FEATURE 2
It seems that no matter where you look these days, everyone is a relationship expert. Talk shows scream out advice, and shelves groan under rows and rows of bestsellers targeted at those in struggling relationships. But for those of us who want to quietly go about building, strengthening or even repairing our own precious coupledom, there are voices of reason out there in the cluttered forest of self help.
Psychiatrists, psychologists, religious leaders, social workers and psychotherapists are just a few of the relationship counsellors with wisdom to share. Their training might vary, but counsellor and psychotherapist Chris Whynot sums up what they all do in just one sentence: “We talk to people.”
Reverend Elizabeth Macdonald, the minister at Sydenham Street United Church, says, “I try to communicate to people that it is not a sign of weakness to bring in a third party; it’s a smart thing. We are wired to grow and develop in community with the support and encouragement of others around us and with the wisdom and expertise of others who have gone before.” Kingston is fortunate to have a plethora of experienced and sage advice-givers. You just have to ask. Falling in love, after all, is the easy part. Staying in the relationship is where the work begins. After all, the “falling” part takes little effort. It’s the creating part that takes time, commitment and a few bumps along the way. Counsellors at religious institutions often see couples flush with the heat of early romance. In some ways, these counsellors have the hardest job because they’re the ones who have to ask the tough question, “What happens after the wedding?” Spiritual leaders remind those caught up in early euphoria that it is essential they gather a kit of basic relationship tools to actually build this thing called “marriage.”
“I see getting ready for the wedding as an opportunity to do some relational work,” Macdonald says. “I meet with a couple three to five times before we even talk about the wedding service.” She knows that it’s hard for couples to look at the reality of their relationship when they are so invested in its celebration, but, she points out, “I want to be a voice that says, at the heart of this is your relationship — this is a living, breathing, growing entity. The wedding is a milestone, but not a destination.” She offers couples basic tools for this work. Plans are drawn out and the building can begin.
Macdonald sometimes uses a computerized questionnaire that couples can fill out. Once the results are analyzed, the about-to-be-marrieds can discuss different aspects of what their life together might look like. The questionnaire becomes, essentially, a springboard for conversation. She also uses exercises and active listening, as well as a series of questions and themes to get couples talking more.
And unlike some TV shows that suggest you focus on your partner, or on the trappings of intimacy (love notes, gifts), many professionals stress the importance of being strong in yourself first. Says Macdonald, “Because each of you is a growing, changing person, you must tend to yourself as well as to the relationship. Develop your gifts and strengths. This is not selfishness, but self care — a vital ingredient in keeping a relationship alive.”
Community is the other, oft not talked about, part of the puzzle in relationship strength, especially because couples today often move far from home or they are too busy to get involved. In this increasingly isolated culture, it is harder for people to know where to take their intimate questions. “No relationship can survive unless it is grounded in a loving and supportive community,” Macdonald says. Perhaps therapists of today are actually filling the gap once filled by live-in grandparents, childhood friends and siblings. Couples can’t exist in a vacuum, despite popular songs promising that, “All you need is love . . . .”
Professionals, unlike family, however, do offer an objective ear. “People of experience can help you move into new ways of living your own life — creative and exciting ways. Genuine learning helps us recognize where we need to change, but it takes intentionality, a degree of self awareness and risk. Really wonderful things can happen,” says Macdonald.
So when the plans are finished and you start digging the basement of your relationship creation, the first tool is still to be solid in yourself. The second is to surround yourself with a loving community and experienced guides. But one can’t build great things with only two tools. There are many more.
Kathleen Pratt is a social worker and facilitator who teaches the course “Rebuilding When Your Relationship Ends” at St. Lawrence College. Although designed by educator Dr. Bruce Fisher to help those going through breakups, it has a wealth of information for anyone wanting to strengthen a partnership. Pratt says, “We also bring the unconscious to a conscious level of awareness so you can enter new relationships with your eyes open.”
This brings up, again, the issue of self knowledge and just how much our past influences our primary relationship. Most agree that the family you grew up in certainly influences how you will function in future relationships, but you don’t have to be stuck with that model forever. “You can put away the ‘leftovers’ from your past and have a healthy and mature identity now,” Pratt says. “Explore who you are, and what you like and don’t like. We need a healthy relationship with ourselves before we can have a healthy relationship with others.
“Know how to meet your own needs instead of searching for the person who is going to fulfill those needs for you,” suggests Pratt.
One of the catch phrases we hear all the time is “to develop good communication skills.” The St. Lawrence rebuilding course focuses on using “I” rather than “you” statements when you speak, which implies taking responsibility for your own feelings and not telling your spouse how you think he or she feels. One of the class exercises is to have everyone take turns listening to each other for 10 solid minutes. “Most people don’t have the opportunity in everyday life to talk about whatever they want without being interrupted,” says Pratt. These small exercises can create big changes. Taking a course like this can provide concrete things to work on. After all, it’s fine to read volumes of “how-to” books, but often we need a simple play-by-play instruction manual on loving. After all, our ways of relating to others have often been part of us for at least two or more decades.
So the first-floor walls of your relationship construct are ready to go up. You’ve added the third tool — looking at your own past — and then the forth, being the tried-and-true “improve communication” tool. The toolbox is heavier now, but working on oneself is still on the top shelf.
Marriage and family therapist Peter Sims has spent over three decades working in the hospital system, has his own private practice, and has been married for 36 years. He, too, echoes the words of advice from others. “The biggest problem is to become focused on your partner’s behaviour. I want to help people refocus on what they can do because trying to change someone else is a formula for frustration.”
He suggests that when we are linked to someone, we tend to see our behaviour as a response; a sort of, “I am acting this way because of the way you are acting.” This makes you feel like you have less control and are less in charge of your own behaviour, which can lead a couple into a constant state of conflict or alienation.
“Stop trying to change your partner and refocus on becoming the kind of person you would like to be, and that will make a big difference. Communicate things about yourself rather than talking to your partner about their shortcomings.” Recognizing not only your other half’s weaknesses and strengths but your own as well (and yes, you do have both) is part of a mature intimacy, as is a certain level of acceptance of, and respect for, even great differences.
“Intimacy is about revealing self,” Sims says. “There is vulnerability in sharing ourselves. It starts out being an internal process, but as you know yourself better, you are able to share more.” Intimacy has been described as, “In to me you see.” And as a partner, he feels it is important to continue to have that curiosity. After all, is it that your husband or wife is no longer interesting, or have you lost the capacity to be interested? The finger continues to point back to self.
Sims also dispels the myth that “healthy” is synonymous with “no conflict.” He says that research shows that 70 per cent of the things that happily married couples argue about never get resolved. “The difference is that these couples are nice to each other while arguing. They are respectful, not contemptuous or abusive. People then feel entitled to share their experience — what they are thinking and feeling.” Of course, none of this just happens “magically.” It requires effort and a sense of commitment.
In a healthy relationship there is movement. One person will change, the other will change; a sort of evolution over time. “You have to make it a priority,” Sims says. This seems harder and harder to do in a world that tugs on everyone from all sides — work, kids, computers, travel. “There are more distractions today. An average couple watches 20 hours of TV a week and only spends about an hour talking to one another.”
Says Sims, “Lower your expectations but not your aspirations. Good relationships have perpetual problems but people keep working at them anyway. It is a lifelong task. Work at renewing your connections because, after all, your partner is your co-creator.”
So the relationship-building toolbox gets heavier still. There is the essential fifth tool of being vulnerable and sharing yourself, and the sixth where you argue respectfully. Sims waxes poetic for a moment. “Think of two really good dancers. They are just doing it for each other; they understand each other, trust each other and seem to be cuing each other somehow.”
Dr. Wendy Stewart, a local psychologist and the only certified Imago therapist in the area, suggests that you are attracted to someone who has the image of your primary caregivers, both positive and negative. The idea is that they are your match, your imago (the person who can make you whole again), and they help you resolve your unfulfilled needs of childhood.”
Using a process of dialogue, listening/mirroring back, validating and empathizing to build connection, this therapy focuses on the “us” of a relationship. With that comes the understanding couples need to gain after the “romantic” stage of the relationship, when they discover — surprise — that they are actually two different people. (Three, really: “you, me and us.”) The trick is to stay connected as you move into the second “power-struggle” phase, so you are not so fearful of being separate. After the power struggle comes the recommitting/reconnecting stage and then, ideally, you move back to the romantic stage once more. “You will cycle through these stages again, but it will be easier the more you do this,” Stewart says. “You can fall in love again with the same person.”
Still, none of this precludes work on oneself. As Stewart reminds us, “You need to try to gain great insight into yourself. Look at your stuff and what your history brings into the relationship.”
Good love doesn’t just happen, she points out. “Relationships are not born of love, but of need; real love is born in relationships as a result of understanding what they are about and doing what is necessary to have them.” Stewart suggests creating a “relationship vision.” “What do you see in the relationship — travel, money, laughter? Break it down into how you can make it happen.”
So as the toolbox grows yet again, a second floor is added to the relationship. The seventh tool is working on matching wounds/needs and the eighth is to have a vision of what you want the relationship to look like. This sounds, once again, suspiciously like knowing your own dreams.
Marilyn Kogan is a registered marriage and family therapist who loves when couples have a vision and come by for preventive work. “I have a big grin on my face when they come in and say that something is not OK before being on the brink of splitting up. We can get back to what it was that made their relationship unique and special.”
Kogan says she feels like a technician at times because she does not set the agenda for a couple. “I just learn the process of what happens between people and that helps me tune in to what’s working and what is not.” Then couples have a chance to renegotiate the terms of their relationship, terms that work for both this time. Kogan says that basically, “You need a belief in self, a belief in your entitlement to be respected and to understand that, in the picture frame of your marriage, two people fit inside, not just one.”
Time to upgrade to a new toolbox to hold these more specific tools of the relationship trade with tool nine: sort out problems before they become too big, and tool 10: recognizing that “WE have a problem so what are WE going to do about it.” Now it’s time to add a roof to this twosome tower.
Counsellor and psychotherapist Chris Whynot feels that for a relationship to get stronger, it helps for the other person to truly know you. One of our primary needs is to know we are loved, and loveable, that we matter and that our heart is safe. But sometimes we have been hurt in our lives and we put up a fence. We become selective about what we show a partner, and the partner, sensing this, can become distant.
Whynot suggests, “When we are born we need to be held or we do not thrive, but as we get older it gets complicated. But that’s what we want — hold me, take me in. To be able to come out from behind the wall, to be really known, is scary, but to be able to do that with each other is really central to a strong relationship — that is intimacy.” It becomes obvious that intimacy is not the wonderful, but short-lived, romantic phase of coupledom we see in the movies.
When we are moving to deeper levels in a relationship it gets frightening, and sometimes we resort to criticism, stonewalling or defensiveness to push our loved ones away. But the most interesting work occurs when the movie ends and we start to bump up against those protective boundaries because if we only present our best face possible, we leave out a lot of ourselves. This means revealing the stuff we are not proud of, all those secrets that make us the fallible, imperfect creatures we human beings are.
Whynot is also adamant that this does not mean that we have to agree about everything. “There is no partner with whom we will not have disagreements. A good partner is someone with whom we can have disagreements and keep moving forward. If we feel heard, and then understood, we don’t have to have agreement. We are connected.”
And maybe, just maybe, in this disposable society, couples give up too quickly. “There is a sense that we should never suffer, so people say goodbye too soon,” Whynot says. “In a relationship we will hurt each other terribly, but it is about being able to sustain ourselves through that. If we run, we limit ourselves. Growth is scary — almost as scary as not changing.”
So, with the roof on, we just need the final coat of paint on this relationship house. The eleventh tool is about allowing yourself to be known and the twelfth is to not run too soon. Try rolling up your sleeves and see if you can drywall the cracks.
Psychotherapists Louise Dorfman and David Rubinstein are a unique co-therapy team who operate Couple Enrichment Inc. near Orangeville. They describe their process as “a value-based approach challenging couples to be true to themselves while being tolerant and respectful of each other’s differences. We help them stay closely connected by maintaining emotional separateness, which is the ability to hold on to your own emotions without taking on the emotions of your partner.”
Rubinstein explains, “Couples come to us from a stuck place because they start with the idealized version. The first year is romantic, that hallucinatory period where you are infatuated with each other, and then you come to that stuck place. At that point you have an opportunity to take it to another level.”
Inspired by Erich Fromm’s book The Art of Loving, which reminds us to develop a capacity in ourselves to love and to become more of a loving person, Rubinstein encourages partners to see their spouses more objectively, see who they really are, rather than simply expecting them to fulfill our needs.
Dorfman continues, “Most people don’t know what intimacy is. The common feeling is that it is warm and nice and fuzzy, but it is about being able to tolerate what you don’t like to hear in your partner. It is not always comfortable — you have to struggle to express yourself without putting the other down. But it can lead to a feeling of connection.”
Connection, conversation, and real listening help couples develop empathy for each other and to develop a sense of being the other person. Dorfman and Rubinstein, who offer private three-day therapy retreats at their Hockley Valley B&B, cite the story of a man who sends his wife roses all the time, thinking it is an expression of love. She hates roses but is too embarrassed to tell him. Dorfman says, “Being in a loving relationship is about learning to be a responsive person — responding to their needs, knowing more about them. It is also about responsibility — taking care of the daily part of life — business, home, children and learning how to connect and relate more closely.”
They think it’s ironic that people feel they don’t need to “learn” how to love, thinking the feelings come naturally. In fact, we often have learned how to love from our family of origin, and if that wasn’t healthy, we may need to “relearn” how to love in a healthy way. Dorfman says, “When couples work with each other, they learn a model on how to love that will extend to all other relationships — partner, work, children and parents. The whole world will look different.”
Still, many therapists say it is more often middle-aged couples who are willing to take instruction on how to love. Perhaps it’s because they have passed the “romance” phase, or perhaps 40-plus is traditionally a time to re-examine life choices, anyway. Dr. Stewart says, “You often don’t see younger couples come in. The youngest of mine are in their late 30s and right up into their 70s.”
The great news is that it’s never too late to heal or improve a relationship. Dorfman says, “When you have known someone a long time, and you stop and make something happen that is intimate, there is a closeness and depth of history between the two of you that is a far deeper experience. Intimacy between two people who have matured and been through a lot in love is a deeper thing.”
And so now our relationship toolbox is fully stocked, topped up with responsiveness and responsibility. But as with any house, the work never really ends, and the toolbox needs to stay stocked and nearby. There will always be maintenance and the occasional flood or leaky roof.
There is a catch-22 in all this rebuilding work, however. Although working on oneself allows one to focus on a healthy relationship, Whynot reminds us that, “One of the best ways to develop self-esteem is to also develop a strong relationship. How we feel when we are with our significant other has a huge impact on how we feel about ourselves.” This echoes Elizabeth Macdonald’s sentiment that, “the love of another enables us to love ourselves.”
So, even if there are a few flaws in the initial construction of your relationship building, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to jump ship and start building a whole new house. You have the necessary tools to do the repairs. After all, a well-loved older house with some scratches and patches is often worth more to the heart than a brand-new house.
Still, it makes sense that all relationships could probably benefit from occasional tune-ups. As Kogan says, “Wouldn’t it be nice if every five years there was a place where every couple could have a weekend of enrichment, a time to look at where you have been and where you are — an investment in the relationship.”
Dorfman feels that people think nothing about taking courses about everything under the sun, and yet, “They think having a relationship is something we should know about. I think it is too complex a world for that — we should learn about it.” The books, the counsellors, the retreats are all out there for the taking — all that’s needed is a bit of research.
As Chris Whynot says so eloquently, “When the first blush fades, we fall in love for real; a more conscious kind of love. We should be tuning up every day. It is a process. Pay some attention to this, respect each other and grow a love. Remember, a good relationship is a long-term conversation.”
