Fortunately for me and others who treat distressed couples, those who come for treatment do so because the flame of hope still flickers. Encouragingly, however fragile or ephemeral their hope may be, it can be readily bolstered by helping partners purposely assign new meanings to their conflicts.
For example, rather than a bleak benchmark foretelling a breakup, the couple’s distress can be dissected to reveal the personal meanings embedded in its underlying causes, in particular, each partner’s individual need management abilities or lack of the same—their disabilities.
Briefly, relationship failure can be explained as chronic, poor personal need management that culminates in protracted, unresolved, and often insufferable conflict that beckons couple breakups.
On the Sunnier Side
Many couples feel hugely unburdened, sometimes even delighted, to discover the much-needed relief of a coherent, understandable, and cogent diagnosis of their otherwise mind-numbingly confusing and painful conflicts. With a therapeutic eye fixed on each partner’s individual need management style, clear, concrete, causative explanations can be unearthed that point to potentially effective treatment interventions.
Sean and Lisa—A Common Couple Conundrum
Sean and Lisa have been married for 11 years. Of late, Lisa complains that Sean is increasingly distant and unreachable. “Sean works too much and when he’s home he spends all his time on the computer.” Worse, Lisa accuses Sean of no longer being interested in her. “He doesn’t care…He doesn’t want me sexually.” Lisa claims she’s tried to make Sean responsive to her, but it “never” works.
Driven by emotional desperation and her “conviction” that Sean was estranged and beyond reach, Lisa had an affair that ultimately proved to be a futile exercise at meeting her needs. Adding to her despair, Lisa began obsessing over ending her relationship with Sean. As she put it, “Our relationship has run its course. It’s loveless.”
Lisa’s pitiable portrayal of Sean, accurate as it may be, is merely a pejorative description lacking explanation, much less a remedy. Further, her conviction that Sean has committed “marital crimes” is Sean-focused, and while it arouses understandable sympathy, Lisa is “guilty” of poor personal need management.
Instead, Lisa must hone her need management skills in a manner designed to bring Sean’s attention to the indisputable legitimacy of her need for emotional closeness. This can be done in any number of ways.
A Simple Request
Effective personal need management begins with an investment of respect in our partners. For instance, a quick and easy request for a moment of their time can work well. This simple gesture confers a small but important measure of respect onto the partner about to do the listening and thereby elevates the probability of that partner’s commensurate return of attentive respect for the “need manager” and what they are about to say.
Think of this initial investment as an exercise on a balance beam of self and partner respect, where nothing’s taken for granted.
Revitalizing the Connection
Next, for my couple clients in situations like Lisa and Sean’s, I often recommend an exercise where partners make a purposeful, detailed reference to their past, a time when the couple shared a peak or exceptionally memorable emotional connection, however brief or long ago it may have been.
Applying this exercise to Lisa and Sean, Lisa retrieves a positive memory and proceeds to openly and vulnerably describe how this experience made her feel. Instructed to target only her own feelings, Lisa avoids any form of persuading, demanding, coaxing, cajolery, or guilt induction to influence Sean, nor does she comment on what Sean’s experience might have been,
Communicating Needs
While perhaps risky, Lisa’s intrepid, depth-of-heart expressions serve as a precondition for making a real-time, quality emotional connection with Sean. By not eliciting Sean’s defenses, Lisa can exert a “benevolent pressure” upon Sean to acknowledge the deeply personal meaning of her past emotional connection to him. Moreover, Lisa’s straightforward, self-unfolding efforts can prime Sean to do the same, to unveil feelings of his own.
Relationships Essential Reads
Within this strategically planned atmosphere of emotional neutrality, or better, one likely to be inviting and friendly, Lisa is effectively managing her need for closeness. By identifying and verbalizing her deepest feelings, she creates a connection or an “intimacy” first within herself, which then serves as a necessary precursor to closeness with Sean. Arguably, she’ll achieve no greater closeness with Sean than she has first created within herself by identifying and verbalizing her deepest feelings.
By simultaneously demonstrating respect for Sean and herself, Sean’s attention can be safely and fully drawn to Lisa’s past emotional connection to him and how it remains meaningful to her. Now on terra firma, Lisa can add that she would like to repeat her experience of closeness. Though she doesn’t exactly know how, she’d like to learn. Besides feeling complimented, Sean may also feel gently prodded to unveil his own feelings, as he has no need to mobilize his defenses. Importantly, Lisa has modeled or “normed” respectable behavior by openly revealing herself via the effective management of her need.
The Lofty Rewards of Waging the Good Fight
The lesson for Lisa is that she can build her self-esteem as a desired outcropping of her own efforts to effectively manage her needs. This includes learning to tolerate whatever uncertainties may attend the outcome of her efforts. With this novel mentality in place, Lisa actively promotes her emotional maturity through the effective management of her needs and feelings, independent of Sean’s response to her. For her efforts, Lisa will likely earn her own and Sean’s respect, thereby making herself more attractive to both her and Sean.
What I often find in my work with couples is that partners who effectively manage their individual needs help create a redeemable, reinvigorated, and healthy emotional couple milieu that encourages negotiation, bargaining, compromise, and quid pro quo. As a positive offshoot, partners are more likely to get their needs met because when mutual respect exists, partners are more likely to gratify one another’s needs.
If you are contemplating a breakup, my hope is that you’ll carefully consider the foregoing before doing so. As difficult as your struggles may be, you can learn to repair the damage to your relationship through good personal need management and harvest the enriching rewards that come from waging this good fight. Couple clients who overcome steep hurdles gain maturity and usher renewed health and deeper meaning into their mended relationships.
