How To Get The Most From Couples Therapy
Businesses and marriages fail for the same three reasons:
Doing couples’ work involves first increasing your knowledge about yourself, and then, from that mindful place, getting curious about your partner and the patterns of interaction between you. Therapy becomes effective as you apply new knowledge to break ineffective patterns and develop better ones.
Couples therapy begins with a focus on goals and desires. What is your vision for your relationship? How do you want it to look?
What do you aspire to be in order to build the kind of life and relationship you want to create?
A relationship is a partnership much like a business, though, often, the typical aspects of starting a business, such as negotiation of the goals, roles and contributions often do not get directly addressed when forming a relationship. Rather than operating out of assumptions, each person must be willing to consider what they have to offer to the joint endeavor in order to create the most potential for success. Often, this requires some flexibility and compensation for each person’s capabilities and limitations.
Before each session, imagine that you are preparing for a business meeting:
1. Reflect on your objectives for being in therapy.
2. Be prepared to focus on the objectives for the kind of relationship you wish to create, or the partner you aspire to become.
Notice that making improvements as a couple involves each person being aware of their own reactions to problems and making changes that focus on the long-term goal of creating a satisfying relationship. This may not be an easy process - there is no quick fix. It takes time and motivation to turn a relationship into a partnership, with difficult tradeoffs and tough choices for each person.
Creating change in your relationship requires time - time to be together - perhaps to rediscover what you enjoy together - and time to talk and explore. It may require emotional risk taking, shifting perspectives, choosing to be more respectful, more giving, more appreciative, or more compassionate.
When it comes to improving your relationship, your attitude toward change and how you think about a problem is more important that what action to take. The definite possibility exists that you have some flawed assumptions about your partner's motives- and that he/she has some flawed assumptions about yours. The problem is, most of the time we don't want to believe those assumptions are flawed. Problems occur when reality departs sharply from our expectations, hopes, desires and concerns. It's human nature to try and change one's partner instead of adjusting our expectations.
A relationship can be a spiritual process. All significant growth comes from disagreements, dissatisfaction with the current status, or a striving to make things better. Paradoxically, accepting that conflict produces growth and learning to manage inevitable disagreements is the key to more harmonious relationships.
Ask yourself these questions:
What is most important - what you say, or what your partner hears?
Are you wiling to acknowledge that your partner is entitled to their opinion?
Should your partner treat you better than you treat him/her?
Will your partner treat you better than you treat yourself?
What you can do to make it easier for your partner to make changes?
Consider “Being” rather than “Doing” - how you commit to being often has far more impact on the relationship than what you do.
A couple's vision emerges from a process of reflection and inquiry. It requires both people to speak from the heart about what really matters to each.