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Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing, there is a field. I will meet you there.   –Rumi

You may have heard the expression, “you can be happy or you can be right.”  I find that one of the primary blocks to wellbeing in relationship seems to be the longing we have for our partners to acknowledge their wrongdoing and admit to the rightness of our point of view. The unlikelihood of this happening doesn’t seem to deter couples from gamely struggling onward, as if there were actually a chance that their partner could or would surrender their own point of view.

It turns out that many of the things that we humans think of as right and wrong are matters of opinion. It’s understandable that we think our opinions are true given that for most of human history we’ve tended to marry people from the same culture or tribe. This prevented many conflicts. People from a similar background are more likely to agree on how to be a man or a woman, how to raise children, how to prepare food, and who is in charge of which life arena.

Modern relationships bring together people who have different backgrounds and conditioning. Without the tools to work through differences, relationships often sour and resentments build up. So how do we work through differences? How do we let go of being “right”?

There seem to be two important first steps. One is learning how to talk about differences without blaming or criticizing your partner. The second is being willing to address and work on the concerns of both people. These steps teach us to understand different perspectives and allow us to engage in authentic communication that gets to the heart of our needs.

Marshall Rosenberg’s Compassionate Communication is one great tool for learning how to communicate authentically and without blame.  One simple way of evaluating if you know how to do this is to see if what you are saying is inarguable. For instance, “I felt sad when you said that” can’t be denied while “you are always saying sad things” is arguable. “My chest feels tight and I’m afraid” is inarguable. “You treated me badly” is likely to be denied by your partner.

A lot of couples try to solve the problem of differences by withholding their complaints from each other. This doesn’t work any better than blame or criticism. The good news is when we communicate authentically and listen without becoming defensive, it opens us up to real understanding of ourselves and our partner. This leads to more love—and more love equals a lot more fun.

Moving couples from conflict to compassion

Over the years, I’ve seen that couples are fighting imaginary foes. Each has their own interpretation of what has happened and only when they reveal to themselves and their partner what is going on below the surface do understanding and compassion become possible.

To share an example, my clients Lynn and Steve (not their real names) had a fight one night because Steve told Lynn he would be back at a certain time and he was late. Typically in a case like this, the couple thinks they are fighting about the details—in this case whether it was reasonable for him to be late without calling. Lynn is sure it wasn’t okay and Steve argues that it isn’t a big deal and tries to resolve the situation by explaining what happened.

When we look below the surface, Lynn notices a deep sense of unease followed quickly by hurt and then anger with thoughts like “if he truly loved me he would be more considerate.”

When I ask Lynn to pay attention to the unease, she remembers feeling something similar as a teenager when she’d been left alone most of the time by her divorcing parents. She’d felt abandoned.  This is what she feels when Steve is late and not communicating with her. This is why it matters so much to her that he stay in touch when he’s running late. 

When Steve takes the deep dive, he notices that he feels frustrated, confused, guilty and rebellious.  He’s been trying hard to communicate more.  But when Lynn gets upset painful thoughts go through his mind like “It’s never enough” and “I can’t win.” 

Steve feels guilty for not calling because he doesn’t like Lynn to feel upset but he also feels rebellious, as if Lynn is a controlling parent forcing him to do something unreasonable. Finally, her reaction confuses him.  It seems too intense for the situation.

Taking the “deep dive” allows for truer understanding and trust to be born.  Not just in our partners but most importantly in ourselves.  Until we stop and look, we don’t know what the deeper feelings and thoughts are that drive us. 

In this example, Lynn and Steve can both see how destabilizing it is for Lynn when she feels alone. Steve now understands that Lynn isn’t acting like a parent when she asks him to keep her updated.  Instead, she hates feeling abandoned and afraid. He now better understands how intense the experience is for her and where it comes from.

Lynn now recognizes that even though she’s asked Steve to be a better communicator, he hasn’t really understood why it was so important to her. It has just felt controlling and unreasonable to him. She can also see that her reaction isn’t just caused by what Steve is doing but has roots in earlier experiences.

Again and again I see understanding and compassion arise out of diving deep. Light bulbs go on as couples realize how differently they are wired and how differently they have understood the situation.

The hardest part seems to be learning how to communicate in a way that doesn’t blame our partner for what we are feeling and learning to listen to our partners with curiosity rather than defensiveness.  Love blossoms again and again when we learn how to do this.

Couples often come to me feeling depleted. The bank account of love has been drained. So one of the important things we do is figure out how to replenish the love bank.  The funny thing is that couples often end up realizing that their partner WAS trying to love them.  It just wasn’t landing. It turns out that couples usually speak a different love language. We’ve been doing our best but innocently missing the mark!

Over 25 years ago, my father showed me a laminated card in his wallet.  On it he’d written a number of things that meant love to my mother.  He confessed that if he didn’t write it down and refer to it, he would forget so different was her list from his own. They’d come to their lists by having a talk about what meant love to each of them.

In 1995 Gary Chapman published 5 Languages of Love which very skillfully categorized these ways of experiencing love.  Gary explained that people tend to have one or two ways that they experience feeling loved and these are often different than their partner’s ways.  Taking the quiz in his book (or on his website: www.5lovelanguages.com ) allows a person to grasp their own way of experiencing and usually expressing love.

We tend to give the way we want to receive.  But in order for a relationship to flourish, we need to learn how to give in a way that our partners can receive and vice versa.  So I recommend taking Gary Chapman’s quiz.  Make sure your partner does as well. Find out which of the five languages you each use: Quality Time, Touch, Acts of Service, Affirmations, Gifts. Get really familiar with your own and your partners.

I tell my clients that they may very well feel like a toddler using their partner’s language of love.  If it were natural to love your partner the way they need it, you’d have been doing it!  Like any skill, it takes practice.  Like my father, you’ll have to find a way to remind yourself.  With practice and commitment, your love bank balance will soar.

Enjoy the discovery.

The Path for Couples Made Visible

Very few of us have been taught how to look within to see the beliefs and feelings that are driving our behaviors. Even fewer know how to do that with their partner in a way that supports bonding rather than conflict. Couples therapy works because it does three main things:

1)   Illuminates the Cycle:  When one member of the couple gets triggered rather then staying with the vulnerability of feeling hurt or abandoned or wrong they get angry and criticize or withdraw into silence and disconnection. This tends to trigger the other member of the couple. This dynamic of triggering and re-triggering can be seen as the “dance” or the cycle.

Couples therapy illuminates the dance and makes it conscious.  Aware of their dance, the couple can make an alliance to stop the painful cycle that has led them to feel alienated and alone.

2)   Helps the Couple “Go Deep”: There is much more to the dance then either person knows.  To understand the depths, someone has to do what I call “taking the elevator down,” to speak about the painful thoughts and feelings underneath the anger or withdrawal.

This reveals a world that the couple was often unaware of and generates compassion and understanding in both.  The couples bond is made more secure by the love and connection that this deeper understanding invites.

3)   Allows for Differences: Another common pattern is that couples resist differences.  It’s easy in the beginning of a relationship because it’s usually all about the “WE” but as each person’s individuality begins to reassert itself a power struggle ensues.  Each wants the other to do/say/see life as they do.

In Couples Therapy we begin to notice the fear of differentiation and to understand, instead, what the differences mean and why they are so important for the healthy development of the couple’s relationship. Freeing your partner to be who they are allows love to flourish.

Research shows that Couples Therapy delivers a big bang for the buck.  Studies of Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples show that most couples experience relief from relationship distress within a few months and the improvements are retained long-term.

Couples Therapy is now an obvious choice for all couples given how much better we feel when our love relationship is healthy.  There is no need to tolerate months or years of distress. The Paths to Well Being for couples are fully visible to experienced couples therapists and there isn’t much else in this world that delivers more happiness.