Meredith Barber, Psy.D.: Couples Work

It is easy for people to see what their partners are doing wrong. It’s harder to listen to them with an open mind and an open heart. Also, it’s much harder—but far more rewarding—to make the change yourself rather than demanding it from them.

In couples therapy, you will spend a lot of time listening to your partner. It’s work for the strong of heart. It requires listening to your partner and holding onto yourself at the same time. This means listening while staying open. You’ll learn to calm yourself enough to realize that the other person’s experience is just that—their experience—not an attack on your character. Truly listening means tapping into your own curiosity about what is underlying your partner’s thoughts and actions rather than mentally preparing your counterargument.

We will practice this type of listening in the office. You the listener will learn to give appreciations and develop curiosity, so that you can ask questions that will lead to learning more about the speaker. You will learn to empathize with your partner’s experience rather than getting caught up in your own experience.

Developing empathy for a partner can be hard because one partner’s behavior so intensely affects the other. People become so wrapped up in how their partner’s behaviors impinge on them that it’s hard to have empathy for the other. Even the most empathetic people can have difficulty with this. Truly identifying what is happening for your partner may sometimes be all that is needed to address the situation.

We will look at the cycle that gets triggered when you and your partner are reacting: Let’s say John had a bad day at work and acts inconsiderately toward Maria. Maria feels rejected and emotionally distances herself from John. Then John feels rejected, and the cycle repeats itself. We will slow down the cycle and identify the feelings that are triggered. Often, people react to their feelings so quickly that they are unaware of them. In the office, we can look at whether you can make other behavioral choices when you are feeling rejected, threatened, etc.

In American society, people are taught that their romantic partners should meet all of their needs. That leads to frustration, and worse, when they ask and are not rewarded. Before you ask for something from your partner, you often need to do your own inner work. This means checking in with yourself about the need: Is it something you could or should be providing for yourself, and is it a reasonable expectation to have of your partner? Is it a need a friend could meet much more easily? Finally, when you do approach your partner, you need to assess how you are asking for what you need. Are you expressing yourself in an angry and demanding way (long after you’ve become overwhelmed), or are you asking from a more open and vulnerable place? Often, what gets communicated is how you are asking, not what you are asking for. Particularly when people are furious and demanding, they need to work on calming themselves down first and checking in about what is going on inside themselves before they approach their partners.