What are You Trying to Say?

There’s a quote widely attributed to the great Maya Angelou that resonates with many of the people that I meet: “When someone tells you who they are, believe them.” Often, it’s used to point out when we give others the benefit of the doubt even when they do something that seems hurtful. For me, it’s a good reminder to listen to my instincts; instincts are trustworthy and wise even though we often don’t give them credit. As a therapist, it is critical for me to constantly work on developing that part of me that is in touch with my inner voice. More often than not, I find that there is something there worth listening to. It’s not perfect. Still, in session, it serves as a starting point for a conversation that often allows me to dig deeper into the root of the problems that my clients are really talking about.

In life, as in session, when we ignore our instincts, unfortunate things can happen.

When I work with couples, it’s seldom because things are going really well. Instead, it tends to be the case that couples therapy begins at the lowest point of a relationship. It’s not uncommon for these couples to be perplexed about how their relationship has deteriorated to such a point. Still, the same couples often will say that things have been bad for years and that they’ve never engaged with a therapist to help them work through their issues. All along, there was a clear inner voice that spoke of the condition of their relationship but there was also always a reason to disregard it. The intuitive self is often clear but rarely is it convenient. One of the many distractions – work, family, kids – often take priority and we take for granted that there will always be a tomorrow to work with our spouse to make things better. We even employ doubt or denial that things are as bad as they appear as a defense. It is in this situation, needing a significant amount of healing that couples most often show up at the therapist’s office.

When I work with these couples, I almost never tell them what I’m about to tell you now. At least not right away. It’s not that they don’t need to hear it; it’s simply that now is not the time. For them, there are many more pressing things that need to be said and heard. For you, though, if you’re in a relationship, these are words that are critical for the long-term health of your relationship. It’s a corollary to Angelou’s famous quote that we started this conversation with and it goes something like this.

If your spouse tells you that your relationship is in trouble, believe them.

By no means is this meant to be an I told you so sort of statement. Serious relationship issues, though, seldom come out of nowhere. There are almost always signs or symptoms, usually present for months or years before they reach a point that we would call serious.

To our credit, these messages are not always clear. Unless you’ve had the best mentors and examples of what it means to communicate in a healthy way, it’s rare to be able to communicate what you need in a healthy, productive way or to receive something from your spouse without feeling defensive and disengaging from them. Maybe you’ve heard phrases like “I miss you!” or “I just want to be alone!” Has your spouse ever said, “It feels like we’re roommates!” or accused you of only thinking of yourself? There is no situation in which these phrases are easy to hear, right? It’s not like these statements are made to make us feel better about ourselves.

Yes, these phrases are hurtful and just because your partner may not be able to communicate them in a way that is easier for us to digest, it doesn’t remove our ability to hear them. To compensate by the pain that these phrases elicit, we often deny them (e.g. “That’s just not true!”) or nullify them (e.g. “You’re just being emotional!”). Otherwise, we have to believe them. And, in believing them, we have to face the pain or anxiety or uncertainty that accompanies them.

You see, in hearing your partner say that they just want to be alone recalls every memory of being alone or abandoned in your past. It brings up the questions about self-worth if the person you love the most would rather be alone than be with you. The things that are said to us are not painful in isolation. They are painful because similar things have hurt us in the past. They’re painful because they might represent a threat to our closest relationship. We become defensive, outwardly, towards our partner because of a feeling that emerges from complex circumstances inside us.

Simply, I believe we listen exclusively to the pain inside of ourselves and miss the importance of what our partner is trying to tell us about our relationship. It’s difficult because if for no other reason, we’re most familiar with the messages that emerge from inside of us. We are wired in such a way as to listen to our own inner world first before taking in perspectives from outside – even when those outside perspectives come from the person who we love the most. When we look inside first, we are all prone to locating problems inside of us. There is something flawed about us and that thing is to blame. When that’s the loudest message, we feel the need to vindicate ourselves and to make the case that we’re not that bad. It can be an overwhelming urge because it’s so deeply primal.

My challenge to couples is to work on understanding these urges to protect themselves and how these urges can impede our ability to actually hear what our partner is saying. Your partner might be telling you that they’re scared or that they’re confused or that they’re lonely. They may not tell you that directly; it might be packaged in a way that feels emotional or intense, but the message is there nonetheless. However they tell you, though, our conversations will be more effective when we learn to moderate that inclination to step back and defend. It’s a foundational part of who you are so we’re not trying to get rid of it. We’re simply saying that it’s possible to be aware of that desire to defend and to also realize that there is more going on for us to hear.

Listening with that sort of awareness is hard, no doubt. For many couples, it’s the kind of thing that a few sessions with a therapist may help with. Couples therapists can help you really start to master the communication skills that are fundamental to helping relationships thrive. We can help you truly hear what your partner is saying even when they may not be communicating in the clearest way. You can learn how to reflect on your own communication and become more aware of how you can learn to be more clear about your needs and desires, too.

It can help you really hear what your partner is trying to say?

Marriage: Impossible?

We’ve all heard commentary about marriage and divorce rates. Even if it’s not technically true, people generally hold the widespread belief that about half of all marriages end in divorce. Commentators have made the case that this indicates a deeper moral decline: individuals today are less driven by values and more by their own impulses; people are selfish and are afraid to commit and settle down. It’s common for such comments to lament that people are rejecting long-held Judeo-Christian beliefs about marriage.

What about you, though? What does any of this matter when you’re in a relationship that feels overwhelming more often than not? Do you care about any of this commentary when you’re trying to make your marriage work while simultaneously making sure the kids are getting to all of their activities, the finances are solvent, you’re having the right amount of sex, you’re working hard for your next promotion, and you’re keeping up the appearance of having it all together for the Joneses across the street?

I take issue with a lot of the commentary about marriage that gains the most publicity. My biggest concern is that it locates the major source of the problem with marriage as inside the married individuals themselves. When people are the problem, marriages fail because people fail. Maybe we mess up. Maybe we give up. Maybe we simply stop caring. Either way, the reason these commentators would have us believe that marriages fail has something to do with a lack of effort. We aren’t strong enough to withstand the pressures of marriage. If we could only give more, or commit more, or do more, then our relationships would start to thrive. Instead, it would seem that a full half of the population chose partners poorly or decide that they couldn’t care less about their vows and would rather move on to the next adventure.

This seems ludicrous to me.

What if framing the high divorce rates as a problem with individual people is, in fact, part of the problem itself? What is the divorce rate has far less to do with anything going on inside of us as individuals than we’ve been told? What would that mean? First, it would probably mean that people could be freed from the sense of guilt and failure that often co-occurs with the decision to divorce. It means that there would be less blame to be used as ammunition. It would also mean that we would need to come up with a new, more complex explanation as to what’s happening. We might even have to admit that marriage as we have designed it, is nearly impossible.

The Modern American Marriage

Margaret Mead may have given us the most accurate portrayal of marriage in the west. She said, “The American marriage is one of the most difficult marriage forms that we have ever attempted.” It’s not exactly an optimistic view but it is full of realism. Wherever it exists in the world, marriage emerges from a complex cultural context. Whatever surfaces in your mind when you read the word marriage today, you can be sure that these ideas didn’t simply arise from a vacuum. As a concept, modern marriage is the continuation of a story in the process of being written for thousands of years. The expectations that we hold about marriage today are not simply our own but are the product of generations of relationships, commentary, and conversations with in-laws.

It is true that many of these expectations, at least in the West, flow directly from specific faith influences. Some of the most prevalent interpretations of the Christian Bible assert that the formula for marriage involves the life-long commitment of one man to one woman. This interpretation is best exemplified in one of the two Christian creation stories. Eve was said to be crafted from Adam’s rib bone to be a companion for him. With this story as the starting point, we’ve since deduced that all romantic relationships are governed by a sense of destiny – that a divine being has arranged a soulmate for all of us and that part of our time here on earth is about discovering that person. We use phrases like meant to be, and the one. It can feel as if we don’t even have a choice.

On top of that foundation, we’ve added all sorts of other constructs. Decades of rigid gender roles have influenced the tasks typically assigned to men versus women. Society, as a whole, places these expectations on men and women as individuals and they’re reinforced in traditional view of marriage. Even with significant progress towards gender equality, it was essentially a generation ago that these more rigid roles were dominant in how we thought about relationships. I hope we never go back to those days but it’s important to point out that this legacy has been formative on our view of marriage and how it is supposed to work. The fact that same-sex marriage was legally prohibited until very recently in American history underscores the idea that our cultural ideas about marriage are about more than the love that two people have for one another.

Today, marriage is loaded down with overwhelming expectations. Partners are expected to fall madly in love with their soulmate. Engagement (with a ring that will cost two months of salary) is soon followed by a wedding (that will cost you a kidney, a leg, and part of your soul). Both partners are expected to work and to climb their respective corporate ladders. How long should you wait to have children? According to your parents, probably mere days. You should buy a house. You shouldn’t have much debt but you also really should have nice things. When the kids are old enough, you need to make sure you’re living in the best school district. When was the last time you took a family vacation? Make sure that you make time for your friends and for play dates and for date nights.

We could go on.

With all of these expectations, doesn’t it sometimes feel like we’re living Marriage: Impossible? Think about the political clichés about how the family is the cornerstone of civilization. Think about how difficult it is to have a single-income household today while still living up to the expectations of broader society. Then there are those movies that portray true love in a way that causes our hearts to flutter for ninety minutes and sends us out wanting to find the person to whom we can say, “You complete me!” Those movies are literally the worst.  The pressure is immense. These are the expectations to which we should aspire. Notice that, to this point, we’ve only really discussed the ideas that we adopt from society at large. We haven’t even begun talking about what we want from our relationships as individual human beings.

Can you see how absurd this whole thing seems to be?

You Don’t Complete Me

As much as I don’t want to, let’s go back to that god-awful phrase from Jerry McGuire. I don’t blame Jerry for saying “You complete me!” I get that the script was written by people who seem to think that marriage is about two broken people coming together to find wholeness in a special someone. As a couples therapist, that quote represents how messed up our view of marriage actually is. On top of all of the cultural expectations that we’ve already talked about, so many of us enter a relationship with this sentiment in mind. The person that we are pursuing has something that we are missing from our own lives. That person has characteristics and capacities to give us something that we are unable to give ourselves. In addition to the overwhelming experience that is American life in 2018, we ask our partners to give us even more. I like to say that we ask them to be superhuman – literally to be more than a single human being – because that’s what we have always been told that our partner will be for us. We ask them, with as little effort as possible, to meet the wide-ranging societal demands of being an excited lover, a pragmatic parent, provider, and project manager, who is adept at keeping our homes intact. We ask them to listen like a therapist and provide support in every-which-way we can imagine while being for us the things that we’ve never believed we could be for ourselves.

If they could be in shape, that would be great too.

And then we ask them to be the things that we are not. Be the calm to my anxiety. Be the joy to my sadness. Be the direction to my wandering.

Be superhuman.

When I hear couples describe this dynamic, I immediately think of at least two responses individuals tend to have when met with an impossible task. The first is the idea of learned helplessness. Realizing what they have been asked to do is impossible and sensing no other alternative, the individual resigns themselves to be tossed about by circumstance, accepting everything that comes with it as the new normal. This is a life-sapping condition that no one would ever want to find themselves in: forever discontent with no hope in sight. The second response people exhibit when recognizing the implausibility of a task at hand is to cut their losses and to divert their energies into something more productive and rewarding. There is no point in continuing on the current path so let’s start to develop plan B. They abandon plan A, learn from the situation as best they can, and move on to whatever is next.

With the bar for marriage set so unattainably high, it is no surprise that these relationships are ending: they’ve been set up to fail from the beginning. Here is where the problem of seeing divorce as an isolated relational event contained within an individual couple becomes clear. From this perspective, when my partner can’t be everything that I need her to be, I see that primarily as a failure on her part instead of the excess of expectation that the world and I put on her. Maybe it is I who failed by not weighing all of the social pressures for her to be superhuman. Maybe I have demonstrated a tacit acceptance of these demands. Regardless, since she cannot be all of the things that I’ve been told she should be, I become disenchanted with her. Our relationship suffers and because I believe that she is no longer completes me in a way that is complementary to my needs.

Honestly, she never could.

This is why, even as a couples therapist, I find myself advocating for the end of the modern American marriage. Yes, it is time for marriages like this to end. I believe that the apparently tepid faithfulness that we have shown as a society to the institution of marriage is less about the slipping away of some long-standing value set and more about a rejection of the absurdity of the expectations we have put on the institution itself. We are no less drawn to the ideas of love and fidelity than our parents were. We have simply gotten to the point where we no longer see the value of adhering to such a list of irrational demands. We no longer want to be complicit with a structure that has been used to impose particular expectations about which relationships are valid and which aren’t. We are deconstructing and truly interrogating our relationships. We are not interested in making extreme demands that require more from our partners than they are humanly able to provide.

I am not saying that divorce is the answer. Ending a relationship with the hopes of starting fresh is pointless if there aren’t changes we pursue in ourselves. Instead, I am saying that there is the opportunity to reframe the issues that we have in our relationships and to see them with a fresh perspective. Are you relying on your partner to be something for you that you’re unable or unwilling to be for yourself? How often are you or your partner having to play the role of superhuman and when do you get to be your unassuming alter ego? Where are the areas in our lives where we are expecting more than our partners can give? Are those problems with our partner's ability to meet the expectations or a problem with the expectations themselves?

If I were being pushed beyond my limits every single day, I would want to reject that reality, too. We all would. Maybe the problem is not with my inability to keep up. Maybe the problem is that keeping up is simply impossible.

Three Thoughts That Might Help

I believe that there are at least three ideas that could be helpful in adjusting to this emergent view of marriage. First, it’s OK to not like how things currently are. Whether in your own relationship or across society as a whole, I want to validate and normalize your instinct that there is something wrong here. There is something wrong here. That something is probably not you. It’s also probably not your partner. If you’re feeling overwhelmed and that the marriage you find yourself is not the marriage you signed up for, it makes sense and it’s OK to feel that way. Marriages can never deliver on the expectations we seem to have for it.

If that describes you, maybe it’s time to reject the idea of marriage in its current form within your own relationship. Being frustrated with your marriage may require your to tear it down and to rebuild on a reasonable foundation of things that are, for one, humanly possible. Rejecting marriage in this way doesn’t require a divorce. On the contrary, if you both agree that you want to fight these expectations together, you might need your partner more than ever. You’ll need to know how to communicate well and provide feedback. You begin to see each other teammates in this scenario, united against the common rival that is the impossible marriage, rather than each other.

We are taught that doubt is bad in relationships. We are taught that apprehension is poison for marriages. Shouldn’t we be in love all the time? It’s important to know that doubt and apprehension are absolutely normal. They’re not symptoms of the impending end of your relationship. They’re clues that something may be wrong. But, that something may be fixable if we think about it in the right way. Doubt is OK. Apprehension is OK. These are not things to avoid but things to lean into and to learn from.

The second thought can get a little more personal. If all we had to do was to figure out how to team up with each other to reset the expectations about our marriage, the process would be relatively easy. When we recognize that there is a problem with the way that marriage has been packaged and sold, though, moving towards a stronger relationship requires us to figure out a different way to accomplish what we had hoped marriage would accomplish for us. In other words, now that we’re releasing our partner from the expectation to be superhuman and meet our personal needs, we need to find a way to meet those needs for ourselves. We can’t expect them to be responsible for our anxieties. We can’t expect them to be the one to cheer us up when we’re feeling down. They cannot be an endless salve for wounds from other parts of our lives. Building a new foundation of marriage will require us to heal our wounds for ourselves.

The title of a book by Dr. Richard Schwartz captures the idea here: You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting for. Rather than putting the burden of meeting those needs on someone else, Schwartz makes the compelling case that we have the innate capacity of managing and mastering our internal world where parts of us can be simultaneous drawn to and distanced from our partner. We are multidimensional and complex. When we commit to understanding and responding to our internal world, when we understand our impulses, we can better address our own hurting parts and not need someone else to be that for us. Then, we get to interact with our partner in a way that is less demanding and more inviting. When we take on the responsibility of managing our internal world ourselves, we need so much less from our partner and they can come to us without the pressure to perform or to meet some unspoken expectation. Rather than beg them for help, we can invite them to enjoy.

After teaming up with one another and developing your own ability to meet your unspoken needs, you’re ready for the third idea: to name and reject the expectations in your relationship that are causing problems and to collaborate on what you want your new marriage to look like. You can choose a marriage that celebrates each others’ individuality rather than attempting to form them into a crude implement to shore up those places in your own life where you feel less secure. We can invite our partners into a relationship that we co-create and that honors who we are as individuals and as a couple. In such a relationship, we no longer need our partner to be a missing piece or the treatment for a deep wound. We get to choose to turn towards our partner rather than feel as though we must desperately cling to them.  Instead of spinning our wheels trying to meet someone else’s expectations, we can decide for ourselves those things to which we aspire for our relationship. We can move more deliberately towards them.

This third idea can’t easily be summed up in a single paragraph. It’s not something that can easily be framed with an expected timeline applied. The process is lifelong; it’s never-ending. It requires ongoing self-awareness and checking in with each other to monitor the condition of the relationship, too. It might require working with a couples therapist to support you both as you move towards what you want marriage to be. What I hope you’ll find is that this third idea emerges naturally when you activate the first two.

To say that you don’t like your marriage is not to make an indictment of your partner. It is absolutely acceptable to not like the current state of your marriage and thinking that does not require you to blame yourself or your spouse.

We all have those hurting elements within us that can become surprisingly energized when our partner says or does something that feels similar to the source of our wounds. This is normal. Our partner may be able to temporarily play the role of superhuman to meet our needs in addition to their own but this is not sustainable. We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for and we must be the ones to relieve those parts of ourselves.

We can be free to collaboratively construct how we want our relationships to be. When we commit to monitoring and managing our internal world on our own, we can be more authentic in the relationship with the person we love. We aren’t bringing conditions to the table that must first be met. Instead, we’re coming with more energy to dream and reflect and to move forward.

It’s true that overcoming Marriage: Impossible will require energy. It will require both partners to commit to understanding and taking leadership of their interior world. It requires time and dedication. Unlike the poorly-set expectations around marriage, there are no guarantees. But, it may be possible to reconstruct a relationship that is life-giving and rewarding. It can be something that you choose to enjoy forever.

The Heart of the Matter

What is the most ridiculous argument that you’ve ever had with your partner? Maybe it was a discussion about whether you should get the blue chair or the brown chair to go with the desk in the upstairs office that turned into an all-out clash. It could have been a debate about some inconsequential fact about where Bon Jovi’s early career. If you’re like a lot of couples, it can be something as simple as attempting to figure out what to have for dinner that leads to an unexpected shouting match. 

It’s the kind of argument that, when you’ve cooled off, you can’t believe you got so angry so quickly about something so unimportant. How on earth could you have gotten into a fight about that?

Chances are you didn’t. 

If we were just arguing about chairs or facts or dinner selections, we would never get to the point of raising our voices. When we argue with this kind of intensity, there is a very good prospect that we’re actually trying to make a point about something much deeper but we fail to get past the superficial level. 

Emotions. They are a wonderful part of what it means to be human. They give us energy and drive and help us connect with the people we love. We don’t fall in love because of facts and figures. We fall in love because we share something deeper – something beyond what we can put into words. Falling in love is an emotional, not a rational, experience. 

We can go as far to say that emotions are not rational. It’s true. They exist on a level of our brain that is below our rational abilities. Emotions are more fundamental to what it means to be human that our ability to reason. 

One the problems we often run into (especially when we get into these kinds of disagreements) is that we generally aren’t very good at being connected to our emotions. We aren’t good at describing them or talking about how they show up in our experiences. We’re not very good at labeling them and seeing them as valid parts of what it means to be human in ourselves or the people we love. Instead, we minimize them by saying things like, “You’re just being emotional!” Sometimes, we explain them away by thinking, “Oh, he’s just letting his emotions get the better of him.” When we think about emotions like this, it’s easy to understand why people try and avoid them. 

We don’t choose our emotions. Our emotions emerge from our experiences. Everything that has made us who we are determines how our bodies respond physiologically and emotionally to any given situation. Until we learn to get in touch with this aspect of our humanity, it’s going to seem like we’re arguing about not wanting chicken for dinner when we’re really trying to express that it hurts when our wants are dismissed. Maybe adamantly insisting on the blue chair over the brown is more about alleviating our fears about the shortfall in this month’s budget than a preference for décor. 
In my work with couples, I often find that the problem is not the problem. In other words, when a couple tells me that they argue incessantly about inconsequential things, that isn’t really what they’re concerned about. Usually, they just don’t know how to communicate in ways that let their partner in on their own emotional experiences. They don’t know how to or they don’t feel comfortable sharing their fear or embarrassment or anxiety. Talking about our emotions in this kind of way can feel vulnerable. It can seem volatile, especially if we’re not used to moving beyond the superficial layer to the emotional depth underneath.

But connection is not rational. To grow that connection even stronger it is going to require something other than rationale. To get there, we need to do the hard work of learning to put our feelings into words. For many of us, it might mean that we have to learn a new vocabulary or how to monitor exactly what it is that we’re feeling. We need to learn how to speak about our emotions as experiences that emerge from our internal world rather than blaming our partner for doing something that makes us feel mad. We also need to learn to accept the emotions of our loved ones and see them as valid. Remember, emotions don’t rely on rationality. Your partner’s emotions don’t have to make sense to you to be real and valid and important. 

All of this can feel overwhelming. Maybe that’s why we spend so much time on the frustrating but known surface layer. If it’s overwhelming for you in your relationship, it can be helpful to find a therapist who understands how and why couples fight in this way. Therapists like this can help you learn new, effective ways of communicating that move past the surface to the deeper layers where conflict actually lives. It can move you into the emotional center where the real opportunity for connection exists. 

The truth is that every seemingly insignificant argument is an opportunity to move towards your partner. Every argument, underneath the surface, is an emotional experience that your partner is inviting you to see and to understand. It’s risky and scary and requires vulnerability. But the payoff is an ever-increasing sense of love and the satisfaction of getting to the heart of the matter. 

The Importance of Premarital Counseling

Getting to Know Your Partner While You Get to Know Yourself

When I was a graduate student, I had a professor who would often remind us of a very important phrase: "How you start determines how you finish." Her purpose was to help us plan our work with clients – to be conscious of how we as therapists brought others into the therapy process to help them work toward their goals. It also had the added effect of helping me think about the couples that would come to therapy at the end of their ropes with each other. They had moved beyond any desire to heal their relationship pains, opting instead to use the therapy room as a battleground.

I wondered how these couples started. 

If the premise that how you start is how you finish is true, then what was the origin story of these couples? While we can't change history, is it possible to work backwards from the end and determine if there was a better way to begin? When we make the decision to commit long-term to a relationship with another person, we want it to work out. These sorts of relationships are important to us and to our well-being. In order to give ourselves the best shot at seeing this through, it's important that we make an effort to start well.

I believe that premarital counseling gives us the opportunity to start well. It allows us to learn about our partners and each other in a safe, nurturing environment while learning the fundamental skills that we need in order to handle the more difficult conversations that are bound to come up. Working with a skilled premarital counselor, you can learn how to communicate in a way that is true to your own experience but also honors that your partner has a different set of expectations than you do. It will help you see the areas where you're strong as a team as well as the areas where you will need to be a little more intentional.

There are a lot of conversations where skills like these will become important. How are we going to raise our children? What role will faith play in our family? What are our expectations about sex? What are our financial goals? What is appropriate when it comes to nurturing friendships outside of our relationship?

If we don't start by having these conversations well, how do you think they'll finish?

There are a few things that we all do very well but that can challenge our ability to have healthy conversation. For example, we're all going to make assumptions and jump to conclusions in our relationships. We humans do this naturally and frequently because there are parts of our brains that are tuned to provide us with exactly those services. Since the brain's job is to keep us alive, it wants to have a complete picture of our surroundings. If there happen to be pieces of information missing, our brain will search through its own collection of memories and ideas in order to fill in the blanks. This worked really well when we lived in the jungle and had to determine if the stick breaking in the trees meant a threat was on the way. However, those same skills can get in the way when a simple text that reads "What would you like to do for dinner?" turns into a day-long silent treatment.

The idea that we make assumptions is not all bad. In fact, an important part of love is our basic acceptance of certain things, like that our partner loves us and wants to be on our team.  But we need to be able to make these assumptions well. We need to make sure that what we understand about our partner is actually what our partner understands about themselves. We also need to make sure that we frequently and actively check in to update these ideas about our partner's world to make sure that our information is in sync with theirs.  Without these kinds of assumptions, our attempts to have meaningful conversation would look less like a love note and more like a legal document. 

We want love notes. Legal documents too often mean the end of something good. 

It's important to start our relationships on a foundation of understanding. Understanding flows from a place of interest and curiosity. If you've ever said about your partner that you know everything there is to know about them, then it's time to take a step back. People are fluid and dynamic and ever-changing. When we say things like this, it often means we've got blinders on and are at risk of missing something important. Premarital counseling helps you become curious about each other and to avoid these sorts of dangers in your relationship. 

By staying curious, we avoid the complacency that can set in when couples stop learning about each other. Maybe they were never taught to keep this part of their relationship alive and thriving. Maybe they genuinely think that they know everything there is to know. On the other hand, maybe there is an opportunity to wake up to the infinite depth of your loved one's soul.

Now, that would be a great way to start.

Ready to start premarital counseling? We would love to hear from you. Desmond is a certified facilitator with Prepare/Enrich and both he and Kristy enjoy working with couples early their their relationship. Contact Us Today for more information.

Recovering from Infidelity

There are few things in a relationship so painful as the experience of infidelity. Reaching outside the relationship for physical or emotional connection can take many forms but all of them can feel overwhelming and devastating. In order to heal from these experiences, it often requires deep levels of understanding from both partners and help from a trusted & highly-trained professional.

In addition to things like apologizing and changing behaviors, there are at least three things that couples can expect to experience in the process of working to heal from infidelity.

1. Everyone Experiences Infidelity Differently

In any experience of infidelity, it’s important for partners to understand that the way they each feel about it will be vastly different from one another. Regardless of how the infidelity came to light, the partner that reached outside of the relationship will have lived with full knowledge of what happened. This means that this partner will have had time to process their decisions, to try to come up with reasons, and even to come to terms with their own pain. They will already have had time to grieve.

For the partner who feels betrayed, however, their experience of the infidelity will be quite different. It could be devastating and crisis-inducing. This was not a gradual reveal but a shock that impacts the entire system. It is brand new and these partners often have no suspicion of any unfaithfulness. Realizing this can be intense and traumatic.

Openly and honestly acknowledging the discrepancies in how partners experience infidelity is a vital first step for couples in working towards resolution.

2. Giving Permission to Feel

Just as both partners will experience infidelity differently, each will have a range of emotions that will fluctuate frequently. In the early stages, it is possible that this will happen many times a day. It is important that partners allow each other permission to experience these emotions. This can be harder than it seems. The partner who feels betrayed will experience a great number of difficult emotions. They are hurting and rightfully so. Sometimes they feel the need to seek revenge, to humiliate the person who hurt them so badly. Even if the partner who was unfaithful is apologetic, the betrayed partner often feels the desire to attack them. Such apologies may be genuine but can seem to have little effect. It is such a difficult tension to navigate.

More difficult still is for the partner was does feel betrayed to allow the unfaithful partner to experience their own emotions. Often, the unfaithful partner will feel guilt and embarrassment. It can be tempting to continue to heap on more of the same. While the betrayed partner sometimes feels a sense of momentary gratification, it is rarely helpful in the process of healing,

For both partners, granting permission for the other to feel whatever emotions that may be surfacing is an important step towards healing. There are no timelines or prescriptions in these situations. The emotions that surface are natural and shouldn’t be ignored. So, if you’re willing and able to in the face of infidelity, try to grant a little grace to one another. In the face of this dramatic emotional upheaval, resilient couples are able to see beyond the infidelity.

3. See Beyond Blame

Contrary to what many people think, blame is often not that helpful in resolving a problem – especially one as complex around infidelity. Again, it can take some time for the betrayed partner to be able to get to this place. Adopting a non-blaming stance, though, can be vital for partners working through their experiences. This is not to say that the person who was unfaithful to the relationship is off-the-hook. But to understand how all of this came to happen in the first place, it’s important to keep everything on the table. When working to heal from infidelity, everything matters.

As they embark on this examination process, many couples report that the infidelity actually started years before. Maybe there was a process of falling out of love or a slowly building sense of disconnection. Some talk about distractions from the relationship like intense demands at work or with the kids and how there was little time left to nurture the relationship itself. In some cases, couples even connect their infidelity to experience from their own childhoods that created some lingering or unresolved needs. Whatever you find out, in order to understand it and to keep it from happening in the future, it’s important to be able to talk about it in a non-blaming way

Healing from infidelity is hard work that involves commitment and trust. It involves simultaneously holding your own personal grief, pain, shame, or pride while working to understand the characteristics of your relationship. Often, it requires the guidance of a professional with specific training in working with couples issues.

If you have experienced infidelity in your relationship, Yetman Counseling Services can provide the safe, knowledgeable, and professional environment to begin the process of healing.

Schedule a consultation today and help your relationship heal.

Photo Credit: "Golden Boat" by Abhishek Jacob is licensed by CC BY-SA 2.0.

Seeing Through Their Eyes

Intimacy is Everything

What is it that people need in order to have a fulfilling relationship? It’s a question that couples have been asking for almost as long as there have been couples! And, as with most questions about love, the answer isn’t always easy. Everyone has their own ideas about what being fulfilled means. Everyone has unique needs and wants so it might seem like a waste of time to try and come to a single conclusion.

Still, with what we have already learned in the Everything Matters series, we can lay a foundation for building a great relationship.

Before we get to that, let’s start by talking about intimacy. Usually, that word conjures up images of sexual intimacy. And that’s OK. The type of intimacy that we’re going to be talking about is about way more than sex but sex gives us a great metaphor for understanding where we are going with this conversation.

Just like with committed relationships, sex is not something that we share with everyone we meet. Sex is something that we reserve for a relatively small number of people. We have all sorts of reasons for choosing who we want to have sex with and to give this part of ourselves to but perhaps the most important is how emotionally risky it is. Sexual intimacy with someone else requires a high degree of vulnerability. Before you literally lay yourself bare on your lover’s bed, you have to feel safe, you have to trust them. Nothing is hidden.

Great vulnerability like this has the potential for great risk. But it also carries the potential for deep connection.

The same thing is true of emotional or relational intimacy. If you’re like me, you probably interact with a lot of people in the course of any given week. But I can also count on both hands the number of people who I feel close and safe enough with to be able to share my emotional vulnerabilities. Of all the people that I meet, there are just a few who I want to share everything with. These are the people that know me – that I’ve hidden very little from. These are the people that see parts of my life that I don’t feel safe sharing with anyone else.

In some ways, intimacy is a measure of how much someone know about you compared to how much you know about yourself.

When we are able to know ourselves deeply (like in part one), and when we learn to be aware of exactly what we are communicating (like we talked about in part two), we have the foundation we need to become more deeply connected to the people we love. We develop the skills to make our own needs known in our relationship but also to hear and understand the needs of our partner. We begin to understand that true intimacy is about the willing dance between what you need and what I need.

The same safety and trust that allows me to trust my partner with my body is required if I am to trust them with my emotional self, as well. When we lay our emotions, our wants and desires, bare before our partner, they will not be mocked or ridiculed or minimized. They will be celebrated, honored, and shared. This is incredibly risky but, when that connection is made, there is no more fulfilling feeling.

Let’s take this idea back to where we started this series: the brain. When you get to know some deeply and intimately, your brain literally changes. You begin to wire that person into the very fabric of who you are. Just like as you begin to sort through those things that formed you and colored the lenses through which you experience the world, and just as you understand that others have their own set of lenses, intimately knowing someone’s emotional world can help you interpret the world how they might interpret it. It’s like you gain a copy of their lenses and you are able to see things close to how your partner might see them.

And when that happens – when you’ve communicated and shared and loved and grown – the needs that they have can seem less like nagging and more like those needs are your very own. You can celebrate when they are happy, and not be jealous. You can hold them when they are sad and not feel the need to fix it or a sense of blame. You don’t just understand them intellectually, you can begin to see the world through their eyes and experience the world through their senses.

Intimacy like this is powerful because it unlocks the most basic secret to fulfilling relationships. When our own needs are understood as being a part of who we are, our partners willingness to meet them feels a lot like love. When our needs are rejected, it feels a lot like we, ourselves, are rejected too.

The foundation for a fulfilling relationship then? It’s an intimacy that allows us to be able to be present with the people we love, to truly listen, to fully understand, and to care without any ulterior motive getting in the way. It’s an intimacy that allows our partners to be the same for us.

Intimacy is the ability to see the world through your partners eyes – to experience what it must be like to be in their skin.

Intimacy provides the safety to share your own areas of vulnerability without fear of repercussion.

Intimacy is awareness of the things that lead our partners to feel happy, angry, sad, or wild with ecstasy.

Intimacy is everything.

And, it’s about coming to the realization that everything matters.

Everything Matters Webinar

This blog post is part of a series based on the Everything Matters Seminar that Desmond has created. There is now an online version of this seminar and you can learn more about it – or sign up for more information – today. Visit EverythingMattersSeminar.com.

Photo Credit: "Mini Me" by lindsayΔlachance is licensed by CC BY 2.0.

In Relationships, Everything Matters

If you’re going to be a human being, then relationships are going to be a part of your life. We are social creatures and when we find ourselves in a safe and loving relationship with another human, we have an opportunity to thrive. Close relationships – whether they’re romantic or not – come with many benefits (I hear they even have healing powers!). When we fall in love, though, we might not be remembering that relationships are also hard work!

That’s why, over the next few blog posts, I want to give you some ideas about enriching that loving relationship you’re in or that you want to be in. When it comes to understanding relationships and how they work, everything matters.

The big picture is basically this: People are beautifully complex. You, as a person, have biological systems and childhood memories and everyday experiences that make you who you are. It can be a lot to get your mind around, especially if your days are as busy as most peoples’ seem to be. It’s hard enough getting to know yourself. Then you meet someone?!? They’re just as complex as you and somehow you have to learn how to navigate and appreciate and live with these differences. You have to tell each other about who you are and you soon discover that everything communicates: everything you say and do and everything you leave out! But, if you’re persistent and committed and can trust the other person you start to develop a deep sense of understanding – an intimacy – with you partner. And Intimacy is Everything!

It’s a tall order!

The Everything That Matters

We could spend a lot of time discussing all of the things that seem to be important in making a person who they are. But, I’m going to try to keep it to just three.

And, we’ll start with the hardest one: the brain. If you’re going to understand anything about yourself, it’s important to understand why the brain matters. There are two big things that I think are important about the brain. First, your brain exists to keep you alive. We can do a lot of amazing things with our brain – iPhones, the Mona Lisa, and tiramisu all started as a thought in someone’s head. But, its first job is to keep us alive and that means that when we’re scared or unsafe or threatened in any way, your brain is going to act more on instinct than creative thought. This impacts how you exist in a relationship. There are times when the more animal-like parts of our brains take over. In those cases, it helps to try and help your partner feel safe.

The second thing about the brain is that it is astoundingly complex. For perspective, researchers say that there are more potential connections between the cells in your brain than there are stars in the entire universe. And, every day, those connections change based on the experiences that you have. If you meditate or get angry or stub your toe on the door, there are changes that happen in your brain because of it. In other words, who you are today won’t be who you are tomorrow.

After the brain, the second thing that makes an impact on who a person becomes is their childhood. It’s cliché for a therapist to talk about this, I know. But, the experiences that you have as a kid impact who you are as an adult. The relationship that you have with your parents or those that take care of you, for example, start to form a template for all of the relationships that you will ever have. It even impacts how you see yourself. I’m not trying to say it’s all about your mother, but I am saying that a person’s childhood experiences are powerful and formative.

That leads us to the third thing that impacts who we are: our ongoing experiences. Remember all those potential brain connections? Everyday, every single experience has an impact on those connections. With time and repetition, parts of our brains can change. The structure, the size, the way our brains function - all of it can be changed by experience. It colors how we see the world. When you understand that your experiences have had an impact on you, you can start to understand how people can be so different.

All of these things matter. Moving towards a healthy relationship involves first understanding that each of these things matter to who we are as individuals. And if they matter to us, they matter to everyone.

When we understand that, we can start to to truly appreciate another person.

In our next post, we'll talk about how we start to communicate all of this beautiful complexity to the people that we love!

Photo Credits: "Hieroglpyhs" by Andrea is licensed by CC BY-SA 2.0.

Everything Matters Webinar

This blog post is part of a series based on the Everything Matters Seminar that Desmond has created. There is now an online version of this seminar and you can learn more about it – or sign up for more information – today. Visit EverythingMattersSeminar.com.

The Healing Power of Relationships

It’s a pretty recent development in human history that we have medical classifications for things like anxiety, depressions, and other concerns. We spend a lot of money researching and treating these issues and a lot more more developing medicines that can be used to help people feel better. The reasoning goes something like this: since these issues can be traced to chemical process in people’s brains, if we can adjust those chemical levels, we can eliminate the concerns.

Before we get too far, let me say that I’m not here to make an argument against medication. As a therapist, I fully affirm that medications are an important part of treating many of the concerns that people have. Medications are a tool and they have a role in a larger ecosystem of treatments to help people feel better.

We also have to understand that we live in a culture where we want our hamburgers in sixty seconds and we get annoyed when Netflix starts to buffer in the middle of a good binge. These ideas impact who we are and how we think about the world. It makes sense that we also want quick fixes for the things that are bothering us.

I don’t have time to be depressed.

When my anxiety keeps me up at night, sometimes I have to load up on caffeine the next day.

We don’t want to be held back or slowed down. In a world like that, medications can become the primary means for eliminating symptoms. But they don’t always fix the problem. It’s only part of the story.

I believe that true healing – not just symptom reduction – involves healthy, safe, and responsive relationships.

We know that drugs regulate the chemical levels in a person’s brain. There’s a lot more that we know about the brain too. We know that it’s impacted by the relationships we have with others. When we feel safe – not judged – and validated by another human, the parts of our brain that respond to threats and dangers and amp up our anxiety levels start to relax and free up resources for other parts. In the closest relationships, we have research that shows us that parts of our right hemispheres begin to synchronize. This is most prominent in babies who we believe use their caretaker’s sense of calmness to begin to regulate their own emotions. This circuitry never leaves us, so when we’re connecting with a friend over coffee or a partner over a romantic dinner we feel safe and calm and connected in a way that goes beyond anything we could consciously describe.

It feels like there is something electric between you because there is.

This is the foundation of empathy. Dr. Sue Johnson, a renowned couples researcher talks about how empathy helps at the most basic level by letting us know that our story and our emotions make sense to another human being.

Understanding and empathy are the keys to healing and growth. If you’ve been told for your entire life that you’re not good enough,  having a relationship with someone who provides you with support can be a healing and restorative  experience. If that person gets frustrated with your low self-esteem or your hesitancy to connect with others, it’s an indication that empathy isn’t really present.

Empathy is so important because, in part, it provides a person with an opportunity to feel like they are safe and understood. It allows the parts of our brain that are focused on survival to relax and the parts of our brain that make sense of the world to take the lead. In fact, I would argue that safe, empathic relational experiences are the natural way that humans experience healing and growth. These relationships quite literally begin to rewire our brains. They provide conditions for our dysregulated brains to readjust. They allow our inborn tendencies for resilience and growth to come to the surface.

Sadly, like home cooked meals and vacations, relationships often become a casualty to our fast-paced lifestyles. We come home from work or carting the kids around and we are mentally spent. It’s easier to connect to the TV than to connect with our partner about how their day went.

Incidentally, these ideas are the same concepts that makes therapy effective for helping people experience a greater sense of well being. Yes, therapists are highly trained in specific techniques and these are important. None of this would be effective, though, without an ability to create a safe, open, empathic environment. Therapy harnesses the power of empathy to mobilize the resources that are already inside you. In fact, when we have people that truly understand us, the effects are undeniable. Our relationships have the power to literally reshape our brain and transform who we are. They have the power to help us see the world in an entirely new way.

They have the power to heal.

Photo Credit:  "Heart" by Thomas Meier is licensed by CC BY-NC 2.0.

Desmond Smith is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist Associate. He and his wife, Kristy Yetman, run Yetman Counseling Services and provide therapy for individuals, couples, and families. 

Together

When you find someone that shares your values, challenges you to grow, validates your emotions, and stands beside you no matter what, you know you’ve found a real partner. These relationships give support and love and the energy to continue. There is great power in knowing that there is someone standing beside you. This is one of the great benefits that people talk about when they experience therapy for the first time. It is an incredible moment when you feel like someone gets you.

For the past several years, that has been our own journey. We have adventured together, studied together, laughed and cried together. Our own relationship has grown stronger and deeper. Because of all of this, we have begun to orient our lives in a common direction, towards a goal of helping individuals, couples, and families to more deeply understand their stories, to heal from wounds of the past, and to experience deeper connection with those that they love as they move forward.

Today, we are excited to announce that Yetman Counseling Services is ready to welcome a new partner. After nearly thirteen years of marriage, many years of graduate school and clinical work, Desmond Smith, Kristy’s husband, is officially joining her practice. Desmond’s therapeutic training includes an emphasis on developing the quality of our relationships with our loved ones. For individuals, this might include work in understanding how our relationships have impacted the way we see ourselves and the world around us. For couples or families, this may include relationship enrichment, parenting issues, or help with navigating transitions such as when a child begins high school, when a parent passes, or when a teenager discloses that they identify as LGBTQ.

We are excited about this new phase. It has long been our dream to be able to work together in this field. We hope that our own experiences together, our diverse training, and our openness to your stories can help you become more fully aware of your own identities and how to continue to work to develop the relationships with those you love.

You can learn more about our work and our interests in the about section on our website. If you’re interested in exploring how therapy might benefit your life, contact us today for a free phone consultation.

The Lies of Valentine's Day

If you venture out into the world at all during this time of year, you will probably be overwhelmed by hearts and chocolates and silhouettes of Cupid. Don’t get me wrong; it is great to have a time on the calendar when we focus on love and romance. It can benefit every relationship to have seasons like these that encourage partners to express their love. Do it. Love it. Enjoy it.

But there’s a flip side too. If we’re honest, the pomp around Valentine’s Day can be frustrating or even discouraging for people. Maybe we are single on Valentine’s Day. Maybe our relationship isn’t as fulfilling as we want it to be. When every shelf in every department store is chock full of messages that are intended to be sweet, it can make us think that maybe there is something wrong with us.

The truth is, though, these messages of “love” can be damaging if we don’t think about what they’re saying. Chances are that there is nothing wrong with you at all. True love is not as simple as the messages on the store shelves and it’s certainly not “As seen on TV.”

That’s why I believe it’s important for us to call out the lies when we see them. It will help all of our relationships if we can start to think about love in a realistic way.

There are two in particular that I love to hate. I know they’re meant to be helpful and to express affection and deep love, but below the surface, they are the root of so many of the problems that we see in relationships.

The first one: “You make me happy!”

Yes, I know. It might seem pretty harmless. But beneath the surface layer of meaning here lies something that we really need to talk about. First, there’s the idea of happiness. To be happy is to experience an emotion. It’s the emotion that you experience when things are going well, when you’re surrounded by people that you love, or when you don’t have any particular stress. Obviously people want to be happy, but as an emotion, it passes; it’s not constant but instead it rises and falls in response to what’s happening around you. The fact that it passes is actually really important. No one is constantly happy. Sometimes you’re happy but then things happen and you experience sadness. Other things bring up feelings of anger. Emotions are constantly changing.

It doesn’t help that we tend to emphasize happiness and avoid other emotions like sadness or fear. But experiencing all of the emotions is an important part of what it means to be human. They are completely normal and should be embraced rather than avoided. There’s nothing inherently bad about feeling sad.

There is nothing or no one person that can make you happy. It is too much responsibility for anyone to assume. To put the responsibility of making you happy on your partner is to say that they’re somehow responsible for everything that happens to you. They have to manage the circumstances that you experience and, the insinuation is that, when you’re not happy, it’s also on them.

I get the sentiment, though. What we’re really trying to communicate when we say, “You make me happy” is “I feel happy that you are in my life.” This is more than just arguing over words though. The difference in the underlying meaning is profound. The words that we say and the phrases that we use have incredible power to create meaning in our lives.

So, own your happiness. Realize that happiness, sadness, anger, fear – all of the emotions – are normal. We experience them in waves that come and go. To put the responsibility for your happiness on your partner, though, is unfair to you and to them.

And that brings us to number two: “You complete me!”

If you’ve seen the movie Jerry Maguire then you already know about this one. The whole story culminates in this line that Jerry delivers to Dorothy. It is at about this time that most people reach for the box of tissues.

Me? I cry too but for a whole different reason.

For years, this phrase has gotten under my skin for the other layers of meaning –the things that it doesn’t say. For some reason, we seem to have lost touch with the idea that we can be whole human beings completely on our own. The parts of our lives where we feel lacking – where we feel broken – can be restored. When we spend time working on ourselves and exploring where these feelings come from we can learn to accept ourselves and love ourselves with our imperfections.

If we don’t do that work though, the feelings of deficiency can stick around. And – I get it – exploring some of the areas where you feel like you need to grow can be scary. Sometimes, it can be easier to look for ways to compensate for those feelings and one of the ways is to look to another person – our partners – to fill in those gaps. But this is a temporary fix; it’s not a solution.

If you find that special someone with whom you feel like you could spend the rest of your life with, it can feel like they complement you perfectly – that they are all of the things that you are not. It won’t take long though before they realize that they cannot be everything you need. To ask someone else to be the things that you are not is to ask them to do double duty and to assume responsibility for you both. This creates a sense of imbalance; it creates an unequal drain that sucks your partners energy to the point of exhaustion.

Instead, if we feel incomplete, the heathy approach, as intimidating as it may feel, is to move towards that feeling. What is about our lives that feel incomplete? Where are the areas that I’ve been wounded and who can help me make moves towards wholeness rather than distraction?

These are the lies of Valentine’s Day. The truth is that you can be whole, complete, and content just with the resources that you have at you disposal as an individual. You don’t need someone else to make you happy, or to complete you. And, the more that you move towards feeling whole the more that your relationship with your partner will enhance you life. When you refuse to burden your partner with the responsibility for your happiness and completeness, you allow them the freedom to love you unconditionally – to love you for who you really are.

Interested in exploring some new ideas about what it means to love and be in a fulfilling relationship? Reach out to us today.

After ten years in digital media and marketing, Desmond Smith recently graduated with a Master's in Marriage & Family Therapy from Pfeiffer University. He is currently working towards becoming licensed as a therapist in North Carolina. His wife, Kristy Yetman, is the owner of Yetman Counseling Services.

Desmond writes about relationships and life at his blog, PartSaintAndPartSinner.com.

"Heart shaped bokeh 19" by Iouri Goussev is licensed by CC BY-SA 2.0