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Power Struggles in Your Relationship?

by | Sep 22, 2020 | Conflict, Forgiveness, General, Relationships, Sex Therapy

Do You Have Power Struggles in Your Relationship?

Couples are often told to learn the art of compromise. Find the middle ground. Make your decision a win-win for everyone involved. Satisfy both needs.

Those are wise words and yes, you have to find ways to factor in what you and your partner want when making decisions. In many situations, that advice works. 

But, what if you can’t do that?

What if your situation is a bit more black and white? What if, whatever decision is made, somebody loses out?

There are some conflicts with no easy compromise.

Examples Include:

  • You want another child and your partner doesn’t
  • You’ve dreamed of moving to another state but your partner doesn’t want to leave family
  • Your partner wants to adopt a pet and you don’t want to
  • You both want your child to have a stay-at-home parent – each wants the other to put their career on hold
  • You want an open marriage and your partner wants monogamy

You can see that, in the situations above, neither partner is “right” or “wrong” for wanting their desired outcome. There’s no malice here. Just two good people with two very different desires.

For many of these examples, it’s not easy to find middle ground. Most couples go around in circles, debating their points, trying to sway their partner in their direction, ending nowhere but frustrated and back at square one.

Or someone feels repeatedly, “unheard”.

 

Here’s how it plays out once a decision is made:

  • One partner gets what they want, the other partner feels angry, bitter, powerless, shocked and dismissed
  • Their relationship divide grows
  • No one acknowledges an important word in the experience: GRIEF

It would be nice if each partner could always get what they want, equally. But some decisions can’t be divided up that way.

It’s not even the final outcome that tears couples apart. Instead, what trips most couples up is the process of how they got there.

In marriage therapy or couples counseling, couples usually call me after one partner went ahead with a decision; either out of assuming their partner was on board, confusion and misunderstanding or lack of clarity around their partner’s wishes. 

When you find yourselves in that situation, know that the person who didn’t get their way gave something up (even if they weren’t involved in the decision). 

So, even if you weren’t trying to “win”, your partner will inevitably feel like they lost. 

Maybe they’ve given up their dream to have a second child, or build their dream home, or make partner at the firm. 

Maybe they’ve lost their freedom and independence and now have to take care of another life (child, in-law, furbaby).

It’s not your job to try to convince your partner that the outcome is “for the best”, or that they somehow “gained too” from the experience. 

It’s not your job to help them see “the bright side” of things or in any way convince them to feel anything other than their grief.

In fact, when you acknowledge their pain and loss around these black and white decisions, you see and hear them. You validate their experience. This helps them feel like they matter, even when things don’t go their way. 

Knowing what to say and how to say it is key to repairing this type of relationship rupture. Below, I offer you language to help you hold healing conversations together.

In the examples below, we’re assuming that one partner went ahead with a decision that the other partner did not fully agree to. 

 

Here’s how to speak to your partner when they didn’t get their way on an issue:

  • I know I didn’t go about this quite the right way. My decision has clearly caused you pain. I’m sorry that I didn’t factor in what you wanted. 
  • I know there were no easy answers here. I can see that you feel like you lost out on this. I’m sorry for that. 
  • I know you weren’t really on board with my decision. And now that this is done, I can see how hurt you feel. What can I do to help you manage your grief around this? 
  • I understand how this outcome bothers/hurts you. What can I do to make it right?
  • I know that you didn’t get what you wanted out of this. I want to talk about what this loss means for you and for us. 

While it’s nice to idealize power as a shared experience in relationships, there will be times when one partner exercises more power than the other; when one partner feels more powerless than the other. These moments are inevitable.

In relationship counseling, I help couples work through those power struggles, whether it’s around intimacy, parenting, domestic life, finances, sex, career; and even in all of the small decisions partners make throughout the day that influence power in the relationship.

 

What You Want to Strive For

In healthy relationships, you want to strive for as much balance as possible when it comes to shared decision making. Maximize that to its fullest.

But also know that, at times, shared or not, it may not always feel equal. 

If one partner doesn’t get their ideal outcome, make sure that you acknowledge and validate the grief that accompanies the loss. Hold space for them and find ways to move forward together.

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The 3 Keys to Create a Healthy Separation

by | Feb 6, 2014 | Divorce/Separation, Forgiveness

I would love to say that therapy saves all relationships from separation. It does not. Some couples soar through the process reaching high levels of satisfaction, others settle for the status quo and still others decide to call it quits. If you have both decided that it’s time to end your long-term relationship or marriage, how do you create a healthy separation?

First, recognize that you are separating on three levels. Dr. Tammy Nelson has written that your relationship exists on various planes: emotional, physical and spiritual. Read below to learn about these three planes and why it will benefit you to discuss them with your partner.

1) Your emotional plane involves all the feelings that you’ve had for each other over time. These range from the attraction that drew you to each other, to the developed love, joy and laughter that you shared, you know, “the good times”. But the emotional plane also includes the tough emotions such as anger, resentment, frustration, fear and/or jealousy. Ultimately, it includes the sadness that you both might feel with the lack of resolve for your problems.

2) Your physical plane involves your living arrangement. You may own a house together. All that has gone into creating your home, your physical belongings, the separation of “stuff”, of money, need to be discussed. While these are temporary material possessions, couples become attached to them for reasons of security, memories and/or entitlement. If you struggle to separate the belongings on your own, hire a mediator to help you.

3) Your spiritual plane includes the hope you once had for the future together. This aspect is most important to discuss. It includes the life you both envisioned that didn’t pan out, the family that you created or planned to create, the caring of in-laws as they passed through the door of death. The spiritual plane holds deep memories and potentially feels the most wounded.

Why talk about all of these things with your partner? To create a healthy separation, you must allow yourselves to grieve what you don’t have anymore. Separations get nasty when partners try to plow through them without attempting to stay connected to each other during the process. Even if you think the separation is your partner’s “fault”, you both still experience grief. The grief will not end once discussed but you begin to release the grief when you share it with your partner.

It’s important to remember that neither one of you entered your committed partnership with the goal of ending it. You both dreamed, exchanged visions of a shared life together and indeed began to create a life together. Holding this truth in your mind and heart will help you maintain compassion for your partner – yes, even if he/she cheated on you.

If you stay in the blame game, consider that you might choose this to avoid harder feelings like grief and sadness.  It certainly feels more powerful to blame someone than it does to feel sadness and disappointment. Blaming is a way to avoid difficult feelings as well as the ownership of how you too contributed to relationship’s decline.

Keep in mind that this exercise is particularly helpful if you have children. When children are involved, the pain of separation/divorce is amplified. Now you are not only grieving your vision of family but you also grieve for your children’s experience of family.

Have these difficult discussions with your partner for the sake of your children but more importantly have them for you. The more you can stay connected to each other during the separation process, the healthier the dynamics will be for all of you after you separate.

Ultimately the goal behind a healthy separation is to help you forgive your partner and yourself. When you reach the phase of forgiveness, the difficult feelings fade into the background. When you forgive, you make room for new opportunities to love again.

Forgiveness Will Change Your Life

by | Oct 23, 2013 | Forgiveness, Grief

On a show called Story Corp of National Public Radio, a mother shared her life story of how her young adult son was shot and killed by another male. As her narrative unfolded, she spoke of her incredibly deep sorrow. She attended the court hearings daily in an attempt to understand this person who caused her such unbearable pain. Once the court sentenced him, she began to visit him in prison…often. When they released him, he had no resources. She took him into her home and helped him get an education. She said, “I gave him the education that I couldn’t give my son”.

As I remember her voice, I feel tearful, as I did when I listened to her story. How is it possible to experience such a deep, profound loss and not only forgive the person who hurt us, but love them? How do we release the chains that bind us and open our hearts toward compassionate, loving forgiveness?

All of us have been hurt by someone at some time in our life. Mom, dad, aunt, sibling, friend, teacher, neighbor, spouse, boss, clergy, stranger. Some wrongs, we’ve forgotten about and let go of. Others seem to have become a part of our identity. Who would we be if we let go these wrong doings? How would our life change?

I remember a client who once said to me, “If I forgive him, then I’m accepting what he did and I don’t accept it.  It’s not okay”. Let’s consider another perspective. This client was partially correct. For her, this behavior was NOT okay. But forgiveness does not equal acceptance or approval. The act or behavior is so unacceptable that it requires forgiveness. You don’t forgive acts or behaviors that feel good. You only consider forgiveness when you’ve been hurt.

Forgiveness requires you to move through grief before letting go. For the mother in the story who lost her son, her grief is obvious. But what about for the person whose mom was extremely critical? Or who has the aunt that touched them inappropriately? Or for the spouse whose wife/husband had an affair?

In those examples, you grieve what was supposed to be, what you wanted. You wanted a loving, non-critical mom. She didn’t deliver that to you. You wanted your aunt to respect your body. Instead, she crossed your physical boundary. You wanted your spouse to be faithful. Instead, he/she stepped outside of the relationship. The mother in the story wanted her son alive.

When you hold onto the old or recurring story of hurt, you may experience increased anxiety or depression. However, when you forgive those who hurt you, you experience increased hope and increased self-esteem.

Scientific research is now studying how forgiveness changes the brain. Specifically, they are finding that forgiveness effects the regions of the brain associated with emotional regulation, moral judgements, perceptions of physical pain and decision-making.

Imagine how this mother might have lived if she did not open her heart, develop compassion and forgive the man who murdered her son?  Her decision to forgive this man changed her life. If she did not take control and choose to forgive, her life would have been shaped by anger, resentment, depression and loneliness. Instead, she gave this man the life she could not give her son.  She chose love.

Forgiveness may be one of the hardest decisions you make. If someone in your life continues to hurt you, you can forgive them while also drawing healthy boundaries and necessary distance if needed. Forgiveness does not mean tolerating hurt. It does mean that you stop that hurt from shaping your future experiences.

Forgiveness requires you to practice compassion, for yourself and for others. It also requires you to live in the present. When you forgive and let go, you create a new narrative, a new way of life.

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