Marriage
Moments of Truth and Lost Love
The tale of falling in love has such a familiar story line. Two people meet and experience an instant rapport that enables long conversations and a strong sense of acceptance. For those individuals who did not experience such unconditional acceptance while growing up, this creates an especially powerful attachment. But all of us experience fear along with the sense of trust and safety. Fear that the other person will leave; fear that the relationship will not remain safe.
The so-called honeymoon stage of a relationship refers to this period of time when the couple is experiencing that powerful feeling of a partner who seems to be so interested and accepting and safe. This allows each person to "be themselves" and feel that they will be loved regardless. It is one of the driving forces of human nature to seek such attachment and security. But it makes every one of us vulnerable.
When a couple begins to struggle, as is inevitable, there is a strong sense of betrayal and disillusionment. As a society, we need to do a better job in preparing young couples for that transition. Clearly, some handle this challenge better than others, a function of personal histories and/or the particular event that may trigger the change in perception of one's partner. It is these events which sometimes shatter the trust and erase the sense of safety that I refer to as "moments of truth" in a marriage. So often, when I am reviewing the history of a marriage, I will find a particular situation which may have forever altered the contract" between the partners, even if they did not recognize it at the time.
For one couple it was before the wedding, when the woman got so angry about an issue in planning the wedding that she threatened to end the relationship. The man acquiesced but from then on viewed his wife as someone who wouldn't really be there for him and put up a wall that simply grew thicker over the years. For another couple, it was during their honeymoon, when the husband wanted to go somewhere that felt unsafe to his bride. Not listening to her fears left her feeling that he was not really going to protect her, that he was not the safe partner she thought he was, and she, too, began to close off the emotional bond we call attachment, or intimacy.
There are two other "moments of truth" that are unfortunately fairly common. Research suggests that at least one-third of all couples experience an act of physical violence during their courtship! This contributes to a significant loss of sense of safety in the relationship, even if it was just one incident. Some relationships never recover, even if the couple, many years later, appears to have forgotten the incident. The other event that precipitates many long-term crises in a marriage is a miscarriage. Too often the wife feels a lack of understanding of the deep pain of her loss on the part of the husband and, once again, a wall of distrust appears.
Men and women want marriage to be a unique partnership where each no longer must hide their feelings of shame, guilt, or inadequacy, where "love conquers all", which actually means you will love me for who I am regardless of my failings. But, when this trust is broken, a pattern of criticism emerges where first one, then the other, begins to focus more on what is wrong with each other than what is right about them. It becomes a process of attack-defend, of talking at not with, of constantly trying to change rather than accept one's partner.
In therapy, we try to help couples to realize that this is actually about fear and not anger. We try to enable each spouse to take the risk of reopening their sense of vulnerability and trying to give the other a chance to show acceptance instead of rejection. We try to teach each spouse to be able to view the world through the eyes of the other, even for just a moment, in order to validate that the way their partner is feeling is understandable if you are looking at the world through their eye's instead of your own. It is not about right vs. wrong, win vs. lose. It is simply going back to a time when you really trusted each other, but learning to do so in a more realistic way. It means letting go of old hurts and risking future ones. But you cannot have attachment and intimacy without emotional risk. When couples can discover this, the change can be powerful and incredibly rewarding.
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