by Haraville Hendrix, Ph.D. & Robert Elliott, Ph.D.

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by Rod Kochtitzky, M.Div.

A surgeon announces his retirement at age 55. His amazed and envious colleagues ask him how he can do it.
“Simple,” he answers with a smile. “One wife, one house.”

This joke, which was bouncing around the E-mail circuit months ago, cuts to the heart of a bitter truth. Divorce often exacts a very a high cost ­ both financial and emotional ­ on all the people involved. And, in some cases, they keep on paying ­ both emotionally and financially ­ for the rest of their lives.

As a marriage and relationship counselor, I see and hear about the high cost of divorce on a daily basis. I hear alarming statistics about the high divorce rate in the United States ­ and the toll exacted on the men, women and children involved.

But what’s really surprising is that ­ despite the high costs ­ divorce isn’t even more common for a simple reason: Very few of us know how love relationships work.

Although Americans tend to have a very pragmatic view of life in general, love relationships are a big exception. A lot of us view love as a holy mystery — something wonderful that “just happens.” Few of us really understand why we choose the object of our affections ­ or why they choose us. And when the first bloom of infatuation wears off, we lack the skills and insight we need to “grow up” in the relationship. As the less than wonderful reality of living, day in and day out, year after year, with the same person sinks in, the “something wonderful that happened” just happens to die.

At that point, some couples choose divorce.

Others settle for an unrewarding “parallel” relationship. They stay together, side by side. But like two railroad tracks, they never connect.

For divorced and “parallel” couples, Valentine’s Day or anniversaries can be sad occasions. It celebrates a romantic ideal of love they’ve failed to sustain. But, ironically, people are more likely to buy a Valentine card or present that doesn’t reflect their true feelings than to invest in counseling to find out why their relationship doesn’t work.

Although counseling in general has less of a stigma today, marriage counseling is still painful territory. Try this test: When you hear that a married couple you know is “in counseling,” what’s your first thought? Did you translate that phrase almost directly into “about to get a divorce”?

In fact, couples in counseling are there to learn to understand and maintain relationships. We go to school for years to learn the language and math skills we need to get along in our society. But we receive little conscious instruction in how to do one of the most important things in our lives ­ create and maintain a loving relationship. So the unconscious cues we pick up during childhood usually determine the way we approach relationships for the rest of our lives. By learning these skills consciously, people can choose not to repeat the negative patterns they were programmed to act out during childhood.

Most couples tell me that the worst aspect of their divorce is the sense of failure. Few want to repeat their mistakes.
And the growing numbers of people who are now in their third or fourth marriages attest to the fact that people do repeat their mistakes, over and over, in love relationships.

As a marriage counselor, it may appear a bit self-interested to promote counseling for every couple considering marriage. But I believe that every couple should be required to seek premarital counseling before they can get a marriage license. This counseling would have three purposes:
To help each couple understand why they are attracted to each other;
To introduce them to the skills they’ll need to sustain that attraction ­ and their marriage ­ over the long-term;
To teach them to recognize the unconscious forces at work in their relationship.

Some couples might decide they need more counseling to improve their relationship skills and their understanding of one another.

Some might discover ­ before marriage ­ that they aren’t ready to be in a long-term relationship.

And others will make the happy discovery that, because or regardless of the models they had while growing up, they are capable of learning new ways of relating that result in healing, growth and intimacy.

Every couple would have the opportunity to start out with a more realistic understanding of why they want to be married, what they expect to gain from their relationship, and what they’ll have to do to make it work.
However, mandated pre-marital counseling is unlikely for a host of reasons, not the least of which is cost.

Which brings us back full circle to the high cost of divorce. The cost of pre-marital counseling is a drop in that overflowing bucket.

by Rod Kochtitzky

Sue falls in love. Sue is thirty-two years old. She is grateful to find a partner. Sue believes she has a “real catch” in Tom. Sue sees Tom as strong and dependable. Tom is grateful to have found Sue. Tom sees Sue as much kinder and understanding than his first wife with whom he divorced four years ago. Tom has confidence in their maturity to handle problems. Tom and Sue have fallen in love.

It is a natural unconscious process for people to “fall in love.” It is not our conscious, rational minds that pick our partners, but instead a mechanism rooted and projected out of our unconscious minds. These unconscious projections stem from how our needs were met in our childhood years, or even more importantly, how our needs were not met. It is a natural mechanism for human beings to “fall in love” and enter a stage of Romantic Love that is blind to the negatives and to the real agenda of the couple. This stage of relationships is built on illusions.

Tom and Sue have been married for six months now. Sue is beginning to see Tom not as strong and dependable, but as stubborn and opinionated. Tom wonders what happened to his kind wife, now she seems so angry.

It is inevitable then that the second stage of all relationships is a “Power Struggle” in which the couple’s differences and unconscious needs start to clash. Fifty-five per cent of all first marriages end in divorce. The vast majority of those who do stay married move into a parallel relationship in which partners distance from each other in order to quell the conflict. Those that do not divorce often use children, jobs, hobbies, alcohol, work, etc. as buffers to the unconscious conflict.

Sue notices that she does not want to be at home as much. Sue joins an evening aerobics class. Sue wonders what has happened to her marriage. Sue reflects on her parents’ marriage. Sue remembers that her father stayed late at work, and that her mother would start drinking even before her father came home.

There is a great conspiracy of silence to the pain in marriages and to the lack of satisfaction, mutual joy, and real intimacy. Couples come to believe that they expect too much from relationships, and they either choose to divorce or to lower their expectations. They learn to expect something less than real intimacy and mutual joy. The power of the unconscious in our intimate relation-ships is seen in the statistics of how the divorce rate increases in second and third marriages. We do not naturally learn; instead, our unconscious minds continue to re-create the same unconscious power struggle — just with a different person.

How can we make love last? I believe that the answer is in understanding the purpose of marriage which is to heal and be healed. The destructive fight or flight conflict in marriage rises out of unconscious needs. When this conflict becomes conscious and understood, it points to what is broken, and provides opportunities for healing. There is a movement today that is aimed at educating and helping couples understand that what makes love last is understanding the unconscious causes of marital conflict.

Real intimacy does not happen naturally; it is something that has to be learned. The hope for lasting marriages is that we can move away from a natural and unconscious process that bogs down in the power struggle and in distant relationships. We can then enter into the process of learning to be conscious in our relationships. Real intimacy is obtained by becoming conscious of the unmet needs that underlie our relationship conflicts.

Tom and Sue decide to go for counseling. Sue feels that Tom does not respect her. Sue feels that it is as if she does not matter. Sue feels that Tom is condescending. Sue feels that Tom doesn’t listen to her. Sometimes, Sue feels as if she is invisible. Tom says that this is just like his first marriage. He wonders why Sue gets so angry and yells at him. Tom feels that Sue is very critical.

The most prevalent pattern that I witness in the relationships of couples I counsel is a hopeless shame/blame cycle in which one partner feels “invisible” and the other partner feels blamed for not being enough or for not “doing it right.” Real love is built on understanding that these negative cycles are triggered by present events that happen between the two partners, but the resulting conflict has more to do with the past than the present. Until the unconscious agenda is brought to light the couple will stay stuck. Issues may change but the pattern stays the same until the unconscious relational agenda is understood. Then individuals are empowered to change the behaviors that are so hurtful to their partners.

Sue thinks she understands Tom more. Tom is beginning to see Sue’s anger as being about her hurt. Tom is taking things less personally. They both feel that they have a very difficult road ahead, but they also have a sense of direction and hope.

Romantic love arises out of our unconscious needs. Real love and intimate relations are built out of understanding, respect, and acceptance that happen when partners see that their role is to help and heal. Conflict becomes an opportunity to heal, and marriage partners empower each other on their individual and mutual journeys toward love and meaning. This is what makes love last!

by Rod Kochtitzky, M.Div.

Can you remember when you first fell in love?  When you saw your partner with eyes of appreciation and had positive thoughts in spite of something silly or annoying they did?

And, can you remember when you lost that in love feeling? It’s natural that we fall in love and then at some point later conflict starts, disappointment sets in and we find ourselves feeling more disconnected than connected.

And then, here comes Valentine’s Day.  The day the world speaks of Candy and flowers.  The day we look at our not-so-perfect relationship and silently bemoan what we don’t have and put our best faces on as we make the dinner reservation, buy the obligatory card and box of chocolates and imagine that everyone else is happier than we are.

In my experience, at least 75-80% of us are in this dynamic with our partners.   If you are in a marriage that is not either on the brink of divorce or being held together out of habit and convenience, then you have a rare gem and you have done something to make this happen. But unfortunately, most couples fall in love and end up in a conflictual, disconnected or distant relationship.  And either the relationship dies a silent death or the couple has done something to learn how to relate intimately. They’ve learned that keeping romance in a marriage is no longer a matter of spontaneity and desire, but happens because they make it happen.

The hopeful thing is that we can all do this.  You can do this!  You can have a relationship that is about being yourself, being real and being intimate and passionate with your partner.  So if you want to have the Valentine’s Day of your dreams, you will be thoughtful and intentional and you will plan to put romance in your relationship, not just for a day but for a lifetime.  Valentine’s Day starts today.  These are the things you (and I am especially talking to the men here) could do and you do them without expecting anything in return — as a free gift, as your commitment to be a better partner.

• Starting today, compliment your partner once a day until Valentine’s Day and the beyond.
• Make a point of listening to your partner and every day find the occasion to say “what you’re saying is important, I want to see if I got it…” and then repeat back what you’ve heard.
• Tell your partner something you appreciate about him/her, either something they’ve done or some aspect of their character.
• Do at least one chore that your partner normally does.  If they wash the dishes, you do it.
• Make the phone call just to say “I love you”.
• Give your partner at least 3 – ten second kisses a week and/or ten second hugs.  (Count sometime; you’ll be surprised how long ten seconds can be).   Take a risk, grow that love muscle.

The idea is to be conscious, thoughtful and proactive about caring and loving.  This is about making emotional deposit in the bank account of your relationship.  This creates goodwill that we all need in our intimate relationships if we are to break out of the parallel relationship and create intimacy and caring. Give it a try. You can do it!

This is love that goes beyond Valentine’s Day candy and flowers

“The Couple’s Weekend Workshop”
(or how to stop childhood patterns, find happiness, and restructure the relationship loop)
By Cyma Shapiro

I love my husband. But, for the past 15 years, we’ve done a dance of wills, and had innumerable power struggles and issues. Despite a handful of therapists, we haven’t gotten it right. In many ways, we’ve just “missed” each other, always going down separate paths. Until this past weekend.

I’m not one to share the intimate details of my life, but since I feel “saved,” I think my story might serve someone else well. Here goes: this past weekend, we attended an Imago Workshop originally created by Harville Hendrix. I won’t lie – it was a last ditch effort, not before divorce, but before we began the old, tired conversation of what we would do next/differently/in the future, to repair/rebuild/start a better relationship. Trust me, we’d gotten weary of this; we both felt that life was passing by too fast to always hit this brick wall. Right about now, our heads constantly hurt and we were hurt – there was a lot of anger and pain in our lives. One thousand dollars at one time would stave off months of unsuccessful therapy. If it worked, we would set ourselves on another course; if it failed, I’m not sure what we would do.

In the past, I had suggested a separation, 　but ultimately realized that I’d be alone/might not do better/would lose out on something not achieved here/the grass probably wouldn’t be greener on the other side, and didn’t follow through. One time I really intended to go through with this, but my husband sought help and I felt that I owed him the time to work on his issues.

In either case, that same struggle and that same last ditch effort was apparently true for the four other couples who also attended the workshop. No one looked very happy. 　In fact, several people and couples seemed in dire straits.

Our therapist, Tammy Nelson, herself on a second marriage, served as part cheerleader, part counselor and part den mother always encouraging us to use the “I” word, and never allowing pointed fingers or blame. She was determined to have us face ourselves in the process.　 She never waivered in her firm belief that if we did not heal our own wounds, no marriage could survive and none of us would find the happiness and peace we all craved. By the looks of things, all of us could use some peace, and more than a little sleep.

Imago is the Latin word for “image.” It rests on the premise that as humans we take in love from our primary caretakers, getting positive and (often mostly) negative messages while attaching (or not) and receiving love. To further our existence, we then develop survival patterns learning how to act or “be” in order to get love, approval or most importantly safety.

These basic patterns become our modus operandi for life. We nearly always partner or marry the very person who gives you the (same) good and most often bad parts of our caretakers. If you craved affection as a child, you would naturally be attracted to an affectionate, sometimes smothering person. You would believe that this person would make you “whole” again. However, while they served you well in the early stages of your relationship, as your own feelings became stirred, their affection may become oppressive to you. 　You might think that they need to change (they can’t!), but, according to Imago, it’s you who needs to transform.

The very conflict that occurs at these moments is the process of healing and growth trying, but not succeeding in happening.　 When you are tempted to look for a different partner, the Imago theory is that you are probably with the right person, and that they most likely have the reverse story of their own to work out. In fact, our therapist was adamant in stating that individuals look for partners whose story and essence forces us to confront and heal our own wounds.　 So, to use our own relationship as an example, it isn’t my husband’s inability to listen, give me time and “be present” that is the issue, it is my childhood wound of never being listened to and never having parents “be present,” that needs to be addressed. Painful words, but a truth that just cut all of us “to the quick.”

The Imago Theory wants us to know this:

We have chosen our partners to heal certain painful experiences, and that the healing of those experiences is the key to the end of longing. When we do so, we have taken the first step on the journey to real love.

Conflict is supposed to happen. This is as nature intended it: Everything in nature is in conflict, and it is a sign that the psyche is trying to survive, to get its needs met and become whole.

Divorce does not solve the problems of relationship. We may get rid of our partners, but we keep our problems, carting them into the next relationship.

Romantic love is supposed to end. It is the glue that initially bonds two incompatible people together so that they will do what needs to be done to heal themselves.

Relationships are not born of love, but of need; real love is born in relationships as a result of understanding what they are about and doing what is necessary to have them.

And understand this:

You may already be with your dream partner, but at the moment, he or she is in disguise–and, like you, in pain. A Conscious Relationship itself is the practice you need to restore your sense of aliveness. The goal of Imago Practice is to change the power struggle and set you on the path of real love.

According to their website, the techniques look like this:

You use effective communications techniques to restructure the way you talk to each other, so that what you say is mirrored back to you, validated, and sympathized with. By stating your frustrations clearly, you articulate exactly what you need from the other person in order to heal.

In the Dialogue, both partners are motivated by the Receiver’s desire to hear and be understood, and by the Sender’s need to be heard and understood. The dialogue forces partners to devote specific uninterrupted time to the relationship.

One of the greatest learnings of Dialogue is the discovery of two distinct worlds – the realities of each person. The reality of the other person can be understood, accepted, valued and even loved, but not made to be identical to our own.

The Dialogue must also be turned into action to give our partners what they need, not just what is easy to give. In a Conscious relationship, we agree to change in order to give our partner what they need. In this, change is the catalyst for healing.

The process by which we alter our entrenched behaviors to give our partners what they need requires that we conquer our fears and do what comes unnaturally. Often we may feel that we’re losing ourselves, but we are not ourselves now. It is the crucible of change that we regain ourselves.

Over time, as our partners demonstrate their love for us, and as they learn about and accept our hidden selves, our pain and self-absorption diminishes. We restore our empathic feelings for our partners and our feelings of connection to the other that were foremost in the pain of our childhood. Finally, we learn to see our partners for themselves, and not merely as extensions of ourselves or as we wish they were.

Their conclusion:

A conscious relationship is a spiritual path which leads us home again, to joy and aliveness, to the feeling of oneness we started out with. All through the course of Imago Practice, we learn to express love as a behavior daily, in large and small ways: in other words, in stretching to give our partner what they need, we learn to love. The transformation of our relationships may not be accomplished easily or quickly; we are setting off on a lifelong journey.

Our therapist stated that without further therapeutic reinforcement, Hendrix had determined that most couples retain positive benefits of the weekend for up to 14 weeks. I can honestly say that the information we learned about each other, the depth of commitment we made, the steps we’ve already taken to change our: approach, methods, reactions, and responses; the inherent respect for each other’s similarities and differences was as if we undertook hypnosis and woke up liking…no make that loving each other more intently and more concertedly than before.

For the first time in a very, very long time, the gloves have been taken off and we’re starting back on the small, very small things – a kiss here, a glance there, and more kindness than we’ve seen in nearly our whole marriage. So, I’m sold. More importantly, I’m encouraged that I can experience the rest of our lives together in happiness and in peace.

If you are seeking a solution to the trouble in your marriage/partnership, I encourage you to try this. It requires guts, transparency and a willingness to listen and be heard. It requires a softening of the heart and the realization that what seemed unanswerable and unfixable is actually the opposite and right around your corner.

It takes so much more energy to continue with strife, pain and anger than it does to let life unfold, especially with hopefulness and less pain. Today, we stand stronger and are doing it together hand-in-hand.

Check out Cyma’s blog for new midlife mothers at www.motheringinthemiddle.com.