How does marriage counselling work?
You may be considering couples (or marriage) counselling for you and your partner. Perhaps you’ve been together for what feels like a hot second. Maybe, you feel you’ve been together forever and the relationship is feeling a little stagnant. Conflict may be high, or it could be the mundaneness of your relationship that you’re finding makes for a feeling of being stuck.
You feel you can’t see eye to eye.
You notice whenever you’ve spent time apart, your partner doesn’t seem to want to connect. They don’t necessarily need fanfare or a romantic date night to catch up or reconnect. And you really, really do. You need to be needed! You need the closeness you craved while you two were apart.
You wonder:
Could couples counselling actually be helpful to you?
What will your partner think if you suggest it?
Might it be worth your time, money, energy and getting your hopes up for any sort of improvement?!
A favourite question I might ask as you sit across from me for the first time, is how you feel about being in counselling. There’s no right or wrong, good or bad answer. Being curious about how you feel might even be new to you or your partner. Throughout my experience with couples, I have received what feels like (but I’m sure isn’t!) every answer under the sun. I invite you to take a moment and lean in curiously to how you might respond to that question.
Would you be excited? Nervous? Fearful? Apathetic? Might you cry? Curious about how marriage counselling works?
If you were to enter into marriage counselling, would you sit tight beside your partner on the couch or would you each choose one end?
How might your partner feel, do you think? Similarly, or completely different?!
Before reaching out for counselling for you two, it’s so deeply valuable to consider how both of you feel about it. If one of you is ready to put in some hard work and the other doesn’t want to engage, then couples counselling may not be the best way to start. If you are both on the same page, why not consider booking just one appointment?!
It’s not uncommon for one partner to respond to that earlier first session question with “well…I’m here”. And when I revisit the question at the end of that session, it is rare to receive that same response. Typically, the response echoes some relief. All couples have some sort of struggle at some season through their shared life. Undoing some of the aloneness you might both feel can be calming and maybe even a little hopeful. You might be reminded of what brought you together in the first place.
Entering counselling – as anxiety-provoking as it can feel – is the hardest step. The courage it takes to book the appointment and then show may be nothing short of exhausting. In a safe space however, nerves can be calmed, some “we-ness” experienced.
What is “we-ness”? It’s the opposite of “me-ness”. It’s the felt sense of togetherness you and your partner may once have known and can find together, again. Being together as “we” rather than “me” is a way of connecting with your partner and feeling a sense of healthy attachment and connection. That first appointment could plant the seed of “we-ness” you’ve been missing or maybe even mourning.
To further elaborate, you might experience more “me-ness” if you grew up in an environment that didn’t prioritize relationships over self. Meaning, perhaps your primary caregiver didn’t tend to you in the ways you needed. Eye contact, physical touch, gentle tones might not have been as commonplace in your home. Even as a tiny infant, you may have learned to self-soothe and turn inward to meet your needs. You may have learned that you were the only one you needed. You were the only one you could rely on.
That wiring still exists in your brain – and it likely affects your current partnership. (…without you possibly noticing.) It’s not a bad thing to be independent and self-reliant, provided it’s not at the expense of your relationship. It’s also deeply valuable to remember that as a human, you are intrinsically or biologically hardwired for connection. Even self-reliant, independent people need other people. You can’t thrive without other healthy relationships and people around you.
Stan Tatkin (a researcher and clinician who studies and works with couples) has written a wonderful, resourceful book called Wired for Love. In his work, he suggests that individuals who fall into this more self-reliant space are more like an “island”. From an attachment perspective you might be known to have an avoidant attachment style. You are content alone and might even find closeness with another person to be stressful for you. This again, likely relates back to your early childhood experiences.
Tatkin refers to individuals who were relied upon early in life to be the emotional regulators or the dependent ones, as a “wave”. This might resonate with you if your primary caregiver was unreliably available – you couldn’t predict whether they would be there to support and care for you or not. You might have struggled with worry over whether you would be accepted (meaning your caregiver was available) or rejected (meaning your caregiver was unavailable). Hence the wave analogy. The thought of depending on someone else is cause for anxiety…so your natural tendency is to cling to your partner. You want to hope for your relationship but when your mind reflects back to earlier experiences, the wave of accepted/rejected is overwhelming. Through an attachment lens, you might be experiencing more of an anxious attachment style.
When an island and a wave marry so-to-speak, there can be some hurdles. The island will seek more independence and the wave will want to cling. If you resonate with either of these two styles – or both, when considering your relationship – you know this to be a tricky area to navigate. One of you is content and seeks solo time and the other seeks togetherness.
Encouragingly, I think it’s important to highlight that a “wave” and an “island” can find happiness and fulfillment in their relationship together. As with anything that is of value, it requires investment from both partners. Understanding how to care for your partner who may experience a different attachment style that yours is powerful. Cultivating awareness behind the why of your partner’s emotions and responses will help you understand them better and offer insight into why your relationship experiences the ups and downs that it does.
It’s not uncommon to overlook the profound influence of your early childhood experiences, yet this is a period in life when the human brain is so malleable and impressionable. So much of what happened to you in those early years has formed a paradigm of how you experience life as an adult. Counselling can be a beautiful, safe, trusted space in which you can begin to explore some of this.
Couples counselling can cultivate both individual as well as couple awareness, exploration and healing. In this space, you might uncover the “why” behind some of what’s been causing distress and discomfort in your relationship. You might begin to shift from the “me-ness” you’ve (unknowingly) been experiencing for some time and begin to notice feelings of “we-ness” once again.
As a clinician who works through an attachment lens, I believe early childhood experiences can profoundly affect how we interact in our adult relationships – both our friendships and intimate ones. If you are curious about whether couples counselling could be helpful, healing or restorative for you, or for your relationship please reach out! I’d love to connect with you.
