Maybe you’ve felt disconnected for a while now. Maybe things haven’t been right in a long time. Maybe raising kids has become the only way you two collaborate. Maybe intimacy took a dive. You have a notion that you need to get help to get things back on track, but life keeps interfering. Kids need attention. Work takes up all of your time. I want to ask: What are you waiting for?
I trained as a volunteer for Zen Hospice in San Francisco in 2005. There were several principles that guided our time as volunteers, but the one that has really stayed with me was “don’t wait.” In hospice, that principle helped us tell the people we cared for how much they meant to us. It taught us to pay attention to that person in front of us because there may not be a tomorrow. It helped us attend to the needs of the dying now.
In a poignant moment, I watched as 2 doctors, 2 nurses, 3 nurses aides, a Volunteer director, and 4 volunteers worked through the logistics of getting the correct ramen noodles for a patient. Any for-profit business would have been aghast at the over $1000/hr spent in wages for meeting participants to coordinate buying cheap noodles. We did that because if we waited, that person might not be here tomorrow and this was what mattered to them. That was priceless.
Similarly, if you’re waiting to repair one of the most important relationships in your life, what is it that’s keeping you from repairing today? Doesn’t repairing it today mean enjoying it earlier? Doesn’t it mean the rest of your life having a better relationship?
If you’ve had a long period of disconnection, it’s very likely that you have coping strategies that allowed you both to deal with life without help from your partner. The kids still have to be picked up, they still have to eat, and they still have to make it to piano classes on time, right? So maybe you have a Google calendar setup where both of you can see what the kids need. But do you want more from life than a good co-parent? Maybe the pain of confronting this disconnection makes this coping the easier option.
Making The Pain Worth It.
I encourage you to take this pain and make it useful. I tell my clients that marriage therapy is about exchanging short-term distress for long-term benefit. If therapy was just distress, I wouldn’t be in this business. I’m not a masochist. I’ve seen real benefits to therapy in making life more meaningful, less lonely, and more secure.
A lot of couples are surprised that they’re fighting over things that seem quite simple or petty. The output of these fights can be either more anger or more disconnection. This surprise over “nonsense” fights is a good indicator that your relationship is getting hijacked.
Often, the cause of these surprise fights is an underlying emotional pattern that comes when one person gets triggered, then triggers their partner. I have blog posts on things you can try to help calm down a hijacking cycle: Going slow, square breathing, understanding anger.
If this pattern has repeated over a period of years, it can be difficult to undo yourselves. I encourage you to seek therapy with a counselor who can help address the underlying emotional pattern that can hijack your relationship. I’ve found Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples to be a wonderfully effective tool for my clients. If you want to know more about Marriage Counseling, check out my marriage counseling page.
If you’re in or around Edina, I can help. You can contact me by emailing me through my contact form, calling me at my number: 612-230-7171, or clicking on the link below to make a 15-minute phone appointment to talk. I look forward to finding out how I can help.