"To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world."
- Unknown
Moving from Hurt and Anger to Love
Our brains are amazing. Powerful, inventive, creative, compassionate. But sometimes our brains react to memories or misperceptions as though there is a real and terrible threat. This is the old "fight-or-flight" response. In close relationships, you may find that you (or your partner) become terribly jealous even though you know you are deeply loved. You may become furious when your partner leaves the toothpaste cap off again, even though you've told them over and over how much it bothers you. You may feel desolate or hopeless when they constantly over-spend while you are trying to save. Or you may feel over-controlled when they sock every penny away and you just want to enjoy life a little in the present.
Throw kids and in-laws into the mix, and it's a wonder people stay married or in long-term relationships at all. When you react with anger or hurt you may accidentally set off the same feelings in your partner. What you really need is for them to stay calm, hear what you're saying and find a way to make it right again. But somehow, the intensity of your feelings is contagious. When you express anger or hurt, trying to get help and feel better, they get defensive and either fight back or withdraw.
Over time, the experience of constant fighting or emotional withdrawal can become a pattern - one that's hard to break. And the stress of this pattern erodes trust and love.
You and/or your partner may:
- avoid talking about certain things
- walk on eggshells with each other
- spend more time alone (even in the same house)
- stop having sex
- spend more time at work
- look for emotional support in friends or family instead of each other
- look for affection from kids instead of each other
Left unchecked, the relationship may disintegrate. Someone may have an affair - sexual or emotional. You may find a way to remain civil and semi-functional, but lead separate lives. This is an emotional divorce. Or there may come an actual divorce.
It doesn't have to be this way. In fact, when couples push each other's emotional buttons, it's usually an opportunity to heal old hurts in each other - hurts that may have been there, even before you met.
The key is understanding that when your husband, wife or partner gets angry, jealous, resentful, cold, distant or otherwise yucky, they are not trying to hurt you. They are having an intense and painful fear reaction. It may not look or sound like fear. And it may not make sense. But their whole body is having this intense response, and they need your help to calm down.
If you're calm enough yourself, and remember that they need your help, amazing things can happen. Listening non-defensively and letting them know you're really hearing their pain, that their pain makes sense to you - even though you may not share it or agree with it will help them feel safer and start to calm down themselves. When you can empathize with your partner's deeper fear (abandonment, rejection, feeling less than or not good enough, for example) they will feel soothed and deeply loved. The problems that used to cause so much pain, become opportunities to understand each other better and deepen the love and bond between you.
If your partner's fear-anger-hurt response triggers your own, then it's time to go to couples therapy. You need a calm, centered and neutral person to help you learn what's happening emotionally, underneath all the defenses. Borrowing the therapist's calm, you can learn to listen without getting all riled up. When you see your partner is learning to listen too, then it becomes safer to open up to them. What was once a negative spiral can become a positive spiral.
If any of these patterns are happening in your marriage or relationship, don't wait get help. problems don't get better by ignoring them. Couples therapy really can work, but if you wait too long, the stress and pain can erode loving feelings so much that one or both of you gives up trying. Every fight, every hurtful word, every closed door makes it harder to rebound. There are so many options for therapy in the bay area. I'm very happy to meet with both of you and see if I can be helpful. And if I'm not the right person to help, I'm happy to learn more about what you need and put you in touch with the right resources for you.
Read another one of Julie's Articles for Couples
Tools to Strengthen Relationship
Understanding Jealousy
Control Issues
Making Your Relationship a Safe Haven
return to couples page
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