Couples that fight are invariably couples that are locked in a shame cycle. One of both of you learned that having needs meant you were weak, needy or somehow not okay. This may have been explicit or implicit. So instead of asking for help, support or understanding directly, you say or do something indirect. Instead of saying, I’m tired and I need help with the dishes, you leave them in the sink or say something like, “why is it always my job to do the dishes?” which puts your partner on the defensive.

When I coach couples to speak from a more direct place, they often squirm. Saying, “Honey, I don’t feel like doing dishes, would you do them?” in a soft and gentle voice feels like a huge risk.

“He’s just going to say no, or tell me I’m being ridiculous.” I hear.

“Let’s try it,” I say, “and if his response is mean or defensive, maybe we can help him out.

“It doesn’t matter what I say. I’ve tried it every which way, and she always ends up pissed at me.” He says.

This is a very discouraged, tired and lonely couple, and their feelings are contagious. I can feel myself wanting to tell them both to just shut the f up and do what I say. Not particularly therapeutic. But I know that the feelings I’m having are not mine. I know that I am resonating with their experience, feeling what they are feeling.

“I wonder if either of you is wishing the other person would just shut up and listen to you?”

“Yes!” They both say in unison. And we finally have some common ground!

“So each of you is feeling the same thing!?” I ask, though it’s more observation than question.

“I guess,” one or the other offers tentatively.

“Where do you feel this wish in your body?” I ask the one who guesses.

“In my arms,” he says, pushing the air in front of him.

“And you?” I ask the other.

“Same,” she says, pushing the air too.

“Wow, so you are both feeling the same thing and your bodies are holding it in the same way. There is so much resonance between you!” They don’t respond. They are not ready to feel what they share.

“What are you pushing away?” I ask him.

“Her.”

If it stops there, she is left feeling like the bad guy. But I know he doesn’t want to push her away. They’ve been fighting like this for 15 years. If either wanted it to end, it would have ended by now.

“Yes, and what aspect of her are you pushing away.”

“Her not hearing me.”

“Yes, and what else?”

“Her not caring about me.”

“Yes, and what else?”

“Her not seeing that I’m a good guy.”

His voice has a little tremor, a little emotion in it. I look at her, and she is not seeing the vulnerability. She is lost in feeling criticized. I stay with him, but keep an eye on her.

“Stay with this experience, pushing away her not hearing, not caring, not seeing you. Where else have you felt this in your life?” I encourage.

“My father.” He says.

“Tell me about your father.”

“He always assumed the worst about me. When there was a mess in the house, he always came to me first and made me clean it up – even if it wasn’t my mess.”

“What did he look like when he made you  clean up?”

“Mean, angry, fed up with me.”

“What did you want him to feel about you?”

“I wanted him to love me, to know that I loved him. I wanted his approval more than anything. I wanted him to be proud of me.” He is tearing up. His wife’s expression has softened.

“What are you seeing in her eyes now?” I ask, nudging him to look up at her.

His face stays downcast and he says, “She doesn’t care.” And in this moment, he could easily drive away the compassion she is feeling for him.

“That’s not what I’m seeing.” I say to him, but hoping that my words will help keep her from hardening again. “What I see is more like tenderness, (her face softens again) and I think it might be important for you to see that.”

He looks up, searching. She has heard me, and stays soft to him. “She looks… like she cares?” He says, surprised.

“Do you?” I ask her.

“Yes I care! I never saw him like this before. I mean, I knew his dad could be an ass, but he always seemed like he just rolled with it.”

“Like he was tough?” I ask.

“Yeah. He’s very tough.”

“How did you learn to be tough?” I ask him.

“I figured out pretty young that I wasn’t going to get what I wanted from him, so I just stopped caring.”

“What about you?” I turn to her, “How did you learn to be tough?” since she is too.

“For me, it was growing up with brothers. If I didn’t act tough, they would call me baby, tease me, pinch me, that kind of thing.”

“Toughness really protected both of you,” I say. And they both nod. “But now, you’re paying a price for that protection.” I continue, and they nod some more, each still looking in the other one’s eyes. “What do you really want to experience together?” I ask.

“Tenderness,” he says.

“Yeah. That would be good,” she says.

“And if you felt tenderness when you didn’t want to do the dishes, what would that sound like?” I ask.

“Babe, I’m wiped, could you do the dishes?” she says, looking tenderly at him.

“I’m wiped too. Maybe we could do them together?” he offers.

“How does this feel?” I ask.

“Better,” he says.

“Much better,” she agrees.

There are so many tiny moments when an argument can either spiral downward or upward.  When we grow up shamed, we tend to look away right at the moment when our partner is offering a look of care or concern. Or we see the care and dismiss it, focusing on what feels more familiar – criticism, anger, detachment. If you fight a lot, I have a challenge for you. Can you find a moment of care or tenderness in your partner? If it’s hard to find there, can you offer a moment of care or tenderness and stay with it until he/she is able to see it and take it in? While it’s not easy (maybe not even possible) during a fight, could each of you commit to looking for these moments as often as possible when you’re not fighting? If you try this, I would love to hear your comments and find out what happens.

A lot of people who had great relationships before baby find themselves arguing more, feeling resentful of each other, feeling rejected or abandoned by their partner. If you’re coming into parenthood in your thirties or later, it may also be difficult to adjust to the changes in scheduling. One of you may have stopped working, and you’re feeling the financial pressure. You may not have the support of family or trusted friends and feel like you have to do it all yourself. If you both go back to work, then you may feel worried about childcare or guilty that you’re not with your child enough. And, while tending to the needs of this vulnerable, little person, it’s all too easy to neglect each other, not to mention yourselves.

It’s helpful to recognize that this transition comes with a lot of unexpected stresses. Often there are elements you could never have predicted. You or your spouse may have post-partum depression or anxiety. The baby may have difficulty feeding, sleeping, or some other distress you couldn’t anticipate. You may not have realized how childbirth and parenting would impact your sex life. You may feel resentful of the changes – but also guilty for feeling bad.

A lot of new parents have an idea that they have to pretend that everything is fine, even to themselves. Complaining may seem like you don’t love your child, or that you’re somehow not up to the task of parenthood. Sometimes couples don’t even talk to each other about these feelings, and neither one knows the other is going through the same thing. They end up feeling isolated. Or they fight about cleaning or money, not realizing that what they’re really feeling is lonely and overwhelmed.

If your relationship has suffered since the baby was born, it’s essential that you make some changes right away. When couples ignore problems, they tend to grow rather than to resolve. Talk to your partner gently about how you’re feeling. Don’t attack or criticize. Instead share how hard it is, how different from what you expected. Tell your partner that even though you seem angry or distant, really what you’re feeling is exhausted or overwhelmed. Tell him/her that even though you love your child, you miss the time you used to take for granted, time together and time for yourselves.

Sometimes these conversations are difficult to have on your own. It can feel scary or risky to open up and let yourself be so vulnerable. It may be hard to find the time without distractions to really listen to each other. Your partner may be too defensive to hear you. Or you might not know how to phrase things – so they come out wrong. It may just feel like there’s too much water under the bridge.

If you need assistance getting your relationship back on track, you might want to meet with a counselor who specializes in couples therapy – someone who has a lot of experience working with new parents. Therapy can help you clarify what each of you is feeling, wanting and needing. It’s a place where you can learn effective communication skills. In the process, many couples find a new sense of peace and equilibrium. They find it easier to turn to each other when the demands of parenting get overwhelming. They have more empathy and understanding for each other. They recognize that even though there are times when they can’t give each other what’s needed in the moment, there is still a deep bond of love, concern and friendship.

Couples who take care of their relationships live longer, happier lives and have happier, more secure kids. So don’t hesitate to get the help you need to strengthen your marriage.

If jealousy isn’t addressed with love, understanding and restoration of positive feelings, it will return over and over again. You already know from experience that jealousy can’t be fixed with arguments or avoidance.

• To heal jealousy, you both need to know that it may have deep roots in a very painful past experience of being abandoned, rejected to made to feel less-than or not-good-enough.
• Being ashamed of feeling jealous gets in the way of healing. So identify and let go of shame.
• If the jealous partner could calm themselves down, they would. They need help to do so. If your partner is jealous, make a commitment to helping them feel safe with you. This may mean spending special time together daily. It may mean sharing phone records openly. It may mean reassuring them using affection, tenderness and finding the right words – words that really make them feel safe and loved.

If it’s hard to heal jealousy on your own, it may be time to get outside help. Really understanding the roots of jealousy, overcoming shame, shifting negative beliefs, and changing defensive reactions is a big task. But it is a do-able task, and one that can make your relationship strong, safe, secure and deeply loving.

When your partner feels jealous, you may get triggered too. Their intense feelings may trigger a painful counter-reaction in you. Often the feeling or belief is, “She/he thinks I’m a bad person, a liar, a cheater.” Then YOU feel threatened. Your sense of self – of being a good, kind and loving person is threatened.

When we’re “under siege” – having an experience like the one above, we lose the ability to think clearly and empathize with our loved one. If your partner’s jealousy make you feel angry or hurt, your primary aim and focus will naturally be restoring your own feelings of worth and goodness.

You may argue, trying to convince him/her that he/she is wrong. Or you may withdraw, protecting yourself from the negative words and feelings. But these reactions don’t work. Your partner can’t be convinced, no matter what you say. And if you withdraw, he/she gets even more upset – in his/her fear of losing you, he/she has in fact “lost” you – even if its only for a few hours.

When you or your partner feels an intense, negative emotion, you can bet that he or she is having a fight or flight response. This response happens in your brain stem – the part that is made for basic survival. When you feel threatened physically or emotionally, your brain stem sends surges of chemicals into your body to help you fight or flee.

When you feel jealous, you’re experiencing a threat to your primary attachment. The basic survival part of your brain feels that if you lose this person, something terrible will happen. It puts you on high alert to avoid this perceived danger. For many people with chronic jealousy, there is an old wound to a primary attachment. This may be an old relationship in which you were betrayed. Or it may go back to your earliest childhood.

If your parents were preoccupied, stressed or had difficulty knowing what you needed to feel safe and secure as a baby, you may have grown up feeling like you were on your own, craving close connection, but fearing that you could never really have it completely. If your parents were overburdened, they may have accidentally given you the impression that you were a burden or that you need for closeness was too much or that you were too sensitive.

When an old attachment wound gets triggered in the present – maybe your spouse or partner travels a lot, or forgot to call when they said they would – that’s when you begin noticing every little shift in your partner, checking every credit card statement, every cell phone log. It’s a terrible feeling – and even worse if you know, rationally, that your partner is not cheating and has no intention of leaving. Then you might also feel ashamed of being jealous.

Understanding jealousy is the first step to healing. In our next post, we’ll talk about what to do when your partner get’s jealous. In the meantime, we’d love to hear how jealousy has affected your relationships – especially if you found a way to overcome it!

When I first met my husband of (wow) almost 15 years, I knew when he took my hand on our first date, that it just felt right.

What about you? Do you have a story about holding someone’s hand?

Sitting with them, I felt my own heart tightening in my chest in response to the stuckness they each felt. When we are hurt, we naturally want to retreat or retaliate – it’s just a normal part of being human. But in our couple relationships, neither of these strategies leads to resolution. What we really need, is to soften, to find more understanding and compassion for ourselves and each other. But often, that’s the last thing we want to do.

I also know that they come from families where the adults had all the power and control. Their parents used anger and shame to intimidate them into “behaving.” When we grow up in families where there is anger – especially scary anger – and shame was used to control our behavior, we are more likely to dig in to the retreat/retaliate strategy. It’s what lets us feels safe. Revealing the hurt under the anger feels too vulnerable, weak or helpless. We feel like we are in a power struggle, and if we show softness, we will lose.

Yet, at the same time, digging in doesn’t feel good. It’s safer, yes. But it’s lonely. We don’t like feeling disconnected from our partner – our primary source of love, nurturing and care. When this happens we’re in a terrible bind. We can’t get the closeness we want, because it doesn’t feel safe. That’s where my clients were when they came to see me yesterday. Ouch.

So the goal of therapy, in my mind was to begin building little bridges between safety and closeness. I know that safety has to come first. So I started with the partner who seemed to be the least triggered/traumatized, in this case, the husband. We spent a long time just exploring the feelings and sensations he was noticing in his body, while his partner watched and listened.

He identified tension in his shoulders and neck, tightness in his jaw. These are the places where we naturally feel our anger. Our jaw muscles tense, at the ready to growl and bite. Our shoulders store energy in case we need to hit or punch. It’s our biology. I asked him to stay with the process of noticing. He became aware that his stomach was tight, usually a sign of anxiety/fear. He also felt a heaviness in his chest, a sign of sadness/hurt/longing.

As his awareness moved from the sensations of anger/protection to the more vulnerable sensations of fear and sadness, I checked in with his wife. “What are you noticing in your body, as you listen to him?” I asked. “All the same things,” she answered, describing similar sensations in her own body.

I knew this was a bridge, and I pointed it out to them. “Wow. So you guys have so much resonance with each other, even when you’re upset, you are feeling each other.” They agreed, making eye contact for the first time in the session (maybe the first time in days).

Each of their faces softened just a little. In their eyes was more of the hope and longing, and a little less of the stony coldness they had at the start of the session. I pointed that out too. “What are you seeing in his face now?” I asked.

“He looks a little sad, a little… less angry.”

“What is that like?” I asked, “to see him less angry?”

“It makes me less angry.”

I turned to him. “What is that like – to know that when you soften, she softens too?”

“It helps.”

And so we began to move into an upward spiral. As they expressed more of their vulnerable feelings, what they saw was that they didn’t “lose” as they would have in childhood. When one partner saw the sadness, pain and fear in the other, he or she was moved to compassion. At the end of the session, they were holding each other and passing the tissues back and forth.

“But we won’t be able to do this at home!” They both shared, near the end of our time.

“That’s okay. I said.” Some little part of you knows that you have this in you, even if it’s not accessible right away. You’re building muscle. No one expects you to get it on the first try, or even the tenth try. Be patient with yourselves. Know that in the heat of the moment, you won’t be thinking straight. But after a fight, when you’ve calmed down a little, you may feel an urge to say to each other, I was feeling really hurt (or misunderstood, or criticized…) when we were fighting, and I didn’t know how to tell you. It’s always okay to repair the rift later on. In time, you’ll get better at doing repair sooner and sooner.”

Couples therapy isn’t just a place to air grievances and get advice. It can also be a sandbox where you get to try new things, notice more about yourself and your partner, and develop new ways of thinking and being with each other. If you get locked into anger with your partner, and you don’t know how to get out, if fights fizzle out but don’t lead to resolution and more understanding, if each fight erodes more and more trust and love, then it may feel really good to try therapy – especially with a therapist who understands the biology of attachment and the fundamental foundation of safety in relationships. When looking for a therapist, ask about their training in partner attachment.

When you make up after a fight, you show each other that your relationship is more important than the thing that got in the way. You may reveal a little more of who you are, maybe sharing something vulnerable, and discovering that you are still loved, even though you are a normal, imperfect being. It’s a huge relief to know you can mess up, be a jerk, say the wrong thing, and still find forgiveness. And it’s this relief that can fuel the closeness and intimacy of amazing make-up sex.

Instead of focusing on winning your fights, what would it be like to become an expert at resolving them? How would your relationship be different if you knew you could turn things around within a short time whenever tempers flare? When was the last time you were able to resolve a conflict and felt closer and more connected afterward? I’d love to hear your experiences on fighting and making up. If you’d like to get better at making up, it might help to consult a couples therapist. You can find one at www.couples-therapy-directory.com.

The solution? Make a safe place to feel and express your anger, releasing the intense, hostile energy of it BEFORE expressing your feelings and needs to your partner (or anyone really). What does a safe place look like? It’s a little different for everyone. Some people like to get in their cars, roll up the windows, crank up the stereo and yell out their feelings as loud as they can. For others, it’s more satisfying to hit things. They might invest in a punching bag and some boxing gloves, or more economically, take out their anger on pillows or a soft bed.

Once the intense energy and hostility of the anger has passed (and it will), peek under your anger. There you will discover something else – pain, hurt, feeling discounted, or some other, more vulnerable emotion. If it’s hard to get to the underlying feeling, talk to a friend or a therapist. When you know what your underlying “ouch” is, you can tell your partner, and ask for something concrete to feel better again. Here’s an example:

“Yesterday, when you canceled our plans and went out with your friends I felt like I didn’t matter to you. I need you to know how important our time together is to me, and I need to know that you want to spend time with me too.”

It may not be easy to share what’s at the root of your anger. It can feel like you’re too exposed, too vulnerable. But you’ll engage your partner’s empathy and care, instead of making them feel punished and shamed. And ultimately that will strengthen your bonds. If your partner doesn’t respond in a loving or empathic way, then it may be time for counseling, and a chance to understand what is getting in the way of helping each other feel loved and supported.

If you find yourself in one of these two roles, it may be time to try something new – something like, “Sweetheart, I’m feeling overwhelmed (or tired or unmotivated…), and I need your help with something.” If this approach feels scary, it may be useful to sit with a therapist who can help you get the words out and help your partner practice listening so that it really IS safe to ask for what you need.

It may also help to preface the conversation, preparing your partner that you’re about to do something hard, and need him/her to be kind. Maybe even showing him/her this posting as a way of introducing the topic. Though it may be uncomfortable for both of you at first, knowing that you can ask for what you need and that your partner will listen without judgment can make you both feel closer and more connected.