– How Marriage Therapy Can Help Us Recognize Our Negative Patterns

Last Updated on October 12, 2015 by Chris Roberts

LEARNING HOW TO IDENTIFY OUR DISCONNECTION IN OUR MARRIAGE

References “Hold me Tight.” By Dr. Sue Johnson

If you are like many people, just the thought of marriage counseling can be a daunting experience.  There is the fear of how our spouse will respond.  There is the fear of how we will respond.  And if neither of you have participated in marriage counseling before, there is the question of: What exactly happens in marriage therapy?  In Dr. Sue Johnson’s great book, “Hold Me Tight,” she outlines the three most common negative patterns that people get stuck in during a marriage.  Usually, a marital couple will find their way into one if not all three of these negative patterns of relating with each other.

Marriage counseling can be used to uncover these negative patterns of interacting with each other.  It is not as simple as knowing these patterns.  Of course, once marital partners know these negative patterns, they must begin to change these patterns and create new ones.  But, there is significant power in knowing how our conflict and fighting gets started.  And it goes without saying that we can’t change our patterns if we don’t know what they are in the first place.

Having a more neutral party in the form of a counselor in marriage therapy is a start to helping slow down the almost automatic negative reaction some spouses have with each other.  Dr. Johnson helps illuminate why there can be such an automatic, negative response to our spouse, when she writes, “For all of us, the person we love the most in the world, the one who can send us soaring joyfully into space, is also the person who can send us crashing back to earth.  All it takes is a slight turning away of the head or a flip, careless remark.  There is no closeness without this sensitivity.” (p. 65)  We are so sensitive to our spouse’s slightest movement, because a marriage this exciting calls for a connection this deep.  The problems arise when we forget that we have a choice as to how we want to respond to certain actions by our spouse.  We slip into automatic responses that if they are negative, just create a self-defeating cycle.  Dr. Johnson describes the three most common forms of negative reactions as:

1.  “Find-the-Bad-Guy is a dead-end pattern of mutual blame that effectively keeps a couple miles apart, blocking reengagement and the creation of a safe haven.  Couples dance at arm’s length.” (p. 67)
2. “The Protest Polka is the most widespread and ensnaring dance in relationships…One partner reaches out, albeit in a negative way, and the other steps back, and the pattern repeats.  The dance also goes on forever because the emotions and needs behind the dance are the most powerful on the planet.  Attachment relationships are the only ties on Earth where any response is better than none.  When we get no emotional response from a loved one, we are wired to protest.  The Protest Polka is all about trying to get a response, a response that connects and reassures.” (p. 74)
3. The Freeze and Flee, or…Withdraw-Withdraw…usually happens after the Protest Polka has been going on for a while in a relationship, when dancers feel so hopeless that they begin to give up and put their own emotions and needs in the deep freeze, leaving only numbness and distance.  Both people step back to escape hurt and despair.  In dance terms, suddenly no one is on the dance floor; both partners are sitting out.  This is the most dangerous dance of all.” (p. 67)

In another article, we will go into greater detail about each one of these negative reactions.  I call them “reactions,” because they are usually a response to some event or circumstance between the marital partners.  The reaction is not involuntary, as much as some really entrenched marraiges might want to believe. There is always a choice.  After years and years of practicing and rehearsing these reactions, the conscious acknowledgement of this choice may be so buried beneath years of resentment and bitterness that neither partner could honestly admit to “choosing” this reaction.  But nevertheless, a distinct choice is made at some point.

Marriage counseling has at its fundamental core a duty to help each spouse in the marriage become more aware of their choices and responsibilities for reacting to their marital partner in a conscious manner.  Helping the marriage identify their negative patterns is one way of doing just that.  If you are looking for a marriage therapist in Nashville, Tennessee, please feel free to give us a call and discuss more if we could be a fit for you and your marriage.

photo courtesy of: Rula Sibai via Unsplash