Conflict with the friend or ourpartner naturally occurs in most relationship situations. You can learn “arguing right,” from out a countless number of advisory books, suggest, on how to do it right. We buy them, read all that and find out: Unfortunately, this does not work in practice. Because we have all learned different strategies for ‘fighting’ things out in our families.
Famous relationship researchers, such as John Gottman or Dr. Susan Johnson, now emphasize, that the disputes are not such an issue. And that all is about something completely different than we assume.
Partners, especially in crisis situations, are rarely interested in knowing, what their childhood impressions has to do with their current crisis. Although, you sometimes want to learn communication leading rules. In an ‘couple emergency’, unfortunately, they never work. Doing one thing provokes the other’s doing and we are in the middle of a dysfunctional communication cycle, with plenty of momentum, that we cannot stop anymore with static knowledge from books.
Why that is this way, the book, written by Susan M. Johnson, answers perfectly. She’s the founder of the so called “Emotional Focused Couple Therapy” (EFT), which is internationally becoming more and more popular and here in Germany as well.
I like her approach on the basis of the ‘couple bond theory’ founded by British psychiatrist John Bowlby. Bowlby believed, that a secure bond between mother and child is crucial for a healthy, emotional development of children.
For many years, parents have known, that babies need a lot of body contact, so they also carry their children in the home in baby slings around.
The simple fact of Susan’s EFT is: Adults need the very same bonds! As regards children, it is nowadays natural for us to believe, that they need attention, consolation, protection from their parents. Being adults, however, strong dependence on the other is “devalued” as immature, childish or clinging. But adults are just equally tied to their partner.
Relationships between adults are more ‘equal’, but the type of emotional connection is the very same! With this background now, you can understand “Debate Discussions” in the partnership completely different.
In violent conflicts, both partners are in a state of “emotional starvation’ because they fear, losing their emotional resources and they are desperately trying to recover what they urgently need. Behind all the usual forms of arguing, there are simple questions like:
“Can I still rely on you?” “Will you answer me when I need you?” “Am I still important to you?”
“Many couples therapists believe, that love relationships are kind of ‘rational contracts’ where partners seek to maximize profits by having minimal costs,” Johnson writes in her book.
“Love relationships, however, are primarily related to an innate need for secure emotional connectedness. Relationship conflicts occur especially, when the partners no longer feel their interconnectedness”, says Sue Johnson.
Ongoing conflicts and disputes are a cry for help, which expresses, that the partners actually urgently need each other.
Strong ‘connected’ relationships are an enormous source of power. And what makes longtime couples different than divorced ones is: They have the unique ability to turn to each other over and over again, even during or immediately after a dispute latest.
Through his research works, Godman found four types of strife. These common couple communication styles, one can see now in quite a different light. You might agree, the worst is, to live together with someone you love, but you were not able to get/recover lost contact.
The key point is, that the partners understand, that they are emotionally connected and dependent on each other, and that they no longer feel safe, when they lose their strong feelings of connectedness.
When one partner is emotionally unreachable to the other, it almost always leads to anger, grief, pain, and above all, anxiety/fear. Fear is, what partners feel in a dispute or disagreement then.
If we have a secure bond, then we experience that only as a short-term ‘relationship low’.
Partners with less strong connectedness are quickly overpowered by a ‘Childhood Fear’. From an evolutionary point of view, this is logical. If the secure connection is broken, then the chances of survival in life are reduced. Then, partners protection strategies begin to fade in:
Clinging -By whining and lamenting for confirmation
Threaten -Make claims or file charges
Distancing -Mostly the other retires to protect himself from feeling fear.
These strategies reduce anxiety in the short term, but the distance between the two partners regularly increases! so that neither partner can feel secure in the relationship anymore.
The longer the partners now experience a lack of connectedness, the more they are also carried away by the vicious circles of their own, negative interactions.
There are three such dialogue circles in couple communication:
1. This is primarily about self-protection. A partner feels criticized or injured and goes on the defensive. The partners then accuse and condemn each other, trying to regain control over the hurt of their injured feelings.
2. One partner protests against lack of connectedness. The other then withdraws. He or she expresses his displeasure by silence. Couples living in protest, often complain about communication problems and experience constant tension.
3. The critical partner turns away and the partners only deal with each other distantly. This usually happens, when the critical partner gives up trying to get the other’s attention.
Susan Johnson says:
“At heart, these dialogues are a cry for help. Most problems in relationships do not arise because the partner comes home late, does not close the toothpaste tube, or does not wash the dishes. The dispute goes back to the lack of attention, trust, respect, appreciation and understanding of actual, emotional reality and needs. “In the disputes the partners say to each other: I am afraid to lose you, I will not let you hurt, I want more attention, I want you to be there for me, please.”
It makes no sense to look for the culprit or the one who started it. Once a vicious circle has set in, both partners become entangled in negative reactions and emotions. The more she accuses him, the more he withdraws. And the more he retreats and walls, the more desperate she becomes and the sharper her attacks (or vice versa).
The more he talks about his meeting, the more she misses his personal contact. Then he struggles even more to get her attention and speaks even more urgently to her … and the more she feels flooded and flees internally or is, depending on temperament, annoyed: “Is there anything else in the world for you other than your work?”
Now, what can you do differently as a couple?
Communication techniques from books can help people deal better with colleagues or friends, but in love relationships they fall short. Indeed, interactions in love relationships have a tremendous impact on the emotional lives of both partners. There is a great deal at stake here: The bond to each other and from an evolutionary point of view, so the chances of healthy survival in everyday’s situations. To get out of the barren and painful quarrels, I see three first steps:
1. Recognizing interdependence
Behind most nagging and reproaches there is a call for help for emotional connectedness. It is not primarily the forgotten wedding day, but the real feeling of fear, that this is another sign, that you are no longer important to the other.
Behind the retreat of men is the attempt to neutralize negative feelings -by retreat. The man feels like an inadequate partner maybe. He suggests rational problem solving strategies to escape from emotional interactions of that sort, that he believes, he is losing anyway.
Women tend to have better access to their need for connectedness and therefore more often take on the role of persecuting and accusing partner. Men, on the other hand, learned to suppress needs for contact and feelings in general at an early age, so they tend more to the role of the retreating partner.
2. The dysfunctional dialogues are the enemy! Not your partner.
Learn to consider, not the others, but the harmful dialogues are a common enemy. At least one partner has to recognize that you are in such a dysfunctional process. Then you could say something like:
“That’s probably a situation where you just feel emotionally cut off from me. Is that correct? ← That always fits then (😉) and leads to a so called “Stimulus Interruption”
A metadialog is the best chance for a de-escalation. Because we will feel/become re-connected and now are observers of the same situation!
3. Recognize that both influence each other unfavorably
Instead of insulting others as the cause of one’s own negative feelings, it is more constructive to understand, how you do it yourself! It’s about recognizing you pull the other into the emotional fight!
Both are trapped in the nasty interactions and are hold by their personal appeal / reaction pattern. This applies to every kind of communication, private as well as professional.
So finally, what is the only important question in relationships?
In a partnership, nobody has to learn to communicate better with a pile of books. Or work up his childhood. Or celebrate big romantic rituals. It is basically about recognizing and strengthening one’s emotional dependence on the other. Relationships are always about this single question:
“Am I still important to you?”
For this, it is important to admit your own dependence and neediness. Many people have a lot of difficulties with it. How about you? Let’s find out quickly.
Here is a little experiment:
Take a quiet moment. Close your eyes and become mindful. I’ll suggest a sentence to you right now that you are saying to yourself. Please watch only, what sort of spontaneous reactions appear in you in the first few seconds. Physical, emotional or thought. Ready? And now close eyes, become attentive and then say the sentence:
“I need you”
Responses provide important clues as to how your attitude towards dependency and neediness is.
And what would your reactions be, if you said that sentence to your partner? Or the partner you wish for? And how would he or she react?
Peaceful times y’all!