Chapter 7 COMMITMENT
A life allied with mine, for the rest of our lives
—that is the miracle of marriage.
—DENIS DE ROUGEMONT
YEARS AGO, WHEN we met a couple for the first time, we knew little or nothing about them. All we knew was that they had lost the vital connection between them and were mired somewhere in the power struggle. They might have been anywhere along that path. They might have been newlyweds reeling from the shock that they had married the wrong person. They might have been a middle-aged couple trying to cope with the stress of having two careers, teenage children, and a relationship that was filled with strife. They might have been an older couple who had lost their love and affection for each other and were contemplating a "friendly" divorce. But whatever their circumstances, we assumed that they had journeyed past the romantic stage of their relationship and become unhappy with each other. They had lost something; they wanted it back; but they didn't know how to get it. This is still true today when couples come to our workshops, although we are now seeing more couples take a preventative approach: proactively seeking the tools and knowledge to buffer their relationship from becoming another divorce statistic.
Years ago, the therapists' approach while working with couples was to wade into the details of their power struggle. In the first few sessions, we would determine whether a couple's main problems centered on communication, sex, money, parenting issues, role expectations, alcohol or drug dependency, and so on. Over the course of the next few months, we would help them gain more insight into their difficulties.
An important part of the therapeutic process was teaching them to communicate their feelings more directly: "Tell Mary how you felt when she said that." Or "Turn to George and explain why you hung up the phone on him." At the end of each session, we would help them negotiate a contract that would specify an agreed-upon course of action. George, for example, would agree to give Mary one compliment a day, and Mary would agree to express her anger in words instead of withdrawing into silence. This was standard problem-oriented, conflict-resolving, contractual relationship counseling. Many therapists still employ these techniques.
The couples learned a lot about each other in the time that we spent together, and they gained valuable communication skills. But to our dismay, few of them were able to transcend the power struggle. Instead of arguing about the issues that brought them into therapy, they began to argue about who had violated the contract first. At times, it seemed as though our function as therapists was to quantify and formalize their conflicts. My (Harville's) work was being supervised in those early days, and I would share my frustration with my adviser. What was I doing wrong? Why were my couples making such slow progress? All I seemed to be doing was giving people something new to fight over. My adviser would smile knowingly and then chide me for having a vested interest in whether or not my clients were able to change. If they wanted to change, he assured me, they would. Perhaps I was confusing my agenda with theirs. My role, he reminded me, was to teach people communication skills, help them gain insight into their problems, and let them go on their way.
Years later, we (Harville and Helen) discovered that relationship therapy cannot dwell on surface issues like money and roles and sexual incompatibility. Underneath these problems is a much larger issue. As one woman once said, "My husband and I had a bigger fight going on that other therapists couldn't help us with. We couldn't put the problem into words, and they couldn't see it. But it was the fuel that ignited all our other conflicts."
This "larger problem" she was referring to is common to most couples who seek help for their relationships. As we talked about earlier, many children experience a rupture in their connection with their caregivers. For one reason or another, their caregivers failed to satisfy their basic needs for safety, affection, and stability. Years later, when they have an intimate partner, a similar rupture can split apart their adult love relationship. The two individuals no longer feel a sense of connection with each other, and they begin to criticize each other or withhold their affection. Learning new communication skills and making behavioral contracts were not going to build the bridge back to intimacy.
We realized that we had to look at relationship therapy in a new way. While mulling it over, we recalled the words of Harry Stack Sullivan, a psychiatrist who wrote The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry in the 1950s. Sullivan wrote, "It does not matter so much what happens inside an individual. What matters is what happens between them." That brought to mind Martin Buber and his well-known book I and Thou. Buber made it clear that his interest was not so much on the "I" and the "Thou"—in other words, on the two individuals—but on the relationship between them, represented by the hyphen between "I" and "Thou," which he called sacred.
As we reflected on Sullivan and Buber, a lightbulb went on in our heads. When we worked with couples, we decided to shift our attention away from the individual partners and their specific concerns to the quality of their interactions. Focusing on the relationship itself would help create a safe and stable connection between them. Significantly, as they became more secure in a new way of relating, they would also be repairing the ruptured connection they had experienced decades earlier with their imperfect caregivers. From a neurological point of view, the old neural pathways formed during painful episodes in their past would be neutralized by new pathways created by the caring interactions with their partners. As we developed this relationship-centered approach, couples began to make remarkable progress.
THE NEED FOR COMMITMENT
VIEWING COUPLES FROM this new relationship paradigm, we quickly learned that one of the necessary first steps was to ask both partners to commit to the process. In therapy, one of the first rules is that they have to agree to come to at least twelve consecutive therapy sessions. Barring emergencies, they are to orchestrate their lives so that they could come to each and every appointment. In workshops, we ask couples to commit the entire weekend to their relationship, practicing and sharing as guided, and to "turn off" the ordinary outside disruptions such as housework, responding to emails, updating statuses on social media, and making nonurgent phone calls. At the end of the weekend, we ask for a ninety-day commitment to specific daily practices.
The reason we ask for a commitment is that we know from our own experience and from statistical surveys that a majority of couples quit therapy before their fifth appointment or give up on new habits within twenty-one to thirty days of implementation. Interestingly, this is about the time it takes for unconscious issues to begin to emerge, which can trigger anxiety. As we know, a tried-and-true method for reducing anxiety is avoidance. Some couples react to their growing anxiety by claiming that therapy is making matters worse, and they fire the therapist. Others report that they "can't find time" to focus on their relationship or keep their appointments. And others still find reasons to quit the practices ("I did all the work"; "I feel like I'm losing myself"; "We are just too different"). A commitment would help counteract this understandable avoidance. A commitment also offers a taste of what is possible when we can give our unconditional and untethered attention to our relationships. Remember, energy follows attention.
When you are working on the exercise section of this book, you may also experience a reluctance to complete the process. Some exercises will be easy for you—even fun. But others will give you new information about yourself and challenge you to grow and change. As you do the more demanding practices, the temptation will be to put the book aside or alter the instructions. It is precisely at these moments that you need to commit yourself wholeheartedly to the process. You will discover that if, before you begin, you make a strong commitment to finish all the exercises and do them exactly as prescribed, it will be easier to overcome your resistance.
Our second order of business is to help couples define their relationship vision. Before we heard all the things they didn't like about their relationship, we wanted them to articulate how they would like it to be. In other words, what would it be like if they had the relationship of their dreams? Defining the vision turns their energy away from their past and present disappointments toward a more hopeful future. Achieving their vision is the goal of a conscious relationship.
It is surprisingly easy for couples to create this vision—even those who are in turmoil. To get them started, we ask them to list a series of positive statements beginning with the word we that describe the kind of relationship they would like to have. They are to frame these statements in the present tense as if the future were already here. Here are some examples: "We enjoy each other's company," "We are financially secure," "We spend time together doing things we both enjoy," "We spend more time together as a family." Fairly quickly, they are able to define their separate visions, share their statements out loud, identify the common elements in them, and combine them into a shared goal. Once the vision is defined, we ask them to read it daily as a form of meditation. Gradually, through the process of repetition, the vision becomes embedded in their subconscious.
THE COMMITMENT AGREEMENT
AS SOON AS the work on the vision is completed, which is usually about the second or third session, Imago therapists ask couples to make a second commitment, and that is to stay in their relationship for the initial twelve weeks of therapy. For three months, they are neither to separate nor end the relationship in a more catastrophic way, such as by suicide, divorce, or insanity. (Although separation and divorce are by far the most common ways couples contemplate terminating their relationships, a significant minority have a feeling that they might go crazy, and there have been several couples who fantasized about more violent options.) We call the decision to close all these escape routes the Commitment Agreement. When you turn to part 3, you will see that this is one of the first exercises you will be asked to do.
It is common for two people in a love relationship to react to the Commitment Agreement in opposite ways. Typically, one partner feels relieved that they've agreed to stay together for twelve sessions; the other feels threatened. The one who feels relieved is usually the fuser in the relationship, the one who grew up with an unsatisfied need for attachment with a neglectful parent. The agreement helps reduce the fuser's fear of abandonment. The one who feels threatened is the isolator, the one who had an unsatisfied need for autonomy with an intrusive parent. Having been frustrated in his or her quest for independence, the isolator may feel an upwelling of anxiety about the decision to close all escape hatches.
During the period of this agreement, Imago therapists work to ease the anxiety of clients who feel trapped. We remind them that the commitment is for only three months. At the end of that time, they are free to make other decisions. Because they are dealing with a finite amount of time, most people find they can cope. Furthermore, we explain that when they agree to stay together for three months, their partners may become less clingy or invasive and will not feel the same need to chase after them.
Some couples experience a startling reversal. The person who wants more closeness begins to retreat. The partner who wants more freedom discovers an unmet need for closeness. It's as if the couples collude to maintain a set distance between them. If one person starts encroaching on the other's territory, the other has to back away. If one person starts vacating the territory, the other starts to pursue. As with a pair of magnets with like charges facing each other, there's an invisible force field keeping them a critical distance apart. There is not enough safety in their relationship for them to feel comfortable being more closely connected.
NONCATASTROPHIC EXITS
ONE COUPLE HAD mastered this game of push and pull. Sylvia and Ricardo had so many ways of avoiding each other with activities we refer to as noncatastrophic exits that they were rarely together. One indication of their success at staying apart was that they hadn't made love in over three years. Noncatastrophic exits are often difficult to detect; nonetheless, they can drain a great deal of energy—and intimacy—from a relationship.
As an assignment, Sylvia and Ricardo were asked to spend just one day together doing something they both enjoyed. The very next day, which happened to be a Saturday, they agreed to go for a hike in the country and then go out to dinner. That morning, just as they were about to leave the house, Sylvia suggested that they invite a mutual friend along on the hike. It had been a long time since they had seen this friend, she reasoned, and, besides, the friend always liked to get out of the city. Ricardo said that sounded like a bad idea. The whole purpose of the day was to spend time together. They argued heatedly for a good hour; then Ricardo gave in. Sylvia called the friend, who was happy to come along. As they waited for him to show up, Sylvia read the paper and straightened the house, while Ricardo disappeared into the den to work his way through a stack of bills.
The friend arrived, and the three of them got in the car and drove out to the country. On the drive, the two men sat in the front seat of the car—ostensibly because they had longer legs and needed the legroom—while Sylvia sat in the back seat, reading a book. During the hike, either Sylvia or Ricardo talked with the friend, while the other partner tagged along behind.
When they got back to the city, the friend went home and the couple made plans to go out to dinner. They decided to go to a restaurant that featured live entertainment. At the restaurant, Ricardo suggested they choose a table in front of the stage so they could pay attention to the music. They had dinner and tried to carry on a conversation but gave up because the music was so loud they couldn't hear each other. They left the restaurant at precisely a quarter to nine so they could be home in time for a favorite TV show. As soon as they entered the house, they poured themselves a couple of drinks and stationed themselves in front of the television. Sylvia went to bed at eleven o'clock (after ritually urging Ricardo not to drink too much), and Ricardo stayed up until one in the morning, happily nursing his scotch and watching TV.
With consummate skill, they had managed to spend the whole day together without a moment of intimacy. Although they didn't realize it, they were living an invisible divorce.
THE INVISIBLE DIVORCE
TO ONE DEGREE or another, most couples who are involved in a power struggle follow a similar pattern: they structure their lives so that true intimacy is virtually impossible.
The way that they do this can be ingenious. By asking partners a simple question, "What does your spouse do to avoid you?" we have come up with a list of over three hundred different answers. Here's a fraction of that list. According to our informants, their mates were avoiding them by: "reading romance novels," "disappearing into the garage," "facebooking, tweeting, or snapchatting,""camping out on the phone," "worshiping the car," "spending too much time with the kids," "being wedded to the computer," "volunteering for every committee at church," "spending too much time with the boat," "spending time at her mom's," "having an affair," "avoiding eye contact," "spending hours reading the New York Times," "falling asleep on the couch at eight o'clock at night," "being a sports junkie," "coming home late for dinner," "fantasizing while making love," "being sick and tired all the time," "not wanting to be touched," "four scotches a night," "spending too many evenings at the Rotary," "lying," "refusing to make love," "having sex but not making love," "living on the tennis court," "jogging ten miles a day," "going on weekend fishing trips," "going shopping," "having her own apartment," "daydreaming," "refusing to talk," "smoking pot," "playing video games until two in the morning," "talking on the cell phone," "working on the house all the time," "masturbating," "playing his guitar," "keeping separate bank accounts," "picking fights," "reading magazines," "doing crossword puzzles," "refusing to get married," and "going to bars."
The fact that so many couples perforate their relationships with exits raises an obvious question: Why do men and women spend so much time avoiding intimacy? There are two good reasons: anger and fear. Why the anger? In the romantic stage of a relationship, people find it relatively easy to be intimate, because they are filled with the anticipation of wish fulfillment. Their partners seem to be Mommy and Daddy, lovers, and therapists all rolled into one. Months or years later, when they come to the realization that their partners are committed to their own salvation, not theirs, they feel betrayed. A tacit agreement has been broken. In retaliation, they erect an emotional barricade. In effect, they are saying, "I am angry at you for not meeting my needs." Then they begin to seek pleasure and satisfaction outside the relationship. Like a cow in a pen stretching its neck under a fence to graze on green grass, they look elsewhere for gratification. The husband who stays late at the office even when he has finished the day's work, the wife who spends the entire evening reading to the children while her husband watches TV—both of these individuals are trying to find substitute pleasure.
The other reason couples avoid intimacy is fear. On an unconscious level, many people react to their partners as if they were enemies. Any person—whether parent or partner or next-door neighbor—who is perceived by the old brain to be a source of need gratification and then appears to be withholding that gratification is cataloged as a source of pain, and pain raises the specter of death. If your partner does not nurture you and attend to your fundamental needs, a part of you fears that you will die, and it believes that your partner is the one who is allowing this to happen. When a basic lack of nurturing is coupled with an onslaught of verbal and in some cases physical abuse, the partner becomes an even more potent enemy. The unconscious reason some people avoid their partners, therefore, is not that they're looking for greener pastures but that they are fleeing death. The appropriate image in this case is not the bucolic scene of a cow foraging for food but that of a terrified lamb running away from a lion.
In most cases, the fear of the partner is unconscious. All that couples are aware of is a mild feeling of anxiety around each other and a desire to be with other people or to be involved in other activities. Occasionally, the fear is closer to the surface. One woman told us that the only time she felt truly safe around her husband was when the two of them were in the therapy office. He had never physically abused her, but their relationship was so filled with conflict that a part of her felt that her life was in danger.
NARROWING YOUR EXITS
WHAT DO WE mean by "exits," and why is it important to limit them? Basically, exits are a way to act out our feelings rather than put them into words. As an example, it's easier to stay late at work than to tell your partner that you feel unhappy every time you walk in the front door. You have an understandable reason for staying away—you don't want to feel depressed. Also, it would take a tremendous amount of courage to tell your partner how you really feel about being together. It is far simpler to spend more time with your grandchildren, for example, and avoid the pain and the drama.
But to rebuild their partnership, both partners need to draw their energy back into the relationship. Two people cannot reconnect with each other until they are physically and emotionally available.
To help couples overcome their resistance to narrowing their exits, we rely on the principle known as graduated change. You've probably discovered this principle in your own life. It is easier to tackle a difficult project if you divide it into small, manageable tasks. You can then rank the tasks in order of difficulty and attend to the easy ones first. Graduated change makes the entire project seem more manageable.
In part 3, you will find complete instructions for narrowing and then closing or modifying your exits. We want to emphasize that this is an ongoing process and not a onetime event. Basically, it involves talking with each other about your feelings rather than avoiding each other.
Here is an overview of how it works. Imagine two people who are trapped in an unsatisfying relationship. To make up for their emptiness, they have filled their lives with substitute pleasures. The woman is engaged in her career and has two children. In addition, she has an active social life, a position on the community board, a passion for physical fitness, and an addiction to science fiction novels. These activities help reduce her underlying feelings of despair, but they drain vital energy away from her marriage.
If this woman were to decide to cut back on some of her activities, she would first have to determine which of her numerous involvements could properly be termed an exit. Like many people, she would probably find a degree of validity in virtually everything she did. When you do the commitment exercise in part 3, you may have this same confusion: What is an exit, and what is an essential activity or a valid form of recreation? The way to find out is to ask yourself the following question: "Is one of the main reasons I'm doing this activity to avoid spending time with my partner?" Most people know whether or not this is the case. If the answer is yes, that makes the activity an exit and a potential topic of conversation with your partner.
Let's suppose that this woman has asked herself this question and identified activities that she would be willing to curtail or eliminate. Next, she could rank them according to difficulty and choose the ones that would be easiest for her to give up. For example, she might decide to jog three days a week instead of five and to read her novels on her lunch hour, not in the evenings when she could be spending time with her husband. She might also decide that it would be difficult but not impossible for her to find someone to take over her position on the community board. Other changes would be even more difficult. If she were to go ahead and make the two easy changes, however, she would be liberating several hours a week to devote to her relationship. This would be a good place to start. Other changes, if necessary, could come later.
At the same time, her husband would be going through a similar process. He, too, would be examining his activities, identifying his exits, asking for a conversation about those exits, and beginning a systematic program of reduction. As a result of this exercise, they would be spending significantly more time together.
As we have said, and it bears repeating, the commitment to closing an exit is not a specific event that occurs at a particular moment. It is a process that may take considerable time, sometimes several months. It requires a lot of soul-searching for people to identify their own exits and the reasons behind them. Then it takes courage to discuss the exits with their partners. But paradoxically, once the conversation has taken place, the exits become easier to narrow and eventually close. Talking openly about them creates a deeper sense of connection between the couple and reduces their need to stay isolated.
TILL DEATH DO US PART
WHEN WE LEAD couples through these series of commitments—an agreement to: (1) come to a minimum of twelve therapy sessions or to a full weekend workshop, (2) define their relationship vision, (3) stay together for a specified period of time, and (4) gradually commit to closing their exits—we let them know that all these separate agreements can lead to a larger commitment: a decision to join together in a journey that will last the rest of their lives.
Although this decision cannot be made when couples are in pain, we want them to know that they need to stay together not for three months or three years or even three decades but for all their remaining years in order to reap all the benefits of a conscious partnership. Childhood issues do not present themselves to be resolved in one tidy package. They come to the surface slowly, usually the more superficial ones first. Sometimes a problem has to present itself a number of times before it is even identified as a significant issue. And sometimes a psychological need is so deeply buried that it is only triggered by a crisis or the demands of a particular stage of life. Ultimately, it takes a lifetime together for a couple to identify and heal the majority of their childhood wounds.
In a culture where serial monogamy is a way of life, the idea of a permanent commitment to one partner has a quaint, old-fashioned ring to it. The prevalent question of the 1950s—"Can this relationship be saved?"—has become "Should this relationship be saved?" And millions of people decide that the answer is no. In fact, ironically, many people now view divorce as an opportunity for personal growth. It's not within a relationship that people grow and change, according to this increasingly popular view, it's when the relationship falls apart. People believe that separation opens their eyes to their self-defeating behaviors and gives them an opportunity to resolve those problems with a new partner. But unless they understand the unconscious desires that motivated their dysfunctional behavior in the first relationship and learn how to satisfy those desires with the new partner, the second relationship is destined to run aground on the same submerged rocks.
Ironically, the more that we have become involved in a psychological study of love relationships, the more we find ourselves siding with the more conservative proponents of love relationships. We have come to believe that couples should make every effort to honor their vows to stay together "till death do us part"—not for moral reasons but for psychological ones: fidelity and commitment create a zone of safety that allows couples to resolve their long-standing issues and become joyfully alive and connecting.