Marriage can be difficult sometimes

There are two sides to a healthy marriage; the roommate side, or how well you live together and navigate daily responsibilities, and the intimate or sexual side, where you connect as a couple. We receive many, often conflicting, messages about marriage, sex, and divorce. Depending upon your age, social, cultural, racial influences, and experiences in your immediate family, you may have been taught that marriage was temporary, or it was forever. Sex may have been tolerated, enjoyable, permissible, or have different rules for men versus women. In some families, divorce was not okay. In other families, divorce was perfectly okay, or only okay for some individuals, while others were made to feel like failures or inadequate when they divorced. Girls may have been taught how “good girls” act sexually while it was permissible for “boys to be boys” in the same family. Many of these early childhood messages impact our adult relationships today.

Opposite Implicit Beliefs

In couples’ counselling we may address some of the underlying beliefs that have contributed to the couple’s frustrations. Many of the messages we internalize as our “implicit rules” of how the world works are developed by the age of 6. If you grew up in a home where the woman worked full time and still assumed most of the household and childcare responsibilities, it is common to repeat these roles in our adult relationships, even when we feel resentment or injustice. Imagine a woman with an egalitarian family whose parents shared domestic responsibility, newly married to a man from a traditional upbringing. This clash of beliefs is common and yet is rarely discussed as many individuals do not question how or why they believe what they do. This is one of the most common areas of contention between couples.

In fact, as cited in The Economist, men’s perceptions of their contributions to the domestic household workload are significantly higher at 46% than their wives who report only 32%.  Even allowing for perceptual disparity, this difference is significant. However, as Kate Manne points out in Entitled – How male privilege hurts women, many women do not necessarily expect a 50/50 split, but would be happy with seeing small changes that they specifically request. Famous relationship guru, Dr. John Gottman, points out that couples routinely disagree 69% of the time on important issues. However, this doesn’t mean these issues need to destroy the relationship – what matters is how we approach them as a couple.

Impact of Early Childhood Adversity

Another common experience that impacts couples is trauma. If you grew up in a home where you felt you did not matter and “made yourself small” to avoid conflict, you may withdraw from your partner, which could trigger their unconscious fears of abandonment or insecurity in the relationship. If angry outbursts were common for your family growing up and you do the same, but this terrifies your spouse, it will cause issues. Recognizing these patterns in ourselves, and in our partners, with compassion and sensitivity, can create a new sense of safety and connection. We are taught how the “world works” as children. When we leave our family and meet others, we are exposed to an alternative “normal” and may realize our normal was anything but normal! Understanding these differences and establishing a new normal for your current relationship ensures both partners feel safe, loved, and valued.

Difficulties Communicating

Communicating your needs can become difficult when, after years, we fall into negative patterns. This can result in one or both spouses feeling criticized, dismissed, or ignored which often results in them feeling unloved or unimportant to their spouse. When this occurs people may withdraw, aggressively demand attention, or numb with self-soothing behaviors. Long term this can result in depression, anxiety, or self-destructive self-soothing behaviors including eating, drugs, alcohol, gambling, or shopping, which can create more challenges for the individual or couple. Sex and intimacy often are impacted by the roommate side of our relationship. In many cases, if we do not feel connected, loved, or valued by our partner, our intimate relationship suffers. This intimate disconnection just makes things worse and feels more hopeless. Other times our implicit beliefs may impact our intimate relationship without our conscious awareness.

Some of the common questions couples ask when considering therapy is:

• “How long should you continue to work on issues in a marriage?” The simple answer is, “As long as you are both committed to making things better, there is hope.”
• Can you fix him/her? Do you blame yourself or your spouse for all or most of the issues in the relationship? The proverbial cartoon where one spouse drags the other to therapy to “fix them” accurately reflects people’s fears and makes them feel defensive regarding therapy. After all no one wants to be told they are the “problem” and need to be “fixed.’ Recognizing the problem is the way you are relating to each other and not specifically anyone’s fault, makes therapy less scary.
• When should you get help? When you both agree to do so or even individually if your partner is not ready. You can still learn new strategies and skills to help you now!
• How do you address problems when you avoid conflict or feel dismissed? Often, we withdraw when we feel criticized, defensive, or hopeless. These resentments continue to build until you address your frustrations. Recognizing and breaking this cycle is the only way to change this with new skills that facilitate meaningful communication that leaves you both feeling connected, loved, and valued by the other.

How therapists can help

When anyone feels they are not getting what they need from their spouse – it hurts, a lot!! Either partner may begin to see themselves as defective, not good enough, or unlovable depending on the early internalized messages they received as children. Many people spend years stuck in this scenario, but you don’t have to stay stuck. Therapy is not about changing your spouse. No one can change someone else. Couples counselling can teach you new skills for communicating more effectively by identifying and breaking negative behavior patterns. We can help identify implicit beliefs that impact our behaviors and how these impact your ability to connect meaningfully with each other. We teach couples how to explore, identify, and question how and why something is important to their partner, respect each other’s opinions, and to compromise, so both feel heard, understood, and loved. Ultimately, we teach you how to create a sense of safety, acceptance, and love for your partner and they create the same for you. Marriage is hard. Even the strongest marriages have challenges. A therapist can offer insight, tools, and new skills to help you through the hard times and help you get your relationship back on track!

For more information, read our couples therapy page.

Check your relationship by taking the Gottman Relationship Assessment.