Life doesn’t always go smoothly, have you noticed that?

It’s easy to feel in love and happy with your partner during times of success and relative calm.  But times like that don’t come along all that often.

My husband and I figure we have had one year that was relatively free of stress. Fortunately it was the second year of our marriage. We had weathered the normal “sturm and drang” of the first year and had established a warm, trusting connection between us. We had one year to enjoy that state of marital bliss before life came along to stir things up.

Change is Inevitable

The old saying goes there are two things certain in life, “taxes and death”.  I would go on to add a third, change.  Change happens continually and most of the time unpredictably.  Humans don’t really like change, for the most part. We would prefer to have our routines and daily lives remain stable and secure so that we can know what to expect.  Unfortunately, this is not true to life.  Life has a way of shaking things up, sometimes at the worst possible times.

Marriages, if they are to last, have to change as well.  They have to adapt to the flow of change in life and become more than they originally were, if they are to succeed. Most of us don’t handle it that well and the result is the amazingly high rate of divorce.  The popular belief is that we are “serial monogamists” and that it’s normal to be divorced in the 22nd Century.  But if you are like me and ever experienced a divorce,  you know there is nothing “normal” about it and it causes damage to anyone touched by it, whether you have kids or not.

So how are we to surf successfully through the storms of life and remain connected as a couple?

I am sure there are books on that particular topic, though I have to admit to never having read one.  There are lots of books on communication and deepening intimacy, but I don’t think I’ve seen any that directly address the topic of managing stressful times together as a couple.  It’s easy to feel connected to another person when things are going well, its something else altogether to stay connected when things are not going well.

Human Nature is to Find Someone to Blame for Our Unhappiness

This is because knowing who is to blame helps us solve the problem.  If we know where the problem is we can do whatever it needs to be done to fix it.  But, in the case of marriage, that often looks like divorce.  We figure, we are unhappy, so it must because of my partner.  “Just look at (him/her) (he/she) is so (fat, addicted, mean, selfish, whatever) and obviously doesn’t care about (him/her) self or me. How can I be happy with a partner like that?”

Ah, we have solved the problem!

Now we know what to do, we can get a divorce and it will be all better.

I can honestly tell you that two divorces did not make the difference in my happiness. My happiness or unhappiness resides inside of me! This need to find blame is so difficult to overcome that it can easily convince us that the one we love is responsible for our feelings of unhappiness.  We so desperately want to find an answer that we will abandon our beloved when we think they are the cause of our despair.

Stress and Change are a Normal Part of Life

The stressful and difficult things that happen throughout our lives are a normal part of life.  Learning to weather it without blaming someone for our difficulties is a challenge.  But getting to an understanding of how we project the cause of our unhappiness onto our spouse can actually help you find happiness within yourself.

If you are looking for the cause of a stink in your kitchen and your focus is on the rotten wood under the sink, but the source of it is the garbage, replacing the wood won’t fix your problem.  You have to figure out where your garbage is and clean it out.

Releasing your partner from the stress of your blame can do wonders for your relationship just by itself.

When you are under stress from the normal things that happen in life: lost jobs, job insecurity, financial problems, children who are having problems, legal problems, deaths, caring for an elderly parent – whatever  – it will cause stress on your marriage. You will want to blame your unhappiness on your spouse. “Why won’t he get a better job?” “Can’t she figure out somewhere else for her parent to live?” “She’s the reason the boy is having such a hard time, she wasn’t hard enough on him.” “If he just didn’t spend so much.”

You see? All of the above are reasonable explanations for stressful situations, but they don’t really solve the problem.  Blame never does.  It seems like it will, but all it does is creates problems of it’s own.

Your Unhappiness Resides in You

The next time you want to blame your spouse for your unhappiness, remember that your unhappiness resides in you.  It’s your job to change how you feel, not your spouses! If you are unhappy, choose to talk to your spouse about it. If you can do it without blaming him/her, they will share their concern and help you try to figure out what you need to do to make things different.  But if you, even subtly convey that you think your unhappiness is because of them, what you will get instead is anger, resentment and arguing.  Partners will naturally feel defensive and try to protect themselves against attack.

It is natural to respond to blame with anger. People so often get upset when someone suddenly lashes out in anger, in what appears to be an unprovoked attack, when what happened was that the person lashing out felt subtly blamed.  When your partner startles you with what feels like an unprovoked angry response, notice whether or not something you just said may have led them to believe you were blaming them for something.  Chances are you were subtly blaming them, or at least, they thought you were.  When people are going through stressful times, they are even more sensitive to the possibility that they are being blamed.

Let go of Blame and Anger

Stressful times are a time to pull together, to look for solutions and give each other a sense of support. Yet it’s very hard to accomplish, even in the best of marriages.  Knowing that the stress itself will cause you to look to your partner for blame can help you let it go.  It’s the stress causing the sense of blame, not the blamed one causing the stress. Learning to notice how you use blame subtly can ease the strain of stressful times. Lean on each other; don’t push each other away by blaming the other for your unhappiness. Your partner can be your best resource.

Generally speaking we choose to go into therapy when we can’t figure out how to make our lives work by ourselves. Maybe we’ve been aware of underlying sadness that doesn’t seem to go away no matter what we do. Or perhaps we have started having panic attacks for no noticeable reason that we cannot contain on our own. We could be tearful much of the time and don’t understand what is causing it.

On the other hand, we could enter therapy because we are unhappy with our marriage and we can’t get ourselves to leave or figure out how to change it.

When we go into therapy for any reason, and we are married, the odds of ending up divorced actually increase. I suspect this is because when we enter therapy we are looking at things solely from our own perspective. We go into therapy hoping to get a different perspective, but often what happens is that we get support in our perspective.  Most therapists are kind, care giving types of people who have gone into the profession in hopes of helping people.  So when you enter their office they give you support and encouragement, they help you feel better about yourself and your position.  If you have a partner and you are unhappy with them, the therapist encourages you to stand up for yourself and assert your needs.

The downside of their doing this is that while it may make you feel better in the short run, it runs the risk of destroying your marriage in the long run. This is because what has happened is that you have gotten help in making you stronger, at the cost of the connection between you and your partner.

In supervision early in my career I remember my supervisor saying that once a person brings their spouse into therapy you become the marriage’s counselor and not the individual’s counselor.  This made sense to me at the time.

Since then I have come to realize that when someone comes to me their relationships are as much a part of the therapy as they.  This means that I do not take positions against the other parties.  I support the person in discovering more about themselves and exploring how their current relationships are impacted by their past experiences. I do not make judgments about my client needing to end their relationships just because my client is unhappy in the situation.

One of my past supervisors habitually demanded that her clients cut off connections with their families.  Now, at the time this made sense to me since some of those family connections were with parents that continued to be abusive.  And, sometimes, this it can be important to take time-outs in these situations until the clients are strong enough to protect themselves.  But most of the time what my clients need is to be able to develop a different kind of relationship with these important people in their lives by developing compassion for both themselves, and for their parents.

To do this the therapist has to themselves be… coming from a place of recognizing that there are no “ bad guys”; only people who are “doing the best they can” given their circumstances.  We do a great injustice to our clients and to the families of our clients when we take the position of naming someone as the “bad guy” and someone else as the “victim.” Yet often this is exactly what takes place in therapy.

How can we stay married to someone who we think of as our enemy, as  “the bad guy”? The difficult thing is figuring out that this is happening. When we are in therapy and we are being supported in our position and our partner is behaving badly, it is easy to think that we are indeed “the victim”.  Maybe we even are actually “the victim” of their bad behavior.  But to remain there without making the effort to embrace the humanity of the other person is doing them and ourselves a terrible disservice.

If you are in therapy and have found yourself thinking of divorce, please pay attention.  Are you finding yourself thinking a lot about how your partner is treating you badly and that you “don’t deserve it”?  Are you keeping your thoughts and feelings to yourself, or just sharing them with your therapist or your friends and not your partner?  Has the trust between you and your partner disintegrated since entering therapy?

Have you brought your partner into therapy only to have them storm out? This tends to happen when our therapist has taken on the position of “the rescuer” and is now ganging up with you on your partner.  The result then is that your partner feels defensive and angry in the therapy session because they know that you have been talking about them and are unhappy with them.

Often this happens to husbands. Then men get the bad rap of not wanting to participate in therapy.  Who would want to go into a situation in which they know that they are going to be criticized? That’s what these brave guys do when they attend even one session. When they get overwhelmed and storm out then we label them as uncooperative.

The bottom line is this: when you go into therapy, take your partner. It will bring you closer together if from the beginning you work on your issues with them present. It will allow your partner to learn how to respond to your emotional needs by watching the therapist. It will allow you both to discover things about yourselves that you did not know. It will bring you closer, and it may also save your marriage.

One thing I notice in a lot of couples who come through my door is a lack of balance in their relationship.

What do I mean by this?

When two people come together there are now three parts to this system; “you,” “me,” and “we.” Imagine if you draw two overlapping circles. There are three parts – the individual pieces on the sides and the overlapping piece in the middle. The outer parts represent each person and the middle is where they join in relationship. Every relationship will look slightly different on paper in where the emphasis is.

On one end of the continuum will be the couple where each person essentially lives a separate life with different friends, few mutual decisions and little time spent together. I once had a couple who literally never sat down to eat with one another and had separate bedrooms. On paper, this couple would be drawn as two separate circles next to each other with no overlap. Essentially, they are extremely “you” and “me” focused with no “we.” In this scenario, one partner often desires more togetherness with the other but their mate possibly fears intimacy and a perceived loss of their independence.

On the other side, there’s the couple who spends as much time as humanly possible together, with no outside friendships or interests. They are totally enmeshed in one another. They live “as one.” The circles would be almost totally overlapping each other, with most of the focus on “we” and very little, if any “you” and “me.” Sometimes, this can be the dynamic in a controlling relationship where one person pulls the other one in very close to maintain control.

The previous examples are extreme and the reality is that most people fall somewhere in the middle. It’s important to mention that these balance styles may work for some people and if it does, that’s wonderful.

However, in my experience, I find that the most content couples are those whose circles overlap in the middle, where there is equal attention paid to “you,” “me” and “we.” Each partner is able to maintain their own identity, friends, hobbies and outside interests while nurturing the relationship. A personally fulfilled person can be more open, giving and loving to their partner than one who has lost their identity. The relationship is where they come together to share their friendship, intimacy, struggles, mutual friends, hopes dreams, meals and bills.

When I work with couples, I always assess their relationship balance and whether it’s working for them both. If it’s not, it first must be understood why they operate that way. There are many reasons that motivate people towards the various styles including family of origin experience (what did their parents do?), fear of engulfment or the opposite, fear of abandonment. The next step is figuring out what they can do differently to create more balance. Often it involves increased awareness, better communication and behavioral change. Ideally, the end result is the two overlapping circles that validate all three parts – the “you,” the “me” and the “we.”

Lisa Brookes Kift is a Marriage & Family Therapist Registered Intern practicing in San Diego, California. She does individual, couples and premarital counseling. For more information see her website at www.lisakifttherapy.com.