O'Grady Psychology Associates

Psychotherapy, Marriage Counseling, Neuropsychological Assessment

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“I’d be better off single”: Distress-maintaining thinking

6523102125_059d03f888_bHow may times have you gone to bed thinking that you hate your partner, fantasizing how you would live on your own? Your thoughts snag on difficulties like how to tell your kids, your family, and the neighbors, and how much it would cost to live in two households.

If you’ve had such thoughts, you are not alone. Transient feelings of anger, dislike, or even hatred toward a partner are not uncommon. “Transient” is the important word: we all have those feelings from time to time, but they don’t become harmful unless we nurse these feelings of discontent, disappointment, and grievance—until they add up to a permanently negative perspective. Therapists call this “distress-maintaining thinking.”

The fantasy that life would be better without your partner feeds the cycle of negativity and keeps you unhappy. This is a huge danger zone, making our relationship vulnerable to secrets, even affairs. Thinking that there is a more perfect person out there who will meet your needs is usually wrong. Blaming your partner for your unhappiness is easier than understanding what role you play in the disharmony.

Fantasies of escape can abet distress-maintaining thinking, but so can fantasies of perfection. We grow up listening to fairy tales, and often form our expectations from them: The princess must love the toad, the knight gives freedom to the hag, and the beauty falls in love with the beast. Real marriage, though, requires confronting what you bring to the relationship—not just looking at your partner’s flaws or imagined imperfections. The fantasy of the perfect partner who always loves and understands you is a child’s fantasy. Children want to be loved unconditionally, but adult relationships take effort on both sides.

 For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

 Equally distress-maintaining is simply giving up on a relationship. I had a client who had grown so detached from his partner that he was paralyzed by his inability to leave the marriage. In his despair, he told me the phrase I was to hear many times from other partner-providers: “It’s cheaper to keep her.” He had resigned himself to a passionless life because paying spousal support would have significantly diminished the retirement accounts and portfolio he’d taken years to build. But despair and casting oneself as the victim also means taking no agency in improving the relationship.

Relationship Enhancing Thoughts

In contrast to distress-maintaining thinking, cultivate relationship-enhancing thoughts. This practice doesn’t deny a relationship’s problems, but allows you to think about them in a way that brings understanding and insight to the challenges you face. Giving time and attention keeps friendship strong, leading to more engagement and more passion.

Don’t wait to redefine yourself by imagining a life with a different partner. Don’t just give up. Look at what you want for yourself now. How can you change the way you think about your marriage? As I was writing this post, a friend called to tell me about something I said to her several years ago that really stuck with her. I had mentioned the importance of making bids for contact and the “turning toward” concept, and how failing to do this will weaken connections, leading to negative perspective. She told me the image that come to her mind was one of a stack of neglected vinyl records stacked on top of each other without their sleeves, collecting dust and warping. Each time she ignored a bid or turned away from her lover, it was like adding another record to the pile, making the music increasingly unplayable.

Expecting perfection and continually ignoring opportunities to appreciate and admire each other compounds our marital problems, setting us up for escape fantasies. When we do the work of love by making a conscious effort to notice how attracted we are to our mates, when we make a point of noticing their positive traits, we feel comforted and loved.

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Falling in Love Again with Your Partner: Love Maps, Friendship, and Staying Connected

_MG_2038When love is new, we ask questions to get to know our partner well. As Mandy Len Catron wrote for The New York Times in her charming summary of a study 20 years ago by psychologist Arthur Aron, we like learning about the person we love, but over time we forget to keep learning. In Dr. Aron’s study, researchers tried to find out if they could make strangers fall in love with each other by having them ask and answer a series of 36 questions that become more intimate and probing as they went. These questions get deep pretty fast. For people who hardly know each other, this is a low-risk exercise, but for couples once close and now estranged, it’s more challenging. I’ve seen this when I assign  couples the Love Map exercise at the end of our first session. Developed by Dr. Gottman, these 62 questions range from super-easy ones such as “Where was your partner born?” to more difficult ones like “Does your partner have a secret ambition? What is it?” I have clients answer the first two or three questions in the office, so I can coach them if they screw it up. As simple as these questions sound, if you don’t know where your partner was born, or what her favorite color, flower, or musical group is, the experience can turn from being fun and playful experience into hurt and disappointment, in turn leading to criticism and increased negative feelings. “She doesn’t know where I was born? After all these years?”

So I set some ground rules: One, it’s okay not to know all the answers—it’s even good—because you can learn something new about each other; it’s an opportunity to re-connect and update in a way that isn’t too challenging. If you don’t know something, make that a topic of conversation, even for just a minute or two.

The second ground rule is to understand that it’s not necessarily the fault of the partner who doesn’t know the answer! Communication is a two-way street. If you don’t take the time, or are passive about seeking knowledge about your partner, or just plain uninterested, preoccupied, or prefer to watch TV, then you need to make a your partner a bigger priority.

Third, I tell couples not to rush through this exercise the night before our next appointment. Take several nights over the week between our sessions to go through five to ten questions at a time, using them as a springboard for getting to know each other again. We refer to this exercise as updating our love maps. Daily obligations leave little time for talk, especially in our wired world, so we can’t expect to know everything about each other when our lives are busy and changing. When couples come back the next week, they usually feel good that they could get most questions right.

Expressing our Dreams Requires Vulnerability

What Dr. Aron’s study points to is that learning the deep, innermost feelings of your partner are what help us love them. When we express those ineffable or unspeakable feelings—those things we hardly tell ourselves—we make ourselves vulnerable, and that is attractive. Often couples have dim knowledge of their partner’s inner world. Dr. Aron’s 36 questions are the type we ask when getting to know someone—and spouses tend to already feel that job is done. Exploring the terrain of the soul with an attentive listener builds an emotional bond rarely experienced for some people with anyone but a therapist. This is why affairs feel rewarding.

As couples get further along in counseling, I have them do what Dr. Gottman calls the Dreams within Conflict exercise. This exercise, which takes place over several sessions, relies on the theory that gridlock results from life dreams in conflict. A powerful part of this exercise is to have each partner fully express a dream or wish that is fundamental to them. For this to happen, each partner needs to feel safe, because the dream is very close to the core of who they are, and it is fragile.

The first step is for one partner to pick a wish or dream, such as the desire for family connectedness, or the wish for adventure and travel, or to express their creativity. Once they think of the dream, their partners will ask a defined series of deliberately redundant questions, in order, without much commentary or discussion. This helps avoid an automatically defensive reaction.

For example, if one partner says “I’d really like to have more thrilling travel,” their partner may immediately respond with objections—and here’s what the mind does—“Oh no! How can we afford it? Will he want to take the kids zip-lining? What if he wants to go to a dangerous country? How can I take time off work? I really hate travel! I’d much rather stay home and have a stay-cation to putter in the garden and get caught up on all my novels… “ and on and on. This stream of thought can take place in seconds, but the effect can last a lifetime for the relationship.

So I ask the listener-partner to just ask the questions, not blurt out their thoughts and fears. Believe me, the stream of thoughts that go through the mind can if articulated, easily lead to squashing their partner’s elaboration of their dream. This Dreams within Conflict process opens up long-shut windows, allowing fresh views of each other, helping return the sweet to a relationship gone sour.

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Turning Toward Each Other Every Day: You Don’t Have to Wait for Date Night

Building closeness doesn’t happen only on date night, the subject of my previous two posts. Turning toward each other creates little and big ways to increase closeness—not just on dates, but in the routine tasks of life.

It’s easy to ignore the moments in a day when you can make a connection. For instance, when making a meal, we tend to stick to a routine; if our partner comes in to offer a hand, it is not uncommon for the cook to decline. That can be a missed opportunity to build some shared experience. It’s in a small way, but the small things will add up if they are done with sincerity.

When James and Lorie started therapy, they were barely speaking to each other. As a couple, they seemed to be DOA. But I have learned that in even the most damaged marriages, couples can turn things around and heal their relationship.

Division of Labor in Marriage Requires Flexibility

In conventional relationships, where one partner is the wage earner, and the other takes care of the kids and household, problems arise when chores become inflexibly assigned to the domain of just one partner, and the other is excluded. Both partners work hard at what they do, and when this arrangement works, it is terrific for everyone. But trouble stirs, when the roles or division of labor is too tightly woven, making for inflexibility.

In the case of James and Lorie, James worked long hours and was rarely home for meals with Lorie or their two sons. Lorie resented this but found ways to adapt by getting her needs met through her many friendships and social activities.  Meanwhile, James was irritated, feeling that Lorie putting her social life ahead of him.  When he was home, she was out at meetings. Over the years this patterned congealed into, both partners feeling increasingly that their roles were unappreciated. They felt disconnected.

I asked how James could help in the mornings by taking care of their sons, before school. They both rolled their eyes. James said, his “Lorie hates to have me in the kitchen.,” said James. Lorie confirmed this, saying, he “He comes in and tries to help with homework, or making breakfasts or lunches, but he just makes a mess. He takes everything out of the fridge and it just irritates me.” James is equally angry, saying, “ She has her way of doing things—nothing I do is ever right. ,” James added. “She is such a control freak.”

Over the years, he began to keep to himself, avoiding going into the kitchen, making it more difficult for him to connect with the boys. Yet being a family together in the mornings, —even when they are hectic, —can be an opportunity to turn toward each other. But in the case of James and Lorie, it created hard feelings.

 Making Everyday Tasks Joint Activities

Turning toward each other begins with the often trivial things we do daily, such as cooking dinner, cleaning up, and working in the garden. For James and Lorie, they decided to make an effort to be pleasant to each other. This wasn’t easy after so many years of tension. Lorie began to see how her judgmental attitudes toward James, were kept leaking out, on a regular basis. This affected their children. Kids who witness their parents showing disrespect to each other may end up having trouble with intimacy themselves. Lorie worked to be looser about James’ way of helping with the breakfast. She quit trying to micromanage their mornings. And rather than automatically slipping into resentful isolation, James swallowed his pride and asked Lorie for advice on how to get breakfast on the table, and began paying attention to the other details of morning routines.

Over time, they found activities they could do together, making even routine tasks opportunities to turn toward each other.
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Date Night: Making Time Together Part 1

Sharing tea or coffee during date night in marriage.Couples need time to be together without other couples, family, kids, TV, and the endless distractions of a digital world.

For many years I have suggested to the couples that they have two dates a week, minimum. One date can be an evening out, such as a movie or dinner. But it is essential that there be opportunity to talk. After seeing a movie, don’t just go home; go out afterwards for dessert or tea and discuss the show. A second weekly date should be something active, like a walk or hike, going dancing, or visiting a museum —anything that allows you to have a shared and active experience.

Date nights give you the opportunity to reconnect positively, without being distracted by  kids, stress, and other preoccupations When relationships deteriorate, it is often because couples haven’t carved out time together that is stress-free.

Date Nights Don’t Always Go As Expected

But what if you’re like Monique and Rob, a couple I saw who chose to go out to dinner and a movie every other week? Their time together didn’t go well; in fact, they felt worse after their dates than when they stayed home with the kids. When dates don’t live up to expectations for reconnection, this is  often because a couple use their date time to hash over stored-up resentments and go over all the stresses they are dealing with. These can be as innocuous as the teacher’s evaluation of their kid, or as big as an unexpected Visa bill. The date deteriorates into bickering, bitching, or nagging, which lead to feeling disappointed and irritated.

During the years our twins were young, we went out to dinner every Thursday night. We had a babysitter, a teenager in the neighborhood who charged a reasonable fee—the price of a burrito or two. She was eager to make some cash, and she was fun and energetic with our girls. We’d come home from our evening to find the kids fed, clean, and asleep.

The next morning the girls would describe the fun things they did together. Parents often mistakenly think that leaving their kids for the evening is cruel,  but in reality kids need a break from their parents as much as parents need a break from their kids. It is extremely important for your kids see that you have a life outside of them, and that they can survive with other adults or older teens. This protects your marriage and it helps kids learn to handle separation, a skill they need to learn before college.

Monique and Rob explored date night during one of their couple’s sessions. They realized that they were drinking too much at dinner. Alcohol may seem innocently relaxing and to increase feelings of amorousness, but all too often it does the opposite, exacerbating tense discussions. Monique had an important insight: that she was saving up all the negative issues to talk over during their one night alone together, since Rob was at work all day. Rob, in turn, felt bombarded and overwhelmed. He clammed up, leaving Monique feeling even more distant than before their evening out.

 Ways to Avoid Tension During Date Night

  1. Limit alcohol. Sharing a bottle of wine over dinner can cause tempers to flare.
  2. It’s OK to talk over important subjects, but don’t bring up your core areas of conflict (the family budget, your sex life), and don’t unload the week’s stresses and concerns. It’s tempting to do so because you finally have a moment when kids aren’t in earshot, but resist. Otherwise, date night will end before the movie starts.
  3. Instead, use the time together to update your love maps. Find out what has been interesting—not stressful— for your partner over the last week.
  4. Be attentive. Put the phone in your pocket, turn it off, and don’t check it. If you must keep it on for the sitter, then create a special ring tone and ignore other calls. When you go out, avoid distracting, noisy venues like a sports bar. Your’re here to listen to each other, not check the score.

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Marriage and Idealism

In my practice, I often treat couples who have highly idealistic expectations about marriage. Does that sound contradictory? After all, idealism is romantic, and you need romance for a great marriage. If marriage isn’t just a partnership, but a meeting of souls, then something must be deeply wrong when you have petty disagreements. Soul mates never argue about where the thermostat should be set.

Soul Mate or Partners on Life’s Journey?

An article on Salon.com, reporting on a study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, explains this dilemma:

Researchers observed that while there are myriad ways people talk about love, two common ways of framing relationships — the “other half/soul mate” approach and the “our love is a journey, look how far we’ve come” approach — both contribute hugely to the way people view conflict in their relationships, but in nearly opposite ways. For people with we’re-on-a-journey view of their partners, everyday relationship struggles are just surmountable hurdles along the way. But for “soul mates,” conflicts are more difficult to deal with — after all, if two people are truly “made for each other,” why would they face any conflict in the first place?

This “soul mate” thinking is a set-up for disappointment since conflict is inevitable. But aside from the narratives with which we structure our understanding of love, there’s another cultural force that encourages over-idealism of marriage: the narcissistic message that anything less than “the best” is a gross insult. (Aren’t you worth the best?)

In the New York Times opinion page, psychoanalyst Joseph Burgo uses narcissistic home renovators as a comparison to marriage:

The relationship between such homeowners and their contractor often resembles an overly idealistic marriage that starts off well and founders in the face of reality. The inevitable construction delays cause frustration. Unanticipated problems always crop up. And most important, the real product usually falls short of that idealized, perfect vision with which the homeowners began.

Burgo identifies narcissism, or unhealthy self-absorption, as the root problem here; just as homeowners takes pride in and identify with their house and its showy declaration of status, narcissistic marriage partners see the other as a mirror reflecting the best image back to themselves. Any blemish on that mirror—like a disagreement—would confront the narcissist’s view of self-perfection. Giving up the need to be, and be seen as perfect can go a long way towards increasing happiness.

Giving up the Need for Your Partner to be Perfect

I recently heard from the wife of a couple I saw in marriage counseling a year ago. They were on the verge of divorce when they came to see me because of conflict over a grown son. It is not uncommon for couples to seek therapy once the kids are launched. The empty nest can bring to the fore, unresolved parental problems that got tabled for the sake of providing harmony in the home. During couples counseling, Theo and Harriet worked on some fundamental ways of handling their differences in how much financial support to give their adult son. They learned to manage conflict, to support each other and avoided getting ‘triangulated’ in their relationship. Over time, they found ways to express their appreciation and love more often–something that suffered because–as so often happens when raising kids–the children get the majority of affection and attention. By the time their kids had left home, they were out-of-practice in showing their love for each other.

When therapy was concluded, Theo and Harriet had better skills to cope as a team, with the challenges in handling issues with their son. They downsized and moved to Oregon. About a year later, Theo phoned me requesting several phone sessions after the birth of a grandchild brought up old hurts. We were quickly able to resolve the problem because they had a structure in place to deal with conflict and just needed to talk it over and remember what they already knew. But something else happened during that process that shifted them into a deeper place of understanding, acceptance, and love. Harriet gave me permission to quote the letter she wrote to me.

So, here is my key conclusion: I believe that every conflict is multi- (multi-!!) faceted. We can lock onto one dominant element of that conflict, and make it all about that, but that is not accurate. I believe we demonstrate our growing intelligence and personal abilities by learning to examine and include more and more of these many facets into our consideration: our humanity; our upbringing; our personality; our failings; our needs; our goals; our stress; our desires; our fears; etc. etc.

 I believe Theo is a loving, good human being – as I believe myself to be. With that, in my opinion, necessary foundation, I believe we can move forward now. Rather than basic civility, I hope we treat each other kindly and respectfully; acknowledging to ourselves and those around us that we are life-long partners. I hope every day is one of communication and support. Thank you again, Susan.    I’m feeling pretty strong right now; encouraged to move forward, but I always benefit from our conversations no matter what.”

Expressing Love in Different Ways

In a different case, a conflict escalated over several years when the ‘honeymoon’ phase settled into a more realistic partnership. Jenny, a self-proclaimed romantic, felt her husband didn’t love her anymore, and wanted counseling to end the marriage. Jenny’s romantic ideals meant that love always had to be expressed in elaborate ways. Homemade cards with hand-written poems, special baked treats, candles, flowers, music—this was how she believed soul mates express their love. Because her husband Dave could barely remember to buy a Hallmark card, she felt unloved.

Our sessions brought out, though, that Dave did plenty of other things to show Jenny that he loved her. He performed a myriad of unpleasant household chores that he knew Jenny hated, like taking out the compost. He cut back on gaming to spend more time with her. He left her the last cookie. Jenny came to see this and was also able to admit that part of why she idealized big romantic gestures was so she could brag to her girlfriends about them. When Jenny stopped demanding Dave fit her ideals and make her look good, and started appreciating Dave on his own terms, the marriage got better—and, since Dave felt more loved and appreciated, he was able to start addressing some flaws he did have. “He’s my teammate, not my soul mate,” said Jenny in our last session.