This document is designed to help you get the most benefit from our work together. The first section is on how to prepare for and maximize the value of our sessions. The second section summarises some brief concepts about relationships and productive couple’s therapy.
Your job is to create your own individual objectives for being in therapy. Like a good coach, my job is to help you reach them. I have many, many tools to help you become a more effective partner – they work best when you are clear about how you aspire to be. My goal is to help you each make better adjustments and responses to each other without violating your core values or deeply held principles.
Preparing for our sessions
The major aim of therapy is increasing your knowledge about yourself, your partner and the patterns of interaction between you. Therapy becomes effective as you apply new knowledge to break ineffective patterns and develop better ones.
The key tasks of couples therapy are increasing your clarity about:
- the kind of life you want to build together and individually
- the kind of partner you aspire to be in order to build the kind of life and relationship you want to create
- your individual blocks to becoming the kind of partner you aspire to be
- the skills and knowledge necessary to do the above tasks
What to avoid in our sessions
A common yet unproductive pattern in couples therapy is making the focus be whatever problem happens to be on someone’s mind at the moment. This is a reactive (and mostly ineffective) approach to working things through.
The second unproductive pattern is showing up with each person saying, “I don’t know what to talk about, do you?” While this blank slate approach may open some interesting doors, it is a hit or miss process.
The third common unproductive pattern is discussing whatever fight you are in at the moment or whatever fight you had since the last meeting. Discussing these fights/arguments without a larger context of what you wish to learn from the experience is often an exercise in spinning your wheels.
Over time, repeating these patterns will lead to the plaintive question, “Are we getting anywhere?” By the time that question is asked, the question is painfully obvious.
What to do instead
You can’t create a flourishing relationship by only fixing what’s wrong. But it’s a start.
To create sustained improvement in your relationship you need:
- a vision of the life you want to build together and individually
- the appropriate attitudes and skills to work as a team
- the motivation to persist
- time to review progress
- communication skills
- have a life separate from your partner because you are not joined at the hip
To create the relationship you really desire, there will be some difficult trade-offs and tough choices for each person.
The first trade-off will be time. It simply takes time to create a relationship that flourishes: time to be together, time to be with family, time to play, coordinate, nurture, relax, hang out and plan. This time will encroach on some other valuable areas – your personal or professional time.
The second trade-off is energy. It simply takes effort to sustain improvement over time – staying conscious of making a difference over time – remembering to be more respectful, more giving, more appreciative etc. It takes effort to remember and act.
The third compromise is comfort. You’ll give up some emotional comfort by going out on a limb to try novel ways of thinking or doing things. It will be uncomfortable to listen and be curious instead of butting in, and to speak up instead of becoming resentfully compliant or withdrawing. At the beginning, there will be emotional risk taking action, but you will never explore different worlds if you always keep sight of the shoreline.
There is one more trade-off that’s even more difficult for some people: that is improving their reaction to problems. For example, if one person is hypersensitive to criticism and his/her partner is hypersensitive to feeling ignored, it will take effort to improve their sensitivity instead of hoping the partner will stop ignoring or criticising.
In all these areas, there is generally a conflict between short-term gratification and the long-term goal of creating a satisfying relationship. The blunt reality is that, in an interdependent relationship, effort is required on the part of each person to make a sustained improvement. It is like pairs figure skating – one person cannot do most of the work and still create an exceptional team.
A more powerful approach is for each person to do the following before each session:
- reflect on your objectives for being in therapy
think about your next step that supports or relates to your larger objectives for the kind of relationship you wish to create, or the partner you aspire to become
This reflection takes some effort. Yet few people would call an important meeting and then say, “Well, I don’t have anything to bring up, does anyone else have anything on their agenda?” Your preparation will pay high dividends.
Important concepts for couples therapy and relationships
The following ideas can help identify areas of focus in our work and/or stimulate discussion between you and your partner between meetings.
Attitude is Key
When it comes to improving your relationship, your attitude toward change is more important that what action to take. What to do and how to do it can often be easily identified. The real challenge is why you don’t do it.
How to think differently about a problem is often more effective than just trying to figure out what action to take. Your partner is quite limited in his/her ability to respond to you. You are quite limited in your ability to respond to your partner. Accepting that is a huge step into maturity.
The definite possibility exists that you have some flawed assumptions about your partner’s motives. And that he/she has some flawed assumptions about yours. The problem is, most of the times we don’t want to believe those assumptions are flawed.
Focus on changing yourself rather than your partner
Couples therapy works best if you have more goals for yourself than for your partner. I am at my best when I help you reach objectives you set for yourself.
Problems occur when reality departs sharply from our expectations, hopes, desires and concerns. It’s human nature to try and change one’s partner instead of adjusting our expectations. This aspect of human nature is what keeps therapists in business.
Improving your response
The hardest part of couples therapy is accepting you will need to improve your response to a problem (how you think about it, feel about it, or what to do about it). Very few people want to focus on improving their response. It’s more common to build a strong case for why the other should do the improving.
You can’t change your partner. Your partner can’t change you. You can influence each other, but that doesn’t mean you can change each other.
You can learn a lot about yourself by understanding what annoys you and how you handle it.
The more you believe your partner should be different, the less initiative you will take to change the patterns between you.
Becoming a more effective partner is the most efficient way to change a relationship. Couples therapy works best if you have more goals for yourself than for your partner.
Conflict as a key to harmony
All significant growth comes from disagreements, dissatisfaction with the current status, or a striving to make things better. Paradoxically, accepting that conflict produces growth and learning to manage inevitable disagreements is the key to more harmonious relationships.
All major goals have built in contradictions; for example, speak up vs. keep the peace.
It’s easy to be considerate and loving to your partner when the vistas are magnificent, the sun is shining and breezes are gentle. But when it gets bone chilling cold, you’re hungry and tired, and your partner is whining and snivelling about how you got them into this mess, that’s when you get tested. Your leadership and your character get tested. You can join the finger pointing or become how you aspire to become.
Tough questions
In a strong disagreement, do you really believe your partner is entitled to their opinion?
Under duress, do you have the courage and tenacity to seek your partner’s reality and the courage to express your reality when the stakes are high?
Why is it important to let your partner know what you think, feel and are concerned about? (Because they really can’t appreciate what they don’t understand.)
What is the price your partner will have to pay to improve their response to you? How much do you care about the price they will have to pay? (Everything has a price and we always pay it.)
Can you legitimately expect your partner to treat you better than you treat him/her?
Can you legitimately expect your partner to treat you better than you treat yourself?
If you want your partner to change, do you think about what you can do to make it easier?
When a problem shows up, it’s natural to think “What should I do about it?” A much more productive question is, “How do aspire to be in this situation?”
Asking good questions – of yourself and your partner – helps you uncover causes beneath causes.
The importance of communication
The three most important qualities for effective communication are respect, openness and persistence. You can learn to do these things even if other people don’t do them for you.
Good communication is much more difficult than most people want to believe. Effective negotiation is even harder. We are all responsible for how we express ourselves, no matter how others treat us.
Communication is the number one presenting problem in couples counselling. Effective communication means you need to pay attention to:
managing unruly emotions, such as anger that is too intense
- how you are communicating – whining, blaming, being vague, etc.
- what you want from your partner during the discussion
- what the problem symbolises to you
- the outcome you want from the discussion
- your partner’s major concerns
- how you can help your partner become more responsive to you
- the beliefs and attitudes you have about the problem
Some final thoughts…
Even with the best of intentions, grace under pressure does not spring full-grown – practice, practice and more practice. Practice the right things and you will get there. Love is destroyed when self-interest dominates.
If you don’t know what you feel in important areas of your relationship, it is like playing high stakes poker when you see only half your cards. You will make a lot of dumb plays.
The possibility exists that we choose partners we need but don’t necessarily want.
To get to the bottom of a problem often means you first accept how complex it is.
Trust is the foundational building block of a flourishing relationship. You create trust by doing what you say you will do.
It’s impossible to be in a highly inter-dependent relationship without ever being judgemental or being judged.
If you strive to always feel emotionally safe in your relationship and get it, you will pay the price by becoming dull. If neither of you ever rocks the boat, you will end up with a dull relationship.
Most of the ineffective things we do in relationships fall into just a few categories:
- blame or attempt to dominate
disengage/withdraw
resentful compliance
whine
denial or confusion
These are the normal emotional reactions to feeling a threat or high stress. Improving your relationship means better management of these reactions.
If you are asking your partner to change something, sometimes it’s a good idea to ask if the change is consistent with how they aspire to be in that situation.
Businesses and marriages fail for the same three reasons. A failure to:
- learn from the past
adapt to changing conditions
predict probable future problems and take action
Effective change requires insight plus action. Action without insight is thoughtless. Insight without action is passivity.
If you want to create a win-win solution, you cannot hold a position that has caused your partner to lose in the past.
Everything you do that takes a sustained effort is governed by three motivations:
- avoid pain or discomfort
- the benefits involved
- be a better person
It’s also true for your partner.
A couple’s vision emerges from a process of reflection and inquiry. It requires both people to speak from the heart about what really matters to each.
How To Get The Most From Couples Therapy
By Ellyn Bader, Ph.D. and Peter Pearson, Ph.D.
© Copyright MMIII The Couples Institute
Used by permission