The most frequent complaints in couples therapy are issues about communication. Couples often complain that they don’t communicate well. When pressed, this usually means that couples either fight or bicker and that they don’t feel connected, intimate, or linked as a team. Prolonged communication deficits usually lead to a lack of overall intimacy. Couples who complain about poor communication also complain that they lack intimacy and feel disconnected and distant.
- How to be “Us” without dispelling ‘I”
One of the first pieces of advice that I usually give couples is that they should feel, think, and act as a united front or team—us rather than him, she, and I. One of the major goals of communication, after all, is to address issues that affect us relationally—collective goals that affect and implicate each partner. How should we manage the division of labor around the house? How do we navigate complex in-laws? Where do we want to be in five years? What does a good enough sex life mean?
These communication goals are best addressed when a couple thinks collectively as a unit. What solution or pathway would help our relationship thrive? For example, if you notice a messy house, we can both contribute to making this a priority. It involves a subtle but important cognitive shift to think about what environment best supports moods and optimal functioning.
This does not mean that we neglect each other as individuals. Far from it. It means bringing each concern, issue, and want to the table as a collective, and not resolving any issue until both parties are satisfied.
Too often, we take the easy or convenient route to suppress a true want or bow out of a debate to avoid conflict. Abdicating your wishes for what you want to do on the weekend, what you want for dinner, or what backsplash to pick may seem like a trivial bit of communication.
Over time, these minor issues can accumulate and lead to a ghostly feeling in the relationship, a feeling that you are not fully in the relationship.
While this can happen to both genders, we see this more often in men, who more frequently quiet quit from trivial decisions only to feel over time a growing lack of agency and fulfillment in the relationship. Men can withdraw ‘into themselves’ in ways that may not be visibly notable but carry risks of depression over the long term or of a life “half lived.” It is no wonder that many turn to the life of fantasy—sports, porn, et cetera—as ways to compensate and round out an incomplete life.
The business or organizational metaphor is helpful here. While it may sound un-romantic, thinking of your relationship as an organization helps to remind us of the ongoing and crucial importance of negotiation. For big issues that affect both parties in the relationship, a couple needs to negotiate thoroughly and exhaustively.
- Get on top of your resentments
If one party is not satisfied with a collective decision, we leave the door open for future resentments. These resentments can grow over time and poison the relationship permanently if left unchecked. For example, if one party always yields to another’s holiday family plan but doesn’t enjoy the in-laws, this can explode many years later in the form of regret, resentment, and the feeling of lost agency.
Moreover, a partner who yields control to the other can lose a sense of themselves and can compensate in maladaptive ways. They may “steal” little bits of individual pleasure or power by sneaking alcohol, daydreaming about other partners, or privately sabotaging the other partner through emotional withdrawal or stonewalling. In more extreme but not uncommon cases, partners can drift into addictions or affairs, which are very often experienced as forms of empowerment, control, or validation not experienced in the relationship.
It takes courage to address and communicate the ways that you may silently withdraw from your partner. It is one of the hardest things to do, especially if you are conflict-averse, a people-pleaser, or the family diplomat.
These quiet resentments need to be slowly coaxed out, however, if you are to avoid long-term siloing, where couples drift into separate though together lives. One may take up residence in the garage with hobbies, while the other may busy themselves with household tasks or activities. These couples may not fight, but they rarely feel a richness in their relational life.
Relationships Essential Reads
- Narrow your “exits”
The best way to ensure a seat at the table in your relationship—to address individual needs and concerns, and start negating as a collective unit—is to narrow our “exits.” Exits refer to the ways that we avoid or retreat from our partner and cancel our voice in the relationship.
“Exits” can be difficult to spot, however, because they can be subtle and often unconscious. After all, it is difficult for many to invite conflict with a partner, so the easier way to address an unmet need is to bury oneself in a distracting task or activity like scrolling on the phone or spending extra time cleaning the house.
Because exits are often normal, or expected, it can be hard to distinguish when they are legitimately needed, and when they represent a way of avoiding a partner.
Some of the exits are more concrete and explicit. We can busy ourselves with work and tasks, or create hugely demanding exercise regiments. We can devote a lot of time to work or projects under the guise of necessity. Or we can spend time with family and friends to the expense of time with our primary partner.
None of these are illegitimate activities on their own. For this reason, these can be ways to quiet quit your spouse without engaging in active dialogue and negation about issues within the relationship.
Other exits can be private and psychological. We can creep away silently from our partner by devoting our energies to daydreaming and fantasies about other people, regrets, or other ways life could have been. These private ruminations may not be visible to our spouse but sometimes can be felt intuitively as someone not being present or too distant or spaced out. Over time, these ruminations can accumulate into depression, addiction, or separation if left unchecked.
Putting energy back into the relationship.
Simple ways to “narrow” our exits involve changing many behavioural habits that may have been built up over time. Having a nightly check-in instead of retreating to your devices is one way to assess the temperature of your communicative dynamic. Putting couple time into your calendar and treating this as an activity on par with work or medical visits is another way to ensure weekly contact.
Spending more time together may create a range of reactions that you must attend to. Some may feel enriched by a long overdue cocktail together and feel renewed appreciation for each other. Others may notice great gaps in conversation, which point to shifting feelings or growing disinterest. In either case, being together allows you to diagnose the state of the relationship, and what steps you may take to improve things and get the love and relationship that you both want.
