– The Basics of Differentiation in Relationship Counseling

Last Updated on April 23, 2014 by Chris Roberts

OUTLINING SOME COMMON BELIEFS OF DIFFERENTIATION THROUGH RELATIONSHIP COUNSELING IN NASHVILLE, TN

References “Passionate Marriage.  Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships” By David Schnarch, Ph.D.

Relationship counseling through individual differentiation.  It can seem like an oxymoron to talk about differentiation during the process of relationship counseling.  Most people are under the impression that relationship counseling is about helping couples feel more together and becoming more “one.”  This is not an inaccurate statement.  However, sometimes, the process of feeling more together comes through being more secure in your individual self.  This is oxymoronic and paradoxical in nature.   In a fantastic book by Dr. David Schnarch about satisfying, long-term relationships called, “Passionate Marriage,” he elucidates on the nature of paradox by stating, “Differentiation provides more tolerance for current paradoxes and those that lie ahead.  As marriage, families, and people mature, they don’t become simpler.  They become more complex—with more inherent paradoxes.  As we grow, the paradoxes of life and marriage don’t go away; they just bother us a lot less.” (p. 208)  If Dr. Schnarch is correct about paradoxes, then we all need to become better at accepting them.

Part of the benefit of relationship counseling through differentiation is helping couples to understand that conflict isn’t always bad or wrong.  In fact, conflict acted out in self-sustaining ways, can actually produce greater intimacy and connection.  Dr. Schnarch lists some of the realities of how differentiation may play out in a long-term relationship:

• “We fear our marriage is threatened when we refuse to give up our integrity—and yet it actually strengthens it
• Having a marriage worth cherishing requires the willingness to challenge it; maintaining the status quo is a good way to kill it.
• One partner can always make the other choose between loyalty to the marriage and loyalty to oneself.
• Sexual crisis doesn’t necessarily mean your relationship is falling apart; it can be a crucial part of the people-growing process.
• “Compromise” and “negotiation,” long extolled as marital virtues, may actually impede decisions of differentiation, which make us capable of true compassion.” (p. 209)

These are complicated statements, but they point to the hope that conflict and challenge can arouse the necessary motivations to change old habits that haven’t been helping a tired and exhausted relationship.  Especially, “compromise” and “negotiation” are logistical patterns of trying to please each partner “equally” without ever really having to change internal dynamics of each person.  Long-term relationships require a never-ending pursuit of finding internal, self-validation while staying in connection with and attunement to another person.  Most marriages fail because of boredom.  Boredom is created out of repeated patterns that no longer require us to dig within our inner selves to find confidence and self-assurance.

Relationship counseling and relationships in general were never meant to dissolve two people into one person.  If you have felt this way, or believed that this was the map that was given to you, you are not alone.  Most people enter relationships and relationship counseling with the goal of becoming “one person.”  Differentiation asks just the opposite.  The goal of relationships should be to feel connection and intimacy in ways that chip away at our deepest fears of loneliness.  Of course, becoming completely absorbed into another person could seem like the best way to eradicate loneliness!  The problem is that we want to be connected BOTH to another person and to our selves, our core self.  We can’t become connected to our core self if we “lose” our self in another person.

This then becomes part of the paradox of relationship counseling.  We must become more ourselves, but also better at giving away parts of ourselves.  If your relationship has become stuck and tired and boring, then I encourage you to reach out to a relationship counselor in Nashville, TN to help you both get on a better track to getting the love you want and deserve.