FINDING MY AARDVARK
Becca was exasperated. She wanted Andy to hear her. She wanted to be understood. She wanted him to see her point. Why was he being so difficult? She found herself getting angrier and angrier. The more upset she became the more he resisted. How can he be so stubborn? She knew she was right. Why can’t he just acknowledge that? Why can't he just agree with me for once?
The arguments were becoming more heated and it was taking a toll on the relationship. Increasingly the couple found themselves immersed in what Susan Johnson, researcher and founder of EFT, Emotion Focused Therapy, calls a "Demon Dialogue." In such an exchange, there are no winners only increasing resentment and emotional distance. What once felt warm and inviting now feels cold and dangerous.
Becca’s immediate want was to win the argument and feel valdated. However, she had lost touch with a deeper need.
What’s the difference between a want and a need? Becca wanted to win. She wanted to be right. She wasn’t about to “cave in” and let Andy win this one. She had to stand her ground. That was her immediate "want."
So, what then was her need? In the heat of the moment Becca lost track of her deepest need, the need to have a happy, secure, emotional connection with Andy.
She wasn’t alone. Andey regularly got caught up in the same need to be right, a need to win — a need to defend! It was either win/lose or avoid the conflict altogether. Both Becca and Andy saw the situation as win/lose and neither intended to lose. Neither Becca nor Andy seemed to realize that in a relationship there is no such thing as win/lose. It’s either win/win or lose/lose.
Many couples are like Becca and Andy and handle conflict poorly, automatically responding to conflict or perceived criticism with a knee-jerk counter-argument characterized by blaming or defending. An even worse way of responding to conflict would be to avoid it altogether.
Why does defending come so easily to us? When a secure comfortable emotional connection is our deepest relational need, why do we act in ways that cancel out the passion and intimacy we crave? Why do we persist until we’ve created a destructive pattern that ultimately can cost us the emotional connection altogether?
The answer can be found in our development as a species. According to evolutionary biology we are programmed to remember the negative (negativity bias) and we are programmed to be hypervigilant for threat, responding with fight, flight, or freeze behaviors. This programming was central to our survival as a species but now works against us in close relationships.
What’s needed is embracing our inter-dependence, acting with kindness, compassion, and empathy. Unfortunately these behaviors don’t come naturally. It’s perhaps more natural to behave out of a need for protection and avoidance of pain. It’s also more natural to defend our egos. Conflict is inevitable.
The solution? It’s practicing empathic listening to the point of attentive listening and empathy becoming habitual. But that’s not easy!
It requires letting go of defensiveness and practicing empathy. You cannot be defensive and have empathy at the same time. It’s not possible. Also, you need to fully believe you don’t really have to defend anything. Believing that you have no choice but to defend, is the problem. Letting go of that belief is terribly difficult.
Empathy is the magic ingrediant for building, strengthening, and preserving that secure satisfying relationship we all crave, and empathic listening is the essential practice.
It’s definitely not easy. It goes against our programming. You will slip and become defensive again, and again, and again. You will never be perfect at it, but you can be better.
Couples learn to catch themselves getting into Sue Johnson‘s demon dialogue. Either person can change the interaction by saying: “I think we’re headed in the wrong direction. Can we slow it down or start over?“ Of course the partner needs to go along with that. A bid for connection needs to be responded to with a bid for connection. A conciliatory gesture should result in another conciliatory gesture.
Some couples have a shorthand catchphrase or code. One couple uses the term “Aardvark“ As a signal that the relationship needs attention and that each party needs to slow down and become more mindful of what’s happening in the moment and aware of what the relationship is needing. Both need to put their egos aside and tend to the relationship.
Of course it will never go perfectly. Like each of you, your relationship is a work in progress. You can catch yourself turning against one another or away from one another, or instead turning toward one another with empathic listening and deeper understanding of one another’s emotions and unmet needs.
For each of us, it’s a matter of “finding my Aardvark.”