Thinking about doing some work on a relationship, or trying some couples counseling? In my opinion, one of the first and best things you can do is check on your relationship to pain. As in, are you willing to feel it?
Because if you're in avoidance, denial, blame or other forms of resistance to pain, don't bother. You're already disqualifying yourself from getting much of anywhere but into a deeper hole. See if you can drop the idea that the current pain in your relationship shouldn't be happening.
Consider that the writer Noah Levine wrote that getting into a relationship is like signing an agreement that says, “Sooner or later, we will hurt each other.”
So let's not be shocked, outraged or despairing when the inevitable happens. Let's put on our grown-up pants and be willing to work with it. And let's be open to the idea that we can make lemonade from the lemon: Couples can feel good about learning to work through, together, things that start out feeling really bad.
One of the leading problems in terms of mental health for individuals and couples is the view that life shouldn't be painful, or not this painful. When we can accept what is real—in this case, pain—that's beginning to position us to work with it, skillfully. If we're stuck in the insistence that this shouldn't be happening, we're tying up our energy, and our thinking, in resistance.
Paradoxically then, acceptance is the prerequisite for change to happen.
The conventional idea about acceptance is that it's giving up, it's being defeated, being passive. Au contraire, mon ami. Acceptance is the first step among the 12-steps method of addressing addictive patterns. To address the leak in your roof, you must first acknowledge that it is, indeed, leaking.
Couples therapy begins when each of you can relate to the perspective that says when pain happens in relationship, you're being called- to show up, to be willing to listen, and to work toward understanding, cooperation and a process forward.
Pain is the call to work.
It's also important for couples to get clear about what is to be worked on. For instance: Are we working on changing something, or, accepting something that isn't currently changeable? Or, are we working to align our views of an issue, or accept that our views are different?
Sometimes, the 'work' is a shift to the tricky practice of feeling the pain, and accepting that it's happening. This includes accepting that there's no easy resolution for it, at least for now. It's the work of coming to terms with hurt that's happened- but not becoming a victim or martyr.
This kind of work is the work of no-work.
Say it another way, it's not 'work' in the conventional sense: Something we actively do, to address or resolve a thing, or make something new. This call to work is often a call to inner work, more like spiritual work, to expand our ways of thinking, our capacity to feel our pain, fear and insecurity, our capacity to accept things we can't fully control. It's a step into the very mature perspectives that say we must learn to sit with uncertainty, including in our own relationships. It's a step toward understanding that life, and being in a relationship, is partially a mysterious process- no one fully understands how life works, nor another person. Our spouse of many years, our parents, and even our own children, will remain a mystery to some significant degree- if we have the courage to acknowledge this to ourselves. It's an idea that makes many people queasy. It's easy to fall under the spell of the view that says life is a quest for certainty, security, comfort and freedom from pain. The quest to escape pain can work temporarily, but it's a very fragile way to live.
Another way is the way of resilience. It's the view that living fully is to accept that life contains sorrow and joy, certainty and uncertainty, security and insecurity. It's the view that invites the heart to expand, rather than contract to try to keep certain experiences away. As the poet Jennifer Welwood writes in her poem titled , The Dakini Speaks: “Let's dance the wild dance of no hope!”
No hope? That can sound dreadful. But wait—it means to let go of hoping that somehow we'll avoid pain and loss. That kind of 'hope' makes one small, tight, and fearful. It's not really hope, but fear, avoidance and resistance to life—masquerading as hope.
Being in a relationship requires us to understand, with growing wisdom, that there's the work of doing something, and the work of accepting something. Relationships are a dynamic balance of the two kinds of work. One is more active, visible, concrete; the other is often more subtle, invisible, and hard to quantify.
Couples therapy must also clarify: Are we working on the issue, or the way we talk about the issue? They are related but crucially different. Many happy couples disagree, even strongly, about a number of things. But how they talk about and process those disagreements is often a crucial factor, and the difference between a happier, more satisfying and growth-oriented relationship, and, well, the other kind.
I have found that most disagreements, most issues in a relationship, are workable in a good-enough way, when people can communicate skillfully about them. Accordingly, many couples need to learn skills of effective communication, such as what's sometimes called the Cooperative Process, or Non-Violent Communication, developed by Marshall Rosenberg and his associates (see the book by him of the same title).
Skillful communication is free of blame, and long on accepting that painful things happen; that people effect each other deeply, yet don't 'cause' each other to feel specific feelings; that how we communicate is just as impactful as what we communicate about. It's to understand that relationship issues don't get 'fixed' like a toaster or bicycle- but they can be integrated, accepted, grieved, and ultimately, learned from.
Many couples find that kind of process is far more sustainable, repeatable, and satisfying than any supposed temporary fix. It's more of an inner shared adventure, like the wild dance of no hope.
