Chapter I: The Cost of Change  

*Author's Note - This article is actually a chapter from a book I am now writing.  I would be grateful for your feedback if you would please send it to me on the form at the bottom of this page.

             If you picked up this book because of your own relationship, then I can already deduce two important things about you.  First, I know that you’re in pain. I’m not talking about the obviously physical just-cut-your-finger kind of pain.  I’m talking about the kind of emotional pain that hurts somewhere in your spirit and soul.  You may even feel that your life wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. 

             Even though your pain is emotional, if you carefully examine it you will find that it can be described in physical terms. For example, if your relationship is in acute crisis then the pain may feel sharp and piercing or perhaps “gut-wrenching”.  If your frustration is chronic then the pain may feel like a dull ache or maybe like a more subtle empty, hungry kind of sensation.  Another possibility is that it may be a heavy, stifling, suffocating kind of feeling. You may associate it with your chest, your heart, the pit of your stomach, the back of your neck or even your head.  But whatever it feels like, wherever you feel it, you’re in pain. 

The second thing I know about you is that you still harbor hope.  Maybe it’s not a lot of hope.  Perhaps it’s just the tiniest fraction of hope but it’s hope nonetheless.  After all, this isn’t a book about divorce, suicide or homicide.  You’re probably also hoping that this book will give you help that is efficient and effective.  You didn’t pick up a book with this title because you thought it would be a tome of esoteric trivia.  You want this help to be practical because you’re concerned about results. You don’t want mild or vague practicality.  You want nuts and bolts practicality. You’re probably tired of skimming the plethora of self-help books that speak of the 8 principles of this and the 6 rules of that but that still leave you with unsettling questions of how to get from here to there.  Questions like: “HOW can we work on emotional intimacy when all we do is fight?” or  “HOW can we stop fighting after it starts?” or  “HOW can we rebuild this relationship when all I ever get from my partner is the feeling that I’m never enough?!!”

I promise you, this book will get practical.  You can expect to learn the following:

        ·        The feeding and proper care of your relationship

        ·        Common myths that hinder your relationship:

        ·        Common scripts that threaten your relationship:

             What to do about common destructive syndromes such as:

        ·        The Role-bound, emotional starvation syndrome

        ·        The Pursuer-evader syndrome

        ·        The Initiator-dependent syndrome

        ·        The Delinquent helper syndrome

        ·        The “Sneaky” spending syndrome

        ·        Conflicts about money

        ·        Conflicts about sex

        ·        Non-violent raging

        ·        Affairs

        ·        Other toxic syndromes

           You will learn about the five most common forms of conflict and best strategy for handling each one:

        ·        Conflict of interest

        ·        Broken contract

        ·        Boundary intrusion

        ·        Neurotic association

        ·        Emotional depletion

              You will also learn the best way to approach conflict in order to improve your chances for positive results.

             In this book you can learn all of these things.  You may even learn them thoroughly.  Your perspective and understanding may become crystal clear.  And even if your vision becomes clear, even if you clearly see your past mistakes and now see the better path, even if all this happens and you rely on this knowledge but only on this knowledge to help you, then you will probably fail. That’s right, fail.  Not that I want you to fail. In fact I’m going to do my very best to help you successfully improve your relationship.  But if you rely only on your insight and knowledge to help you then you will probably fail because the biggest obstacle we all face in emotional intimacy is not our ignorance.  It’s our fear.  And we usually fear ourselves most of all. If you’re going to successfully improve your marriage, then you will need more than knowledge. You will additionally need courage and faith to help you face what you fear most about yourself.

            In addition to teaching you new behavioral strategies, this book will also help you to prepare for the emotional challenge ahead.  Most self-help relationship books shy away from this topic.  A few exhort you to get your external life in order and focus on your interests or behavior. That’s OK advice but I’m more concerned that you get your internal life in order.  Relationship change strategies usually fail a person who is emotionally unprepared.  In fact, most surveys of couples in marriage counseling indicate only a third of them report significant improvement.  My own interpretation of this disappointing percentage is that most people unknowingly sabotage their attempts at marital improvement.  And they do so because of emotions they don’t understand or even recognize.  The reason why these emotions are so enigmatic is because we don’t want to talk about them.  We're afraid of them.  We collectively keep each other in the dark because we all act as if these emotions hardly exist.  The emotions I’m talking about are both shame and the fear of shame.  And an interesting thing about shame is that, like mold, it grows in the dark. 

The Great “No No

        If there were ever such a thing as a worldwide conspiracy it would be this: That no one wants to admit that we are all influenced by fear throughout our everyday existence….that along with the more positive emotions such as love, curiosity, sensuality, and the desire for pride and self-actualization, we are similarly motivated by the fear of shame that both nips at our heels and narrows our vision of opportunity.  But a conspiracy involves people getting together to covertly communicate.  What do we call it when people are secretive about something and they covertly discourage communication?  Perhaps an “Un-conspiracy” like the “Un-Cola?”  Somehow, that doesn’t quite get it.  For want of a better name, I’ve resigned myself to calling it "The Great No No.” If anyone has a better suggestion I’m open to it.

         At this point, let me invite you to get a more personal feel for this subject. The following self-exam lists personal challenges that we all experience to some degree.  The items are framed in the collective first person “We” instead of “You” because I didn’t want you to feel individually targeted as if the rest of the human race doesn’t struggle along with you.

          The fear that we’ve been discussing is the fear of shame.  We both fear and try to avoid the shameful sense that we’re unimportant, not valuable, unlovable, and undeserving.  Shame takes different forms but in this context it’s the pain of feeling that we’re somehow less than we’re supposed to be. While guilt is about doing, shame is about being.  It’s about whether we perceive our very existence as being important.  And this fear of shame plays out on a totally symbolic level.  In our civilization we no longer fear giant sloths, cave bears, and saber-tooths.  Instead, we fear the diminishment of our symbolic selves.  We fear the symbolic meaning of a mistake, a poor performance, a disapproving glare, a sarcastic comment, a forgotten date, a raised eyebrow, a bored sigh, a raised voice, an irrelevant interruption in the middle of our talking, inequity in our relationship, having another person tell us how we feel, the lack of pursuit by a person who says they still love us, and especially the experience of not being asked about what we want or feel.    

Another reason why we’re unaware of this fear is that the feeling can be very subtle.  It’s usually not the experience of strong terror. It’s more often a subtle anxiety that leads us to react quickly before we even become aware of it.  Think about whether you’ve ever experienced the following:  

·        You didn’t apply for a position or opportunity because you thought you might fail even though there was a possibility for success.  (Probable dynamic: You were afraid that failure would give you the shameful feeling that you didn’t deserve what you wanted.)

·        Another person directly expressed to you their deep affection.  You became uneasy and changed the subject.  (Probable dynamic: You were afraid that you wouldn’t be able to say or do the right thing in return.  You were afraid of feeling the shame of an inadequate emotional performance.)

·        You didn’t pursue a private interest of yours because your partner wanted you to stay home.  You really didn’t want to stay home but you didn’t want to cause any friction.  (Probable dynamic: You were afraid of your partner’s wrath and/or accusations of your “selfishness”.  More importantly, you were afraid of having to utilize your anger in a conflict situation.  You were afraid that your own anger would make you appear “ugly”, “selfish”, or “unloving.”)

·        At the end of the day, you think about taking your coffee cup to a private place to relax and think.  However, you quickly change your mind because you have more important things to do.  (Probable dynamic: If this happens very occasionally, you may just have pressing responsibilities.  If it happens more frequently, you’re probably afraid of letting go of responsibilities because they’re your defense.  Your activity helps you to avoid feeling shame.  Although you tell yourself that relaxing would be too indulgent, you’re actually afraid to stop feeling proud of your accomplishments.  You feel driven to accomplish things because you’re afraid of otherwise feeling unimportant or inadequate.  Many people start feeling depressed and unimportant if they stop frenetic activity.) 

·        When you sometimes get up in the middle of the night, you think about how quickly time is passing in your life. You feel some of your losses more acutely.  You fear your eventual death and you wonder about the overall meaning of your life.  However, you never get around to sharing these thoughts and feelings with your partner.  (Probable dynamic:  You’re afraid of talking about these feelings and sounding silly or weird.  You’re afraid of your partner’s possible reaction if you did share them.  You’re afraid that they might confirm that you’re abnormal or perhaps intellectually inadequate for attempting such a weighty discussion.) 

·        You’re feeling taken for granted in your relationship.  You indict your partner for a long list of past wrongs.  You demand for them to change instead of requesting that they sit down with you for some planning sessions.  (Probable dynamic: You covertly fear that you’re too dependent.  You’re afraid that being too dependent makes you weak and defective.  Therefore, you don’t want to appear weak by making a request.  By making demands, you get to view yourself as being strong.  By indicting your partner for past transgressions, you get to feel superior as well.  More importantly, you protect yourself from having to experience your personal request being ignored or refused.  Demands don’t hurt as much if they’re rejected.  A request that is ignored, forgotten, or refused is more likely to stir up the sense that you expected too much for yourself.  After all, is seems that if you were truly important to your partner, they would have been more responsive.) 

·        You indict your partner for not being sufficiently available to the children.  You omit the fact that you especially want your partner to be available for you.  (Probable dynamic: You’re ashamed of your dependence again.  You’re afraid of a more obvious and therefore painful rejection compared to the subtle one you’re already experiencing.  While it’s true that you’re concerned about your children’s welfare, it’s also true that the children are to some extent being used as surrogates for your own needs.  You’re afraid of feeling ashamed if those needs were to be exposed and somehow derogated.) 

·        You want your partner to “help” with the household responsibilities.  You’re critical of him not helping enough.  (Probable dynamic:  It doesn’t occur to you that you’re holding onto authority by delegating tasks.  You’re unaware of treating your partner as a subordinate.  You resist the loss of authority that would come if you and your partner were to negotiate task ownership as equals.  After all, it seems that the household should all be your domain.  There’s a subtle threat of covert shame if you were to give away some of your control.  Your partner’s different performance standards might negatively reflect back on you.  Besides, you don’t like giving up your pride in organizing all aspects of your household.)   

            All of these situations involve the fear of shame.  It’s subtle and usually operates well beyond our awareness.  What’s more relevant to the current discussion is that our fear of shame inhibits our ability to change our behavior or negotiate changes from our partner.  If our relationship were a car, then our fear of shame would be the emergency brake stuck on hold.  We might move forward but it would be with great resistance.   

            I’ve chosen the following case example because it’s a good illustration of how the fear of shame can influence our interactions far beyond our awareness.

Anatomy of a quarrel

             Jim and Marie came for marriage counseling to increase communication and to help Jim with his anger management.  Jim acknowledged that he had a short fuse and that his raging was sometimes excessive.  This was probably accentuated by his tall imposing physique.  He was able to keep his anger in check for his upper management position but didn’t do nearly so well at home.  In contrast,  Marie was a rather quiet and petite school teacher.  She had emotionally distanced from Jim for the past several years.  The couple had been married twenty two years with three children, two of whom were still living at home.  There had been no separations, no violence, and no history of affairs.  After a half dozen counseling sessions, the couple reported their relationship and communication had improved. 

        During one of the later counseling sessions, Marie reported a recent quarrel that had occurred like this:  The whole family, except for the oldest son, had been together for their big Sunday dinner.  Jim and Marie were both upset about having recently heard that the oldest son had lied to them.  The son had taken a loan from them under false pretenses.   He did not have a job as he had previously led them to believe.  During dinner, Jim ranted and raved about the situation.  Although Marie was similarly upset about the news, she was also concerned that their other two children were present for their Sunday dinner ritual.  For her,  Jim’s angry venting was spoiling a ritual for family cohesion.  Having already learned a new tool from counseling, she asked Jim to come with her into a different room to speak with her privately.  Marie then privately told Jim how his anger was excessive and was spoiling the dinner.  Jim protested that he was entitled to have his feelings and she shouldn’t demand that he give them up.  Marie persisted in telling him that she wanted the family to enjoy their dinner without turmoil.  When they returned to dinner, Jim was quiet for a while but eventually lapsed back into his angry venting.  After dinner, Jim and Marie continued to quarrel.  However, there was now a new dimension.  After the dinner, Marie tried to escape Jim’s anger by retreating to another room.  Jim followed her and kept up his diatribe.  Marie then tried to escape to yet another room but to no avail.  Jim kept on following her and kept on ranting.  Jim wasn’t criticizing Marie but rather the oldest son.  However, Marie had had enough and didn’t want to hear any more.  The quarrel ended when Marie finally had to drive one of the children to an event and she escaped from the household. 

             During the counseling session when Marie and Jim were describing their recent quarrel, I made some interesting observations.  One was that Jim didn’t want to talk about the issue of Marie’s right to retreat from his anger.  When I kept raising the issue, Jim’s facial expression was that of bored disgust.  He frequently diverted attention back to the subject of his son’s deceit.  This was a seemingly unintelligent response from a man who worked in a human relations field.  I wondered what was really going on with him.   Marie then brought up the fact that Thanksgiving dinner was coming up soon and she didn’t want a repeat performance of Jim’s anger at the table.  I invited Marie to work that out with Jim right there in the session.  She then turned to Jim and bluntly stated how she didn’t want the issue of the oldest son raised at all.  She turned back to me as if she had finished what I had asked her to do.  At that point something became clear to me and I asked her about how she had negotiated for Jim’s cessation of ranting during the initial dinner incident.  When she had him off privately in the side room, had she actually asked him for a commitment?  Marie’s first response was confusion.  After a bit more discussion she finally admitted “no.”  I then asked Marie to turn toward Jim and actually ask if he would agree to no angry expressions at the Thanksgiving dinner table.  Marie halted and turned back with a bewildered look on her face.  The ensuing dialogue went something like this:

            “This is hard.  I’m afraid I’m going to be hurt if he actually says he’s going to do something and then he doesn’t.  That would be really painful.”   

            I replied “Yes, I imagine that might be true.  And you don’t feel as vulnerable if you merely state your expectations or throw them at him, do you? You feel a lot more vulnerable asking him for something with the possibility that you might be rejected somehow.  If he forgets you, he kind of drops you.  I would guess that even if he rejects your request outright, you’d take it like a personal rejection – or am I wrong about that?  Tell me if I’m wrong."

            “No, you’re right.  That’s how I would feel.”

            I continued:  “That’s really a kind of fear.  It’s subliminal but your reaction just now indicates that you don’t ask for a commitment because you’re afraid.   Do you think that the same fear was operating that night after the dinner incident?  I mean you didn’t actually ask for a commitment then either did you?”

            Marie leapfrogged ahead a giant step at this point.  We had had previous discussions about the possible influence of her uninvolved parents when she was a child.

            “You know it makes sense but I guess I really didn’t realize it at the time.  Remember we talked before about how when I grew up my parents really ignored me.  I didn’t ask for anything back then either.  I couldn’t.  It was no use.”     

            I tried to give her support. “And it helped you to survive.  It really fit back then.  It helped you survive it without getting overwhelmed with pain.  For a little child, feeling rejected is almost like feeling annihilated.  But that was then and this is now.  Go ahead and ask Jim this time.  Ask him about Thanksgiving dinner.  Give him an opportunity to get involved with you.”

            Marie proceeded to do a commendable job of asking for a commitment.  Of course by this time Jim was really primed.  He even articulated back to her his detailed commitment to avoid expressing anger during Thanksgiving dinner.  Marie was pleased.

            The next part of the session focused on how Marie had originally complicated the original argument by confronting Jim about his anger’s intensity.  I pointed out to Marie that Jim’s poor timing in ranting during the dinner was a valid issue.  However, why was she evaluating its intensity?  I confronted Marie that Jim had been correct in one respect.  He accurately perceived that she was trying to invalidate his feelings.  When she did that, she ruined her chances for successfully confronting him about his timing.  Marie was perplexed.  She asked if it was really all right for him to get so angry and loud? 

            “Did he attack you at all?  Did he hit you or threaten you?  Did he use sarcasm on you?” I asked.

              “No”

             “Well if the two of you had been alone and he wasn’t intruding into your privacy and there was no dinner to be disrupted, then would you have been OK with his intense anger? You know… if the two of you were just privately discussing your son?”

              She replied, “I really don’t know, probably not.  I don’t think I’ll ever get comfortable when he gets like that.  Is it really OK for him to get like that?…….I really don’t know.  I’m not sure I really know what normal is or what I really should expect.”

            Marie’s comment about not knowing normalcy was a surefire indicator that she was struggling with her past.  We talked about that family background: about how her parents yelled and sometimes got violent, about how her mother often hit her, and about the near total absence of loving attention by both parents.  Marie agreed that she associated Jim’s intense anger and loud expression with the lack of safety she experienced as a child.  We discussed how some people are relatively comfortable around their partner’s intense anger because they’ve never experienced violence.  She eventually accepted the interpretation that her parents’ violence had left her over-reactive to her husband’s non-violent anger.  Marie and I discussed how she would need to accept her husband’s anger.  She would also need to get very good at retreating from  Jim in situations when she would start to feel too uncomfortable.  

            The remaining piece of the puzzle was Jim’s tendency to follow and intrude when Marie wanted to retreat.  Even if Marie were to accept that Jim had “a right to his feelings” (as he termed it),  Jim would still intrude on her privacy when she would try to retreat during future episodes.  At this point, I figured that Marie’s preceding disclosures might have made Jim less defensive.  I decided to try a new tack.

            “Jim, what’s the story on your following Marie when she’s trying to calm herself down?”

            Jim thought for a moment before replying.  “I just didn’t want to leave it before she could understand.  I could tell from what she was saying that she didn’t understand the situation.  I didn’t want to end our discussion with a lack of understanding.”

            “But Jim, at that point she was no longer listening.  She was hearing your anger and reacting to that instead of your ideas.  You would have never gotten her understanding by continuing with your ranting, especially by violating her privacy.” 

            “I know , I know.  But you asked me what was going on back then and I told you.  I had this very strong frustration that I wasn’t being understood.  I just couldn’t leave it like that.”

            I took a chance. “So you couldn’t leave it because that’s a very painful feeling, an almost unbearable feeling for you …..to not be understood about something you feel strongly about….and then to be left, maybe that plays in there too.  How about it Jim?  How about the possibility that you’ve felt that before?”  I watched Jim closely because something about his demeanor indicated we were onto something important.  I continued pressing.  “Where does that come from?  Who used to do that?”  Jim’s sudden stillness and inward gaze confirmed my hunch.  “Who was it Jim…..who was it?”  I waited and was determined to say nothing until Jim answered me.  . 

            In the tension of the moment, Marie’s patience abandoned her first.  She blurted out the answer for her partner as is all too common among couples in counseling:  “It’s his dad!  He used to tell me his Dad would yell and scream and then leave home for days at a time.”

            By now, Jim was beginning to mobilize. He also probably didn’t want his wife to continue talking authoritatively about his most vulnerable subject. He echoed Marie:

            “It was my father.  He was a bad drunk and he’d just take off for days, usually after he got real mad about something.”  He nodded while saying this, then turned silent and continued with that inward looking kind of expression with his eyes not focussing on anything around him.  He remained still while I picked up the conversation.

            “Let me guess at something Jim.  Back then could you talk to him at all?  Could you ever get him to understand you?

            Jim’s facial expression was saying a lot.  In addition to the change in his face coloration, the telltale glint of welling tears were beginning to show along his lower eye lids.  By now his voice had become more “breathy” from painful emotion and the tightening in his diaphragm. 

              “No……  I never could get him to listen…..especially when he was angry.  Everything  came down from him but nothing could go back the other way.  I didn’t dare….not when he was angry.  He was a real rage-aholic.  An alcoholic and rage-aholic too.

              “So Dad would rant and rage and he would act in such a way you could never get to be understood by him….…..and then he’d up and leave you. Was that how it was?  Did I get that right?”

              Jim didn’t answer.  He just sat there, teary-eyed, looking miserable.

              I continued.  “It’s a heck of a coincidence… but you know it’s really not coincidence don’t you.  I mean you can’t stand for Marie to leave you without your being understood.  It has both elements there.  You can’t stand it when you’re not understood and you can’t stand to be left.  So you avoid feeling that old awful feeling of being worthless, unimportant, and like a nothing ….. but you avoid it in a desperate kind of way.  You continue in your raging and you don’t allow Marie to have her privacy to collect herself.  Tell me if I’m off-base.”

              Jim replied very solemnly:  “No.  You’re not off-base.  In fact, I think you’re hitting the nail right on the head.  I just never looked at it like that before.  He continued to reflect.  After a while he concluded, “I’ve got a lot to think about.”

              The rest of the session flowed with understanding and cooperation.  We all now had a common model for what had really transpired during the day of the infamous dinner quarrel.  The blaming had stopped and both Jim and Marie were now receptive.  It was obvious that we had opened up issues for each that they would be examining for a long time to come.  Before they left, I gave each of them an assignment to practice certain self-suggestions.  I wanted them to consolidate their gains.  A lot of additional work would be required but we had established a good start.

            The reason why I present this little vignette is to further clarify the biggest obstacles to anyone attempting to change their own emotionally rooted behavior.  There’s a good metaphor to help you with your understanding.  Imagine that most of your relationship behaviors are like plants that have roots extending way down into deep emotions.  You can’t see all the roots but they’re vitally important to what happens up above on the surface.  In Jim and Marie’s case, what can we conclude about some of their obstacles?  Let’s take that same question from a different angle.  Let’s suppose both Jim and Marie were not in counseling and were trying to improve their communication on their own.  The central questions would then be the following:  

1)      What feelings would Marie have to endure if she were to start asking  Jim to commit to suppressing his anger in certain situations? 

2)      What feelings would Marie have to endure if she were to start accepting that it’s often OK for Jim to express his intense anger? 

3)      What feelings would Jim have to endure if he were to start accepting that it’s OK for Marie to disagree and “not understand” his position? 

4)      What feelings would Jim have to endure if he were to start accepting Marie’s retreat from his anger and her withdrawal to her privacy? 

              Taking it from the top, I would answer the questions like this:

             For #1 (Marie asking Jim to commit to suppressing his anger in certain situations):  Marie would have to wade through her fear that Jim would either refuse her request or possibly even ignore it.  But it wouldn’t be the actual refusal that she would fear.  She would be afraid of triggering her old shame of feeling unimportant and worthless.  She had originally felt that way about herself when her parents were self-absorbed and were oblivious to her need for attention.  She had worked many years to become a worthwhile and important human being.  She didn't want her worst fears confirmed: that she’s still the same little girl who isn’t worth being noticed.  It’s important to note that even with full knowledge of her fear’s origin she will still have it.  That’s because insight and awareness don’t prevent the triggering of painful shame in a person’s memory.  The latter is a neurological event.  Insight can help modulate the feeling but it doesn’t prevent it.  So, the simple version of my explanation is that Marie would have to endure the discomfort of subtle fear.  The technical term is anxiety but it’s still a type of fear.

            For #2  (Marie accepting that it’s often OK for Jim to express his intense anger): Marie would have to endure fear from two sources.  One is that she would fear the re-emergence of feeling inadequate and defective like she did when her mother became violent.  As a child, she made heroic efforts but could never be good enough to prevent the violence.  By the same childish logic, she was never good enough to stop her parent’s destructive fighting.  For Marie to begin accepting Jim’s intense anger, she might start feeling the same old shame that she is inadequate to bring about love and harmony in her family.  Even with new conscious knowledge that anger has a valid place, Marie would have to endure discomfort.  She would still be afraid that her feelings of defectiveness might re-emerge.   

            For #3  (Jim accepting that it’s OK for Marie to disagree and “not understand” his position):  Jim would have to endure the fear that he’s not sufficiently important to be noticed.  He would have to endure the covert fear that he’s once again letting himself be treated as an insignificant victim.  As a child, he had to hide thoughts and opinions.  He couldn’t afford triggering his father’s rage and disappearance from the family.  During these early years of hiding his symbolic self,  Jim accumulated a great sense of weakness and unimportance.    Now as an adult, he unconsciously fears the re-emergence of those old feelings.  To start accepting Marie’s disagreement would stir up the fear that she’s ignoring him just like his father did.  And that would stir up the fear that he’s still weak and unimportant. 

            For #4  (Jim accepting Marie’s retreat from his anger and her withdrawal to her privacy):  By now you can probably infer the answer from our past examples.  Marie’s withdrawal serves to stir up old emotions from when Jim’s father disappeared for days.  For Jim to start accepting Marie’s privacy, he would have to covertly be afraid of feeling worthless and powerless.  As a child, he felt worthless and powerless to prevent his father from abandoning the family for long stretches of time.  It’s not surprising that Marie’s withdrawal into privacy threatens to trigger Jim’s old shame.  Jim is afraid of feeling that old pain.  Again, it’s probably not a conscious and obvious fear.  It’s probably a vague kind of anxiety.  For Jim to be more accepting of Marie’s privacy he would have to wade through that anxiety. 

            Now let’s bring all of our discussion and all of these dynamics down to a simple conclusion.  For Jim and Marie to successfully change their conflict behavior they will each have to endure fear and anxiety.  It’s like the popular adage:  “No pain, No gain.”   As Jim and Marie change their behavior, each will be afraid of being overtaken by parts of themselves they’re trying to leave behind.  Knowledge, insight, and effort won’t be enough.  They will also need courage and faith.  The rest of us are no different in that regard.   

            At this point you may be thinking something like “Wait a minute.  I didn’t get beaten, I didn’t have parents who raged, and I didn’t have a parent who left for days at a time.  My parents loved me and treated me well.  All of this fear and shame stuff really doesn’t apply to me.”  If this is what you’re thinking, then you’re only partially correct.  You’re probably not as encumbered with old traumas as many of the people who show up for counseling.  But you’re only partially correct because it’s only a matter of degree.  All of us (except the purest of psychopaths) pick up shame along the way.  I presented Jim and Marie’s case here only because their dynamics were so simple and obvious.  For many of us, the origins of our shame are subtle.  We may have had the most perfect parents yet we were still exposed to smaller traumas.  We may have been exposed to the teasing of playmates, the occasions when our parents were too depressed or emotionally depleted to notice us, and times when we failed miserably to meet the expectations of our family and friends.  We may also have unconsciously adopted the shame of our parents.  Our parents may have been so ashamed of certain emotions that they never risked expressing them.  For example, they may have been so afraid of anger that they never disagreed, argued, or forcefully negotiated among themselves.  Perhaps they were loving parents but they never touched or verbally expressed their affection.  They may have felt so undeserving that they never took off time from work and responsibility to have fun.  None of us were so strong as children that we could avoid vicariously picking up some of our parents’ shame.  The stuff may be subtle but it’s powerful.

The danger of self-sabotage

             Propensity for shame, like pride, seems hard-wired into our emotional motherboards.  It’s embedded in our basic genetic endowment.  I’m tempted to start a long esoteric discussion about the evolutionary advantages of such an endowment.  The subject fascinates me but I’ll spare you from what would be my own indulgence.  Let it suffice to say that shame is nearly universal and the fear of shame is woven throughout our private daily experiences.  In an intimate relationship we feel most vulnerable because of our fear of shame.  We don’t want to “get our feelings hurt.”  But what does that expression really mean?  It’s unfortunate that we limit our self-awareness when we use that expression.  We don’t look to define exactly what feelings will be hurting and how we’re already afraid of them before they get conjured up.

            So what does all this have to do with practical improvement of your relationship?  After all, I had initially promised you practicality. OK, here’s something very practical to consider.  In my experience, the single biggest reason why counseled couples fail to improve their relationships is that they won’t do the work.  Either they won’t get started or they quickly stop working when they hit an uncomfortable feeling.  Only a minority will methodically persist despite uncomfortable shame charged emotions.  These emotions are often attached to beliefs and perceptions such as the following:

• I’m putting in more effort than my partner.  I’m being victimized so I’ll stop my efforts.

• My partner doesn’t really care about me.  Therefore, why should I care about them.  I’ll show them that I can be uncaring and independent too.

• My partner blames me.  I need to stand up for myself by blaming back.

• I just don’t have any free time to spend with my partner.  Why can’t he/she appreciate how hard I work for both of us.

• I initiate more suggestions than my partner.  I’m being taken for granted.   I’ll stop initiating until they do more.

• When I try to use self-suggestion to influence my emotions, I feel silly.  Most other people don’t do this silly stuff.  They use self-discipline.  I’ll stop being silly and I’ll try to act stronger like the others.

• My partner isn’t changing fast enough.  This isn’t working.  I’ll stop what I’m doing.

• My partner won’t give me any credit for changing.  They still won’t trust me.  Since it makes no difference to them, I’ll stop my efforts.

            Embedded throughout these perceptions are three fear driven beliefs that inhibit marital change.  The first one goes something like this: “If I’m not getting at least 50 % or if I’m giving any more than 50 %, then I’m a victim.  And if I allow myself to be a victim, then I’ll be unworthy.”   This fear of victimization is often so powerful that it tempts us to strike a pre-emptive emotional blow.  That way we can get “one up” at the beginning of the anticipated conflict we assume will occur anyway.  The second belief involves an inflated responsibility for being productive.  It may unconsciously dominate us by making us too busy with work or childcare to ever arrange private leisure.  This exaggerated sense of responsibility usually results from fearing that we’re unworthy if we’re not toiling away for pride.  Without hard work, we may feel uneasy and anxious.  Of course all this is very hard to consciously admit.  Instead, we may tell ourselves something like: “I just don’t have any free time because of everything I have to do.  We’ll eventually get around to having time together when things let up.”  We need to look within ourselves if the work burden never lets up and we can’t find free time.  Our blind spot could be that we’re too emotionally hamstrung to ever make time.  We may covertly feel that our private selves are not as important as our responsibilities.          

            The third common saboteur of marital recovery is the fear of being “silly.”  This fear inhibits us from trying something new.  There’s a particular irony about this fear.  The irony is that “feeling silly” often occurs when we’re experiencing our greatest growth.  The sense of silliness actually comes from contradicting old emotionally conditioned mandates for how we should be.  These are technically called schemas.  We feel silly when we begin to defy our old roles and old inhibitions.  The silliness comes to us because the old schemas have not yet been reconditioned.  If we continue to practice our new behavior, then the sense of silliness will eventually dissipate.  So to reiterate, feeling silly is often a sign that we’re beginning to grow in a new direction.

Inoculating yourself with faith and courage

Let me share a concern.  At this point in our discussion I am aware of how much I’ve dragged you over the coals of a very negative focus.  We’ve discussed fear, shame, and self-sabotage.  I’m just a bit concerned that I may be misinterpreted or prematurely judged.  Based on our preceding discussion, it may appear that I’m preoccupied only with the dark side of human nature.  Will the rest of the book be depressing?  Is this guy the Darth Vader of marital self-help authors?  

            Anyone who knows me well knows how much I believe in the power of love and spirituality.  My clients are used to me talking to them in such terms.  They also know several other important things.  They know that I don’t teach these concepts to promote my own religious beliefs.  They know that I teach them to help people unlock their own personal authority and creativity.  I have no need to promote a belief in a particular religion or a deity.  That’s not my concern.  My concern is that you learn to strengthen and effectively use the positive emotional forces that are already within yourself.  And you can’t effectively use those forces if you can’t use them methodically.  And you can’t use them methodically if you don’t know where and when to apply them.  And you can’t know where and when to apply them if you keep yourself in La La Land about the real obstacles within yourself.  That’s why I’ve risked such a negative focus early in this book.  My commitment is to be practical and it’s very practical to know the exact nature of the obstacles even if they are well hidden in yourself.

            It isn’t practical to use this chapter to detail all the different ways to apply faith and courage.  We’ll deal with some of those later.  What we can discuss are some general guidelines that will help.  If you want to avoid self-sabotage and thereby avoid becoming a part of the 2/3 statistic of couples who stay stuck, then work hard to adopt the following principles:

1)      Dare to have faith that you are larger than your conscious self.  Risk believing that there are other powerful and beneficial parts of yourself that help you beyond your conscious control.

2)      Give yourself permission to not be in total conscious control of your feelings. 

3)      Learn to influence your feelings instead of trying to control them. 

4)      Invite faith to give you courage and protection at the moment when your relationship begins to hurt or frighten you. 

5)      Accept, respect, and embrace your fears until they no longer diminish you. 

6)      Accept, respect, and embrace your dependence until it becomes your powerful ally. 

7)      Accept, respect, and embrace your anger until it becomes your beneficial tool.

These things aren't easy to do.  However, when we learn to do them we ‘re much better equipped to maintain emotional intimacy.  We’re better equipped to let go of our reactive defenses that perpetuate the old cycle:  defenses such as blaming, ridicule, raging, sarcasm, or just plain hiding.  When we apply the preceding principles, we’re more prepared to make constructive leaps of faith instead of destructive leaps of pride.  That’s a curious expression isn’t it? You’ve heard of the proverbial “leap of faith” but “leap of pride?”  What does that mean?  Think about it.  When we’re threatened or angry in our relationship, what do we do?  Of course we make leaps of pride. We do it to escape our shame.  We may leap to sarcasm or blame to accentuate how we’re on the superior side of the issue.  By contrasting ourselves with the crafted image of our partner’s inferiority, we’re leaping to a transient feeling of superiority.  Cheap pride!  When we raise our voices in an argument, we’re leaping to pride by displaying how important and noticeable we are.  When we try to show how little we care for our partner because we feel ignored, we’re trying to create an image of ourselves as being autonomous and strong.  Pride again.  A lot of what we do to sabotage marital change has to do with these little leaps of pride.  And when our partner does the same, we do a kind of dance in tandem – around and around, again and again. 

Leaping to faith affords us a passage out of the labyrinth of false pride.  It allows us to risk changes in our emotionally rooted behaviors.  But the faith to which I refer is not necessarily the same as “The leap of faith”.  This latter expression has by now been thoroughly claimed by the religious establishment.  As I previously said, promoting formal religion and deity worship isn't my concern.  I’m much more concerned with everyday leaps of faith, particularly in the context of intimate relationships.  When you look into your partner’s angry face and see their momentary contempt for you in their eyes, what’s going to save you?  What’s going to prevent you from feeling awash with shame, unlovability, and defectiveness?  What’s going to prevent you from desperately grasping at the straws of cheap pride already within your reach?  At that moment you really have a choice:  you will either choose control and pride or you will choose influence and faith.  And if you choose faith, it will need to be faith that you remain intrinsically connected to value, importance, and worthiness despite your partner’s contempt.  The faith you evoke will need to both support you and block the shame.

            How we make leaps of faith, how we maintain feelings of our own intrinsic worthiness, and how we apply this in our relationships will all be woven into our future discussions.  After all, the title of the current chapter is only “The Cost of Change.”  By now you’re probably clear about what that cost is.  To change our relationships, we must struggle with what we fear most about ourselves.  We get to feel both fear and shame while we carry on that struggle.  We get to make difficult choices between easy pride and more tenuous faith.  But while fear and shame are the cost of change, hope and faith are its inspiration.

I would greatly appreciate your suggestions and feedback below                  

ã COPYRIGHT (12/2000) Allied Psychological Services.  All rights reserved.

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