Finding Hope Blog

We only get so much time. Watching the minutes tick by without accomplishing anything can feel pretty painful.

Do you ever feel guilty while scrolling through your Facebook feed? As you lie on the couch, you keep hoping for one more great post, something interesting. In between the interesting posts, your wall shows mostly boring material, leaving you blank faced and bored as you wait for the one post grand enough to make all the time worthwhile. Actually finding the interesting post brings a unique pain, however, as you realize the amount of time you’ve spent scrolling.

Our culture tells us to be productive. The media tells us that most of us could achieve millions if we just worked hard enough. Most of us, after all, are really just down-on-our-luck millionaires, waiting for things to feel right. Problematically, life never feels slow and safe enough to kick back without some part of you going over the list of things you should be doing. If life is either work or play, this system makes work stressful and play… well, also stressful.

Setting goals actually makes this worse. One of two things happens when you set a goal – you either reach it or fail to reach it. Either way, most of your time will be spent working toward the goal, with a limited reward if you actually achieve it. If you fail to achieve it, you will instead face disappointment for your hard work. Neither of these scenarios ends up feeling satisfying, making it hard to get motivated to make new goals.

Instead of goals, I recommend systems. Journey before Destination. Rather than focusing on where you want to go, focus on how you want to get there. With this setup, you can appreciate all the time you spend working on something, knowing that doing so is in line with who you want to be and how you want to do things.

Creating systems is harder than creating goals, however. It doesn’t just mean determining where you want to go or what you want to have, it means learning who you want to be. This means looking inward, identifying your values and what matters most to you. Not things you want, but ways of being.

As you live more in line with your ideal self, “wasting time” means something different. If you live for goals, your time is either productive (working toward these goals) or unproductive (failing to work toward these goals). If you live for your value systems, however, your time is either fulfilling (in line with your values) or not.

Am I living the life I want to live?

Our bodies actually answer this question pretty quickly.

Ever get a gut feeling that says something is wrong? Our intuition picks up on a lot of details, sometimes telling us something doesn’t feel safe, other times that something doesn’t feel feel in line with our values. Use this feeling to start asking questions.

What feels wrong? Does your gut tell you to change something?

I encourage you to resist the urge to suppress this feeling. If it comes up while scrolling Facebook, pause scrolling Facebook. Sit with the feeling and ask yourself – do I want to do something else?

Keep asking questions. Reflect inward. If you ask questions whenever this feeling comes up, you can start honing in on what feels right, rather than just what feels wrong. Each time you feel this, your body offers you a chance to identify a currently unfulfilled value. Over time, this allows you to shape your life as you want it, embarking on a journey you will enjoy.

Nothing. Nothing is wrong with you.

Your sex drive is perfectly normal, as is your partner’s. Your body is beautiful and there is absolutely nothing wrong with how it responds to sexual situations. That said, life can get more complicated if there’s a mismatch between your sex drive and your partner’s. Here are some things you should know in order to move forward together sexually.

The Gas Pedal

Every body learns to respond to various sexual input. This natural learning process occurs throughout your adolescence and into adulthood. It’s also not really something you can control, with your culture largely determining what you learn to see as sexually appealing. All our bodies do this to some extent, giving us a chance to engage sexually in a fun, arousing way. People also vary with how many things they find arousing – how many things hit the gas – with men typically responding faster and more strongly than women. This doesn’t mean that men learn to associate more things with sex, just that the arousal process tends to happen faster and with less regard for context.

So, if your gas pedal develops outside your control, what can you do about it?

Most of your work here comes from honest self-reflection and sexual exploration. If you never explore any kind of porn or erotic stories, you won’t find everything that hits your gas pedal. I encourage you to think about exploring content (in a safe, controlled fashion) and trying to figure out what gets you hot and bothered. Notice any feelings that accompany this arousal. Our Christian culture tends to tell us sexual arousal is shameful. This causes us to feel shame in addition to our arousal, slowing how hard we hit the gas. A strong enough shame will also hit the brakes.

The Brakes

Ever feel excited, ready to rock, then get pulled out of it suddenly? The candles, the music, it all starts to feel forced and you retreat into your head. Your lust dies out and you wonder if it’s worth the effort. Why does this happen?

Well, how do we stay safe while aroused? Our judgement tends to get fuzzy, with people making riskier decisions the more aroused they become. To keep us safe, then, our bodies sometimes hit the brakes. As a general rule, women have more sensitive brakes than men. It doesn’t help that our culture tells women their very bodies are a source of shame, sometimes meaning arousal itself can be a brake for women.

In order to soften up the brakes, you and your partner need to be really intentional about slowing things down and establishing safety. Physically and emotionally. Physical safety means clear consent, both initially and throughout your fun time together. Emotional safety means valuing each others’ pleasure, slowing down or stopping if something doesn’t feel right. If this happens, speak up! Your partner needs to know something hit the brakes, giving you both a chance to re-establish safety and get back in the mood.

What can we do?

Beyond establishing safety, here are some things you and your partner can do when experiencing a sexual mismatch.

1. Communicate sexual expectations clearly. Make sure both of you have input on what consent looks like and how to make sure both of you are in the mood initially.
2. Know that it can take a little while to get in the mood. Your body may feel slow to hit the gas, meaning it might feel like “faking it” initially as you and your partner start the fun.
3. Set up sexual boundaries. What is or isn’t okay in your relationship? If one of you has a higher libido than the other, consider helping them masturbate when you’re not in the mood. If that doesn’t appeal to you, consider letting them take time to pleasure themselves.
4. Communicate, communicate, communicate. You have to be clear about what hits your gas and what slams your brakes. This requires self-reflection and exploration, as well as communication once you figure it out. The more clearly you understand your own gas and brakes, then communicate these, the more satisfying you’ll find your sex life.

Do you ever feel like your partner just won’t back off? It seems like you walk in the door and they immediately lay into you for all the things you did or didn’t do throughout the day. You try to ask for space so you can catch your breath, but they just ramp up their accusations and demands. This leaves you feeling defensive and belittled, angry your partner – someone you want to trust – won’t give you even a few minutes of peace. You’ve tried defending yourself, you’ve tried reassuring them you’ll do better next time, you’ve even tried just shutting down. None of these seem to work. Your left feeling frustrated and helpless to do anything about the constant nagging.

Here’s what’s happening for your partner. They aren’t seeing something about your relationship as fair, causing them to notice countless examples of this throughout the day. Their own mental load, burdened under a dozen to-dos, doesn’t give them much patience for your – often valid – reasons. This leaves your partner to stew, stuck with their own frustrations and loneliness as they consider their unfair situation. When you finally meet up after the work day, you don’t get to interact with your partner early in the stewing process. You hear the end result. The end result is a frustrated place asking for change.

Little reassurances don’t work at this point. Your partner isn’t just asking you to do the dishes more often. Your reassurance to do the dishes more often just falls on deaf ears. As far as you can tell, though, you just offered them exactly what they’re asking for! How is this fair?! Well, you two need to have a talk.

What kind of talk?

This isn’t a problem solving talk. Problem solving happens once you both know you’re on the same page, not before. As such, you have to sit down for a potentially tense talk where you each offer a different kind of reassurance. You can’t be in this just to get the nagging to stop – that will become painfully clear very early in this conversation. No, you have to be in this conversation because you each can tell how hard things have gotten for each other.

You have to see this pain in one another. This dynamic sucks for both of you. You don’t want to be nagged and your partner certainly doesn’t want to come across as nagging. The first step, then, is to listen to each other patiently as you share what this is like for you. Hear your partner. Listen to their frustration and loneliness. Then, share your own pain. Tell them what it’s like to fear seeing them every day. Tell them what it’s like to dread coming home, just waiting for the next resentful rant.

That’s the hard part. The next part isn’t exactly easy, but it feels better. Give each other reassurance. You don’t want to see your partner in this pain – you want them to feel loved and appreciated. Let them give you the same reassurance. You have to know you matter to each other, or the problem-solving feels like placating. “Stop yelling at me, I’ll do the dishes!” is a very different reassurance than, “I don’t want you to feel alone in housework. I’m happy to do the dishes.”

If you do this right, your relationship will not only include less nagging, it will be stronger than ever. You need to be able to talk about hard things and, every time you do, it gets easier.

Imagine you could look at a 6 month old and determine how they interact with others for the rest of their life. What would that mean? What would it say about the importance of those first few months and our ability to change in general? In order to answer these questions, we need to learn about Attachment Theory.

These 6 month olds – and later their teenage counterparts – each fell into one of four categories. Anxious, Avoidant, Secure, and Disorganized. The last of these is beyond the scope of this blog and much less common than the other three, so I won’t be touching on that attachment type in this blog post. Knowing the different attachment styles does a number of things for us. First, it can help you understand how your childhood continues to impact you as an adult. Second, attachment theory guides child-rearing, giving us concrete ways to lead our children toward secure attachment. Finally, knowing your attachment style gives you a few helpful hints about thoughts and feelings you might entertain over your lifetime.

Attachment Styles

Anxious Attachment

John Bowlby founded attachment theory with his research on 6 month olds and their mothers. After being introduced to a new environment and toys, the researcher pulled the child’s mother out of the room and studied how well they handled their newfound isolation. The first of these groups, the anxiously attached children, became distraught after their mothers left the room. Essentially, they panicked, crying and screaming as they looked for their mothers. Surprisingly, these children did not immediately feel better upon their mothers’ return, remaining upset despite the attention they received. These children live in an inconsistent world. They don’t know if their parents would meet their needs or not, forcing them to cry frequently and readily upon any perceived abandonment. Even when the parents return, these children don’t know for certain their parents will stay. How do I know you won’t leave me again?

As adults, Anxiously Attached individuals tend to be our Pursuers. They fight for the relationship because they watch so closely for any signs of disconnection. When they find any of these signs, they push – and they push hard. They don’t know if their partner will respond well to their bids for connection and, even if their partner does seem open, cannot feel certain their needs will continue to be met. These individuals tend to feel they have little ability to impact the relationship, using words such as “helpless” and “rejected” to describe their hurts. They rely upon their partners to meet their needs, but don’t trust their partners to continue meeting their needs once they start to feel important. In return, these same individuals tend to report needing to feel “appreciated” and “accepted.” They need to know their actions can actually have an impact on their partners and their own happiness.

Avoidant Attachment

Some of the children in Bowlby’s study didn’t care when their parents left. A child’s mother leaves the room and the kid continues playing as though nothing had changed. The parent returned, but the kid barely acknowledged them. These children seemed ambivalent to their mother’s presence, feeling they needed to meet their own needs even at 6 months old. Even if you’re here, how can I know you care?

As adults, Avoidantly Attached individuals tend to be our Withdrawers. They often look apathetic to their partners bids for attention, keeping to themselves no matter how hard their partner pushes for connection. This doesn’t mean they don’t care. To the contrary, these individuals often worry they can only make things worse by talking about their wants and needs. If my partner likely doesn’t care about my experience, how can it possibly help for me to tell them about it? And, if it won’t help, how likely is it to make things worse? At that point, our withdrawer likely feels they have no good options, looking shutdown and quiet in the face of their desperate partner.

These individuals tend to worry they’re “disappointing” and “alone.” Any time they try, they just let their partner down. So it’s best just to stay shutdown. Likewise, they report wanting to feel “valuable” and “loveable.” While our pursuers worry they can’t get their partners to listen, our withdrawers worry there is something wrong with them. I need to keep to myself because it’s the only way I can keep my partner from seeing how broken I am.

Secure Attachment and How to Get There

Securely Attached individuals feel confident their partner will meet their needs and care about their experience. This provides them a secure foundation to try new things and new ways of being, knowing their partner will support them through successes and failures alike. These individuals know they deserve love and respect. They leave toxic relationships quickly, looking for a partner who can meet their needs lovingly. In essence, these people know who they are and how they want others to treat them. But how do we get there?

Attachment researchers used to think you couldn’t get here. If your early childhood taught you to be anxious or avoidant, that was it. You were doomed to a life of pushing for a connection you couldn’t trust or not trusting yourself to push for connection. Therapy could help you cope with these pains, but couldn’t make any actual impact on your attachment style. In the last decade, however, we’ve changed this position. Our work on neuro-plasticity – the ways the brain changes through experience – show us ways to push clients toward secure attachment.

This may be possible alone, but certainly much easier with a partner to help shape your new attachment style. In individual therapy, your therapist serves as your new attachment figure, giving you a safe foundation to express yourself and experiment with new ways of being. In couple therapy, however, you can practice these skills in real time with your partner. We call these “Corrective Emotional Experiences,” moments where your partner responds well to your vulnerable emotions. Anxious partners, our pursuers, tend to need to know their partner is listening. Avoidant partners, our withdrawers, need to know their partner cares. Only when both partners feel supported in disclosing to one another their vulnerable feelings can we create a supportive, loving relationship that helps push both partners toward secure attachment.

Relationships use several different kinds of dances. In my previous blogs, I’ve discussed most of these. We started with the tango, a closely connected dance of responsive partners. Next, we looked at the Protest Polka, a dance wherein one partner pushes for connection and the other partner pulls away. Finally, we looked at the Your Fault Foxtrot, where both partners push for connection, but do so aggressively.

Notably, any of these dances can get more exaggerated over time. Our brains categorize things as “dangerous” quickly, flagging different experiences as life threatening. At the beginning of a relationship, we bring in our pre-existing biases, putting them on our partners. The way my partner brings up money might remind me of how my parents argued about it. Talking about sex might remind me of a previous partner who shamed my sexuality. While we will bring these pieces into the relationship, we don’t necessarily have to keep them. In most relationships, however, our brains find ways to validate our fear. Maybe my partner once yelled at me about how we raise children. In that case, I might start shutting down anytime they try even bringing up the kids. Our relationship has stopped being a healthy tango and become a reactive dance.

In this blog, we’ll look at the last of these dances. A dance wherein both partners avoid making things worse, paralyzed by the fear they’ll ruin something precious to them. Both partners quickly pick up on disconnection, seeing it as incredibly dangerous. In response, they each shut down, afraid to push their partner even further away. Today, we’re looking at the Two Lane Linedance.

The Two Lane Linedance

In the Two Lane Linedance, both partners’ brains have found enough dangerous situations to make the relationship itself dangerous. That doesn’t mean you want the relationship to end, however. You can be unhappy in your relationship and still want it to get better. The pain comes from wanting closeness, craving connection, but feeling distant and lonely instead. While you would love to feel closer, however, you may find your brain has flagged so many situations and conversations as dangerous that you cannot discuss much of anything. You’ve moved into a flight or freeze part of the dance.

Here, you and your partner still need to feel able to discuss important relationship matters. Your partnership lacks connection, but also the ability to talk about that connection. Trying to talk about anything puts you both into a hopeless panic, feeling there’s no point in even trying to sort things out anymore. You shut down. Your partner shuts down. You both part ways, living together but feeling lonely. Sleeping in the same bed, but feeling totally alone.

This only gets worse over time. A bad experience of snakes as a child can lead to a deep seeded fear of snakes. This leads to avoiding snakes, which in turn makes the fear worse. The same holds true here for conversations with your partner. As you avoid talking, your brain only remembers the bad conversations – and the pain that came with them. You both feel so separate from one another and powerless to even bring it up. Trapped in your loneliness.

What do I do?

It can feel hard to talk with your partner once the passion has died. Without this fire, you can both feel cold and powerless to start a conversation about change. You can lose track of what relationship you even want. When this happens, you need to start conversations very carefully. Your partners brain, and your brain, will pick up on any small challenges as dangerously threatening to the relationship. To prepare for this, you have to feel very relaxed before the conversation even begins. Do some self care – take a warm bath, go for a walk, or whatever you need to do. It’s important to feel prepared for your brain to flare up, allowing you to feel safe when your partner does something you’ve previously flagged.

With your own mind centered, you can move your focus to your partner. You can ask them to hear you out, knowing they will likely feel threatened by the conversation you both desperately need to have. Lead with this. Even saying something like, “Hey honey, I want to talk about us. I know it can be hard, so I just want you to know I love you and care about you.” Starting with this can help both of you feel as close and connected as possible as the conversation starts. At that point, take things slowly. Very slowly. You’re both so used to taking small things as challenging, you have to feel prepared for flags in this conversation.

This conversation might just be the most difficult of all the dances we’ve discussed so far. You have to feel safe, as does your partner, to even start fixing things. If that seems like too much, if it seems like there are just too many flags making things too hard, feel free to reach out to me. Using Emotionally Focused Therapy, I can help you and your partner feel safe during this conversation. We can take things slowly and help you find the passion in your dance. You and your partner can learn to dance together instead of keeping up your Two Lane Linedance.

We learn many different dances throughout our lives. In a perfect relationship, we master the tango. Our bodies and minds flow with our partner’s, creating connection and closeness. These patterns take form in our brains, shaping how we treat those we love. If you came from a loving family, your brain already knows many of the right patterns. It recognizes love from others and can feel safe. This allows you to let your guard down, bonding with those you treasure.

If you didn’t come from a safe, loving background, your brain learned other patterns. If you couldn’t feel safe around loved ones in your life, how could your brain suddenly learn to trust and feel loved? Trusting brains don’t develop on their own. We are social creatures and need safe connections to create trusting patterns in our brains. Unfortunately, our partners also come from imperfect backgrounds. They also learn ways to keep themselves safe, patterns that stick with them into adulthood.

When your partner responds to you protectively, using a system that has kept them safe through hardships, you might feel unheard. Their protective response suddenly pulled them into their own world, away from the tango you both crave. When this happens, your brain likely follows suit, sensing the tango’s loss. It starts to feel unsafe, unheard, and responds with your own patterns. This creates a new dance, one without the tango’s intimate connection. In this second blog post, I’ll tell you about another of these reactive dances. The Your Fault Foxtrot.

The Your Fault Foxtrot

While the Protest Polka has one partner pushing for connection and the other partner feeling overwhelmed, both partners push in the Your Fault Foxtrot. Here, both partners feel overwhelmed with their own worlds. This means both partners largely feel unheard in conversations, making an “I understand where you’re coming from,” approach all but impossible. In this dance, both dancers claim their partner can’t hear the beat. If we’re out of synch, it must be your fault. Just listen to the music. Try harder. Pay attention. Arguments quickly blow up, turning heated as we look at details. You did this; I didn’t do that. We can’t possibly move toward feelings, much less vulnerable feelings, when we’re stuck in who did what.

When stuck in the details, conversation quickly gets bogged down. Entire arguments might be spent figuring out who started yelling first. Our dance consists of pointing fingers and feeling blamed, neither of which allow you and your partner to feel close and connected. For that matter, neither of you can feel safe in this environment. How can you possibly talk about what you did wrong – or what hurt you – when your partner immediately tells you to do better?

This dance becomes repetitive. With neither of you able to talk about what hurts you or what you did wrong, the only option is to blame. I can’t talk about my mistakes, so let’s focus on what you did wrong. You can’t talk about what you did wrong, however, so you tell me about my own mistakes. We both quickly get heated, focusing on who did what and moving further and further away from vulnerable connection.

What do I do?

Conversation needs to slow down. Details move quickly, even while going nowhere. Honestly however, the details don’t often matter. In fact, our brains aren’t even good at remembering details. We can, however, remember how we felt when something hurt us. That’s the important part when talking with your partner. In a tango, you could both discuss your hurts and feel safe enough to comfort each other. In a perfect relationship, you’d both feel safe discussing your pains and needs without fear of judgement.

No relationship is perfect, however. Conversation needs to slow down, as do your expectations. Change doesn’t happen quickly, but it can happen. The first step to correcting a Your Fault Foxtrot requires acknowledging you and your partner will likely never agree on the details. Once you can move past that repetitive part of the conversation, you can both feel more space to talk about your own hurts. Over time, talking about your hurts openly and honestly gives your partner space to see their mistakes for themselves. Our brains shut down when we feel attacked, but we can often correct our own mistakes given the safety and freedom to do so.

If this conversation sounds overwhelming to you, feel free to connect with me for couple therapy. You and your partner may be able to break out of the Your Fault Foxtrot, but doing so requires patience and understanding that likely feels impossible at this point. My training helps me slow down the conversation, moving both of you away from the details and blame. From there, you can feel safer discussing your hurts and hopes. Given that space, it is possible to change your dance. You and your partner can learn to tango.

We dance with our partners when dating. We feel each others’ rhythms, responding to them even as they respond to us. Our bodies and our minds work together to create harmonious, beautiful moments, where we both feel alive. In an ideal relationship, we’re always on beat. We hear the music and move accordingly. Our partners feel our patterns and match us, inviting us to do the same. In a perfect relationship, we accept this invitation. Our dance reflects this magic, showing the world our love.

The ideal relationship doesn’t exist, however. In reality, we fall out of synch with our partners. Sometimes, life screams at us so loudly we cannot hear the music. We stumble over our own feet, potentially taking our partner with us. Our partner, meanwhile, can’t hear the music either. The dance loses its magic, with both partners trying desperately to figure out what just happened. We try to grab each other, try to hold on, but it doesn’t feel the same. The magic has passed, the moment died. Our dance feels over.

Then we start a new dance. Our original dance felt like a tango, our bodies and minds moving together to paint a beautiful relationship. This new dance, lacking our original music, feels very different. Now, we do not feel the magic, but still look for that connection with our partners. We still reach out, but now they don’t respond in perfect synchronization with us. We’ve lost our tango.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to talk about some of these new dances. In Emotionally Focused Therapy, we have identified three types of dances couples start after their tango ends. This blog will focus on the first and most common of these dances. The Protest Polka.

The Protest Polka

In The Protest Polka, you and your partner feel the lack of connection, but respond to it very differently. You might feel isolated from your dance partner, craving that sense of belonging and connection. As you push for it, however, they seem to pull even further away. Sensing this increased distance and now feeling rejected, you might lash out, desperately hoping they hear your plea for connection. This continues for a while, your dance slowly falling apart around you. After long enough, it seems you could say pretty much anything and they’ll interpret it as a criticism. This is frustrating and leaves you feeling criticized yourself just for doing what you can to save your relationship. The very act of asking for a dance partner starts to feel wrong. You shouldn’t have to demand a dance from your partner, much less get angry in order to be heard.

Meanwhile, your partner continues to pull away. In their mind, this lack of connection means they aren’t a good dance partner. Trying to dance with you just means they’ll reveal to you how bad they are. With that in mind, they hide their perceived lack of dance skills from you, terrified you’ll truly see them. When you approach them, desperate for your partner back, they run through all the things they might say or do wrong. It is better, they might think, to run and hide from you than to risk stepping on your feet. Over time, even a normal request for change might trigger this fear. How can your partner know if a small request symbolizes much larger criticisms? They begin to retreat from even your smallest bids, keeping your new dance going.

What do I do?

A dance only works when each partner feels confident in their steps. That doesn’t mean knowing you will always respond correctly to your partner’s movements or always hear the right beat. That does mean you want to grow and feel safe enough to try. Our polka starts when the dance becomes a series of reactions, rather than a true dance between equals.

Returning the magic to your dance requires two main steps. First, you must figure out how to ask for a better dance while helping your partner avoid feeling criticized. This can be tricky, considering they’ve potentially spent years reacting to smaller and smaller signs of judgement. They might be really scared to show you their current dance skills. In order to address this, you have to ask for your partner back in a very safe, accepting way.

Meanwhile, your partner must return to the dance. They must accept their mistakes and trust you can keep them safe when dancing. This requires facing their fear over your reaction and truly engaging with you. In order to make this happen, it must actually be safe for them to return to the dance. If they trust you and still feel judged, it just reinforces the polka. The tango gets even further away.

If this conversation seems intimidating, I can help. My training means I can help both of you engage more meaningfully, more intentionally, with one another. In therapy, we can slow things down, working through the reactions you and your partner have developed toward one another. Our therapy can bring hope back to your relationship. Our therapy can bring the magic back to your dance.

Life is tough. It takes innocent children and forces them through hardship and pain. These children become teenagers, tasked with deciding who they want to be and who they can trust. Lessons from childhood and adolescence carry into adult years, creating imperfect adults. Our brains don’t unlearn things very well, meaning skills and lessons learned early in life pretty much stick with us forever.

Many of these skills and lessons tells us how to trust and connect with others. If your parents were perfect, these lessons taught you a perfect balance between trusting others and keeping yourself safe. As I’m sure you know, however, no one’s parents are perfect. This means, as an adult, your brain continues to project these early lessons onto loved ones.

This creates barriers to attunement. If I’m reacting to my partner based upon lessons I learned from and about others, how can I expect my partner to feel treated fairly?

Running with these skills for too long traps me in these patterns. My brain reacts more quickly than my mind, potentially causing me to talk or act without thinking first. As I’m sure all of us know, that’s when we make bad decisions or say hurtful things we don’t mean. We can’t take back those actions or words, but we can learn to understand why they happened. We can learn control over the triggers that put us into such a firm, inflexible mindset.

What do I do now?

Clear communication really helps. While surviving childhood and adolescence requires learning survival skills, that doesn’t necessarily lead to a happy adulthood. When things get tough, you might find yourself feeling pretty worked up and “reactive” to your partner. This means you’re most likely using skills you’ve grown up using, as opposed to the skills you want to use right now with your partner. Communicate with your partner about what really hurt. That lets them know what’s most likely to lead to inappropriate reactions.

Be honest with yourself. I’m not perfect. You’re not perfect. A perfect human being might be able to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, treating their partner fairly all the time, but that’s not us. You’re going to get heated sometimes and fall into old patterns. Acknowledging your imperfection lets you embrace your triggers. Only when you’ve accepted these triggers can you start to control them and help your partner understand them.

Communication and honesty form the backbone of a healthy relationship. Few human experiences hurt more than feeling isolated from our loved ones. Sometimes, life teaches us skills that keep us safe, but also leave us feeling alone, unable to connect with others. Be honest and open about the triggers that lead you to feeling this way. Sharing these triggers with your loved ones lets both of you feel close and connected.

If you think this reflection or conversation sound too difficult, I encourage you to reach out to me for therapy. With my training in Emotionally Focused Therapy, I can help you look within yourself, past these strict defenses, and access the longings for connection you feel. Therapy can also give you a safe environment to share these longings, helping you to have a happier, more hopeful, relationship.

Life often feels confusing and lonely. Because of that confusion and loneliness, we desperately need our connections with others. These connections affirm us, praise us, and even validate our existence. Couples counseling focuses on fostering this connection between partners, teaching them to open up to one another in critical ways. But why is that so important?

I soon start my Level 2 training in Emotionally Focused Therapy. In EFT, we operate within Attachment Theory. Attachment Theory claims most feelings stem from a need going met or unmet interpersonally. These needs form as children – were your parents there for you? Did you feel you could turn to them when you needed them? If not your parents, who could you rely on?

If you couldn’t rely on anyone as a child, your brain likely became hardwired to watch for moments where, as an adult, you can’t trust others. This might mean others seem unreliable or even dangerous. Alternatively, others might just seem distant and uninvested in you. Either way, your brain starts watching for these moments, triggers that others will hurt you, intentionally or not.

Your connection with your partner is no different. Marriage counseling shows us that we continue to watch for these patterns with those we love, sometimes even watching for them here more than with others. After all, if I’m going to invest heavily in someone, I need to know they’re safe, right? Unfortunately, none of us are perfect. If you watch for moments of your partner ignoring you, lying to you, or just generally making mistakes, you will find them.

What do I do now?

In these moments, you need to know. Really, truly know. Do I matter to you? If you believe this, in both your heart and your mind, your brain can interpret those pains generously. It can recognize your partner’s imperfections and forgive them, knowing they’re trying their best. These moments can then offer opportunities for growth and connection, allowing you to engage in meaningful conversations. These conversations lead you to believe in one another more and change your behaviors to serve the relationship better.

You might not believe you matter to your partner. If that’s the case, these moments instead prove dangerous. You ask yourself, “Do I matter to you?” and feel unsure. Maybe you can rationalize that your partner must care. You might try to put their behavior in the best possible light, but you don’t really believe it. If that’s the case, it’s time for couples counseling.

Emotionally Focused Therapy offers ways to change emotional truths. You need to believe you matter to your partner. Beliefs don’t change quickly or easily, however, often requiring intense conversations and powerful moments of connection. My training teaches me to reach these moments, giving you and your partner the opportunity to start believing you matter to one another. Without this belief, no amount of work or conversation will make for a happy relationship. You can always find things your partner did wrong.

Marriage counseling helps you find hope by learning to believe you matter.

Ever feel all alone with your problems? For many of us, this feels overwhelming, making the problems seem even bigger. You might spend a lot of time thinking about your stressors, not feeling able to share them. Over time, even small problems can feel like barriers between you and your partner. When asked, “What are you thinking about?” it seems tempting to give an “I don’t know,” or “I don’t want to talk about it.” Meanwhile, you’re not really sure what to do to feel better.

Your partner likely wants you to ask for help. When our loved ones seem troubled, our brains naturally and automatically look for ways to help alleviate stress. This joining releases oxytocin, the brain’s bonding chemical. Asking for help gives your partner an opportunity to join with you and feel good about it. Repeatedly getting turned down feels pretty bad for both of you, however. This means if your partner asks “What are you thinking about?” and gets shot down enough times, they’ll stop asking.

Now we’ve started a cycle. Your partner once pushed to help you, but you didn’t feel safe to talk about your problem. They pushed harder and asked more insistently for a while, desperate to connect with you. If you felt overwhelmed before, though, this made it worse. At this point, they’ve stopped asking. You both accepted this distance between you and given up the fight for connection.

How can you ask for help in a safe way that promotes connection?

First and foremost, you need to know you’re safe to talk about your problems. If your partner might snap at you, insult you, or even physically hurt you for opening up, there’s little chance of connection. To get around this first piece, it can help to offer a little heads-up about the type of conversation you want. You might say, for example, “Hey, can I talk to you about something? It might be a tough conversation.” Any version of this can put your partner into the right mindset to connect with you.

Second, you will find this conversation much easier if you’re in touch with your feelings while talking. I’ve previously discussed feeling “flooded,” where emotion clouds your judgement. You might “see red” for example. Being in touch with your feelings gives you a chance to slow down if you start to get worked up. Hopefully the heads-up you offered your partner put them into the right mindset to support you, but no one is perfect. If they give you a raised eyebrow or scoff at something you say, being in touch with your feelings gives you a chance to reset instead of the conversation blowing up.

Finally, focus more on connection than problem solving. You probably know your issues better than your partner does, so they likely will struggle to give good advice. They can, however, help you feel important. Most of us can solve most of our problems, but trying to do so often feels risky and isolating. Knowing your partner supports you can provide a secure base to push for a solution, to try something new. Accept their help, but don’t expect them to fix everything for you.

If this sounds like too much, that makes sense. Our culture doesn’t teach us great ways to ask for help. With that in mind, if you’re interested in couples counseling to help you and your partner connect with and support one another, feel free to reach out to me. I offer marriage counseling in all of Minnesota and would love to help you and your partner ask for help in healthy ways.