How does couples therapy work?
Coupling up is an experiment in love that we as a species just can’t stop trying. But let’s be real- it is not a cakewalk. In fact, existing happily as a long-term couple takes intention and skill. Since we don’t learn in school how to communicate skillfully with a love partner, most couples at one point or another ask for advice, pick up a book, attend a workshop, or get into couples therapy.
Because we bring our oldest attachment wounds and strategies with us into love relationships, it’s very easy for even loving and supportive partnerships to become emotionally burnt out. Rather than getting to experience the joy and pleasure of partnering, so many couples get stuck in defensive positions, cycling between anger, sadness and withdrawal while never getting to the root of the issue. In couples therapy, we train our sights on understanding the cycle, painting a picture of how each partner’s anxieties and coping strategies are triggering a predictable response in the other.
A Typical Conflict Cycle: The Dirty Dishes
Let me give you an example of the kind of cycle I mean. Perhaps this will sound familiar! A husband and wife, let’s call them Pat and Jodi, take care of a house and two energetic children together. Jodi tends to be more attentive to mess and clutter around the house, cleaning constantly, whereas Pat will take his time and do other things before getting around to the clean-up, sometimes leaving it for days until he feels the motivation to do a big clean up job all at once. The feelings stirred by this recurring situation are boiling over. In session, Jodi describes her dilemma to me this way:
“Pat forgets to do the dishes. When I nag him (as I always have to do) he gets defensive, and tells me to lay off, that he will do it when he wants to, and he’s busy with work.
When he says that I go into a shut-down rage. I feel like he’s a misogynist, and I am so sick of being the slave to him and my kids, and I get scared, like how did I marry someone with such different values than me?”
Hearing this, her husband seems to collapse in his chair, listless and forlorn.
“I am doing the best I can, and when I hear how angry she gets about the dishes, I feel really hopeless. Like, if that’s what has her questioning everything, then we are really screwed. I am busy with work, and I feel like she expects too much from me.”
From what I’m hearing and observing, I’m already getting a picture of the cycle that’s gotten Pat and Jodi to this very stuck place. They are clearly playing the two opposing roles that so many couples get locked into, which in Emotion Focused Couples Therapy we refer to as the pursuer and the withdrawer.
We can understand the pursuer and withdrawer roles as similar to the way each partner responds to the sight of the dishes. Jodi sees dishes on the counter, feels anxiety about how much there is to do, and tries to resolve her anxiety by immediately attacking the pile. Pat sees dishes on the counter, feels anxiety about how much there is to do, and tries to resolve his anxiety by ignoring the dishes.
Now apply those same coping mechanisms to the anxiety we feel around having and losing secure connection. Our brains are wired to be extra-sensitive to the little ins and outs of connection with our partners, going all the way back to when we came out of the womb already able to track what kind of attention and attunement we were getting from our mothers. Attachment anxiety is as much about survival as anything else, and so when it comes in, it creates quite a stir in the nervous system.
So, when as adults we are hit with a signal from the brain that our connection with our partner is in danger, we have pre-established strategies that come online pretty much automatically. Those in the pursuer camp will try to resolve their attachment anxiety by moving toward their partner, to try to change what’s bothering them. Often this can sound like anger or annoyance, but the purpose of the anger is to say to the partner “Hey, did you forget about me?” Those in the withdrawer camp will try to resolve their anxiety by getting further away from the situation that’s making them anxious or angry. Rather than try to change the situation, they will get some safe distance from it physically or mentally, so that it doesn’t escalate into a full blown, destructive fight.
Here’s where the cycle becomes really stuck in a loop. Jodi comes forward with feeling, which activates Pat’s attachment anxiety, and he reacts by getting distant or dissociated. As soon as Jodi senses Pat moving away from her, it further activates her own attachment anxiety, prompting another round of angry or annoyed pursuit, which further activates Pat, who distances again, and so on and so on. By the time I met Jodi and Pat, they had been in this cycle long enough that nagging and annoyance had given way to rage and despair.
Learning about ourselves, and each other
What this couple needs, and what so many need, is to be able to comprehend the intensity of feeling that even small slights and disagreements can dredge up in us based on the wounds and traumas of our earliest relationships. The difficulty is that folks that have never been in therapy rarely have any of this insight about themselves, let alone be able to communicate it to their partner. In EFCT, we take time to help each partner understand their triggers and auto-habits in the context of the genuine, painful dilemmas of their childhood, opening up space for more compassion and less defensiveness.
In this session, I started with Jodi. I invited her to close her eyes, take a mindful breath, and sense into her anger more deeply, asking her to identify the body sensations that come along with it. Spending slow time with the embodied part of the emotion, rather than the story it was telling about Pat or her marriage, Jodi was shown an early memory connected to her father. We learned that her earliest experiences of this kind of self-protective rage came in reaction to how devalued and disempowered she often felt by her father. As we processed and worked through what was emerging from the past, Jodi was able to turn to her husband and say something more true, complete and non-blaming than ever before, about just what happens to her with the dishes:
“When you don’t do the dishes, I am brought back to my childhood, when my dad bossed me around and made me feel so inadequate. He was always choosing my brother, telling me he wished I was a boy, and bossing me around as if I was his slave. I feel like your not doing the dishes is your message to me that you think this work is beneath you, and that I have to do it because I am a woman. I am sent into this crazy mix of shame and rage- part of me believing that to be true, and part of me fighting back so hard and getting so angry at you for making me question my value.”
Understanding the sources of our partner’s pain helps melt our protective coldness, softening our hearts so that we may feel and show our love
When he heard that, Pat immediately softened and opened up, rather than collapsing or defending himself. He hugged her and held her as she sobbed into his chest. When he was ready to speak he said: “I am so sorry that my forgetfulness elicits that in you. I don’t want to put more housework on your plate, and I know how much you do for us. I get defensive because I am scared of disappointing you. I am not like your dad. I see you as a full and equal partner, and I don’t want you to be any different.”
Hearing what was truly underlying Jodi’s reaction helped Pat see the full impact of his passivity. Once he understood that her anger was not a judgment of him so much as a painful reminder of an emotionally abusive situation, he was able to stay right with her and respond with strength and compassion. In other moments in the process, it was Pat’s turn to sense inward and share the places that his pain comes from, to learn what gets triggered in him and help Jodi understand what he needs from her.
In couples therapy, we get to visit these tender places again and again, building up awareness and insight, and creating more moments of authentic healing through love. When we’ve broken through the negative cycle, then the pleasure of connection that brought you together in the first place is given a chance to flow again.