Category: blame

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IS IT SO?

 

Our brains, as amazing as they are, sometimes don’t do us favors when it comes to how they “think” about our partner’s actions and words. Our default is to attribute negative intentions to them–or at the very least to view them with suspicion. This is because the brain prioritizes survival, moving us away from pain and hardship that it thinks is a threat. We survived by assuming that others were a threat before concluding we were safe around them. How funny it is that while trying to protect us, our brain can sometimes make our lives more difficult! 

This is not the intention, of course, but rather the result of how we make sense of things that don’t make sense on the surface. This is why a well-lived life is an intentionally lived life. As we all know, some pleasurable activities are harmful, while some painful activities are good for us. We have to use our rational brain to convince ourselves to do hard things that are actually good for us, or avoid pleasurable things that can be bad for us.

This is usually not too difficult, unless the hard thing we are trying to convince ourselves to do is responding to an upset partner! When this happens, it is not very useful to “listen” to what the brain is telling you, especially if that message is one of the following: 

  • Run away/withdraw
  • Attack back
  • Defend yourself
  • Shut down

So what should we do? 

It can be useful to know how to “hack” the brain’s survival instincts at times. What this means is finding a way to trick ourselves into thinking differently about an action. An example of a brain hack could be when we put a toothpick in our mouths instead of a cigarette when we are trying to stop smoking. You hope your brain accepts the “oral substitute”, calming the craving for a cigarette. 

THE QUESTION: With relationships, the most successful hacks are ones where couples shift their perspective on the problem and how they are thinking about it. The approach I offer in this article is one where you question the “truth” of what is going on. I like this hack because it is relatively simple, but very effective! It entails simply asking yourself, as needed: “Is it so?”

This question is a variation of any number of questions that work to put a wedge in our thinking. Our brains are very adept at writing a story about what is happening with our partner that may make sense to us, but have little to do with our partner. Taking a moment to ask yourself “Is it so?” is sometimes all the time necessary to stop the printing press of the mind, allowing us to become more curious about what might actually be bothering our loved one. 

Here is an example. Imagine that your partner comes up to you and complains about you leaving your dirty dishes in the sink. As they complain to you, your mind might come up with a story like this: They are too sensitive about things. I cannot be myself in this relationship! I can’t do ANYTHING right! I will never be able to please them. 

If you take a moment to ask yourself “Is it so?”, you are giving yourself a pause from the story in your head, which is enough time to become a bit more regulated. From this state, you have access to other information other than the story you need to survive. That information might look like one of the following:

  • I forgot that they just cleaned the kitchen so it makes sense they would be upset about the dishes in the sink.
  • I remember them telling me that their mother forced them to clean the house, but never showed appreciation for it. 
  • They told me they were stressed today and my actions did not show compassion. 
  • I did promise to do the dishes more consistently and gave them permission to remind me if I forgot. 

Or even this one, though this may be more difficult to step into quickly:

  • My partner is right–I should have cleaned my dishes right away–that is respectful towards our shared space. I am glad they called me out on this, holding me accountable to our relationship agreements. 

IF IT IS IN FACT SO: But wait a minute, you might say. What if the negative story we make up in our heads is actually the truth? To be honest, this is rarely the case–but if you do reach that conclusion, I hope that you have first given it the “Is it so?” test. If the story in our head is in fact so, there may be a difficult conversation for us to have with our partner. If we choose to do that, we’ll at least be addressing something that needs to be addressed. 

What might that conversation look like? Well, let’s say that it is in fact so that “you cannot do anything right in the relationship”–and your every move is criticized and judged because you are not doing it “correctly”. This might be a time to question whether the relationship is a good fit for you, but if you want to have a conversation with your partner before calling it quits, you could start by saying something like this:

“It is true that I left the dishes in the sink–I admit to that. But it feels like I can’t do anything right–is that how you feel about me in this relationship? It feels like I am constantly disappointing you, and that concerns me a great deal. I would like to understand how where you stand on this. Are you open to my efforts to do better?”

Not all discussions would look like this–it might be that you left the dishes in the sink just this one time, and that is a quick fix and easy to repair. So while you might be nervous to ask yourself “Is it so?”, it is always better to respond based on what is true than what we think is true. 

*

Successful relationships are not models of perfect behavior, but rather models of mindful behavior. Successful couples think about the choices they have available to them, and the consequences of those choices, before choosing. This skill takes practice, but it is doable, and is easier to accomplish if all partners are intentional about it.

I generally suggest that a couple “team up” to make sure that false conclusions don’t become the truth of their relationship. This is making the problem something that is between you, not in one of you. You are teaming up against the problem, not each other, and you are doing this for the benefit of the relationship (which is composed of you two!). 

With practice, you will be better equipped to notice the false assumptions coming into your head when conflict arises. Noticing these, taking a beat, and then choosing what is best for both of you in the moment is a strategy that will lead to greater understanding and connection. It is not necessarily easy to do, but it is easier than suffering with the false realities we make up about what is happening. 

Just ask yourself, “Is it so?” 

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HOW MY THINKING CHANGED ABOUT STAN TATKIN

“Who the hell is Stan Tatkin?”, you might be asking. Those who have been in therapy with me will be familiar with the name, as I often bring up his writing regarding love and relationships. I even share an excerpt his publishers provides from his latest book, In Each Others’ Care: A Guide to the Most Common Relationship Conflicts and How to Work Through Them, because of how helpful I feel the suggestions are for couples. I admire his writing style, intelligence, compassion, and knowledge about what the human brain does when it is in a relationship with another. 

However, I did not always have such high praise for Dr. Tatkin. I used to have a completely different opinion of him and his work. In this article I want to show how, as I gained experience as a couples therapist, he earned my respect, despite my continuing disagreements with some of his practice policies. I hope that in this time of polarization, my story will serve to show the value of both humility in professional growth, and willingness to change one’s mind given new information. 

***

Several years ago I attended a conference for therapists who work with couples. This was before the COVID pandemic, when these were held in person, and they were a great way to connect with other professionals, learn new skills, and get out of town for a weekend. Dr. Tatkin was doing several presentations during the conference, as his profile as a well-known published author and speaker is significant, and his presence on the roster can influence people to attend. 

After one of his talks, he was available to sign books in the lobby, and I took the opportunity to ask him a question about his work with couples. As a “narrative” therapist (one who works with the stories clients have about themselves, others, and the world), I wanted to know if he would ever confront a couple about the “story” they had about their relationship. I wondered if he would ever explore if the story they had was in fact the problem–that it was not working for who they are as a couple. For instance, it might be a problem if a couple has a story that the man is supposed to provide for the household when in fact the woman earns the money.

He listened to my question respectfully, but answered me by saying: “No, I would never do that. I would just tell them to grow up.” I remember being stunned by his answer, but trying not to let that show. Instead, I thanked him for his time, and I wandered away from his table. 

This happened years ago, but for a long time I harbored the thought that Dr. Tatkin must be one of those therapists who has been working for so long that he has lost compassion for the couple he treats. It can happen! For years I held this negative view of him, and it allowed me to convince myself that I must know better. Yep, I have an ego!

***

Being a therapist is one of those careers that, in my opinion, requires a certain level of not just curiosity and compassion, but also humility, patience, and respect for the work. It asks that we take care of ourselves so that we can bring our full skills and caring abilities into sessions. It demands that we do our own work to minimize becoming reactive when clients anger us or get angry at us. 

Was Dr. Tatkin, in his response to me, displaying a lack of patience or reactivity for clients’ suffering, or was he perhaps letting me know that, in his work, compassion could look like confrontation? At the time I was convinced it was the former, and I remember hearing stories over time about his couples work that reinforced how I thought about this. 

But then I myself worked for several more years, seeing couples in my own private practice. And along the way, I kept hearing more and more from Dr. Tatkin online in articles, videos, and discussions about the books he had completed and the work he does. What I began to struggle with is that the intelligent, empathic person he presented as in his videos and interviews was nothing like the harsh convention speaker I encountered at the book signing all those years ago. 

I began to consider the idea that none of us are ever just one thing. Sometimes we are patient, sometimes we are not, sometimes we are caring, sometimes we are less so. As human beings, we hope to respond skillfully to whatever shows up around us, but that is not always the case, is it? Therapists are supposed to be better at this than most, but better does not mean perfect. 

Life, even when we love it, can still be stressful at times, or we can just be tired. And careers, even when they are our passion, can tire us out or feel unsatisfying at times. Like all human beings, Stan Tatkin was neither an asshole or a saint. Like all of us, he could be both and everything in between. And this is when I started to listen to him more closely.

***

His most recent book, which I mentioned above, speaks loudly to me because of a few guidelines that he refuses to compromise on. I summarize them below:

  1. The needs of your relationship must ALWAYS come first.
  2. Love is not enough. Every relationship must define their shared purpose and vision. 
  3. Agreements that you make together serve as guardrails to keep your relationship from running off the road. These agreements MUST be 100% agreed to by all parties, or they will fail. 

In the recent trend of nurturing psychotherapy, clients can end up being coddled more than cared for. Sometimes the best way to care for anyone is to hold them accountable for who they are being, and support their efforts to be a better version of themselves. A therapist’s role can be more than listener–they can also be mentor, advocate, witness, and challenger. 

Dr. Tatkin’s guidelines hold partners accountable for the health and wellbeing of the relationship, so they can no longer blame each other or outside forces. Imagine how powerful that can be–to not have any excuses for why you are not happy other than your choices and responses! This does not mean that if someone is abusing you, you are the cause of it. But you are accountable for your response to it, and your response can change your life (or save it!). 

I believe that these guidelines need to be firmly followed, because it is natural for us to be selfish in life, concerned primarily about our individual needs. Even motherhood does not shift this very much–caring for a child has a selfish element to it.  I want to stress that there is nothing wrong with natural selfishness like this, but it may not be in the best interest of the relationship. 

In placing the needs the relationship first, you ensure not only that it thrives, but that you also thrive as an individual! One individual win usually ends up being a loss for both partners, so why not go for the win-win?

Your shared purpose and vision can be thought of as your relationship’s Mission Statement, guiding you down a shared path together, a path that can be changed at any time by both parties. Another way of putting this is that your relationship can only grow if you are both moving towards the same values. 

Agreements act as guardrails to keep you on that path, and Dr. Tatkin stresses that caring partners will agree to hold each other accountable in a non-blaming way if one starts to veer off the road. Why wouldn’t we agree to do this for each other if we both have a vested interest in the continuation of the relationship? 

***

In this article I have just given you a taste of what I have found of value in Dr. Tatkin’s work, and if your curiosity was piqued, I encourage you to read his books or watch his webinars and videos. Modern relationships cannot thrive by following the rules of the past, unless you are content with the narrowness of that kind of life together. Today’s complex marriages need guidelines that respect modern values and respond to them. This is how, over time, I grew to respect Dr. Tatkin’s approach to the work. He is on a mission to make relationships strong and secure, and coddling won’t achieve that goal. 

I still don’t know if he is an asshole or not, but aren’t we all assholes from time to time? What I am certain of is that he is onto something that benefits anyone who takes the time to follow his lead. Today’s relationships need more than love–they need intention, follow-through, and shared accountability. This is what it means to be in each other’s care. And it turns out that new was right when he answered me way back when, because for some couples, being in each other’s care means they have to sort of grow up. 

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THE HUDDLE

I am not a big sports fan, which is odd considering how I regularly bring up “huddles” in my couples therapy sessions. But when I do this, I assure you we are not really talking about football or soccer! What we are talking about is teams, specifically how a team wins, and the huddle, which I will discuss in this article, is a key element in any team’s approach to winning. 

We didn’t used to think of couples in a relationship as a team–the individuals were more like employees in the same company, but each in charge of different departments. In the old days, men made the money and doled out discipline to the children, while women managed home and child care. While this worked at times to keep a home and family going, both men and women suffered because individual needs were not part of the overall plan (this is why so many men got individual needs met outside the marriage, while women would take sedatives). 

Today, we have mostly moved beyond that stilted and misogynistic model, forging a new version of what home and family looks like and how they can thrive. Many of the relationship experts, including the Gottmans and Stan Tatkin, have stressed that today’s couples have to work like a team rather than as co-employees. I want to explore what that means for couples, and why it is beneficial to them both as a couple and as an individual . Are you ready? Hut, hut, HIKE! 

WHAT IS A HUDDLE? I’ll be honest with you–I had to look this one up. While there is the definition I use with couples, I thought I should at least verify that what I tell them is accurate before writing an article about it! So here is how Webster’s defines a huddle as applied to football: 

huddle: to gather away from the line of scrimmage to receive instructions (as from the quarterback) for the next down

What does this definition tell us about huddles? That they are a gathering away from where the action is happening in order to make a plan for how to move forward. In this definition, the instructions come from the quarterback, but in a relationship all members act as quarterbacks. I will add to this the  purpose of making this plan–to win the game by getting closer to, and ultimately over, the goal line.

One main question addressed in a huddle is: “What do we do next?” Maybe the team starts by identifying what did not work previously, but there is little time for pointing fingers or blame–the focus is on what’s next! In other words, let’s look briefly at what didn’t work and then decide what might work now. The team does not get distracted by anything that could pull them away from their main objective: to win. And, judging by their continued use by football and soccer teams worldwide, huddles work. 

WHY DO THEY WORK? In his book In Each Other’s Care, Dr. Stan Tatkin says the following about relationship success:

“People make their relationship difficult when they do not orient to a two-person psychological system full of collaboration and cooperation. That lack of a two-person orientation is at the center of all difficulty in couple unions.”

What is another name for a two-person psychological system? A team! There may not be as many members in a relationship team as there are on a sports team, but the point is that the rules work across the board. Here is my understanding of these rules:

  1. The needs of the team supersede the needs of the individual members: The team (relationship) always comes first.
  2. The blame game and defensiveness serve no purpose other than to stop forward movement: Avoid blame and defensiveness. 
  3. If you want your team to win, the individual members must be strong and care for their individual development: Be accountable for what’s yours. 
  4. If one person messes up the plan, the whole team suffers; if one person succeeds, the whole team benefits: You either win or lose together as a team. 
  5. The focus is on what to do next to gain or re-gain ground, always with the intention of winning: The important question to explore is “How can we do better next time? What does our relationship need to thrive?”

What I love about huddles is that they are quick and purposeful–no need to talk until 4 in the morning! They work because they focus on what did work and what will work next. Can you imagine if that was the priority in the conversations you have with your partner(s)? 

HOW TO DO HUDDLES IN YOUR RELATIONSHIP: One of the biggest challenges couples therapists face is how to get their clients to use the skills they develop in sessions at home. In fact, John Gottman wrote about this nearly 25 years ago in his book The Marriage Clinic, describing how only about 35% of couples who do therapy experience meaningful positive changes, but after only a year, 30-50% of these couples relapse into the old patterns. 

Given that, the challenge I face is two-fold:

  • Making a tool or skill appealing to couples so they will use it
  • Looking for any emotional obstacles to using the tool or skill (a topic for a whole article in itself)

Regarding the appeal of huddles, I approach this challenge by first looking for times when a couple is already doing them without knowing they are doing them. Any instance when we have been pressed for time and have to make a decision quickly is an instance where we have likely used the huddle, quickly exploring these things: 

  1. What do we currently know?
  2. What do we need to do right now?
  3. How are we doing to do it?

When decisions need to be made quickly, there is little time for blame, regret, or criticism! You come together and make a plan to get back on track as soon as possible–this is a version of the huddle! Bringing awareness to, and reinforcing, behaviors you are already doing successfully is one way to ensure a tool will be used outside the therapy room. 

Secondly, I spend some time exploring how good it feels for couples on the other side of the huddle–when they have their new direction and are headed there together, connected. Emphasizing how the outcome will feel good is a powerful way to motivate us to do something difficult. Without a desirable  sense of reward, couples will not use the tools, period. 

Lastly, it is my job to look for anything in a client’s history or relationship dynamic that will get in the way of them practicing new skills. This could be resentments, past trauma, depression, or lack of commitment to the relationship. If one or more of these factors are identified, I will either do individual work with them in the couples session, schedule an individual session apart from the couples work, or refer them to outside individual therapy. This is critical! If the obstacle is not addressed and removed, the work will atrophy at home. 

***

Here is the secret I hope my clients will experience for themselves: doing huddles at home is fun! Or at least it can be. I recommend practicing them on everyday situations where there is no anger or resistance. Then you will be ready when the stakes are higher. As an example, let’s say that you are going to the movies, but when you get to the theater the film you want to see is sold out. You could do a quick huddle to decide what to see instead by using the three questions:

  1. What do we currently know? What movies are there still tickets for and when do they start?
  2. What do we need to do right now? Save the evening! Choose an alternate movie and buy tickets, or go somewhere else. 
  3. How are we doing to do it? Agree on a film we have not seen and both want to see, and laugh off the fact that we did not get tickets beforehand. 

When you are dealing with a heavier issue or conflict, using the same process can actually lighten the weight, ensuring that partners stay regulated and connected. When regulated and connected, couples can get to the other side of any problem. 

Remember, if you don’t make it something that you both enjoy or benefit from, you will not do it–so imagine how you will feel towards each other when you have successfully navigated a difference in this way. I think anyone can agree that this feeling is preferable to anger, resentment, and hurt! And just like the sports teams that huddles, practice, practice, practice. 

Huddle up!

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THREE POSSIBLE OUTCOMES WITH COUPLES THERAPY

Premium Photo | Choosing a path. the junction, three forest roads converge into one.

My last article was about how relationships are the hardest thing you will ever do, and I outlined some of the main reasons for this. In this article I want to present the ways couples therapy can help with these difficulties by discussing three possible outcomes of the work. I hope this exploration will demystify some of the “mystery”, helping readers to understand that the success of couples therapy has more to do with the couple seeking it than the therapist administering it. This is not an attempt to make a couple responsible for any failure of couples therapy, but rather to emphasize their role in its success–to up their skin in game, so to speak. 

There was a time when couples therapy was seen as the last resort for a broken marriage. Today, there continues to be more of a stigma toward couples work than individual work. Fortunately, that perception is changing over time, with many couples now seeking assistance at the beginning of their relationships, as a way to avoid issues down the road. 

However, there continue to be misconceptions about what couples therapy can actually do. What it can’t do is: 

  • “fix” your relationship
  • decide for you if you should stay together or break up (though it may help you to make a decision about this)
  • improve the sex (or re-start it) in your relationship if neither partner is willing to make some changes

Simply put, the work of a couples therapist is to help couples have difficult conversations. The main difficult conversations that couples struggle to have often concern sex, money, parenting, and respect. These conversations can be difficult to have because having them requires that we set aside defensiveness and criticism, and examine what we are willing to “give up” so that the relationship, not the individual, can “win”. This can be very challenging if a couple have opposing values in these areas, but it is not impossible! 

So let’s look at what can happen when a couple comes into therapy for help with their difficult conversations. What are the possible outcomes?

NOTHING CHANGES: Let’s start with the bad news. Simply put, change requires an action, not just an intention. Many couples truly want their relationships to improve, but then find themselves running into obstacles when they try to change their behavior. Those obstacles can come from inside or outside the individuals in a relationship, and can be so discouraging that the process is stopped before it even gets going. 

However, not all is lost when obstacles show up. They can be a sign that something is moving. Obstacles are often negative beliefs that individuals have carried for years, which they have brought into the relationship with them. Negative beliefs are shameful ways of thinking about ourselves that are either handed to us by others, institutions, or culture, or conclusions that we make about ourselves based on how the world responds to us. We are not always aware of them until they show up in relationships or when we are trying to embrace change. 

Regardless of why we resist action, without it nothing will change. This is why I want to be sure that a couple is willing to take action before working with them in therapy, because without that willingness, they will be disappointed by the lack of results and take that as a sign the relationship is hopeless and should end. 

BREAK-UP OR DIVORCE: While this is an option that many choose without coming into couple therapy, it is still an option even while working together with a therapist on your relationship. However, couples who choose to break-up or divorce after a course of couples therapy are more likely to be doing so for the right reasons, whereas most other couples end their relationships by mistake. 

There are two primary reasons that a couple will break-up in the course of doing couples therapy:

  1. They realize that they no longer (or perhaps never did) have shared values/goals/relationship dreams, making them a poor fit who would be better served moving on from one another.
  2. They find out that there is no longer any relationship to save.

As their therapist, I never make this decision for them–but I may ask questions about what I observe in the room. It is up to the couple do decide whether they want to stay together or not. One thing I always tell them is a phrase I got from my mentor, Dr. Walter Brakelmanns, who would tell couples “I will fight for your relationship until you give me a good reason not to.” 

Many couples break-up because of “incompatibility”. I am here to tell you that this concept is a myth! Incompatibility suggests that differences in interests divide couples, and yet the reality is that many couples have long and happy marriages while having wildly dissimilar interests. Rather, it is a wide difference in values that can signal a mismatch. 

Values signify what is important to us, and some examples are: having a family, living near parents, honesty, mutual respect, spirituality, loyalty, trustworthiness. We usually have 3-5 non-flexible values, but even those are subject to change over time, so finding someone whose values match yours is no guarantee for the long run, but it can’t hurt! Values conversations are just one more way of showing interest in your partner’s inner world, and how it may change over time. 

Though relationships work best when they share key values, it is not an automatic deal-breaker with they don’t. It all comes down to respect–and the willingness to be curious about each other rather than judgmental or critical. Values can change over time, but that does not mean that a relationship has to end–it can change too. 

***

The second reason that couples might break-up in couples therapy is because they come to realize that the relationship is already dead. What lets us know this? Lack of interest. 

When I notice that one partner is sharing a painful emotion or event, and I see a lack of empathic response from the other partner, I start to worry about the relationship. Lack of response can show up for many reasons, but if it is happening because the person no longer cares about how their partner is suffering, then the relationship has lost its emotional connection. There is no relationship for me to save. This happens not because one partner is a cold, uncaring person, but because they no longer care about their partner’s inner life. This can happen for a number of reasons, and often happens over a period of time. 

This will present as a couple who come in because the relationship is still alive for one, but not for the other. This can be very painful, but it is even more painful to stay in with someone who no longer has interest in you. I think it is easier to survive a break-up than a bad marriage. These couples can still do work in couples therapy, but the focus shifts from connecting them to problem-solving–what do they need to figure out in order to move on from one another?

What makes a relationship lose its connection? Well, the main causes I see are unresolved resentments that have turned into contempt, breaches of trust that are seen as “unforgivable”, lack of mutual respect and understanding, and certainly undiagnosed mental illness, domestic violence, or substance abuse. The loss can occur over a long period of time or in response to a specific breach, but it is up to each individual to choose to work toward reconnection, otherwise the relationship will start to disconnect and die. 

Couples therapy can help couples to set aside blame and reflect on the role they each had in their relationship getting to this place, while also helping to create new understanding about each other’s actions, leading to greater understanding. This understanding it the beginning of empathy, rebuilt trust, and reconnection. 

DO THE WORK: To round out our exploration of the three outcomes of couples therapy, let’s look at the optimal outcome–doing the work! The reality is that this option is really the only thing that brings about change in a couples relationship. It does not matter how brilliant or skilled the therapist is, if the couple does not take the work home and into their interactions, nothing will change. 

So what is the work? Well, in my office I first get the couples’ agreement that I can do my job–which is to guide them to having more successful difficult conversations. Sometimes that means that I need to interrupt what they are trying to say–and that can be a challenge for some. The work in this instant is for the client to regulate themselves and “set aside” whatever feelings are coming up for them in the moment. This is harder than it sounds! But without this willingness, the conversation will be derailed and nothing will change. 

Secondly, the couple has to change what they are doing at home. This can entail a whole list of things, or perhaps just a couple adjustments, but without some action towards practicing the skills at home, again, nothing will change. Couples don’t have to turn the  whole house upside down–John Gottman says that it is more important that we do “small things often” as a way to keep the engine of relationship connection running on idle, rather than having to restart it each time we need to communicate. 

Another action that can help a great deal is when the individuals pursue their own work with an individual therapist. As we reveal the vulnerabilities that each partner brought into the relationship, it is up to each partner to attend to these rather than holding the other responsible for “fixing” them. Individual therapy can be a great adjunct to couples work so that in the couples session, the focus can be on the relationship instead of the individual. 

I get some pushback from couples when I tell them that there is work involved in having a healthy relationship. I can understand why. We are raised to believe that love does not take work–that it is some sort of magic glue that sustains itself, and that is absolutely not true unless you are speaking of the love a parent has for a child. Real love take effort to sustain, because it is effort that indicates caring and interest in another, not passivity. Real love is a verb, not a noun! It is caring in action. And when couples embrace that framing of effort, they see it as a romantic gesture rather than an obligation or duty. 

The bottom line is that it works. So do the work!

***

Anytime a person wants to improve or change their life, some action and effort is required, even if that action or effort is to do less. And for those who do not know what actions to take, it is considered wise to seek out an expert for guidance and support. This is what a couples therapist can offer, but a good therapist will also assess whether or not a couple is ready and willing to do the work, in the same way a personal trainer will evaluate your commitment to an exercise program. 

Therapists can guide your progress, but the couple has to start the engine, and this is why I present these three choices to every couple that comes into my office–I want to invite them to work as hard as I will to improve their relationship. 

Which choice will you choose? 

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DOES YOUR RELATIONSHIP MAKE YOU A BETTER PERSON?

Do you like who you are in your relationship?

I ask this question because, despite what many think, relationships rarely end because we fall out of love with the person we are with–more often breakups happen because we don’t love who we are in the relationship. What makes us fall out of love with ourselves at times in our lives? For our purposes I want to focus on the words, thoughts, and actions that can work against our values. 

When we engage in behaviors that don’t align with how we prefer to be in the world, we become unsettled, and the easiest way out is to look for someone to blame for this unpleasantness. Guess who usually gets the blame? When something happens in the world that keeps us close to our partners for long periods of time, unsettled feelings can get triggered and magnetized. What do we do with them? How do we talk to our partners about what we are feeling without projecting blame? When do we know if talking will help, or if we should just break up?

Believe it or not, the most helpful approach to answering these questions begins with looking at yourself, not your partner. This is because our responses and reactions tell us a lot about how we experience the world, and if we are not satisfied with the results of that perspective, then we have an opportunity to change it. There is a greater chance for success with changing the self than there is with changing someone else! The challenge is that changing the self is hard and sometimes more painful than trying to get someone else to change, but it is the only way I know that works for the long run. So let’s look at how we determine where the change needs to happen: in us or in the state of our relationship…

FOR BETTER OR WORSE: As I wrote above, we often break up because we no longer love who we are in our relationship, meaning that we don’t like how we are responding to what we don’t like in the other. When we say that we promise to stay together “for better or worse”, we are actually talking about the future state of the other, the relationship, and ourselves.

In the courtship phase it is easy to imagine sticking with someone for the long run because the version of that person in the moment is quite enjoyable. This makes it easy for us to show up as caring and kind to the other–we are our best self. We love our relationship most when we feel like a better version of ourselves in it–not so much when we feel like a worse version! 

What factors into these opposing experiences of the self? It is not difficult to be a better version of ourselves when the relationship is humming along nicely. Not so easy when going through a rough patch. Why is this? Often it is because rough patches trigger our fears, vulnerabilities, and in worst case scenarios, our negative beliefs about ourselves. When this happens, our better self, the one who acts lovingly toward our partner, disappears, and our priority shifts to protecting ourselves at any cost. We stop loving and instead attack, defend, or retreat, intent on survival. 

How do you have access to your better self regardless of what is going on in your relationship?

THE FUNERAL EXERCISE: The ability to have consistent access to our better self is dependent on these key steps:

    • a strong and appealing vision of our better self and how our relationship would benefit from us showing up as that
    • awareness of the cost of leaving our better self, both to us and to our partner
    • ability to self-regulate ourselves and/or be co-regulated by our partner
    • ideally, a partner who is willing and enthusiastic about teaming up with you to support you being your better self

You might be wondering how you even figure out what your better self looks like. Let me tell you a story…

Many years ago I participated in a series of workshops that could be categorized as “self-actualization” workshops. It was the 90’s! I remember that one night the group of participants were gathered, and we embarked on an exercise that is sometimes called “The Funeral Exercise”. Over the course of the evening, we all had the opportunity to lay on the floor of the room and pretend that we were dead and buried. We were then instructed to imagine that our loved ones were above us, attending our funeral, and we were told to think about what they might be saying about us and the life we lived. 

This exercise changed my life, because at the time the conversations I imagined happening above my buried body were not flattering! There was a lot of “He was so closed off” and “He lived so carefully”, and I remember imagining that my mother was there, crying because I had kept her at arm’s distance. In other words, I realized that I was not living my best life, I was not being my better self. I was letting fear influence me to protect myself from being hurt, which resulted in me keeping out love along the way. 

Today, I no longer prefer protecting myself to feeling alive and in relationship to others. 

After the workshop, things did not turn around immediately in my life, but they did begin to shift. And what helps to bring my better self to relationships more consistently today is the desire to live a life that is a celebration while I am living it, and celebrated after it is over. The motivation to do this is simple: I want to feel more love and less pain. I realized that by avoiding pain at all cost, I was also avoiding love, which then reinforced the pain. A very vicious cycle.

TURNING PAIN INTO MOVEMENT: What is the turning point for most people–that time when they decide to make changes in how they are living live and relating to others? In the popular play A Christmas Carol, the change happens overnight for the main character, but we can’t all have the benefit of a set of ghostly visits to spark us into action! I have observed that turning points often come when the pain becomes unbearable–when the balance between what we gain and what we lose is tipped toward loss. 

This is the time that most people seek out therapy. How can therapy help? Ideally, it does not give you the answers, it instead leads to better questions. These questions hopefully influence your relationship to yourself, others, and your values. This process can also increase awareness in one’s own choices, bringing recognition that we are making choices more often than we think! 

Mindfulness, as this awareness if often called, invites us to live intentionally rather than reactional. Intentional living has a greater chance of leading you to your better self, since you can not only accept or reject painful choices, you can also adjust your response to pain by being aware of how you are thinking about it. This is what is known as taking accountability not for what life is, but for how you experience it–becoming the author of your own life. 

(Read more about becoming the author of your life HERE.)

Our better selves don’t just fall into our laps–we realize them by first identifying what that will look and feel like, and then surrounding ourselves with those who support our movement in that direction. This is why it is critical to choose a partner who supports your vision of your better self–a partner who even inspires that vision. 

Peter Pearson, Ph.D. of the Couples Institute says that we have been measuring success in relationships all wrong. He says that rather than defining success by the amount of positive change in our partners, we should define it by the amount of positive change in ourselves. Meaning: Are you a better person today in your relationship than you were yesterday? 

This is a powerful question, because it requires that you accept accountability for your life, and that you take responsibility for whether you are enjoying it or not. It does not mean that you can’t seek change in others, just that you realize the path to that change is through influence, not demands. We influence our partner to be better by being better ourselves. If this does not happen, then there may be other issues at play, but at least we won’t blame the other for how our life is turning out. It is more likely that at our funeral our loved ones will celebrate who we have been instead of mourning who we could have been. 

***

Philosophers have been exploring what makes a good life for centuries now, and fortunately we have the benefit of their musings, but it takes more than reading a book to have a good life. We have to live it. The motivation to do so comes from imagining what it would feel like to live a good life–we are driven by our emotions, not our thoughts–thoughts may spark feelings but they rarely motivate on their own (try “thinking” your way to exercise!). 

The reason to live a good life, your better life, is pretty simple: it feels good! A better life is not about being “good”, it is about being better, and you get to decide what that looks like for you. Rather than figuring this out on your own, you can use your relationships as a guide–noticing what works and what doesn’t with others and exploring how each of those feel to you. (For example, we may not hold “honesty” as an element of our better self until we are lied to and we experience the pain of that.)

And every evening before you go to sleep, you can ask yourself, “Was I better today than I was yesterday?” If not, you can adjust course tomorrow, ensuring that your focus is on changing what you actually have control over. When you are a better version of yourself, you will naturally become a better partner, which will aid them in being a better person, and so it goes. Now that is a cycle I can get behind!

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HOW TO STOP BLAME

I wish that blame worked–I really do. It would be so nice to just point the finger at another person and make them responsible for all our problems and woes, wouldn’t it? I find it interesting that blame is the basic premise of many religions and most politics, and yet if you look into it carefully you will find that it does not really accomplish anything, other than making people feel badly about themselves. Blaming another is like pushing the dirt around the house–it moves the problem around but does not get rid of it.

So why do so many couples continue to use blame when difficulties come up in a relationship? Why do we continue to rely on something that so clearly does not work? 

In order to answer these questions we need to look to the brain and understand how it works to keep us safe in the world. If we can understand more about why we engage in behaviors that do not work, then we have a chance of stopping them and making new choices. But first we have to explore why we blame in the first place…

WHY WE BLAME: We often feel threatened when our partner is upset with us. Their upset sends a message to our brain that something is wrong and that we need to protect ourselves. But do we? The reality is that in any relationship partners will get upset with one another. The helpful response when this happens, which I often have to teach couples, is to show interest in what is bothering the other, curiosity at what role, if any, we have played in generating the upset, and empathy towards their feelings. 

What we usually do instead is defend against what they are telling us, or counter-attack to negate their right to be upset at us. Naturally, neither of those responses work, and yet couples do them all the time! They do them because they do work in one way: they create distance between us and the person who is upset with us. 

This is what couples need to know about the brain–it seeks to protect itself from threats. When it detects them, it often activates the amygdala, an almond-shaped part of the brain within the temporal lobe, that among other tasks is in charge of deciding what to do when we are threatened. The amygdala has three responses to choose from: fight, flee, or freeze, and you don’t need me to tell you how these don’t work during conflict!

Blaming the other for our upset, or as a response to one’s upset, is a way to protect ourselves. This is why we do it. 

WHY BLAME DOES NOT WORK: The problem is that blaming the other does not work. And the reason it does not work is because it creates distance from our partner, when closeness is what is needed when we are upset. (Conflict is one of the most important elements in healthy relationships, because when done well it results in greater closeness.) Closeness heals emotional wounds, while distance just covers them up. 

Blame does more than just create distance, however. It can also cause the internalization of shame. When we blame someone for something, we are making them the cause of it, not just the trigger. And when someone feels as though they caused harm to a loved one, they naturally feel bad–but when blamed they feel badly about themselves rather than the behavior.

When blamed, we internalize the shame of behaving poorly and this gets in the way of repairing the damage–in fact the opposite usually happens where we avoid repair. Our goal at this time is to distance ourselves in any way from the bad feelings we have for ourselves. 

Additionally this pattern of blame creates and strengthens unhealthy boundaries in the relationship, where we either make the other responsible for what we feel, or take responsibility for another’s feelings. Either version leads to resentment and guilt. 

DO THIS INSTEAD–BE ACCOUNTABLE: What’s the difference between blame and accountability? Sometimes small adjustments in our way of thinking about things can result in big changes in how we live. Fortunately, the distinction between blame and accountability is in how we think about responsibility in our minds. Let’s look at the difference.

Accountability inspires action, blame inspires denial and shame. This is because accountability is about one’s behavior, while blame is about one’s character. Accountability works with what you can control (what you do or say), while blame assumes that you cannot change who you are. Accountability is looking for a description of how things came to be, while blame is looking for a cause of why things happened. 

When the focus is on description, we have a chance of understanding the underlying factors in our behavior and choices, whereas when we are made the cause, the exploration hits a dead end. If you are labeled “bad”, there is little that can be done–this is why blame is useless if your goal is change. We all behave badly at times, but that does not make us a bad person any more than good behavior makes us “good”. We are complex beings who behave in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons, and if we want to have some choice in how we behave then it helps to look deeper, even if that is painful. 

Accountability works in relationship because it keeps the focus on our own behavior (what we can control) rather than our partner’s (what we can’t control). It allows us the chance to regularly check in with our values and see if our behavior is aligned with them. And finally, since accountability avoids shame, we stand a better chance at repairing the situation with the person who was hurt by our behavior. When you feel badly about yourself you avoid repair. When you feel badly about your behavior you seek it out.

***

There is an old saying that whenever you find yourself pointing your finger at another person, turn it back around toward yourself. There is good intention in that saying, but it is misguided in that you want to avoid blaming yourself as much as others. Instead, when you point the finger at yourself, think of it as turning blame around. Ask yourself, “What was my contribution to the problem?”, and “What was the effect of my actions?”

Questions like these will go a long way toward changing the way we think about behavior that hurts another, and a long way toward how we think about repair. And as your way of thinking and your behavior changes, you might just start to notice that conflicts with a loved one result in both a better feeling about yourself, and feeling closer to each other. Instead of you both losing when blame is assigned, accountability offers you both a win-win.