Relationships Involve Many Things: fun, intimacy, sharing, struggle, confrontation, feeling trapped, responsibility, hard work, growing together, boredom, joy, changing times, and so forth.  When people are young, they dream about the relationship they will have some day.  Then it happens, and it can be a wondrous experience, a sad disappointment, or some state between the two.  When they are not in a relationship, people yearn for one and feel as if their lives are not complete; and yet, once involved, they can feel frustrated and incomplete.  There is hope for those in less than fulfilling relationships.  Human beings have the wonderful ability to change behaviors that are not working successfully and re-educate themselves.  Relationships can be successfully salvaged, sometimes with the help of a professional counselor, when any of the following points are applied:

Open Communication: Many couples don’t communicate.  Verbal communication is probably much less than thirty minutes a day for the majority.  This may be due to different time schedules; an overload of responsibilities; resentments that have built over time; and a lack of knowledge about how to communicate.  To begin to enhance their communications, I suggest that couples pic a few times each week to get together, without interruption for perhaps thirty minutes.  Each person may have fifteen minutes to talk, broken up into five minute segments.  The listener may not interrupt and, above all, he or she should put aside all critical thoughts and feelings of disrespect for the speaker.

Good communications Pertain to the Sharing of Feelings:  Partners who risk sharing honest feelings with each other, even if these emotions may sometimes hurt, do better than those who don’t risk sharing. If not spoken, feelings such as annoyance, resentment, sadness, hurt, disappointment, jealousy, and envy build up inside.  Pent-up emotion can lead to stress, addiction, physical illness, irrational outbursts, and depression.

How to Share Feelings: A feeling should be shared without blaming or attacking the other person.  The model for the correct expression of feeling is:  When you do…, I feel…, because….  For example, if the husband comes home late for dinner and has not called, the wife might say, “When you don’t call, I feel hurt, because it seems as if I am not as important as other aspects of your life.”

Expectations, Judgments, and Negative Thinking: If a person holds an expectation and it is not met, he or she becomes angry.  People have expectations for each other based on the belief that each knows the way life should be lived.  Housework, cooking, making money, arranging for social events, putting the children to bed, initiating romantic interaction, planning for vacations, and dealing with in-laws, are some of the many behaviors governed by fairly rigid expectations.  If one person falls short of his expected role or behavior, the other is often disappointed and resentful.  The belief is “It should be this way!”

Rationally, one must question whether “it” really need be any particular way.  “Oughts” and “shoulds” need to fall by the wayside.  Accepting the partner’s frailties as a human being and letting go of unrealistic and harsh expectations is a priority for healthy relationships.

Touch and Physical Contact: All close personal relationships need physical contact.  Hugs, a light touch on the shoulder, a pat on the head and a back massage are various forms of letting someone know you care.  Touch is the most intimate and most meaningful form of communication between two people; therefore, it is important to make an effort each day to touch the other, even if it is a very simple gesture.

 Disagreements and Arguments: All couples need to fight.  Arguments are a way of letting off tension and steam and coping with genuine issues where there may be conflict and disagreement. Arguing will not lead to the end of a relationship. Instead, the opposite is the case.  Once the disagreement is aired, there is a tendency to feel even closer than before.

Key Issues about Arguments: Stick with a subject of the disagreement; no name calling or mean and nasty judgments; pick a time for the argument that is agreeable to both parties; if there is too much rage present, stop the argument and wait for a calmer time;  try to achieve some kind of resolution, even if it is just an agreement to  disagree.

Independence of Thought and Action: Relationships that do well allow freedom to pursue one’s own interests and activities, as long as they do not throw off the internal balance that has been achieved.  Rather than becoming jealous and feeling threatened that the other might leave if there is too much independence, show support, i.e., “That’s a great idea.  How can I help you get started?”

 Doing Things Together: Sharing some activities and experiences is another aspect of a happy, healthy, relationship.  Couples should look for common things they can enjoy.  For some it is going out to dinner, others enjoy attending concerts or plays, and others like physical activities such as walking, running or biking.  Those who can’t find anything in common have to work harder and must force themselves to experiment until an activity they can both agree upon is identified.

Commitment: Another relationship essential is commitment.  There needs to be an inner focus in each person to want to make the relationship work.  There is a desire to enjoy the good times and work through the hard times because the other person is a significant part of one’s life and special in some way that cannot be duplicated.

Prayer or Meditation: Sometimes just asking for guidance, from a higher power or from an inner guide, can be a source of much comfort and support.  If there is a problem in the relationship, taking time to meditate upon it and seeking help with it may lead to the solution.

The Ability to Love: Growth and development involve the heart and the ability to love. The heart integrates the whole organism, providing pulsating energy streams that flow into the body, the emotional system, and the mind. The heart is controlled and directed by the creative focus of one’s inner wisdom, but it is also helped by the outer will, the part that motivates and directs one’s actions. Working through love blocks that involve the heart results in a transformative experience. Much depends on each person’s ability to correct the situation though work with energy and love.

Karyne B. Wilner, PsyD (revised 7/2/09)

Masks provide emotional safety. A client of mine smiles at me as he presents emotional material filled with despair. When I tell him that it is unsettling, he explains: “if others can’t see my pain, they can’t use it against me.” He also smiles so that others will like him. In Greek theatre actors used masks to illustrate emotions. Synonyms for mask include facade, false-face, cover, and persona.

The Mask also protects you from undesirable truths about yourself. Because you perceive yourself as good and decent, you don’t face your capacity to hurt others, to be cruel, or to get back at them. You mask your negative thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors. Since they are not in your conscious awareness, you are unable to work on them or transform them.

A mask is a human version of the blind spot you experience when driving. You look in the rearview mirror and are unable to see the car beginning to pass you on the left. Luckily you did not pull out to pass or he would have hit you. The mask blinds you to your own motives by distorting situations. You end up blaming others for their inadequacies, real or imagined, rather than taking a harder, look at yourself. However, those of you who are able to confront your mask, will heal and transform negative elements. You may find and transform the critical part that gets pleasure from bringing others down or the competitive part that holds ill will toward others.

In a recent therapy session, a client talked about how much his girlfriend looked forward to attending an affair sponsored by an organization that she previously disliked. Rather than supporting her, he told her: “I don’t think you should go,” leading to an argument between the two of them. When I asked why he had a problem with her changing her mind, he said: “I don’t really have a problem with it, but I enjoy making her feel bad about it.” He remembered having this kind of communication with his mother. His shadow side remained hidden from him, enabling him to perpetuate hurtful behavior that was in conflict with his stated goal of a satisfying love relationship with this woman.

Your mask is found in your body as well. Your physical body results in part from genetics, but it is also shaped by early life wounds. Under adverse circumstances in your childhood, your energy froze. When that happened, your toes curled under, your arches flattened, your shoulders crept up around your neck, you thrust your chest out, and so forth. In response to negative circumstances from which you could not protect yourself, your body masked your hostile or frightened response, and there it remains, locked in your frozen muscles. However, your body is more like plastic than you realize and through body psychotherapy, it can regain its natural organic stance. In doing so the locked away emotions and thoughts are made conscious and released. As your body changes, you change too and some of your masked and crueler behaviors transform.

Divine marriage results when relationship partners search for new ways to share the depth of their individual truths. They interact and communicate continuously. When the interaction stops, restlessness takes over, and the relationship becomes static and habitual. Sometimes it ends, reeking of sluggishness and inertia.

Two dissatisfied people cease to meet on a soul level. They fall into inertia fueled by past resentments and hurts. They do not know how to break through the impasse. If they leave each other and find a new partner, they secure a second chance to behave in ways that promote eros and love. Those who stay in the unsatisfactory marriage may try to repair the damage. They reveal parts of themselves they had not formerly shared. They work to become conscious of the fears that stopped them in the past from revealing. They express emotions. The marriage is enriched.

Those who avoid revelation find themselves in failed marriages. Unwillingness, fear, and ignorance controls their souls. In contrast, those who reveal discover the spiritual meaning of marriage. This is the secret of the enriched relationship.

Ideas from John C. Pierrkos, MD and Karyne Wilner, PsyD, 2001
Written by Karyne Wilner, PsyD, 7/28/2008