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.

Couples seek relationship counseling for numerous reasons. As a professional who works with many different couples with a variety of issues, I’ve identified one similar thread that runs through all of them.

Their relationships lack in varying degrees of “emotional safety.” Typically, the couples who present as the most hostile, distant, angry, disengaged or otherwise dysfunctional are the least emotionally safe together. Even people who come for counseling who have less glaring issues can benefit from a tune-up in this area.

So what is “emotional safety” in a relationship?

I define this as the level of comfort both people feel with each other. There are six aspects in which to assess the emotional safety in a relationship. They are respect, feeling heard, understanding, validation, empathy and love. How can one assess their own relationship based on this paradigm? When working with couples, I often ask each partner to rate, from zero to ten, (zero being “never” and ten being “all the time”) how much they feel each of the six mentioned aspects of emotional safety from their partner. I chart it out with each person’s name written on the top of a piece of paper with a column under each. Then on the left side I list the six aspects with rows next to them.

1. Respect: How much do each of them feel respected by their partner? People who report low levels of respect often experience criticism or judgment from the other.
2. Feeling Heard: How much does their partner listen to them? Those who don’t feel heard complain of being ignored, tuned out or talked over by the other.
3. Understood: How much do each of them feel understood by their partner? People with low levels of understanding from the other report frustration around their partner not getting them or twisting their words into an entirely different meaning.
4. Validation: How much do they each feel validated by each other? Low levels of validation are problematic to any relationship in that one or both don’t feel that their partner gets what they’re saying. Its one step beyond understanding and it doesn’t require the partner to necessarily agree with them.
5. Empathy: How much do they each feel the other can be empathetic with them? A low number on this is the most toxic of the six aspects in that a lack of empathy in a relationship means a lack of attunement to the others emotions. The partner experiencing a lack of empathy can experience a great deal of sadness or anger. “You don’t care how I feel.”
6. Love: How much do they feel loved by each other? This encapsulates and reflects the state of the previous five. Couples who report low levels of feeling loved by the other typically have low numbers in the other aspects.

Doing this type of charting makes it easy to compare and contrast how each person feels in the relationship. This tool is very helpful to anyone wanting to assess their own level of emotional safety. Be aware that it might bring up a lot for both partners. If the topic proves to cause too much emotional reactivity then a trained therapist can help flesh out the results and provide a road map to make changes. In my work, I find that it often involves altering communication styles, behavior modification and exploration of both partner’s families of origin. The greatest evidence of change in the relationship are these numbers going up – and they can!

Lisa Brookes Kift, M.A., is a Marriage & Family Therapist Registered Intern in San Diego, California. She helps individuals and couples work through a variety of issues. To learn more about her and her services go to www.LisaKiftTherapy.com.