"Why can't he get it?"

Frustration, anger and sadness are some of the feelings that I hear women express when talking about the day to day struggles with their partners. Women often come in to therapy because they have gotten to a point where they feel so frustrated with their spouse that they either want to "hurt him," or they want to end the relationship. Most people would rather avoid doing either and so therapy is seen as a last ditch effort to make repairs that will turn things around. Obviously it is better when an individual comes into therapy earlier rather than later but there are many reasons why people don't. Sometimes it is pride, sometimes it is financial, sometimes it is shame or denial. I find that often people choose to wait to come into therapy because they think they can resolve the problem on their own without the help of another person. What many people discover is that they keep trying to "fix the problem" by trying the same thing over and over again and we all know what that leads to.
So what helps women who have a relationship that evokes the question, "Why can't he get it?" There is no one answer to this question. However, women who feel frustrated with their spouse or partner may need some simple suggestions that will help their partner to focus better on their needs. There are times when individual sessions will lead to greater self understanding and insight which indirectly reduces some of the frustration engendered by a relationship. At times, but not always, it may be a good idea to try to include the partner in the counseling. When a partner is reluctant at first to attend therapy I usually suggest that we gradually develop a strategy that will help them to eventually feel comfortable about joining us for a meeting. Encouraging a partner to attend couples sessions is often less difficult than it appears.

Making Connections to the Past: Lowering the Temperature in Relationships!

Many clients use psychotherapy to talk about present day conflicts with spouses, co-workers, friends, etc. If a client is recognizing that they are reacting more strongly to a situation than they feel is appropriate to the given situation, then I will sometimes ask if there is anything about the current situation that reminds them of an earlier time in life. Not only does this open up an opportunity to explore one's life more deeply, but it also provides the client with an opportunity for greater insight into the effect of one's past on the present. One of the values of psychotherapy is to help clients to learn how to react in the present without baggage from the past. Perhaps an example is the best way to describe how this process works.
Let's say that as a child you grew up in a home where your mother was very manipulative and controlling. Instead of being direct and clear about her wants, she would use coercion and shaming to get you to do many of the things that are often expected of children. Your response to this was to comply but it was not without a cost to your emotional development.
Now, today when you are in a subordinate relationship with a supervisor who also tends to be manipulative you find that all you want to do is get away from this person. Your reaction to her is to either run away or to yell and scream. If you are able to make the connection to the past, in this instance by realizing that your supervisor is reminding you of a particular part of your mother's personality, or of particular experiences growing up, and if you can begin to use that knowledge to help you to realize that your reactions to the supervisor are being inflated by your own history, you might start to find that there are ways of responding to her that you hadn't previously realized. This is a good example of where coping mechanisms that developed in childhood out of neccessity may not be particularly helpful as an adult and can be useful to examine in order to develop a greater range of choices in the present.

Listen (If this is your first time visiting remember to read threads from the bottom up)

Many couples come to me wanting help with "communication problems." Soon after beginning work with a new couple I frequently teach a listening exercise that I encourage couples to use at home. I call it a "paraphrasing exercise" because that is the best description for what it is. Simply put, the exercise requires each individual to listen and rephrase back to the speaker the content of what the speaker is stating. Typically there are two forms of paraphrasing, one is based on the emotional intent of the speaker and the other has more to do with the descriptive content. Both are important, but usually it is when a person paraphrases emotional content that we as speakers feel most understood. Some couples find this experience to be quite easy and natural, while others can struggle heartily with it. For those who have difficulty, the exercise is usually especially helpful.
Many clients have commented that the exercise made them realize how much they were focusing on an answer or a defense to their partner's statement, rather than making an effort to understand what it is that there partner thinks and feels. It then becomes obvious that that there is no way that you can truly listen if you are already formulating a response. I believe that listening is the first building block to good communication so if listening is done well you can be pretty sure that the communication between parties will be off to a good start.

First things first: Good Communication

Many of the couples I work with discover early on in therapy that there is a missing ingredient in their communication that if corrected can make a world of difference. It is a simple problem that is often at the core of much more complicated relationship difficulties. The ingredient I see most often missing with couples who are struggling is effective listening. Most couples who have been together for awhile, listen while already formulating a response to their partner. Most of us find that doing both of these things well at the same time is close to impossible. There are relatively simple tools that couples can learn to use that help to solve this problem and so they are often the subject of early sessions. I will talk more about the things that couples can do differently that will help with their relationship in upcoming blogs.