No one in a relationship wants it to fail. Obviously, couples want their relationship to work and last a lifetime. But how? What is the secret to making a relationship work? It clearly doesn’t happen all by itself just because they love each other.
The typical relationship starts out with passion and emotion. Dopamine is flooding through the brains of each partner and they believe this will last forever. But the reality is that the brain cannot continue to produce this level of dopamine and over time that high stops and each partner becomes who they really were all along. Past relational woundings and insecurities from childhood come to the front and get triggered by little things the other person does or says. And before long they are trapped in a negative cycle of conflict that catches them up like a tornado and leaves them disconnected and confused.
Over this and my next blog, I will share some relationship skills that any couple trapped in this negative cycle can learn and use to not only break out of the cycle, but make their love last a lifetime. The skills I am going to share come from the method of couple counseling I practice. It’s called Emotionally Focused Therapy, or EFT for short. It is the most researched and proven therapy there is for repairing relational disconnection. I encourage you to follow up after reading this blog with a call, text, or email to us at SoulCare Counseling to either do an EFT weekend marriage intensive or weekly EFT couple counseling.
Relationship Skill #1: Recognizing Your Partner’s Raw Spots
If your partner had a wound that hasn’t healed or an old scar that is always tender, you’d try very hard to avoid mashing or scratching it. Well, every person on earth has what we in EFT call raw spots, or attachment wounds. In the first two years of life, in response to how things are with their primary care-givers, usually parents, humans develop either secure or insecure attachment styles. There are four attachment styles; three of them are insecure attachment styles. That tells you that most people have an insecure attachment style. They are ways that we learned when we were small to reconnect when our attachment was damaged. Insecure attachment styles are strategies to connect that are dysfunctional. But it’s all the person knows, so those childhood patterns last into adulthood.
The saying in the therapy world goes like this, “What went wrong in childhood will show up in the intimate relationship.” If a person was left alone as a child, that is a tender spot in his or her psyche and when left alone as an adult, he or she will respond by feeling abandoned and desperately seek closeness by clinging. If a person’s parents made him or her perform in order to get love and approval, then in adulthood, he or she will have a crippling fear of failing his or her partner and being rejected. This fear will drive perfectionist or compulsive behavior. If a person was abused, especially sexually, he or she will have a fear of intimacy and respond by being distant.
A very important skill, then, to make your relationship last is to learn your partner’s raw spots and also your own raw spots so that you can help one another to heal from those wounds instead of continually rubbing them and making them worse. The therapy we use in EFT does exactly that.
Relationship Skill #2: Awareness Of Your Trigger Response
When your raw spot gets rubbed, it triggers a primary emotion like fear, anger, or sadness. This sends a “warning” signal to the brain that the relationship is in danger. The brain responds by substituting a secondary emotion to hide the real emotion that is too vulnerable to reveal. For example, the primary emotion is anger, but that’s too risky to express, so instead you feel annoyance, jealousy, envy, or resentment. If the primary emotion is fear, that’s too risky, so the brain substitutes anxiety, inferiority, or insecurity. Then the brain creates a narrative about your partner to justify the emotion you’re feeling. This is the point where harsh words come out that you don’t really mean. Your partner, in turn, gets his or her raw spots scraped, and the same chain reactions in his or her brain, quickly sending back hurtful words in return. And just like that, you’re in the negative cycle.
But when you are aware of your raw spots and your partner’s raw spots, you can learn to recognize when this chain reaction has begun and respond with compassion and empathy rather than those hurtful words rooted in the secondary emotions. When you get really good at this skill, you can be in touch with your soft, vulnerable primary emotion and take the risk to share what’s really going on with you in the moment. How can you become vulnerable?
relationship Skill #3: Voicing Your Vulnerable Emotions
I’ll tell you a secret, vulnerability heals disconnection faster than anything can and it creates connection like superglue. When you open up and risk revealing those tender emotions that are under the surface, first to yourself, and then to your partner, if he or she responds with love and compassion, emotional healing will happen. Not just healing of the emotional wounds with your partner, but the emotional wounds all the way back to childhood. It literally rewires your brain to heal the attachment wounds.
If you and your partner have it within you to love one another when you take the risk to expose your soft underbelly and reveal your primary emotions, you will have a relationship that lasts a lifetime. We are all seeking a safe haven and secure harbor, to use the language of EFT. In EFT couples therapy, we provide a safe space in the therapy room for you to discover your raw spots and your primary emotions and share them in a way that will be received and responded to with compassion. If a partner ever does not respond in this way, we do something called “catching the bullet,” and working with that partner to get him or her to the place that he or she will respond the right way. When this happens, and happens consistently so that you can trust each other with your deepest feelings, you are able to disarm the flash of anger, fear, or shame and keep it from escalating by talking about how it feels and being heard.
relationship Skill #4: Validation
What I just described is called “validation.” How do you feel when you tell someone how you’re feeling and they respond by saying, “You’re crazy. You shouldn’t feel that way”? Does it make you want to open up some more? No, it makes you want to shut them out. But how do you feel when they say, “Well, of course you feel that way. Anyone would. I totally get it”? You feel safe, you feel that they care about you and your feelings and they understand, and you want to come in closer.
That’s what happens when you and your partner learn to validate one another’s feelings. It creates trust so that when life gets tough, you have a resiliency to handle it because you’re not alone. Research has shown that we can handle even physical pain better when we are in a strong, connected relationship. We can problem-solve better and overcome all kinds of obstacles.
Remember this: validate, validate, validate. We’re taught that as therapists. Never say, “What you’re feeling doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand.” Even if you don’t, try to. Put yourself in your partner’s shoes and ask yourself, “What would it feel like to be her or him right now and feel what he or she is feeling?” Emotions are the most honest thing about us as humans. And once you unpack them, they always make sense. So, listen with compassion and without judging, and you will build amazing trust.
If you are feeling disconnected from your partner and need help to repair and reconnect, I urge you to read more about Emotionally Focused Therapy, and then reach out to us at SoulCare Counseling for either weekly EFT couple counseling or an EFT marriage intensive.
Dr. Bernis Riley is co-founder and Clinical Director of SoulCare Counseling. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor Supervisor and a Certified EFT Therapist with a Doctorate in Psychology. She is also trained in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). Dr. Riley is taking new clients.