”

Often, if we pursue the line of inquiry, it comes back to a fear of being somehow “wrong” or “unlikeable.” Childhood is often the time when these types of negative core beliefs are picked up.

Emotional Crises

Not wanting to dwell on the past might also mean we want to avoid difficult feelings. However, the fact that we are experiencing mental health issues in the present suggests that these difficult feelings, although avoided, are still around in a different form.

It is also highly likely that we use that same defence mechanism—of minimising our feelings by not dwelling on the past—in the present, too. We get angry but don’t say anything. We feel hurt but keep quiet. We feel scared but put on a brave face. This leads to a car-crash of emotions that pop up in unwieldy ways, such as panic attacks, violent outbursts, or floods of tears at inappropriate moments.

Self-Blame

The phrase, “I had a very happy childhood” coming from a client who is evidently suffering would make any good therapist’s ears prick up. It suggests a black and white, childlike way of categorising experiences as either very happy or very unhappy, with no room for grey areas.

What did you do, as a child, with experiences that didn’t fit into that category of “very happy?” After all, we cannot have been very happy all of the time, even with the best of parents.

Often, we have a strong sense that talking about our parents in a less than flattering way is wrong and makes us a “bad” daughter or son. We feel guilty for criticising our parents. We do not differentiate between our parents who may have had the best of intentions, and their behaviours, which may not always have been helpful, and could have been downright hurtful. We prefer to blame ourselves.

But if we don’t talk about it, we will likely remain fucked up.

According to Dr. Jeffrey Young, who devised Schema Therapy, our parents are responsible for providing: 1) nurturance, including reassurance, attention, affection, warmth, and companionship, 2) empathy,including understanding, interest, self-disclosure, and mutual sharing of feelings, and 3) protection,including strength, direction, and guidance.

Even in a household where the children grew into reasonably functional adults, they may have experienced parenting deficits.

I’ve worked with many clients who are very successful in several areas of life but suffer a highly critical inner voice, lack of self-esteem, high anxiety levels, or relationship black holes.

When exploring their childhoods, they discover that even if their parents meant well, something was missing in the quality of their relationships.

Perhaps nothing less than achieving 100 percent in school was acceptable, and the child would end up feeling “not good enough” if they came home with 95 percent. Maybe either or both parents found it difficult to express their own vulnerability, so the child grew up with no model about how to express emotions.

Perhaps one of the parents had a volatile temper so that even if their child felt protected most of the time, at other times they felt petrified around them. It may have been that one or both parents were so preoccupied with their own career that their child felt like an obligation on their to-do list rather than a person who they were genuinely interested to know.

So, here’s the thing: we need to talk about it.

It is only by recognising these relational deficits that we can identify where our negative core beliefs have come from and start to disentangle ourselves from them.

As adults, we now have the intellectual maturity—and perhaps the help of an outside therapist’s perspective—to recognise that just because our parent didn’t spend time with us, that didn’t mean we were unlovable. Just because our parent never seemed happy with anything less than 100 percent, that was their “stuff” and not ours, and did not make us “not good enough.” Just because our parent had a terrible temper and would say horrible stuff to us, that had absolutely nothing to do with us.

It’s about recognising that however we behaved as kids, our parents were the adults who were supposed to protect, nurture, and guide us. They could have loved us dearly and had the best of intentions, but this doesn’t mean we always felt like they were doing their job.

By identifying their behaviours rather than blaming them, and by challenging the negative core beliefs we unthinkingly picked up, we can also learn not to condemn ourselves in the here and now. We have less need to put up a front to others. We can be more open. We are more likely to put ourselves out there and recover more quickly when we fall.

To stop playing unhealthy patterns on repeat.

Sigmund Freud first coined the term “repetition compulsion.”

This refers to doing something over and over again due to an unfinished and subconscious experience from childhood that wants to be completed, or processed.

For example, if as a young child, we experienced feelings of abandonment, grief, loss, shock, and rage when one of our parents left the family home, what happened to these feelings? Let’s say we were under five. We might have cried or behaved differently, maybe stopped talking, become more withdrawn, or started wetting the bed. However, since we weren’t able to articulate our inner state so that an adult could sit down with us and help us to understand our feelings, our only way of coping was to suppress them.

And what if the person who evoked strong, difficult, and overwhelming feelings is also our main caregiver? The sarcastic mother’s cutting words chill her little girl’s heart, who, yearning for love, buries her shame to be her momma’s “good girl.” Children, terrorised by their violent father’s drinking binge, “forget” about their overwhelming powerlessness and helplessness when their dad apologises and says he’ll never do it again.

These feelings need to be processed just as rain drops need to fall, just as a pendulum needs to swing, just as an apple tree needs to grow apples.

This is what Gestalt Therapy theory calls “organismic regulation.” When we keep playing the same old unhealthy patterns, like falling in love with unavailable partners who abandon us, or marrying abusive partners where we feel trapped and powerless, or dating arseholes who treat us badly—those are our buried feelings stomping up and down, waving red-faced and screaming, “Wake the fuck up! Grab this opportunity to heal so you can start doing life differently.”

For this to happen, we need to talk about your childhood.

To feel more at peace in the present:

Coming back to those overwhelmingly difficult childhood feelings that were not processed, what happens when a current situation provokes the same feeling? How can we allow ourselves to feel it if we’ve never learned how? How can we get angry with someone when we’ve never learned how to “do” anger?

Some might reply that they don’t need to feel anger, but anger is a perfectly valid emotion and is as worthy and equal as any other emotion. It’s how we express it that can be problematic, not the emotion itself.

According to Gestalt Therapy theory, the function of emotions is to act as messengers. They let us know what it is we need and want from others and from ourselves. Once we know that, we can do something about it. So, if we do not acknowledge all of our emotions, we have a bit of a problem. It means that we limp through life without getting what we need. Depression and anxiety, among other symptoms, are the consequences of that lack of support.

Say, as a child, we didn’t allow ourselves to feel abandonment rage because it wasn’t acknowledged by anyone. It feels overwhelming and scary, so we bury it.

Then, our abandonment stuff gets triggered by a partner who says he is going on holiday with his family rather than us. The anger is there but we don’t allow ourselves to feel it. We feel anxious instead. Or we start to numb ourselves and withdraw from the relationship. Or we start to make cutting comments and become passive-aggressive.

We do anything rather than allow ourselves to feel anger, as that just feels way too risky. Thus, we don’t get to say, “I feel annoyed that you’re going on holiday with your family. It makes me think I’m not that important to you.”

Being able to say this could open up dialogue to find some kind of compromise or at least be assured that you are important to your partner. Taking the risk of expressing anger and having it well received gives you the new experience that expressing anger is okay. By not expressing it, you are playing by the old rules that you learned as a child—that getting angry got you nowhere, it was futile, and it tended to boomerang back onto you.

This goes for other feelings too. For example, and without wanting to oversimplify, buried shame can lead to perfectionism and being hyper-critical. Buried fear might manifest as obsessive compulsive disorder and controlling behaviour. Suppressed grief is often linked to depression.

The idea of allowing these feelings is scary because they were scary when we were children. However, taking the risk of allowing them in the present leads to feeling all the other “child-like” feelings that might have also been suppressed. such as joy, excitement, courage, and a sense of empowerment.

“Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can”

So, like Philip Larkin, I suggest you get the hell out of misery as early as you can and to do that, let’s sit down and talk!
~

 
Author: Alexandra Schlotterbeck
Image: simpleinsomnia/Flickr; Xavier Sotomayor/Unsplash
Editor: Catherine Monkman
Copy Editor: Travis May
Social Editor: Callie Rushton

The key to contentment - self approval

A common thread that runs through a lot of the issues my clients bring is validation. By validation I mean the process of being confirmed as ‘ok’, ‘acceptable’ or ‘good enough’.  For many individuals this sense of being ‘ok’ is derived from others or how we imagine others think of us. We need others to consider us interesting in order for us to feel interesting. We need others to think that we are beautiful in order to feel beautiful. We need others to think that we are intelligent in order to feel intelligent. We need others to give us permission to feel ok before we give ourselves permission to feel ok.

And what’s wrong with that you might ask? On the one hand we are social animals so of course what other people think of us is important. If we were not influenced by others’ perceptions, what that would make us? Psychopaths?

There is nothing wrong with being influenced by others. However if you imagine there is a continuum going from one extreme of needing others to validate our experience to the other extreme of not needing anyone to validate our experience, I suggest that being closer to the centre of the continuum would feel better. Firstly, if we are dependent on others’ validation in order to feel ok then we can never feel ok within ourselves. Instead we feel anxious and uncertain each time we think we have upset them.

Secondly it takes up a lot of energy to be constantly evaluating oneself on whether we are worthy of approval. It’s tiring! Not to mention how frustrating and irritating it is to strain so hard for others’ confirmation. Although often we hide these angry feelings from ourselves, they show up when our attempts to get approval from another are rejected. Then we might think, ‘how dare they not like me when I was trying so hard’. We might react to the rejection in a way that is disproportionate to the situation for example feeling furious or devastated.

Lastly, it is often a futile task. Think about the people that you find most interesting or attractive.  They often have an easy-ness about them, the ease of being ok with themselves, the ease of not having to try too hard to please. This enables them to be spontaneous and to feel excited in the moment about their encounter with you. This is what makes them attractive to others. Indeed it is precisely this element of openness and spontaneity that we lose when we are trying so hard to be validated. We may succeed in portraying a polished image however in exerting such control over ourselves we also manage to polish away qualities such as openness, vulnerability, ability to be with uncertainty and sensitivity to the environment and to others. These are qualities which we find endearing in others We’ve probably all been in the presence of people who seem to have mastered the social game and yet they do it by not allowing anyone else a word in edgeways, or by asking lots of questions without giving anything away themselves. Somehow we find ourselves glazing over or getting bored.

So how do we feel more ok with ourselves? Well I can’t offer a ‘magic wand’ cure. However the journey starts with learning to validate oneself more. In order to do this we need to get to know ourselves so that we can connect with our own signs and signals that we are doing ok.  The route to this is through our bodies. Our body sensations and emotions provide important messages about ourselves. From time to time throughout the day try asking yourself the simple question, ‘am I doing ok in this moment here and now?’ Then close your eyes and go inside to feel the answer.  Wait for the voice that may be weak that tells you that you are doing ok. Be patient and let it tell you exactly how you are doing ok in this minute. Notice the body sensations and emotions that go with it. For example a client in therapy looks at me as if seeking my approval on what she is saying. I ask her to see if she can approve of herself. She takes a moment to reflect, notices a warm steady glow in her chest, a quietness and absence of anxiety. She connects these sensations and emotions with something positive. She realises and tells herself that actually she is doing ok right now with me. She even manages to elaborate on why this is. She is self-reflecting, courageously exploring herself and taking the risk of sharing difficult material with me. Indeed therapy is hard so dammit she is doing more than just ok!

So go on, try it and let me know how you get on?