Relationship For Dummies

Having trouble with your relationship?  Are you growing apart instead of getting closer?  Feeling alone while living together? Thinking of divorce or breaking up?

WHAT’S GOING ON?

These are some of the issues that couples bring to me when they enter couples therapy. One of the most important roles we have in our lives, we know least about. We only know what we know. What we know we learn from early role modeling. Most of us came from a dysfunctional family to a greater or lesser degree. Few came from healthy relational mature parents, where the relational space felt safe. That space is where we grew up. It was the playground of our youth. If our parents were hostile, bitter, abusive, detached, violent or addicts, we learned how to emulate their behavior unconsciously and unwittingly. If our parents were loving, kind, considerate and present to one another, we imitated their behavior. None of us came from perfect homes.

Even in the best of families, arguments incurred along with resentments and withholding. We were scolded, spanked, punished and ignored. When apologies were heard and parents retrieved harsh words, reparation was possible. Some of us were fortunate in that we did not want to be a carbon copy our family of origin. We separated and individuated with the hope to be better than what was familiar in our past.

HEALING OUR RELATIONSHIP

How can we improve our relationships if we do not have the resources, tools and skills to effectuate change? How do we move our relationship forward to a healthier place in a safe space with respect and consideration for our differences? How do we learn how to accept each other with our weaknesses as well as our strengths? How do we learn how to enrich each other’s life—have each other’s backs—navigate the troubled waters when we never learned how? How do we know how to accept each other unconditionally—change what needs to be changed and leave when must?

It is important to understand that it’s not a blame game. If we blame our parents, we need to go back to their parents, and so on.  We did not know a generation ago what we know now. Psychology like all professions has grown by leaps and bounds. It was “spare the rod and spoil the child” that morphed into “You cannot raise your children the way your parents raised you, because your parents raised you for a world that no longer exists” and “To be a parent is to be chief designer of a product more advanced than any technology and more interesting than the greatest work of art.” (Alan de Botton)

RECOVERY, REPAIR AND RESOLUTION

So, what’s the answer? Reading books on relationships is helpful, however it’s not unlike learning how to swim. You can read many books, but you cannot learn how to swim until you get into the water. There are hundreds of relationships books available that have been written by many qualified, well credentialed professionals.

In my book I HATE THE MAN I LOVE  I provide an insight to couples therapy and how it help couples through therapy. Workshops and couple’s retreats are very valuable, and I highly recommend attending them. The last is finding a professional couple’s therapist with lots of experience to work through the bumps in your relationship. This can be one of the best investments you will ever make. Why struggle with problems that can become an adventure in intimacy with the right therapist? After all, you would not consider taking out a tumor or sewing up a limb that has been torn in an accident.

Marriage therapy is not different than a qualified heart surgeon if you need a bypass or a neurosurgeon to operate on a brain tumor. Emotional illness is no different. It needs to be repaired and made well just as physical illnesses. Without healing, nothing changes. Without repair, there is no healing.

Joan E Childs, LCSW is a renowned psychotherapist, inspirational speaker and author of I Hate The Man I Love: A Conscious Relationship is Your Key to Success. In private practice since 1978, she specializes in individual and couple’s therapy, grief therapy, EMDR, NLP, inner child work and codependency. Learn more about her services at www.joanechilds.com.