"In relation to others, people are free to participate in targeted activities or to lose themselves in the intimacy of a close relationship." – Murray Bowen
There is no shortage of strained marriages. Two people who have been close to one another can distance themselves over time and establish themselves in their own positions, which they see as opposed to those of their spouse. The things they once appreciated or found charming have since faded or become angry. Where there used to be agreement, there is now discord. Where there used to be silence, the water is now churned up. Comfort has turned into insecurity, and the house that was once full of laughter is now pulsating with calm (or not so calm) tensions.
Rarely do couples come to counseling until the discomfort of this distance, in whatever form, has exceeded their ability to deal with the difficulties and pressures they cause. But how does that happen? How can two people who started so close together be so far away?
People are drawn to the comfort, support, intimacy, affection and affirmation that marriage can offer. This desire for closeness pulls us together. However, when the harmony of this relationship is disturbed, problems begin where each partner has used the relationship to support or alleviate their personal fears in some way. If one partner suddenly feels invalid, the other feels hurt by a disagreement. If one spouse is upset with the other's opinion, the other person withdraws from their partner's criticism. The forms that these disorders can take are endless.
What happened?
At the beginning of a relationship, most of us are more flexible and adaptable in the presence of the other than we would otherwise be. We create a level of maturity that does not necessarily reflect our true level of function. We are able to do this because the nature of the relationship is less tense early on. We listen to each other, we share our opinions openly, we ask questions and hold conversations, we are curious about our partner and his views and we are warm, friendly and loving. Our immaturity is somehow minimized. And thank God that's the case, otherwise we could never get together.
However, this layer of ripeness is only temporary. It is a reaction to the attraction of closeness and harmony with the other. We do not imply that this act is only fake or fake, but that part of it does not reflect the reality of our functioning. It is a mechanism that promotes the closeness that both individuals desire.
When this maturity decreases and when our immaturity raises its head, each individual in the relationship can ask what has happened to the other. Each person begins to assume that the other has changed, and each assumes that the other inhibits the restoration of intimacy and harmony. This is the distance that pushes people apart who were once so close. Both anchor in their position that the other is the problem, and the relationship patterns that maintain the distance become fixed.
This is the time when people tend to seek advice. What can we do as professional consultants? Working on Murray Bowen's family systems theory has helped us gain and maintain a perspective on the relationship between two people. Its systemic basis enables us to design the relationship without blaming one or the other partner or seeing mistakes. The theory focuses more on the processes between people than on the content of the arguments, which can create a noise in which both consultants and clients can easily get involved and get lost.
Concentration on the "Other" as a problem
All marriages have tensions and difficulties because instabilities are built into every two-person relationship. People want to be with others, but they also want to maintain their autonomy. When things work well in a relationship, people feel connected, but also free to be themselves. When people feel too close or too far, this leads to a disruption to the individual and ultimately the relationship.
We want our partners' attention, but we can become allergic to too much of it, push the other away, or distance ourselves emotionally from them. And when we get the space we think we want, we can feel neglected and look for affection and affirmation so that we feel connected and safe. In this emotional seesaw, each person becomes sensitive to the other and what he does or says, and can begin to concentrate on them as the problem: If only my partner would pay more attention to me. If only my partner showed up and made his contribution. If only they would listen to me. If only if only if if only …
The reality is that both parties contribute to relationship difficulties. This is the nature of reciprocity, but the fact is that we all have difficulty seeing when we are in the midst of relationship tensions and the emotions and fears they create.
The more tensions and fears arise, the more reactive people become and the more they unintentionally contribute to mutuality or the mutually influenced pattern that maintains the "problem". When people become anxious and reactive, they focus more on what is wrong in or with the other than what they are doing, how they contribute to the maintenance of the "problem" and what opportunities they have to change their own thinking and behavior could be.
Especially in intimate relationships, people can get stuck in the tension of feeling misunderstood, neglected or abused in one way or another. It can be difficult for people in a relationship to see beyond the dust cloud of an argument, a story of little misunderstandings, the tiny experiences of neglect that one feels but never spoke to the other, and so on. These stories build up because people want stability and harmony at the moment and are willing to sacrifice some autonomy for it without realizing that they are contributing to a process that will later lead to an outbreak.
In our experience, many first sessions with couples begin with attempts by both parties to drag the advisor into a tug of war that he said. Both want the convenience of belonging with their advisor, albeit at the expense of their relationship. We believe that it is the consultant's responsibility to stay away from it. The moment clinicians see one or the other partner as an angel or a demon, they have lost their objective status.
The two overarching and interlocking steps counselors can take to guide people through their process of working on themselves are:
1) Help each person broaden their perspective on their relationship with their partner.
2) Help everyone to work on themselves in the present.
As with any idea, the simpler it seems, the more difficult it is.
Increasing perspective: seeing mutuality
Supporting perspective for people begins with the ability of the advisor to maintain a broader perspective. Instead of seeing the sides of the relationship, the goal is to focus on the processes and patterns that both parties contribute to, much like a coach looking over the field from above and watching what each player is doing. If the counselor is able to keep perspective, they can be useful to their clients by helping them get a better view of what is going on in their relationship.
Step 1: Reduce Anxiety. Nothing can happen until the fear in each individual has dropped to a level at which both of them can work. Often speaking can only help relieve anxiety. Setting your expectations (as a consultant) for the session can also help limit escalation of tensions. One of the biggest factors in reducing anxiety when a couple is in the room is the counselor's ability to remain objective and neutral.
Step 2: Take a step back. Let the couple step back from the intensity of the moment by expanding the lens they are looking at the problem with. Each person is often hyper-focused on the other. So if you take a step back, each person has to shift their focus from the other to their own functioning. When one person talks about what the other is doing, you can help them shift focus by asking questions about their thinking about their own behavior and thoughts.
For example, if a person starts telling you how the other never says anything, never has an opinion, and is just so limp and passive, you can answer questions about what they are doing and thinking when their partner does them Doing things or what they are doing and thinking before the other partner reacts passively. Conversely, if one partner tells you that the other partner is constantly angry, approaching them with high intensity, and is critical, you may be wondering what they are doing in this case or how often they anticipate their partner's intense reactions.
Step 3: Mark the reciprocity. Repeatedly point out the reciprocity of the "problem" – the fact that each person contributes in some way to keeping the action going. Emphasizing reciprocity helps each person recognize that they are an equal participant in what is going on in the relationship, and it encourages the process in which each individual's view of the other as a problem focusing on their own Functioning relocated. Using the example above, you can point out to the couple how interesting it is that each time one partner becomes intense, the other becomes passive and when one becomes more passive, the other becomes more intense.
The nice thing about this perspective is that it is never up to one person to change the other. There is always something for each person to work on individually, and each person also works on the relationship. There is always a way to move because the processes between two people are constant and flowing, even when the participants are tied to automatic and reactive behaviors. A change in one person triggers a change in the process between the two. It makes no sense for one person to blame the other because they have contributed and contributed to what is going on between them in the present.
This shift in focus – from other to self – is necessary for each person to effectively move forward. If this shift is not made, people tend to either be in conflict or give up more and more of themselves to keep the relationship stable. A little conflict is better than a wrong stability.
Working on yourself in the present: Working on reciprocity
If you take a step back and gain perspective, you can express the tensions of the present moment more clearly because the focus has shifted from the other to the self. Once this shift in focus has taken place, people can work to manage their emotions and fears in the here and now. However, these two steps are inseparable since the knowledge gained by looking at and understanding your own share of relationship patterns is the catalyst for better self-management in the present.
Step 1: Observe mutuality. Once each person has started to recognize mutuality and recognize that it contributes equally to the relationship tensions, they can begin to work on their part. The first step is to help each person become an expert on how to contribute to mutuality. What you do as an advisor is to move clients' thinking from a cause and effect framework to a systemic framework where the rule is reciprocity.
After people have seen it, they can begin to become aware of the reciprocity in the present. This awareness could show up in a session as a person thinking about how their partner "withdrew" when he got angry. In response, her partner's intensity increased, and that person responded to this increase by shutting down. The customer now focuses on the process and its share in it.
Step 2: Working on Mutuality. When everyone becomes an expert in the process between the two, they begin to work on themselves in the present moment and in the ever-present reciprocity. From the example above, when the partner begins to realize that their “pulling back” and “shutting down” add to the other partner's increasing intensity, they can begin to stay under pressure in the relationship. This could start with you noticing your impulse to withdraw and stay in the conversation a little longer than you would normally do despite the “feeling”.
In other words, they tolerate the discomfort of feeling, but this tolerance is driven by a thoughtful framework regarding the nature of reciprocity and its part in this process. It could mean to realize that the partner's intensity is not a criticism of him, but rather his partner's own functioning. So the first partner can start to take things less personally. We could go on and on here, but the point is that this person is less caught up in the emotional intensity of the moment. This way, the person can be less reactive and more thoughtful about what they do and how they do it. The more they work on themselves in reciprocity, the more options they have on how they work, and the greater the chance that the relationship will improve.
We focused on one partner above, but we were able to do the same exercise with the other partner. This person would first recognize the reciprocity of increased intensity by them and a withdrawal by the other partner. They could start to observe their own functioning and realize that the more intensely they become, the more their partner withdraws. You may notice that their own intensity automatically increases as the others withdraw. You could start managing this impulse and your facial expressions, tone of voice, etc. in the presence of the other. And when you work on yourself, you may see that you are working on the relationship.
The challenge as a consultant is to continually bring the focus of the session back to the process that is going on or going on and to stay out of the content. Each couple will tend to return to the content – who said or did what to whom – when tensions and fears increase. It is the task of the consultant to remain neutral and objective and to point out the process of what is happening.
Just as the paradox of marriage is that each individual manages the self, the paradox of counseling is that the counselor has to manage the self instead of trying to change whoever is sitting in front of him. We see the work of the advisor no different from the work that we consider useful for clients. In other words, if the counselor gets lost in a couple's arguments, the counselor is not managing himself and his fears have taken over. But if the counselor can focus on the process, how the couple argues, how it contributes to the larger patterns of their relationship, and how it relates to a behavioral history that includes both, then the counselor is somewhat useful and manages the self , at least a bit.
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Guillermo Cancio-Bello is director of the November Institute, where he works to bring the thinking of natural family systems into the lives of individuals, families, and organizations to grow through a deeper understanding of human relationships achieve. He is currently doing his doctorate in counseling at Barry University and lives in Miami with his wife and two dogs. Contact him at [email protected] or visit thenovemberinstitute.com.
Jim Rudes is an associate professor of counseling at the Adrian Dominican School of Education at Barry University. He has more than 20 years of clinical experience and in recent years has devoted most of his professional energy to studying family systems through the lens of the theory of natural family systems. His current research interests deal with emotional processes versus content and the light at the end of the tunnel. Contact him at [email protected].
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