I often have couples come to CCBT for couples therapy. They expect the therapy to focus on increasing communication. Unfortunately, they communicate quite a bit, but often in ways that hurt each other, strangling their love for each other. Communication is not absent for them, it's broken.
When communication leads to being critical of each other, expressing defensiveness, or builds a wall between partners, it is still communication, but it is broken. Broken communication needs repair so that love can return to the relationship.
Repairing communication is a different approach to bringing love back to the marriage. If the goal is to increase communication, and that communication is broken, then the more the couple communicates, the more they fall out of love: a bad and harmful outcome, really. Repairing communication, instead, changes how partners relate to one another so that they express love: a good and healing outcome.
Couples turn toward each other and begin listening with their heart. John Gottman describes one way to do that as building love maps, which are the "in your brain" rooms that each of us have about our partners. Those rooms, or maps, need to be filled with stuff that really reflect your partner. The things you love about each other should be in there. One couple came in, and hadn't thought about how endearing they found each other when they met. They also didn't know what each other dreamed of for their life together. We built a way of understanding each other through turning toward each other's feelings, but looking below the arguments to see the people they really were. We built a way of seeing disappointment, not anger, when dreams are unfulfilled.
When you become defensive, remember that if you want love (not winning) the key is to repair the communication: accept responsibility for your side of the breakdown using a soft and loving approach to the words. Something like "I can see how what I did could have upset you. I am sorry for doing that. It makes me sad that I hurt you." Even though your partner might hurl an attack back again, persistent acceptance of responsibility will repair the communication. After the repair takes hold, you and your partner might want to ask and answer this question: What can I learn about my partner from that fight?
Love builds on listening, understanding, and accepting each other. Turning toward each other, even when upset, builds chances to feel connected. Love springs from expressing caring at the expense of "winning." Always remember, if you win a fight with your partner, then the love of your life just lost. Love wants the best for him or her, not losing. You really win when the love you want to give can be accepted by your partner, and the love you want to feel from him or her flows freely to you.
It occurs to me that the effort to feel connected in relationships can be very fragile. Once we try to connect and there's a failure, or we feel like there's a failure, to connect, then the misfire hits us much more than a success might. It is easy to pull back into being protected, to let the fear of being hurt win when it argues for comfort and safety rather than connection.
ReplyDeleteWe all have hurts in our past, but some are worse than others. Some of us have more hurts, and some of us have both big hurts and lots of them. We feel rejected and want to be connected so badly, but our life has created a pattern of being safe rather than trying to have our needs met.
One idea is to build on the old saying "Love like you've never been hurt." Let's try a little different saying "Love can include some disappointments." This second saying takes an acceptance view of the occasional pang that jumps up from our past when our partner mis-fires in connecting. If the relationship gives us connection, but occasional disappointments, then taking an acceptance approach frees us to experience the connection moments more lively and more really. Acceptance is a powerful tool.