THERAPIST THURSDAY: How to Ensure Your Marriage Will END

How do you start a conversation with your spouse when he or she has done something to annoy you? How do you bring up a challenging conversation or mention something that needs to be addressed? The way you approach topics that are difficult can make all the difference in how the conversation goes.

Often when we want to address something that is bugging us in a relationship, we feel a sense of anxiety about doing so. Bringing up something in a soft way can make us feel vulnerable, so much so that many people don’t know how to do it. Many people instead use what we call a HARSH START UP when bringing up a challenging issue. But there are several problems with this. The first is that the chances of the conversation going well are very low when the start up is harsh. The second is that a person who continuously uses harsh start up in speaking with their spouse increases the odds of the marriage ending. In fact, one of the most accurate predictors of if a marriage will end is if one or both of the partners start up conversations in a harsh manner. Let’s look at these issues more closely and then discuss what can be done instead.

The conversation will not go well if started harshly. Why is this? It is because a harsh start up immediately puts the other party on the defense. This means the person addressing the concern initially is very likely to get a response that makes the person feel unheard. And when we feel unheard in a relationship, we almost always escalate our emotions to try to get the other person to understand where we are coming from. So, a cycle of defense and blame or of escalation ensues. The person on the receiving end of the start up feels blamed and judged, and the person who initiated the conversation feels unheard and uncared for. Both parties are likely to be discouraged by this interaction.

When this occurs over the course of a relationship, the cycle becomes faster and more intensified as the years progress. Each person comes to view these patterns of communication as attributes of their partner. This can mean the spouse is viewed as nagging, unhappy, judgmental, harsh, not caring, defensive, and not able to hear or meet the needs of their partner. And because what we all need out of our intimate relationships is a sense that we are heard and cared for, this pattern will eventually erode the relationship to a point of the partners feeling disconnected and eventually hopeless to fix it. When they reach this point, people usually start considering divorce.

Why does harsh start up hurt us so badly? The answer lies in understanding human nature and what we all need at the core of who we are as a species. That is a sense that someone 1. sees us for who we are; 2. understands and accepts us. When we start conversations harshly with our spouse, we are setting up the conversation so that neither partner feels heard or understood. The pattern it creates is destructive and the sense of softness and understanding is never achieved.

Why does one use harsh start up? I find that most of the time when a person uses harsh start up as a regular form of communicating dissatisfaction there are usually a few possible reasons why. One is that they never saw healthy communication modeled for them as a child. They typically grew up in a family that either did not communicate about feelings and needs or a family that argued a lot and never really heard each other. Another reason one may have developed this pattern is that it feels scary to reach to have needs met in a more vulnerable way. For example, it is very vulnerable to say “it hurts my feelings when…”; it is much easier to say, “I’m really mad at you because…” or “why were you acting like such a jerk?” The first allows for rejection, which can feel scary. The second feels less vulnerable. So if a person is not used to getting their emotional needs met, often times beginning in their early relationships with their first attachment figures (their parents), they do not know how to reach in a vulnerable way and certainly do not feel comfortable doing so. Third, if a pattern of unhappiness and dissatisfaction has existed in a relationship for a long time, the person has likely become more and more unhappy and more and more hopeless that they will get their needs met, which has likely led to resentment and anger that comes out when another example of their unhappiness presents itself. This person has essentially given up and no longer makes attempts to be nice or friendly in the relationship when they are dissatisfied with something that their partner has done.

So, what can we do instead of using harsh start up? The answer to this is both simple and complex. In one sentence, practice saying things in a vulnerable manner. Use I-statements like, “I felt sad when you…” or “I need you to hear what I am saying and try to understand where I am coming from.” Talk about vulnerable emotions like sadness or hurt and avoid harsh emotions like anger and frustration. Simple, right? It is! And yet it is not. And this is because actually putting these things into practice is not as easy as it sounds. When we try with our partner, the part of our brain that becomes activated are the emotional centers, because this person is our primary attachment figure and therefore we are emotionally vulnerable to be hurt by them (even if we don’t want to be vulnerable). So often times logic goes out the window. We have difficulty forming the words. Or the words may form, but they come out sounding angry or frustrated instead of the softness we intended. It takes continuously practicing this before it begins to feel more natural. Even then, if we are not getting the responses we were hoping for, we are not likely to be able to continue trying, as the danger centers of our brain will be easily activated with each failed attempt. And if there is a long history of this pattern, it may be virtually impossible to create this change without intervention. There are a few books that I recommend that further this conversation as well as provide help with changing these patterns. Both are written by Dr. Sue Johnson, who is the founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples. This is the type of therapy I use in my work with couples because research has shown it to be highly effective, due to it’s specific focus on changing patterns in the part of the brain that is being activated when these patterns are occurring within relationships. The books are Hold Me Tight and Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships. Both books are written for couples to help understand and change these patterns.

If you find that the cycles described above sound very familiar, if you find yourself wanting to improve the communication within your relationship, or if you find yourself feeling helpless to change things, I encourage you not to give up until you understand what is occurring in the brain and how this impacts these cycles. It can feel very hopeless when a couple has had a long-standing pattern of not having their needs met. But please know that there often is hope. If you and your partner are willing to put in the work to change things, you may be surprised what can come of it. It may not be that your partner does not want to meet your needs, it may be that he or she simply has not known how, and that the emotional centers of both your brain and your partner’s have been stopping you from creating the kind of satisfaction you both want in your relationship.

Rochelle Whitson is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice in Temecula, CA. For more articles like this, please subscribe to her blog at www.meetme4therapy.com.

Ms. Whitson can be reached by email at meetme4therapy@gmail.com.