Even the strongest of marriages may face tough challenges during the course of a lifetime. Couples who maneuver through the child-rearing years successfully may be surprised to discover that, down the road, a financial setback or a major illness can rock the foundations of their union. In Steering Your Marriage, author Dr. Suzanne Burger offers couples a toolkit to navigate life’s challenges while remaining in a committed and vibrant relationship.

Through anecdotes and case histories, Dr. Burger provides a guide for those seeking insight and wisdom in their journey together. She explores potential issues-such as finances, the death of a child, career changes, aging parents, chronic illness-that couples often encounter and uses examples and checklists to illustrate how to find new understanding in one another.

Steering Your Marriage presents the latest research on what helps couples shift course as they adapt to a variety of challenges, and it offers detailed examples of couples who have successfully navigated through hardships and around unforeseen detours in their lives. This guide provides couples with the skills necessary to move through time together.

Steering Your Marriage

A Guide to Navigating the Road TogetherBy SUZANNE BURGER

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 Suzanne Burger, PsyD
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4697-9308-5

Contents

Preface.....................................................................................xiIntroduction................................................................................xvChapter 1. From Familiar Ruts to New Directions.............................................1Chapter 2. A Safe Journey: Paving the Way to Intimacy.......................................19Chapter 3. Eyes on The Road: Practicing Mindfulness.........................................37Chapter 4. An Open Window: Acceptance and Forgiveness.......................................51Chapter 5. Toward the Horizon: Commitment and Intention.....................................65Chapter 6. Financing the Journey: Money Issues..............................................77Chapter 7. A New Direction: The Journey with a Child with Special Needs.....................91Chapter 8. Terminals: The Death of a Child..................................................103Chapter 9. Changing Lanes: Relocation and Career Moves......................................117Chapter 10. Backroads: The Pull from Ailing Parents.........................................131Chapter 11. The End of the Road: Chronic Illness and Letting Go.............................141Chapter 12. Diverging Paths.................................................................157Epilogue....................................................................................169Bibliography................................................................................171Online Resources............................................................................179Index.......................................................................................185

Chapter One

From Familiar Ruts to New Directions

The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken. —Samuel Johnson

I love being married. It's so great to find one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life. —Rita Rudner

When you drive to work, you probably have a regular route locked into your commute. You drive down the same road every day, even though there might be a lengthy traffic light or a pothole-lined street much in need of repair. Another route might be just as convenient, but you don't take it because it's unfamiliar. We like our routines because they are comforting and require little mental and emotional work. To discover a faster, more convenient, or more pleasant route requires thought and effort.

Relationship patterns like these also grow and quickly embed themselves in a marriage. You and your spouse probably have heard yourselves say, "Here we go again; it's the same discussion we've been having for the past ten years!" Like many people, you and your partner may find yourselves falling into these well-worn exchanges very quickly. Most often, people inherit the assumptions about emotions, family rituals, and personal values from their parents, yet they rarely reflect on them. In some instances these unrecognized aspects of your identity and your past can become serious roadblocks in the course of a committed relationship.

The Furrowed Road

In my consulting office, I frequently hear these sorts of complaints from people who find themselves at odds with their partners: "You're turning into my mother!" or "We're stuck in a rut."

Most of these couples are surprised to find themselves in this position. During the passionate early stages of their courtship, they were convinced they had found the man or woman who met most of their needs; they believed they had found the path to romantic and sexual happiness. A few years into their marriage, they find themselves miles away from this blissful place.

Many couples describe a gradual decrease in marital satisfaction. Some may find that their marriage was built on a sandy foundation, with little holding them together in the way of interests, values, and life goals. Despite the best intentions, some couples, five or ten years into their marriage, are surprised to hear echoes from their childhood. They find themselves repeating unpleasant patterns of intereaction with their spouses that are all too familiar, patterns stemming from their childhood.

Spinning Wheels

A middle-aged couple consulted with me over the course of several months, as the wife, Lori, was feeling increasingly resentful about her demanding role in the marriage. In addition to working full time, she was the primary caregiver to the couple's two children. Things came to a head in the marriage when the husband, Jay, developed colitis. He became increasingly dependent on Lori and frequently complained to her about his symptoms. Their discussions on this topic spiraled into heated arguments, with Jay accusing Lori of insensitivity and Lori retaliating by proclaiming Jay to be her "third child," yet feeling guilty for not being more understanding.

As I encouraged them to explore their own personal narratives about illness and care-giving, a striking picture emerged. Lori had grown up as the eldest of four children in a family with a depressed mother who relied heavily on Lori to help with chores and care for the younger siblings. In contrast, Jay, an only child, had been raised by parents whose very active social life often required them to leave him in the charge of babysitters. Only when he was home with a fever or a stomach virus did he feel that his mother focused on him in an attentive and nurturing way.

As we delved into these different narratives, Lori and Jay began to explore what meaning these memories held for them and became curious about how these patterns manifested themselves in their marriage. Lori, initially irritable and resentful, cried as she identified her conflicting wishes to be needed by her mother while wanting to be babied at times herself. She had pushed away these softer feelings yet had continued to hold on to old resentments about having to be the competent caregiver. Jay, on the other hand, articulated that he often felt that he could only express his need for caring and comfort in sickness. This exploration of unmet needs and wishes enabled this couple to begin down a new road together. Lori offered Jay more positive attention and warmth when he contributed to the household, and Jay became more attentive to Lori's need for caring and tenderness.

The emotional and interpersonal learning that you do as a child is essential to the development of your identity, your perceptions, and your patterns of social interaction. Harville Hendrix, the noted couples' therapist, has observed that, unbeknownst to us, we often seek in our mate someone we believe will help us complete our unfinished childhood business. Until we understand where we've been, it really is hard to know why we've chosen a particular partner with whom to journey through life. It helps to study those roadmaps from the past. In fact, couples who develop a dialogue around how feelings, conflicts, and challenges were handled in each other's original family are better equipped to understand and manage their differences.

As an example, a man raised with the traditional saw "boys don't cry" might break down in tears early on in his relationship with his partner, perhaps following the loss of a grandparent or an argument with a friend. While such an open expression of emotion may seem entirely spontaneous, often it is not. Instead, it is in part an invitation to exploration with the subject of inquiry being, "How will my lover respond to my being vulnerable?" If this man's partner is compassionate and supportive, the takeaway for him will be, "Hey, I can share these kinds of feelings with her." On the other hand, the partner might respond with a dismissive, "Get over it"; or she may anxiously react to the sight of this normally self-assured man appearing so shaken. In this case he is likely to return to his familiar route; that is, he will probably suppress strong painful emotions in the future. The road will be familiar, the message repeated: "It's bad to cry."

Some couples will find that their relationship has been moving along smoothly, with only minor friction, until an event reawakens important childhood feelings that had previously been locked away. At these times, a couple may feel their journey together has been abruptly and radically disturbed, as though they've been blindsided. Some common scenarios that set the stage for these collisions include illness, the transition to parenthood, or a sudden change in fortune.

Johanna and Vincent had been married for four years of what they later referred to as the honeymoon phase, prior to the birth of their daughter. Until that time they shared decisions and household responsibilities. They were also successful at balancing their time between their relationship and their social and familial commitments. Yet with the birth of Anna, Vincent abruptly became distant. He stayed at work for long hours and began to spend more time with his high school buddies. Resentment at home escalated.

Fortunately, the couple recognized their increasing distance and decided to understand its source. Vincent began individual therapy and unearthed uncomfortable memories of having gone to live with his grandparents for several weeks following the birth of his brother. At that time, at the age of five, Vincent had few possible responses available to him. He recalled crying once to his grandmother about his longing for his mother and father and was told that he was a "big boy" who would need to help his parents now that they had a baby in the house. As Vincent came to recognize and accept his sadness and resentment from this period, he moved away from recreating this experience with his wife and daughter and began to realize that he did not need to feel shut out or abandoned.

A second couple reported that their first major disagreement occurred on their first Christmas Day together as a married couple. It left such indelible tracks in their relationship that the same issue cropped up now on a weekly basis. Mitch woke late that morning, stayed in bed, and waited for his wife, Patty, to wake him gently and present him with a specially wrapped item encased in multiple, increasingly smaller boxes. This was, after all, the ritual he had known growing up.

When his wife failed to appear with the mystery gift, Mitch felt bereft. While Patty had never heard of this family ritual, and while Mitch recognized intellectually the unreasonable nature of his expectations, he couldn't seem to get past his profound disappointment. Instead, he reenacted it again and again.

Over the years Mitch had become increasingly dismayed when his wife returned home with purchases for him like a new shirt in a color he disliked. He would become withdrawn and even unapproachable at times. Patty was left with the feeling that she could never meet his expectations. It took time and work for Mitch to succeed at articulating that his mother's ability to recognize his wishes held a magical quality that he connected to Christmas and to his notion of love. We spent even more time teaching him to recognize the many ways in which Patty expressed care and love (like inviting his friends over regularly despite her long work hours or sending him e-mails with words of encouragement prior to his annual review meeting with his boss), ways that he had previously ignored, as they hadn't been emphasized in his relationship to his mother.

Freud noted that we are compelled to repeat what we do not understand. He defined the repetition compulsion as the tendency to repeat actions and patterns of behavior, especially those resulting in pain or disappointment. Whereas Freud viewed this as an unconscious, self-destructive force, contemporary therapists see this pattern of behavior as an attempt at mastering hurtful, confusing, or incomplete life experiences. In a sense, we are traveling the same route again and again in the often false hope of arriving at a new destination. In marriages, couples are frequently looking for a partner who will repair or complete an earlier disappointment or fill a need that has always gone unmet.

You can ask yourself what unfinished business you are hoping to resolve with your husband. For instance, if you had married "Peter," who was extremely wealthy, perhaps you would have been trying to repair your profound sense of financial insecurity, a feeling you developed as a kid after your family was evicted for failing to pay the rent. Peter would have provided a monetary cushion, but you would have worried about his fidelity. Instead you married Jason, who, unlike your mother, praises you to the stars, but, like your father, is unreliable.

In this model, a person looks to her mate to provide opportunities to satisfy unmet childhood needs. These needs can include the need for security, predictability, empathy, and admiration. Difficulties arise when you remain unaware of what you are seeking from your partner and you look to him to recreate your parents' failings; instead, the goal is to open the door to the possibility of having a corrective emotional experience with your mate. For you to avoid repeating past disappointments, recognition of your patterns and an invitation to deepen your knowledge of each other are powerful interventions.

Slowing Down

When you have an automatic, intense reaction to something your partner says or does, try the following:

• Slow down long enough to recognize your emotions and sensations. This is akin to sitting with and observing your feelings.

• Think about what triggered you: Was it a word, expression, or a look on your spouse's face?

• Consider other times in your life when a similar event occurred for you. See if you can remember why you felt this way as a child. Why was this important to you then? How is this still affecting you today?

• Pay attention to details that distinguish this moment from the past so that you can assess the current situation more openly. Use your senses (sight/smell/sound/touch/taste) to ground yourself.

• Share your reaction with your partner. Use statements like, "The way you just said that really got to me."

• Do a body and mental check. How is your breathing?

Working with your reactions with these tools will help you become less reactive and more reflective. Once you have sat with your experience long enough to be less reactive and more self-aware, try sharing your experiences with your partner. Provided he or she is equally nonreactive, this will help you in becoming allies in your effort to emerge from unhealthy cycles.

Pit Stops at the Funhouse

As you will discover throughout this book, bringing in humor to ease some of these tense patterns will go a long way toward keeping your relationship on a steady course. Instead of screaming that your mother always baked a homemade cake for you on your birthday and attacking your husband for failing to do so, agree that he will buy an inflatable or plastic cake and place it out when that special day rolls around! Find the areas from both your childhoods that you tend to revisit in an angry way and be creative about discovering their potential humor.

Here are some examples to give you a better feel for how you might play with these differences in background, family rituals, and rules about emotional expression:

• If one of you tends to be highly expressive and the other one more of an emotional stoic—the guy with the "stiff upper lip"—make some posters or buy some masks that caricature these two styles, and pull them out as you enter into one of your familiar debates about being emotionally over- or under-expressive.

• If your partner (and everyone in his family) is chronically late, recall the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland and run around in a frantic way in order to release some of your negative energy. You will find that you are less angry when he finally arrives.

• When your husband expects you to drop everything as soon as he return home from work because that is what occurred in his home growing up, bow down to him in an exaggerated way, perhaps even hum "God Save the Queen" (or, in this instance, King), and then get back to whatever it is you need to tend to. In this way you will acknowledge your husband's needs while still asserting yours.

The Attachment Highway

You've probably read about how children who spend their first years in an orphanage often have a tough time bonding with their parents. These kids show little interest in seeking out others for comfort or protection even when they are upset. During the first three years of life, these children are cheated out of a critical experience: they never connect enough to one or two adults who serve as a kind of emotional home base. Children raised by a consistent caregiver are much more likely to explore their environment with confidence, fully confident that they can return to the safe harbor of a mom or dad when they need comfort, protection, or rest.

Your need to connect is a fundamental aspect of being human. Even monkeys demonstrate a need for attachment: in an often-cited experiment, monkeys preferred to cuddle with a terrycloth wrapped wire monkey than select the wire-mesh foster mom who was equipped to provide milk (Harlow, 1962). People are biologically driven to seek out attachments to others and to develop expectations and beliefs about relationships based on their own early experiences. These expectations become organized into a working model of relating that remains active throughout adulthood. In the end, if you find yourself among those who are often mixing it up with your partner, chances are you experienced less-than-optimal attachment as a child. To understand this better, you need to know a bit more about attachment theory.

Attachment Styles

Identifying your attachment style will enable you to be more proactive in working with your partner. For people who are insecurely attached, separations such as business trips or minor disagreements can activate a cycle of anxiety, anger, and distrust. Many couples that struggle with issues of jealousy are actually working on attachment problems. Again and again they are asking the fundamental question, "Are you there for me?"

Those who study how babies and toddlers connect with their parents have found a few basic attachment styles. Most babies seek comfort and closeness with their parents when upset, but there are notable exceptions. Children whose caregivers are intrusive, disconnected, or inconsistent are likely to have an anxious or avoidant response when upset.

Following are four distinct attachment styles from childhood: secure; anxious-preoccupied; dismissive-avoidant; and fearful-avoidant.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Steering Your Marriageby SUZANNE BURGER Copyright © 2012 by Suzanne Burger, PsyD. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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