In the field of Couples Therapy, we often talk about “pursuers” and “withdrawers.” Many of us can identify with both of those roles at different times. Basically, if you find yourself amping up your behavior in arguments or in times of disconnection, you might be identified as a pursuer. If you find yourself shutting down in arguments or times of disconnection, you might be identified as a withdrawer.
Books in pop culture would have us think that women are pursuers and men are withdrawers. Having sat with hundreds of couples, I can say this is often not true. In heterosexual relationships, many men pursue, and many women withdraw. I’m mentioning this to help us all loosen the assumptions we’re taught to make.
In times of disconnection, pursuers do things and say things to try to re-establish connection. They are protesting the disconnection and want to reconnect. What they actually DO may not have that result at all.
In EFT we talk about pursuers “moving towards their partners” by… blaming, criticizing, telling their partners how to improve, making threats, getting pushy, prodding, and even blowing up in anger.
One goal of Couples Therapy is to help pursuers see their negative behavior and the impact it is having on their partners. In my experience (both as a person in a long-term relationship and as a therapist) looking at your own behavior is only possible when you aren’t being judged, and when your feelings are understood. When we look at a pursuer’s behavior and the impact it has on the partner, we’ve got to also acknowledge the underlying motivation for it.
We also ALWAYS look at each partner’s behaviors and feelings in context of the pattern they are in together. Pursuers don’t fall into those patterns alone. Withdrawers don’t fall into their patterns alone. Every long-term couple has a negative communication pattern they can fall into. When we identify the pattern and understand it, couples gain the power to stand together seeing the pattern as the enemy, and seeing each other as allies.
Weekend Couples Workshop in January 2013
I am so excited that Sara Lesser and I will be facilitating another Weekend Workshop for Couples on January 19th and 20th, 2013 in San Francisco. Our last workshop went so well that we can’t wait to share the information and exercises again. The workshop is based on Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, with some skills from the Gottman Method included. Couples are taken through exercises over 2 days to identify where they go wrong in communication and lose connection, and some ways to get connection back. Sara and I both work with couples a great deal, and we have noticed that the intensive weekend format allows a deeper and faster kind of change to happen than would be possible with weekly therapy in the same amount of time.
If you are interested in learning more about our workshop, go to
betterconnectionsforcouples.com
John Gottman’s book: What Makes Love Last?
I am excited about John Gottman’s new book, What Makes Love Last?
He focuses in this book on the most distressed couples, people who have suffered through affairs and other betrayals. His work is always research based, and here he draws on his work with over 4 decades of couples. Why do some couples recover from breaks in trust and others grow more distant? He shows us that trust is the key to building a strong lifelong relationship and making your relationship less likely to be destroyed by a betrayal.
Gottman defines trust as the belief and knowledge that your partner is there for you, and that they will make decisions based on your best interests and not only their own. Here is a short video clip of John Gottman talking about trust. I find it very clear and also moving.
Please give me a call if you’d like to know more about how I help couples increase closeness and work through conflict.
A Different Kind of Workshop for Couples
I’m so excited to be facilitating a workshop for couples based on Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. Have you read Hold Me Tight, the book by Sue Johnson that provides a self-help version on Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy? The Workshop is also called Hold Me Tight, and it takes things even deeper than the book.
Our next workshop will be on September 29th and 30th in Muir Beach. I’ll be co-facilitating with Sara Lesser, LCSW. She’s an excellent EFT therapist working in Oakland, and we have been colleagues and best friends for over 20 years.
Couples in this workshop can expect to experience the steps of EFT, rather than just learn about them. Hold Me Tight is an experiential workshop, so we will go back and forth between Sara and I giving the couples the ideas and instructions for an exercise, and then taking time for the couples to privately do the exercise together. This format allows the couples to work deeply and privately. Sara and I will be available during the exercises to answer questions and help couples work through stuck points.
To check out information about the workshop, go to betterconnectionsforcouples.com
You can schedule a free consultation to find out if the workshop would be right for you.
Schedule Now
Couples and Sex: It Isn’t Really About How Often
When couples discuss sex, they often start out by talking about how often they are having sex. Often, of course, one person is wanting more frequency than the other. I believe that this is not usually the deeper problem. Esther Perel in her talks often says “Sex isn’t something you do; It is somewhere you go.” I find this a useful metaphor. If we talk about sex and sexuality as a place that you go with your partner, it opens up ideas about what might hold you each back from going to that place and what you each want in that place. Talking about the place you go also helps each person take responsibility for their own journey to get there.
It is never just your partner who influences your sexual world. There are a lot of other factors in your own control. When you think about setting yourself up to be able to go to that place, what factors come to mind? What are the ways you can care for yourself or enjoy your life that set you up to be able to connect in that place of sexual intimacy?
For more ideas from Esther Perel, check out her book Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic.
To find out more about how I help couples connect, visit my website at
annieschuessler.com
Couples Arguing, Couples Bickering, What’s the Difference?
Some couples describe themselves as never arguing, and it’s true that some of them don’t argue very often at all. For a lot of these couples, though, there is a low level of bickering during much of the time they spend together, and this is just as hard on a relationship as having louder arguments. Even when bickering doesn’t escalate, it can be destructive to the relationship. There are a couple of things that set apart non-desctructive bickering from the kind that hurts your relationship.
Bickering is destructive when it contains either criticism or contempt, even if the conflict is just about dirty socks. Contempt is present when one partner is expressing superiority over the other, implying that their partner is below them. Eye rolling is a good sign that contempt is happening. The antidote to contempt is increasing the appreciation and respect in the relationship. Criticism is not as harmful as contempt, and some amount of it seeps into most happy relationships from time to time. However, the more criticism in your relationship, the higher the chance that you will not maintain a happy relationship. Criticism is present when you talk about a problem as if it is all the fault of your partner, or as if the problem is inside your partner. An antidote to criticism is to complain and not blame.
You know that bickering is not harmful when both partners stay on the topic at hand. Even if the conflict is frustrating, the spirit of it is respectful. Healthy bickering sounds more like “I really disagree with you about this, and I’m really annoyed about it.” Healthy bickering may sound like an oxymoron, but it’s actually quite possible.
To find out more about how I help couples connect, visit my website at
annieschuessler.com
Couples Communicating with the Glass Half Empty
Evidence suggests that the circuits in our brains that handle negative information are more sensitive than the circuits that handle positive information. We’re built to notice the negative, and even to interpret neutral information negatively.
How might this affect a typical day in the life of your relationship?
Your partner says, “Did you make that phone call today?” You can easily hear that as a criticism of your follow through skills. It could just be that your partner is asking a judgment-free question. From the other side, let’s say you come home from work tired and crabby. Your partner is likely to assume that your crabbiness is aimed at them, and they might assume you are being distant because you are upset about something they did wrong.
So what can we do about this?
We can hold in mind that we are likely to see the glass as half empty. We can remember that our perceptions of others are not always accurate. We can back up and listen to our negative interpretations the way we would listen to an overdramatic friend. They might be right, but they might be exaggerating.
Maybe you could ask, for example: “I might be misinterpreting this. Are you asking about the call because you think I’m going to forget?”
You can also reassure your partner. If your partner is reacting defensively to a neutral comment or question, remember that we’re built to interpret things negatively. Don’t get caught up in feeling badly that your partner is feeling defensive. That could lead to a pointless back and forth of defensiveness. Just say that you didn’t mean it as a criticism. You just might be able to sidestep a fruitless argument.
To find out more about how I help couples connect, visit my website at
annieschuessler.com
Couple Time: Do You Have Enough in Your Schedule?
Creating a loving, safe relationship takes work. We’ve got to consistently work on it, mess up, and repair it, over and over again. Having the right communication tools helps a lot. Without the right tools, we all have a tendency to fall into damaging patterns some of the time. We might get critical or defensive, we might not express enough appreciation, or we might forget to listen. But tools are not enough.
You also need to have enough time together. When you look at your schedule, how much time do you find that you spend one on one with your partner, actually focused on each other? I know it’s not easy to find enough time. We’re all in the same soup. We live busy lives and have extremely limited down time.
Perhaps the only control we have about this time problem is to spend a little more time hanging out, and a little less time online or in front of the TV at the end of the day. Just notice whether it makes a difference when you spend a little down time with your mate, catching up and laughing together. It might take more effort than zoning out and watching TV or surfing the web. But if that’s the time you have to work with, try a little experiment of extending the time you focus on your partner by just a few minutes, and see what comes of it.
A woman once told me that she was worried that she and her wife had lost their connection. They were arguing a lot, and feeling irritated with each other most of the time. She wasn’t looking forward to spending time together. Then she noticed that when they spent at least a few hours together, unplugged, she felt more connected, and stopped feeling irritated with her. These few hours could get them through a week of feeling hectic and not having time to focus on each other. It was the shot of intimacy they needed to maintain their bond each week.
How much time do you think your relationship needs? Are you able to give it that time?
Visit my practice website at http://www.annieschuessler.com/ to send me an email, or to find out more about how I help couples stay connected
Get Married? Move in Together?
Jaleh Donaldson recently interviewed me about the important decision couples make about how and when to commit to each other. To read the article, follow this link:
Interview
To learn more about how I help couples work through important decisions and learn to make decisions together, visit my practice website www.annieschuessler.com
Couples: Can You Tolerate Having Two Points of View?
In my last post, I discussed why we need to tolerate and tune in to the most negative emotions our partners experience. Staying close in those times can make a huge difference in staying connected over the long-term.
The other important and challenging thing to tolerate in relationships is the existence of two valid points of view. John Gottman, PhD. of the Gottman Institute, has found through research that couples who can tolerate having differing points of view while in arguments are more likely to stay together and get closer. In the heat of an argument, this is hard to do. We all tend to fall into repeating ourselves and arguing for our own position. We tend to listen with the intention of making our next statement. When I’m arguing with my partner, it’s easy to fall into feeling like: “If I can just say this one more time, it’s going to be obvious that I’m right here.”
What we need to remember is that our partners also have a point of view that makes sense to them, based on their reality. If you can work on tolerating that different reality, even when you don’t agree with it, your relationship will be stronger.
To find out more about how I help couples stay connected, visit
Relationships and Communication 