Is it Ever Too Early to Start Couples Therapy?

I think you probably know by now if you’ve been reading my newsletters that the short answer to this question is no. 

On occasion I will get a call from a couple who is engaged or newly married and they will say something like, “we don’t have a lot of issues, but we want to get started on the right foot, do you think it’s a good idea for us to come to therapy?” 

To which I will respond with a very enthusiastic - of course!! And then I do a little song and dance and praise them for taking the time to invest in their relationship before things get overwhelming. 

I honestly wish that couples would invest their money in therapy rather than a lavish wedding, or that it was more normal for family and friends to gift couples therapy to newlyweds. 

*Sigh* Maybe one day. 

There are some major benefits to investing in couples therapy early on in your relationship. 

I know that therapy can be expensive. But think about it like going to the dentist - if you brush and floss regularly you’re less likely to get cavities. If you get your teeth cleaned every six months as recommended then that gives the dentist an opportunity to detect a cavity early and take care of it before you are in need of a root canal or something more serious. 

Starting couples therapy before things get too out of control is like getting a filling. The amount of time and money you’ll be spending in therapy is going to be much less than if you’ve been in the same negative patterns and routines for years. 

Finding a therapist who practices Gottman Therapy is also really great at the beginning of your marriage because the protocol for treatment includes the Relationship Checkup, which is an extensive background questionnaire designed to measure various aspects of your relationship. 

In most Gottman Therapy practices like Rancho Counseling, you come in first as a couple, complete your Relationship Checkup and then each partner has an individual session with the therapist. 

After that you have a second couples session where the therapist will sit down and show you all of the components it takes to have a really strong, healthy relationship. 

The therapist will discuss your strengths as a couple, and the areas that you have as opportunities for improvement which come from the conversations the therapist is having with you as well as the Relationship Checkup. 

Once those areas are identified you go to work and learn ways to improve the areas that are going to translate to a healthy, happy connection. 

Many couples tell us that even completing the assessment is super helpful because it gets them thinking about their relationship in ways they haven't in the past. Couples also report an increase in their satisfaction levels after just 3 sessions, which is before the real work even begins. My theory about this is that dedicating the time and space to focus on the relationship gets couples thinking differently. They feel excited about the process, and happy that their partner has agreed to focus their time and energy on making improvements. 

Most people don’t actually know what it takes to have a strong, healthy marriage. They have some ideas - good communication, spending time together, etc., but the Gottman method of therapy is backed by years and years of actual research and gets into the nitty gritty of helping couples understand their communication patterns and learn what truly works. 

Much of what people know is by gleaning from what was modeled to them by parents or family members and many times people will tell me they learned what NOT to do because their parents divorced or don’t seem very happy. 

Investing your time in the beginning of your marriage will give you some amazing tools to keep in your toolbox for years and years to come. 

If you are on the fence about it, give us a call and schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation and we will be happy to answer any questions you might have about the process.  

What leads to an Affair?

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about how people give themselves permission to have affairs. I know they don’t do it outright - it’s not the first thing their minds jump to. But when I’m sitting with a couple, the betrayed partner always wants to know, how did this happen? 

What I've learned is that there is a cascade of things that happen in the primary relationship before an affair happens, and I want to share a few of those things with you.  

This can help you either look at your own relationship and work on things so you don’t get to that point, or if you’re in the trenches of affair recovery, it will help you understand how you and your partner got there. 

Just as a caveat, I’m in no way blaming the betrayed partner here for their partner’s choice to step outside the relationship. That was their poor choice, and sometimes that choice has nothing to do with them being in an unhappy marriage. (I think that’s important to note before we dive in.)

Before there is even a thought of an affair, many times an erosion begins to happen in the relationship. This erosion chips away at all of the factors that help couples build trust, opening them up for such a vulnerability. 

The erosion begins with feelings of loneliness. Couples stop turning towards one another and reciprocating one another’s bids for connection. Some examples are: when you feel like every time you walk through the door and say hello, your partner is too busy for a hug or a kiss. Or when you invite your partner to sit next to you on the couch, and they miss your subtle gesture and move into another room or on the opposite end of the living room. 

You may be the one missing the bids for connection - your partner begins to talk about their day, but you’re busy scrolling on your phone or checking the scores of last night’s game and don’t even hear what they have to say. 

Those are just a few examples. You or your partner may be reaching out to one another in a bunch of different ways, and not having your bids for connection reciprocated takes a toll. 

When your partner doesn’t reciprocate your bids for connection you make meaning of that, and the meaning that people tend to make is, “I’m not important,” or “what I have to say isn’t important.” When you internalize those types of thoughts, you can start to feel lonely and even stop making those bids for connection. 

The distance between partners grows when no one is reaching out to connect. 

After the connection stops couples can start to live parallel lives. They pass one another, make plans with friends or coworkers, or focus only on their kids. They have logistical communication - where are you going? What time will you be back? What’s for dinner? And stop having the connective type of communication that is so important to keeping marriage strong, “How are you feeling this week? What have you been thinking about?” 

At this point couples can find it difficult to reconnect - sometimes it’s easier to keep focusing on the kids or work  because you don’t know where to begin, or feel timid in making that connection out of fear of rejection. 

At this phase it can start to feel like your partner isn’t there for you. So seeking comfort outside of the relationship through friendships is common, but also dangerous. Spending time out after work, having drinks with colleagues, or staying late at the office begins to feel better than coming home to an empty marriage. 

During this stage, conflict can be high or avoided. When it’s avoided, partners begin to suppress their feelings, and then they tend to have big blow-ups over things that might be insignificant on the surface, but are more indicative of the feelings underneath - “I’m lonely, and I want to connect with you!” But saying those things might just feel too vulnerable. 

When conflict is avoided, self disclosure is also something that is commonly avoided. You no longer want to tell your partner all about your terrible boss, or run through all of the items on your to-do list for the next day because you internalize that they don’t care, or it’s not important. You may even begin to keep secrets from your partner. 

Keeping secrets can begin to happen quite innocently, because it is often done as an attempt to keep from burdening your partner. You might think, “she’s so busy with the kids, she doesn’t want to hear about all my work stress,” or “he’s so stressed with his own work, I don’t need to bore him with my work stresses.” 

You or your partner may then turn outside the relationship and begin confiding in a coworker, or someone who is part of your workout crew at the gym. Things typically start pretty innocently. But the moment you begin minimizing your partner’s positive traits and maximizing their negative ones, it can become a slippery slope. 

Actively looking towards others in an attempt to feel less lonely, more heard, and understood, can lead in all the wrong directions, and an innocent outing with coworkers, can lead to more and more one-on-one time with a member of the opposite sex that you feel connected to.  

I could go on about how that outside relationship can continue to develop, but I’ll stop here. This is where I hope you’ll stop and begin to recognize that looking outside the relationship is not the answer, even when it seems innocent, but it’s a wake up call that you need to do the difficult work to reconnect with your partner.  

Bids for Connection: How to make and reciprocate them

How well do you notice when your partner is reaching out to connect with you? 

That process of reaching out to connect is called a bid for connection. 

As human beings we are wired for connection, and in our romantic relationships we want to connect with our partner. I know you’re probably thinking, “duh, Alicia, of course!” 

Even though this concept is incredibly simple, it’s amazing how many couples miss the importance of this, and end up feeling lonely in their relationships. 

As simple as bids for connection are to make, they are just as simple to miss because they happen quickly. (Kind of like when you go to the grocery store and the automatic doors open, and you have a few seconds to get in, or the doors close.)

An example of a bid for connection could be: you and your partner are sitting on the couch, and your partner looks out the window, and says, “wow, there are a lot of birds out there.” 

This is not a relationship altering revelation, it’s just a simple observation but one that your partner sees as a way to connect. 

At that moment you can turn towards your partner by saying something like, “oh, yeah.”  Or you can turn away from your partner which would be something like continuing to scroll on your phone, or keep your gaze focused on the game you’re watching on TV. 

(You don’t even have to physically turn towards your partner, that’s just the language that we use to describe reciprocating bids for connection.)

According to John Gottman, in order to maintain a healthy relationship there needs to be a 5 to 1 ratio when it comes to reciprocating bids for connection; so for every time you turn away from your partner and don’t reciprocate a bid for connection, there needs to be five times that you do. 

Reciprocating your partner’s bids for connection is extremely important because when a person feels like their partner isn’t reciprocating their bids they tend to make meaning of this, and they begin to tell themselves things like, “I guess what I have to say isn’t interesting to my partner,” or, “I am not interesting to my partner.”

After continued missed bids for connection, the person who feels like they aren’t important or interesting stops making bids altogether, and one or both partners begin to feel lonely. 

Loneliness in a marriage is a difficult feeling, and since I work with so many couples recovering from infidelity, it makes me worry because that loneliness can be a slippery slope that allows a person to give themself permission to begin opening up to someone else. 

So, look up.

Acknowledge your partner when they are reaching out to connect to you.

Even if it’s just to point out the flock of birds outside the window. Those little connections are important even if the subject matter really isn’t. 

If you’re finding it difficult to reciprocate your partner’s bids for connection, or you're feeling disconnected because your partner isn’t turning towards you, therapy can help. We help our couples create the safety they need in their relationships to make and reciprocate those bids for connection. Click the link below to book your free 15-minute phone consultation or call us today at (909) 600-0306 and get your relationship back on track.

How Trauma Impacts Marriage

“If it’s hysterical, then it’s historical.” Have you ever heard this saying? Maybe it's just psychology geeks like me who gravitate towards these types of sayings. This is one that has really stuck with me from grad school through the years in my practice. You might be wondering what the heck that even means - well, when someone has a really big reaction to something that doesn’t necessarily warrant that type of reaction it’s usually related to something from the person’s past. Many times it's an indication of something that has also been unresolved. 

As a couples therapist I hear fights about so many different things - things that might seem pretty benign on paper: You didn’t do the dishes! You never text me back quickly enough! You didn’t tell me you were stopping at the store on your way home! 

If you can imagine grown adults having what looks like a tantrum in my office for these above examples, it might seem so ridiculous to you. However, the reason that these things cause such big reactions for people has less to do with the subject matter, and more to do with old wounds and historical traumatic experiences. 

Going to war isn’t the only thing that causes a trauma response although it is one of the quintessential experiences that people tend to imagine and sometimes the only thing people imagine can cause PTSD - but that assumption is outdated and incorrect.

Trauma can be defined as “a deeply distressing or disturbing event,” and emotional trauma is experienced when there is a violation of a person’s familiar ideas about the world and about their human rights. 

Trauma can be difficult to define because it’s really about the way the event is experienced. In Oprah and Dr. Bruce Perry’s book, What Happened to you? They discuss an excellent example of a fire in an elementary school.

For the firefighter on the scene, this was business as usual, and the incident felt controllable and even predictable. For the first grader in that classroom this event caused him to experience minutes of terror, intense fear, confusion, and helplessness. Both are very different experiences, and this is considered a trauma for the child due to his response.  

A recent study by the National Survey of Children’s Health found that almost 50 percent of children in the US have had at least one significant traumatic experience. And the CDC recently reported that 60 percent of American adults report having had at least one adverse childhood experience, or ACE. (You can find out more about the ACEs here)

Events like an infidelity or sudden threat of divorce in relationships can be very emotionally traumatic and people describe experiencing them in terms like, “my world shattered,” or “I felt like the rug was pulled out from under me.” In these examples the relationship that the person believed was stable and secure is turned upside down and unrecognizable.

That sense of security being ripped out and the sense of reality being shattered causes emotional trauma. There are developmental traumas (that happen during childhood), and emotional traumas that can happen at any age. Either type of trauma can impact the relationships closest to us, including our marital relationship. 

When there is an unresolved trauma that comes from childhood, it can rear its ugly head right in the middle of an argument with a partner and cause havoc. That response that’s so big, and seemingly unnecessary, can then touch on your partner’s unresolved trauma causing a tidal wave of emotions to come spewing back. This is typically the reason couples have such difficulty hearing one another and reaching resolutions. 

The conflict often becomes so big that both partners eventually retreat and only come back together when they absolutely need to deal with something together, like parenting their child, or they have to play nice in front of family or friends.   

The argument that is started because your partner had expectations about spending time alone together after a long day can really be about him/her being upset that you haven’t made them a priority. And that need to be high on your priority list may not even be coming from your relationship at all, but from their unresolved need to be prioritized as a child since their mother was often away using drugs and alcohol, and they were left to fend for themselves. 

When both partners have unresolved traumas they can continue to bump heads with each other. One partner may have a deep-seated need to be a priority due to parental abandonment, while the other has a deep need to be independent because they were constantly smothered by an overbearing parent. These two marry one another, and dig their heels in, fight tooth and nail, and continue to go around and around about this seemingly unresolvable issue in the marriage. 

The negativity from something like this can bleed out into other areas of the relationship and erode it over time. 

Couples therapy is a great place to identify how past traumas are showing up in your relationship and can be worked on in that setting, or your therapist might recommend individual therapy in addition to or in place of couples therapy. Either way working to resolve past traumas can be incredibly beneficial to your marriage. 

Mind-Reading in Marriage (part 2)

Last week we talked about mind-reading and how it can be such a disappointing pattern when you think your partner should just know what you need when you need it. In case you missed it, you can read that here. 

This week I want to talk about the other side of the mind-reading pattern. It’s also something I see a lot in my practice where one partner will say something like, “well no, I did not bring that up, because I already knew exactly how he/she was going to respond.” 

To which I typically reply, “oh, so you can read your partner’s mind?”

The truth is, we don’t know exactly how our partner will respond to something. 

Yes, you may have had a similar situation or pattern and you know things about what your partner may like and dislike, but when you assume that your partner will respond in a certain way and as a result of this pattern of mind-reading, you tend to either alter your communication or you avoid the conversation altogether. 

You might tell yourself you’ll get a negative response to something because you’ve felt negativity in an area of the relationship, and this sets you up for a pattern called negative-sentiment override. 

One of my clients used to refer to this pattern as the merry-go-round. 

Altering and avoiding communicating with your partner because you are telling yourself you know how they will respond only perpetuates the pattern and many times you will treat your partner as if you’ve already had that conversation and you’ve already received that negative response even though you only actually had the conversation in your mind and not out loud. 

Once you get into the pattern of negative sentiment override it can be difficult to get out because you aren’t actually having the conversations and you’re always assuming your partner’s negativity. Not having the actual conversations never allows for a positive response from your partner and keeps you perpetually stuck in assuming negativity and you might even begin to see your partner in a negative light altogether

When I reality test with clients about their assumptions of their partner’s negative responses and they actually have those conversations in session they find out things like: 

Their partner gave a negative response to helping with the kiddos' bath time once when they were stressed from work, and if they could do it all over again they’d respond differently. 

The assumption that was made in this case was that helping in the evenings was not going to happen, and one partner just assumed all responsibility without asking for help due to one negative response. 

One partner didn't want to talk about vacation planning one evening because they’d just had an issue at work with a coworker who typically covers for them, and didn’t feel comfortable asking for coverage at that particular time. 

The assumption that was made here was that vacations weren’t a priority for this person, and their partner was afraid to broach the subject. After further conversation in session it turned out this wasn’t the case, and once things were running smoother with the above mentioned coworker, vacation planning could easily resume. 

One negative response from your partner should not mean you’ll always receive that response in similar scenarios, and it could just be situational. 

So have the conversations. Make the requests. Don’t assume you know exactly how your partner will respond and get into a rut of negative sentiment override.

If you’d like help improving the communication in your relationship, we are here and eager to help! Click here to schedule your free 15-minute phone consultation and get hooked up with one of our amazing therapists who can walk you through improving your relationship.