Do You Wonder Why You and Your Partner Are Together?

Month: October 2016

Do You Wonder Why You and Your Partner Are Together?

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One way of understanding the driving forces behind common relationship problems such as high conflict, communication difficulties and lack of intimacy is to ask what is arguably the most fundamental question of all: ‘Why are we together?’

It seems almost too obvious to ask, doesn’t it? However it is striking how few people who seek relationship counselling have ever asked themselves or their partner that question. People are often unable to easily answer that question for themselves or predict how their partner would answer and sometimes people are afraid to ask.

 

Two further complications exist here. Firstly, people’s true reasons for being in the relationship are not necessarily their stated ones. Secondly, each person’s perception of why their partner is with them does not necessarily match their partner’s stated reasons. It can, understandably, be a very delicate topic. Nevertheless, open exploration of the answers to this big question can reveal a great deal about why people behave as they do in their relationships and also which insecurities or sensitivities may be present in the relationship.

There could be a range of reasons why two people choose to be in a relationship with each other, including love, attraction, convenience, practical considerations, personal val

couples counselling

ues, cultural or religious practices, etc. Most people would probably think that there are no universally right or good reasons. However, it is important for each person to understand them because they can influence each person’s emotional state and, accordingly, the overall tone or atmosphere of the relationship.

 

There are two dimensions involved in the question, ‘Why are you together?’ Firstly, how you feel about why you are with your partner and secondly, how you feel about why your partner is with you.

Here are a few reasons that are commonly expressed in counselling. Consider how closely these match either your reasons or what you imagine your partner’s to be:

• We are soul mates.
• We made the commitment of marriage.
• He or she is special to me.
• We’ve been together for a long time.
• I wouldn’t want to be alone or single.
• I’m not sure there is anyone else out there for me.
• For the children’s sakes.
• I don’t like to give up on things easily.
• My partner or I would have to leave the country if we separated.
• I haven’t the strength/courage to end it.
• We used to be so in love.
• He or she has such a lovely family.
• He or she really needs me.

Obligation and desire

The above reasons could be arranged into two categories fitting the two primary types of motivation: desire (attraction to something positive) or obligation (avoidance of some sort of negative consequence). So you could ask yourself if you have an overall sense of being motivated to be with your partner out of desire, obligation or perhaps a bit of both. If you had to choose only one reason for the two of you to be together, what would it be?

When I explore this issue in counselling, most people report that many of their reasons for being in the relationship are to do with obligations. However, people also often add that they would hope that they are with their partner due to desire, due to their partner having a special or unique quality that they hold dear. Similarly, they hope that their partner is also with them primarily due to desire rather than obligation. A lack of desire – or the perception of it – can strike at the heart of a relationship and can lead to hypersensitivity, defensiveness, insecurity and misunderstanding.

What to do if obligation outweighs desire

If you or your partner is in your relationship primarily due to obligation and if you are uncomfortable with this, can you influence the relationship so that you are more motivated by desire? Perhaps you need to remind yourself of what attracted you both to each other when you first met – before the trials and tribulations of life complicated things or before you disappointed each other one too many times. What would you need to do to create or recapture some of the conditions that allow desire to flourish? What would each of you regard as quality time together? What expression of love would you and your partner value the most? If both people are willing and able to make the right sort of behavioural changes, it may be possible to restore the missing element of desire.

 

If you’re looking for help with your relationship from one of our experienced psychologists across Australia, please contact us.

 

 

 

OUR MAJOR MARRIAGE COUNSELLING LOCATIONS:

See all of our Relationship Counselling Melbourne locations.

See all of our Relationship Counselling Brisbane locations.

See all of our Relationship Counselling Perth locations.

See all of our Relationship Counselling Adelaide locations.

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Did Your Relationship Start on Rocky Ground?

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Sometimes one or both people in a relationship struggle to come to terms with the conditions under which it was formed.

Common examples are where:

• trust breaches occurred

• one or both people were already in a committed relationship

• one or both people were in a dysfunctional state such as drug-affected, unwell, or in some sort of crisis

• there was an unplanned pregnancy

• there were some other difficult situational factors such as an illness, injury or a death.

In such circumstances, meeting one another could have been experienced as fraught, upsetting, complex, controversial or shameful in some way, contributing to a sense of the relationship being somehow sullied or spoiled before it had the chance to develop. The memories or perceived impact of these beginnings could seem to be ‘hanging over’ the relationship creating a negative atmosphere and the potential for further damage to be caused.

Regret about the way the relationship was formed can be heightened by a wish that you and your partner had some version of a normal or acceptable beginning, or perhaps even a ‘fairytale’ one that you might have encountered in novels or movies – the type that many people grow up believing or at least hoping will happen to them. These sorts of regrets and fantasies are understandable as it is the nature of the mind to dwell on the past and create idyllic alternative scenarios.

What to do about it

Couples who feel that they missed out on a normal or fairytale beginning to their relationship, yet who seem to have come to terms with it do at least two things well. Firstly, they fa

relationship rocky ground

ce the issue head on. As with so many relationship problems, the key is to develop insights into your own and the other person’s experience. It’s a good idea to encourage each other to tell the story, uninterrupted, of how your relationship was formed. This way each person can develop their understanding of what their partner is carrying with them. There’s no need to try to persu

ade your partner that it wasn’t that bad, only to let them know that you are trying to understand how it might have been for them.

Secondly, these couples give careful thought to how they present the beginnings of the relationship to people outside it. There are three options. The first is to keep the

story completely private. The second is to tell everyone the whole story ‘warts and all’. The third is to agree upon a story that is somewhere between these two options.

An alternative approach is to tell different stories to different people depending on how well you think they’ll understand and not judge you. The important thing here is that each of you is comfortable with how your relationship is being portrayed to others and that your story is consistent with your partners.

A narrative therapy technique

A narrative therapy technique that can be beneficial to couples who are grappling with perceived difficult beginnings to their relationship is known as ‘re-writing the narrative’ or ‘re-storying the relationship’. This is a creative exercise that involves partners expressing how they wished they had met. You can make it as long and elaborate as you like. Just have fun with it. What happens for some couples is that these invented narratives can sit alongside the actual narrative. Over time, especially if you keep embellishing the story with each re-telling, the invented memories may become as compelling and important as your actual ones. I mean, memories are just constructions anyway!

For example:

‘I’d like to think we were secret childhood sweethearts and when we finally ‘came out’, we resisted all comers who tried to break us up.’

Or

‘We actually met at the Beijing Olympic Village after we’d both won gold in the gymnastics. We then retired and spent the next six months as professional dancers on a cruise ship in the Pacific before eloping in Vanuatu.’

Remember, just as many fairytales have tragic endings, many relationships that have a non-fairytale beginning end up being fantastic and fulfilling, perhaps even more so as a result of your overcoming the initial adversity together.

If you’re looking for help with your relationship from one of our experienced psychologists across Australia, please contact us.

 

 

 

OUR MAJOR MARRIAGE COUNSELLING LOCATIONS:

See all of our Relationship Counselling Melbourne locations.

See all of our Relationship Counselling Brisbane locations.

See all of our Relationship Counselling Perth locations.

See all of our Relationship Counselling Adelaide locations.

See all of our Relationship Counselling Canberra locations.

See all of our Relationship Counselling Sydney locations.

What Are You Like In a Relationship?

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Successful couples counselling requires at least one person to make significant behavioural changes that their partner recognises as beneficial. However, the relationships that make the most progress in counselling are the ones in which both people make such changes.

 

In order to understand which behavioural changes you need to make in order to bring out the best in your relationship, you need to develop the most important relationship skill – self-awareness. To help you do this, the best possible question you can ask your partner is ‘What am I like for you?’ You want to know more about what you are like generally but, more specifically, what you are like for your partner so that you can make changes that they will value.

 

Early in counselling, this question is likely to be furthest from people’s minds. Often, when people are in relationship crisis they are so bothered by their partner’s behaviour that this becomes their overriding focus. The standard pattern is that each individual builds a case for why their partner is the problem and enlists the counsellor to persuade them to see reason and then change. Their reasons may be valid, however, if both parties see the other as the problem and neither is willing to make any behavioural changes themselves, obviously no progress can occur.

 

The question ‘What am I like for you’ may also be perceived as a risky one to ask. Naturally, after your partner finishes singing your praises, you are likely to hear one or two criticisms and perhaps something pretty confronting about yourself – maybe something you’ve never heard before or can even believe. But you need to listen and you need to understand. How else can you meet their needs and, therefore, get the best out of them?

 

Preparing the ground and following through

 

Questions can be asked for many reasons, for example, in order to learn, to persuade or to exert power. Are you asking so that you can make a point, or so you have an opportunity to criticise your partner? Are you asking so that you can persuade them that you are fine the way you are? Ideally, you are asking the question in order to learn how to improve yourself and the relationship.

 

Once you’ve clarified your intention and when the timing feels right, you are ready to talk to your partner. You may choose to do this either in counselling or outside of it but, if at all possible, it is advisable to choose a ‘peace time’ situation.

 

Say to your partner something like, ‘I want to work on myself and us. I want to understand more about what I am like to be with for you?’ You may then wish to follow up with some more specific questions, such as:

 

  • What am I like when I’m tired?
  • What am I like when I’m stressed?
  • What am I like as a communicator?
  • How good a listener am I?
  • What am I like to argue with?
  • What am I like as a lover?
  • What am I like when I’m in a good mood?
  • How approachable am I?

 

Bear in mind that you are not asking the other person for an objective assessment of who you are ‘in reality’, rather you are asking about their perception of you, how they experience you. So, of course, their response tells you something about them also. For example, everyone will take your style of argumentation differently, depending on how sensitive they are to conflict, and everyone will experience your expressions of love differently, depending on what they value.

 

The next step for you is to receive their answers constructively. Your ability to do this will naturally be affected by the content of what they say. Hopefully, if your timing is right and they have the impression that you are asking for the right reasons, they should respond constructively and relatively dispassionately.

 

If you find their answers difficult in some way, for example, offensive, obscure, vague or overwhelming, be patient and ask for clarification. Perhaps you could ask them for one or two illustrations of your behaviours. However, don’t get too caught up in the details. This is not an opportunity for you to argue with them. Indeed, if you react this way you will just be confirming a perception they may have of you as being a difficult person! Furthermore, you cannot really logically argue with their perceptions, even if you think they are extreme. Even if you think your partner is particularly judgmental or sensitive you need to adapt to these ‘conditions’.

 

If you are lucky, your partner may then ask you the same question!

 

If you’re looking for help with your relationship from one of our experienced psychologists across Australia, please contact us.

 

 

 

 

OUR MAJOR MARRIAGE COUNSELLING LOCATIONS:

See all of our Relationship Counselling Melbourne locations.

See all of our Relationship Counselling Brisbane locations.

See all of our Relationship Counselling Perth locations.

See all of our Relationship Counselling Adelaide locations.

See all of our Relationship Counselling Canberra locations.

See all of our Relationship Counselling Sydney locations.