Paul Hutchinson, Ph.D.
Psychologist - Bellevue WA
Couples Therapy / Marriage Counseling - Seattle Area
For any couple, a close and healthy relationship is incredibly important. It is definitely possible to learn how to have a closer and healthier relationship with your spouse. It is possible to learn how to argue fairly instead of fighting destructively. It is possible to become emotionally close and sexually close once again, even if a great deal of distance and conflict have crept into the relationship.
Changing longstanding patterns in a relationship certainly takes work, but the rewards are enormous. If you are reading this, I expect you can imagine what it would mean to you to have a happy marriage rather than an unhappy one. If you have children, imagine the difference it could make to their futures if they can grow up seeing (and learning how to have) a healthy marriage.
Couples therapy is designed to explore and analyze what is happening between you, and to help you make specific, concrete improvements in order to return to a healthy and emotionally intimate relationship with each other.
As countless couples have discovered, having a healthy marriage is harder than it looks. It seems like it should come naturally, but it actually takes a combination of skills, humility, and self-awareness that not many people possess on their wedding day. Fortunately these things can be learned. ( Sometimes the humility part takes a few remedial lessons. )
As a loving relationship gets into trouble, vicious circles develop, in which the couple reacts to each other in cycles that make things worse. One person’s anger or withdrawal inspires the other person’s anger or withdrawal. As defenses go up, people say less of what they are thinking, reach out to each other less often, and the warmth of the relationship evaporates. In addition, the feeling of being "in this together" often changes, leaving each person trapped inside his or her own point of view, viewing the other person with resentment and criticism instead of empathy or compassion.
Couples therapy has the job of identifying and interrupting these vicious circles, so that the couple can get back to having a sense of common purpose and compassion for one another. In addition, couples therapy works to analyze and change the old patterns and habits that caused the relationship to deteriorate.
John Gottman, Ph.D., and other researchers, have figured out a lot about how healthy relationships operate, and how they differ from unhealthy relationships. One part of couples therapy involves trying to work towards those habits and behavior patterns that are typically part of healthy relationships.
Another important component of couples therapy involves understanding the patterns that each of you saw and learned growing up, which you may have brought into your relationship without being fully aware of it. It can be quite challenging to try and have a healthy intimate relationship if you did not grow up observing one. People are shaped by their families growing up in many fundamental ways. This includes your communication habits, your emotional reactions to closeness and conflict, and whether you know how to comfort someone else, or how to let someone else comfort you. There are typically important things that need to be understood in some of these areas, because they are typically affecting your relationship now.
What to Expect in Couples Therapy
In a nutshell, the cornerstones of an intimate relationship are how the two of you handle conflicts with each other, and how you go about trying to be close to each other.
With conflicts, are you able to talk things through to some kind of resolution? Are you able to avoid being nasty even when you are mad? Are you able to see each other’s point of view, or do you get stuck defending your own and insisting that you are right? Do arguments end with cold withdrawal and lingering bad feelings, or can you come back to feeling close to each other afterward? It is quite possible to learn how to do these things better, but it also takes persistent effort to change old habits.
The art of getting close to another person (and staying close to another person) is a tricky process for most of us. In a relationship that has started to go badly, it is harder to be vulnerable, harder to let the other person know what you are thinking and how you are feeling. It is harder to be physically affectionate if you are not sure it will be met with affection in return. Intimate relationships have a way of stirring up all the feelings and fears that a person might have about closeness, and about being loved and accepted by someone else. Most of us have some defenses that operate all the time, so that we don’t show our vulnerabilities to most people. We also have more defenses that go up when things are going badly, and many couples are quite surprised that they used to feel so close, and now feel distant and guarded.
If you are considering couples therapy, you should know that it will take effort and practice to change how the relationship works between you. Some of the time in therapy will be spent exploring and understanding how your relationship works, and how you have developed the relationship patterns that you have. The rest of the time is spent discussing specific things to try and do differently, to be closer, to communicate better, to resolve conflicts. You can expect to try various things and home, and then to talk about the "experiments" and make changes as we go. Here is some of what you can expect:
 | Learning and practicing ways to communicate about difficult subjects. There are a variety of ways of talking and ways of listening that make it more likely that you will get through a hard conversation in one piece. These methods take practice, as well as the determination to interrupt your old habits. |
| Learning to contain and de-escalate your conflicts. If the two of you are overly mean and harsh with each other, even when you are mad, you will need to learn and use some active strategies to interrupt you own anger and meanness before you say or do cruel things to each other. There are a number of strategies that help with this, but each of you will need to be responsible to for controlling your own anger, and interrupting your own meanness. What I mean by controlling your anger is that you can be as mad as you want to be, and you can tell your spouse just how mad you are, as long as you can avoid being nasty when you are mad. |
| Learning how to shift into "observing and understanding" mode. Much of what goes wrong in relationships happens because we act or react almost automatically. Especially when emotions are running high, we react the way we always have, healthy or not. One of the most important tools for changing your habits with each other is learning how to step out of "act and react" mode, so that you can observe what’s happening, think about it, and then deliberately try something new. |
| Each of you will need to deliberately practice empathy. Empathy is the process of trying to put yourself in your spouse’s shoes, and really understand what the world looks like from his or her point of view. You still may see the world differently, but your job is to really understand how it is that they see the world the way they do. |
| Each of you will need to look at your own faults. You will need to carefully consider what you are doing wrong, and how you are adding to the problems in the relationship. It is human nature to be able to see other people’s faults more easily than our own. In couples therapy you will need to look at how you are adding to the problems, and you will also need to take responsibility for working on yourself as part of the solution. Don’t expect to come to my office and have me declare that you are doing everything right and your spouse needs to change, just like you have always told them. |
| You will need to practice being kind and respectful, even when you don't feel like it. It is unlikely that your relationship will survive unless the two of you learn how to be deliberately and consistently kind to each other. That doesn’t mean there will be no anger and no conflict, but if the two of you are in the habit of constant criticism, with lean rations of affection or appreciation, you will need to change those habits or your relationship will not survive. It won't work to wait until you feel like your spouse "deserves" more kindness. Think of it this way: When you and your spouse were dating, if you had been treating him or her they way that you have been lately, would he or she have signed up for a lifetime of it? |
| You will need to allow your spouse to know you better, to know you more deeply. Eventually you will need to let down any defenses that have been going up during the recent hard times. As you feel safer with your spouse, you will have to make a conscious effort to be more vulnerable, and to put more of your thoughts and feelings into words. You will also have to understand that your spouse will only be able to share more with you if you meet the vulnerability with sympathy and kindness. |
| Eventually you will need to touch each other more. There is an experience of closeness that comes from touching someone that is unique and separate from the closeness that you can have by talking. Your sexual relationship is a part of this, but only a part. In the same way that infants form their attachments largely through being held and touched, touch has a lot to do with the feelings of attachment in adult relationships as well. And sex is a powerful and important factor of its own. |
| You will need to understand more about your families of origin. It is likely that we will need to explore some of what happened to each of you in your families growing up. For each of you, that shaped your relationship habits, and also may have created areas that are sensitive or painful for you now. Couples therapy can’t resolve all of those types of issues, but we will need to look at what you may have learned that you need to unlearn, and at things that you didn’t get a chance to learn, but need to learn now. Also we will want to talk some about how you came to be the person that you are. Often times, if you understand some of those things about your spouse, it allows you to have more empathy when your spouse feels very differently than you would about something. |
How Long Will it Take?
How long therapy takes depends on what we are trying to repair. How bad are the problems, and how extensive are they? If there is a single isolated area of conflict or difficulty, we may be able to address it in 10 or 12 sessions. That is also enough time to do some basic work on communication or conflict resolution. If the problems have been going on for a long time, if the conflict is serious, or if we are trying to repair some significant damage to the relationship, it may take six months to a year to make real progress. Hard work, but again the rewards are enormous. There is a lot at stake. Divorce is very hard on all concerned, and people often find that the relationship issues that they were struggling with in this relationship somehow come back in their next relationship as well. There really isn't a shortcut that allows you to avoid learning how to do all of this.
A note about violence:
If your relationship includes violence without remorse, end the relationship now. There is virtually no chance that the pattern will change. If there is a cycle of violence followed by remorse, change is possible but difficult. The violent partner will have to be ready to work quite hard on changing the pattern, and will have to give up justifying the violence by saying it was provoked by something the other person did. A major research study on domestic violence found that when a couple is In a pattern of violence followed by remorse, couples therapy does not help. The violent partner should seek out individual or group therapy with someone who specializes in treating marital violence.
Insurance Coverage:
Unfortunately most insurance policies provide no coverage for couples therapy.
Call me at 425-646-8665. Or e-mail at: paulhutchinson40@Earthlink.net
Located in the Bellefield Office Park
1450 114th Avenue SE Suite 100
Bellevue, WA
98004