Relationship Visioning
by Dr. Bill
If you have built castles in the air, your work
need not be lost; that is where they should be.
Now put the foundation under them.
Henry David Thoreau
Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. The starry-eyed couple build their dream castle in the air, and they live happily ever after. Life is perfect!
Isn’t that how the story is supposed to end? What if it’s not an ending at all, but merely the beginning? What if falling in love is the simple part?
Obviously, there is more to the story if you want a shot at “happily ever after.” Don’t you need something else? Is love really all you need? Is love enough to sustain your relationship? I suppose “happily ever after” means a lifetime relationship, and a lifetime can be a long, long time And I’m not talking about just staying together. What about going beyond merely keeping a relationship to thriving in your relationship?
Being in love is wonderful and exhilarating, but it’s not the same as having a relationship that is solid and satisfying over the long haul — and so much more is expected of intimate relationships today than in previous times.
It’s only in the last two centuries that people marry for love and intimacy rather than to gain political or economic advantage, or for social and family reasons. Free choice is now the norm, and love is now the main reason for choosing a life partner. Now people seek a relationship that satisfies all their emotional and sexual desires. Most recently, we expect our partner will be a lifetime best friend, co-parent, financial ally, confidant, and soulmate. We expect a lot out of our relationships, perhaps unreasonable expectations, and we often believe that love is all we need. Love conquers all! Or does it?
In a rather amusing statement, George Bernard Shaw talked about marriage as an institution uniting two people “under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most elusive, and most transient of passions. They are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.”
Romantic attraction and romantic love constitute natures anesthetic. It gets us together and leads us to believe that nothing can ever get in the way of living happily ever after. However, sooner or later the anesthetic wears off and you find yourself dealing with real differences with the person you thought of as your perfect lifetime partner, your soulmate.
Having a lasting relationship is hard. Most long-term relationships don’t make it. No, I’m not trying to discourage you. We all need a secure emotional attachment with another person, and you can have it, but it takes more than being in love. Love merely activates a process that we hope will last a lifetime. However, there is work to be done, and things to be learned and practiced to fulfill your relationship dreams. As Thoreau said: “Now put the foundation under them.”
Imagine skillfully building a great relationship, a relationship that grows and lasts. If your relationship has problems, imagine getting a less than great relationship on track.
You need a great relationship vision. In the words of Yogi Berra, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably wind up someplace else.” It’s a funny line from a guy known for funny one-liners, but it’s also true.
You need a vision and a roadmap showing details of your path for living the vision. In this article, you will get a chance to develop a strategic plan for your relationship. I will also provide some ideas of what you might include in your vision.
I invite you to dream big dreams and aim high. No matter where your relationship is at present, I want you to envision the relationship of your dreams. While there are no quick fixes or easy solutions to relationship problems, the journey will be much easier with a vision of what might be.
Besides suggesting a personal relationship vision, I will also share some thoughts on how to have a shared relationship vision, with the two of you developing a collaborative vision you can both embrace and be guided by.
Let’s start with awareness, awareness of where you are in your relationship, awareness of where you want to be, and awareness of what it takes to get there.
How aware are you of what you bring to your relationship? Do you show up as the best possible version of you, or do you sometimes get sidetracked and unwittingly sabotage what you want most — a safe and satisfying emotional connection? Does your defensiveness get in the way? How about fears and insecurities? How about ego?
Self-awareness is being awake to the realities of the here-and-now, along with your strengths and capacity for future change and growth. Self-awareness also opens the door to thoughts about what your relationship might be and opportunities for growth.
According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Wherever You Go There You Are; Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life, "Our minds are such that we are often more asleep than awake to the unique beauty and possibilities of each present moment as it unfolds." Jon Kabat-Zinn continues:
"TRY: Seeing your own life this very day as a journey and as an adventure. Where are you going? What are you seeking? Where are you now? What stage as of the journey have you come to? If your life were a book, what would you call it today? What would you entitle the chapter you are in right now? Are you stuck here in certain ways? Can you be fully open to all the energies at your disposal at this point? Note that this journey is uniquely yours, no one else's. So the path has to be your own. You cannot imitate somebody else's journey and still be true to yourself. Are you prepared to honor your uniqueness in this way? ... can you commit to lighting your path with mindfulness and awareness? Can you see ways in which you could easily get stuck, or have in the past?"
Are you awake to possibilities for your relationship? What do you believe? Do you believe you can influence the development of a great relationship, even if your relationship has problems at present?
There are three most important questions that are helpful for both your vision and your roadmap
What are the three most important questions? I'm glad you asked. The questions are central to our Mindful Choices Therapy, and they have relevance to your relationship vision.
When applied to your relationship, the questions are:
1. Where am I in my relationship at the present time? Am I caring? Skillful? Do I contribute to the relationship lasting? Am I contributing to our happiness? Do I have blind spots, emotional reactions, and behaviors that damage or threaten the relationship that take away from our happiness?
The answers to these questions reflect accurate self-awareness.
For very specific information on your present relationship skills, take my Mindful Choices for Couples Self-Assessment on the website www.beingtherightpartner.com. If you are honest with yourself, you will discover areas that need attention. Positive change requires an honest self-appraisal. You can’t change anything you are unaware of or unwilling to look at. Nobody’s perfect and if you get a perfect score, we have an altogether different problem.
2. Where do I want to go in my relationship? If I show up in my relationship as the best possible version of myself, what would it look like?
The answers to these questions reflect a personal relationship vision.
This is the focus of the article you are reading. I will present ideas for a great relationship vision, give you a chance to work on your personal relationship vision, and conclude with some information about you and your partner developing a shared relationship vision.
3. How do I get there? How might I continuously ratchet up my daily experience toward my vision?
The answer to this question reflects a roadmap for relational success.
A draft copy of our upcoming book Being the Right Partner can be found on our website www.beingtherightpartner.com. Each of the 10 sections of the Mindful Choices for Couples Self-Assessment has a corresponding chapter which constitutes an action planning guide for developing positive relationship skills..
It’s rarely too late to create a personal relationship vision, and a shared relationship vision created with your partner. What would your ideal relationship look like?
Did you know that long-term healthy relationships evolve through several predictable stages, moving from the euphoria and enmeshment of romantic love to a stage where interdependence is balanced with each partner being differentiated, feeling good about being a full complete individual? Can you imagine great self-acceptance while enjoying secure attachment with a partner?
THE DEVELOPMENTAL MODEL
I am currently in a year-long training program on the Developmental Model of being a couple. It's making sense to me.
Ellyn Bader, PhD, and Peter T. Pearson, PhD, in their book In Quest of the Mythical Mate: A Developmental Approach to Diagnosis and Treatment in Couples Therapy, ask: "What do we do after we fall in love?" Bader and Pearson draw upon the research of Margaret Mahler and her theory of infant developmental stages. The authors see similar qualities characterizing the development of long-term relationships between adult partners.
Couples move through developmental stages with specific tasks to be mastered in each stage. Difficulties follow when individuals fail to master stage specific developmental tasks and therefore get stuck on a particular stage.
Couplehood, according to Bader and Pearson, evolves through five stages. The first stage, Symbiosis, is the stage of being newly in love. According to Bader and Pearson:
"Here there is a merging of lives, personalities, and intense bonding between the two lovers. The purpose of this stage is attachment. To allow for the merger, similarities are magnified and differences are overlooked."
The second stage, Differentiation, is where differences emerge, and a power struggle may develop. Again, according to Bader and Pearson:
"This stage is rarely easy! As time passes, one person may start thinking about wanting more space from the other. As a couple, they begin noticing differences and feel that they don't want to spend quite so much time together. They may want more privacy and may feel guilty and ask, what’s happened? Why don't I feel the way I used to?"
The third stage is Practicing. Bader and Pearson state:
"Autonomy and individuation are primary; at this point, the partners are rediscovering themselves as individuals. Developing self becomes more important than developing the relationship. Here, issues of self-esteem, individual power, and worthwhileness become central."
This is a stage where conflict may be increased, and couples need to be really good at managing and resolving conflict while maintaining a balance between needs for emotional connection and self-development.
The fourth stage, Rapprochment, is a stage where partners have developed their own identity and feel safe again turning toward the relationship for intimacy and emotional support. According to Bader and Pearson:
"Vulnerability reemerges. Partners now seek comfort and support one another. They alternate between periods of increased intimacy and efforts to reestablish independence. Although partners in this stage may find either the intimacy or the independence at times to be threatening, their anxiety will be resolved more quickly because negotiation is not as difficult as before."
Finally, the fifth stage is Mutual Interdependence or Constancy. Again, according to Bader and Pearson:
"Here, the two well-integrated individuals have found satisfaction in their own lives, have developed a bond that is deep and mutually satisfying, and have built a relationship based on the foundation of growth rather than on one of need."
Bader and Pearson have developed a Developmental Model for working with couples. They look at where each individual is in the developmental phases of the relationship. They found many problems occur when there is an imbalance between developmental stages producing a "see-saw" effect where couples alternate between conflict and withdrawal. Diagnosing the couple’s developmental issues helps therapists figure out what skills are needed by each partner as well as determining joint issues to be addressed.
I find Bader and Pearson's Developmental Model to be very useful, particularly while working with couples in long-term relationships.
We are now in our fourth decade of marriage, and the Developmental Model certainly makes sense looking back. In our Symbiotic stage we were caught up in romantic love, forming a strong bond and satisfying a deep need for attachment. We were struck by how similar we were in so many ways, and differences seemed unimportant. It was so easy to be mutually nurturing.
In the Differentiation stage, we realized we had very different interests and began reestablishing our own boundaries. In the Practicing stage we found ourselves having more and more interests and relationships away from each other and developing a sense of self became as important or more important than developing or nurturing the relationship. Issues of self-esteem became central and yes, there was conflict.
"In long-term relationships… We are called upon to navigate that delicate balance between separateness and connectedness… We confront the challenge of sustaining both - without losing either." Harriet Lerner
In Rapprochment we had become more comfortable in our individuality, each feeling competent and secure in our identity. We looked again to the relationship for a secure emotional connection. There was some back and forth between increased intimacy and reestablishing independence. And there was increased vulnerability.
Finally, in a stage of Constancy or Mutual Interdependence, we find ourselves growing together, comfortable with the differences, and fully committed to helping one another on our shared journey. We've fully accepted that we are different people, and that's okay. We have deep respect for one another and readily work together.
ADULT ATTACHMENT STYLES
Earlier, I mentioned “secure attachment.” It’s one of four adult attachment styles and the style that should be reflected in your relationship vision. Here is more about the four styles.
Early learning led you to have certain beliefs about how people are likely to respond to you, and how worthy you are of being loved. Anxiety about relationships may have developed in your relationships to your earliest caretakers.
Like many adults, you may be vulnerable to attachment related anxiety. Attachment is a crucially important subject in understanding your couple relationship. I will continue to emphasize attachment in subsequent blog articles and guide you to a deeper understanding of secure attachment and how you get it.
The following chart illustrates four adult attachment styles, according to Susan Johnson, a founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy. Of course, we want everyone to be securely attached but the most common pattern we see is for one person to be anxiously attached with a partner who is avoidantly attached. We have previously referred to this as the Magpie/Mole Syndrome.
In the demand/withdraw cycle illustrated below, Jane is anxiously attached and questions Sam's love and commitment. Sam is avoidantly attached and finds all this emotional stuff very distressing. Jane is stuck in reactive anger while Sam is stuck in shutting down and being numb.
Taking a deeper look at the demand/withdraw cycle, you can see that Jane is the anxiously attached pursuer whose autopilot response is to be attacking, critical, and complaining. She believes Sam doesn't care about her. Her surface emotions, or secondary emotions, are frustration and anger, while the deeper feelings are her fear of abandonment, sadness, and emotional pain. Her unmet attachment needs are to feel loved, needed, and important to Sam.
Sam, on the other hand, is avoidantly attached with a knee-jerk reaction of avoiding conflict, escaping difficult emotions, and shutting down. He fears he isn’t good enough and sees Jane as controlling. His secondary emotions are frustration, anger, and simply being numb. His deeper emotions have to do with his fear of failure, his feeling of rejection, his sadness, and his disappointment in himself and in the relationship. His unmet needs? His needs are the same as Jane’s, to be loved, needed, and an important part of his partner’s life.
The crucial ask for both Jane and Sam is the development of self-awareness and the ability to self-manage constructively. They each need to be fully aware of their destructive cycle and together practice calmly dealing with deeper emotions and unmet attachment needs. They each need to develop mindful and empathic listening skills along with allowing themselves to be vulnerable, co-creating a climate of mutual respect and safety.
Of course, there are other cycles as well. There is a danger that Jane will give up pursuing and shut down emotionally. At that point, we would have a withdraw/withdraw cycle.
Another possibility is Sam reacting angrily with all of his pent-up frustration and resentment. If Jane responds in kind, open conflict could become quite destructive. At that point, we might have an attack/attack cycle.
Our solution would be to teach Jane and Sam to recognize their cycle and to join forces in changing it. Of course, if a couple has been locked in the destructive cycle for a considerable period of time, change is very difficult.
We provide daily practice and plenty of homework aimed at mindful awareness and a team effort for bringing about positive changes. It needs to be Jane and Sam against the cycle instead of Jane and Sam against each other.
A huge milestone would be the development for each of a "mindful pause," the creation of a space between stimulus and response. With practice, Jane and San can learn to suspend their habitual responses and instead turn toward one another with empathy, compassion, and relationship enhancing choices.
I have presented some thoughts about what a great relationship might include. Next, let’s develop your personal relationship vision.
On the next page, you will find instructions for your personal relationship visioning. Take your time. You can actually work on your personal relationship vision over several days, and you can add to it in the future as you have new insights about your relationship.
Finally, on the last page, you and your partner will find instructions on completing a shared relationship vision. For this vision, you and your partner will combine your thoughts, eliminating things you don’t agree upon, arriving at a shared vision that you both can commit to and be guided by.
FOR ME / FOR YOU / FOR US
Relationship VisioningSit back, close your eyes, and imagine being in a great relationship. What do you see? How do you want to experience love? How do you see the two of you treating each other? What would make you happy?
There are three sections to this exercise. Use a sheet of paper or create a document on your computer screen. You may use as much space as you need.
WHAT DO I WANT FOR ME?
Think about everything you want out of a relationship. Think about your ideal relationship and all that it would encompass. Try to come up with as much detail as you can.
WHAT DO I WANT FOR YOU (my partner)?
What would you like to see your partner get out of the relationship? How do you want to see them benefit? Be careful not to talk about how you want your partner to change. That would come under the heading of what you want for you. Here you’re describing what you would like to see your partner get that they would actually like to get. How would you like to see your partner experience a relationship in ways that make him or her happy?
WHAT DO I WANT FOR US?
Finally, what are your thoughts about what you would like to see for the relationship? How would you like to see it grow? What would a great relationship look like? Imagine the relationship of your dreams. Imagine our relationship with the two of you are thriving because of the qualities of your relationship. What are those qualities?
OUR SHARED RELATIONSHIP VISION
WHAT DO WE WANT FOR US?
Once you and your partner have worked on your personal relationship visions, it’s time to combine them, coming up with one shared relationship vision.
Step 1. The first step is for each of you to come up with a list of about 20 items that you think belong in a relationship vision.
Step 2. Each item should be stated as though it is happening now. For example, you might have items such as “we communicate openly about sex and intimacy, without defensiveness,” or “we have an active lifestyle, and enjoy physical activities such as tennis or hiking on a weekly basis.”
Step 3. Combine your lists. If items are slightly different, but acceptable to both of you, play with the wording until you have the statement that you are both satisfied with. If one item is not acceptable to a partner, discard that item. This is not a place for focusing on the things you don’t agree on. You can deal with that separately.
Step 4. Finalize your shared relationship vision. Each partner gets a printed copy of the vision, and a copy needs to be posted in a conspicuous place.
Step 5. Your Shared Relationship Vision can be revisited many times and amended as necessary. It should serve as a guide to what both of you want your relationship to be.
Happy visioning!
Dr. Bill 
Relationship Visioning
by Dr. Bill
If you have built castles in the air, your work
need not be lost; that is where they should be.
Now put the foundation under them.
Henry David Thoreau
Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. The starry-eyed couple build their dream castle in the air, and they live happily ever after. Life is perfect!
Isn’t that how the story is supposed to end? What if it’s not an ending at all, but merely the beginning? What if falling in love is the simple part?
Obviously, there is more to the story if you want a shot at “happily ever after.” Don’t you need something else? Is love really all you need? Is love enough to sustain your relationship? I suppose “happily ever after” means a lifetime relationship, and a lifetime can be a long, long time And I’m not talking about just staying together. What about going beyond merely keeping a relationship to thriving in your relationship?
Being in love is wonderful and exhilarating, but it’s not the same as having a relationship that is solid and satisfying over the long haul — and so much more is expected of intimate relationships today than in previous times.
It’s only in the last two centuries that people marry for love and intimacy rather than to gain political or economic advantage, or for social and family reasons. Free choice is now the norm, and love is now the main reason for choosing a life partner. Now people seek a relationship that satisfies all their emotional and sexual desires. Most recently, we expect our partner will be a lifetime best friend, co-parent, financial ally, confidant, and soulmate. We expect a lot out of our relationships, perhaps unreasonable expectations, and we often believe that love is all we need. Love conquers all! Or does it?
In a rather amusing statement, George Bernard Shaw talked about marriage as an institution uniting two people “under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most elusive, and most transient of passions. They are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.”
Romantic attraction and romantic love constitute natures anesthetic. It gets us together and leads us to believe that nothing can ever get in the way of living happily ever after. However, sooner or later the anesthetic wears off and you find yourself dealing with real differences with the person you thought of as your perfect lifetime partner, your soulmate.
Having a lasting relationship is hard. Most long-term relationships don’t make it. No, I’m not trying to discourage you. We all need a secure emotional attachment with another person, and you can have it, but it takes more than being in love. Love merely activates a process that we hope will last a lifetime. However, there is work to be done, and things to be learned and practiced to fulfill your relationship dreams. As Thoreau said: “Now put the foundation under them.”
Imagine skillfully building a great relationship, a relationship that grows and lasts. If your relationship has problems, imagine getting a less than great relationship on track.
You need a great relationship vision. In the words of Yogi Berra, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably wind up someplace else.” It’s a funny line from a guy known for funny one-liners, but it’s also true.
You need a vision and a roadmap showing details of your path for living the vision. In this article, you will get a chance to develop a strategic plan for your relationship. I will also provide some ideas of what you might include in your vision.
I invite you to dream big dreams and aim high. No matter where your relationship is at present, I want you to envision the relationship of your dreams. While there are no quick fixes or easy solutions to relationship problems, the journey will be much easier with a vision of what might be.
Besides suggesting a personal relationship vision, I will also share some thoughts on how to have a shared relationship vision, with the two of you developing a collaborative vision you can both embrace and be guided by.
Let’s start with awareness, awareness of where you are in your relationship, awareness of where you want to be, and awareness of what it takes to get there.
How aware are you of what you bring to your relationship? Do you show up as the best possible version of you, or do you sometimes get sidetracked and unwittingly sabotage what you want most — a safe and satisfying emotional connection? Does your defensiveness get in the way? How about fears and insecurities? How about ego?
Self-awareness is being awake to the realities of the here-and-now, along with your strengths and capacity for future change and growth. Self-awareness also opens the door to thoughts about what your relationship might be and opportunities for growth.
According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Wherever You Go There You Are; Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life, "Our minds are such that we are often more asleep than awake to the unique beauty and possibilities of each present moment as it unfolds." Jon Kabat-Zinn continues:
"TRY: Seeing your own life this very day as a journey and as an adventure. Where are you going? What are you seeking? Where are you now? What stage as of the journey have you come to? If your life were a book, what would you call it today? What would you entitle the chapter you are in right now? Are you stuck here in certain ways? Can you be fully open to all the energies at your disposal at this point? Note that this journey is uniquely yours, no one else's. So the path has to be your own. You cannot imitate somebody else's journey and still be true to yourself. Are you prepared to honor your uniqueness in this way? ... can you commit to lighting your path with mindfulness and awareness? Can you see ways in which you could easily get stuck, or have in the past?"
Are you awake to possibilities for your relationship? What do you believe? Do you believe you can influence the development of a great relationship, even if your relationship has problems at present?
There are three most important questions that are helpful for both your vision and your roadmap
What are the three most important questions? I'm glad you asked. The questions are central to our Mindful Choices Therapy, and they have relevance to your relationship vision.
When applied to your relationship, the questions are:
1. Where am I in my relationship at the present time? Am I caring? Skillful? Do I contribute to the relationship lasting? Am I contributing to our happiness? Do I have blind spots, emotional reactions, and behaviors that damage or threaten the relationship that take away from our happiness?
The answers to these questions reflect accurate self-awareness.
For very specific information on your present relationship skills, take my Mindful Choices for Couples Self-Assessment on the website www.beingtherightpartner.com. If you are honest with yourself, you will discover areas that need attention. Positive change requires an honest self-appraisal. You can’t change anything you are unaware of or unwilling to look at. Nobody’s perfect and if you get a perfect score, we have an altogether different problem.
2. Where do I want to go in my relationship? If I show up in my relationship as the best possible version of myself, what would it look like?
The answers to these questions reflect a personal relationship vision.
This is the focus of the article you are reading. I will present ideas for a great relationship vision, give you a chance to work on your personal relationship vision, and conclude with some information about you and your partner developing a shared relationship vision.
3. How do I get there? How might I continuously ratchet up my daily experience toward my vision?
The answer to this question reflects a roadmap for relational success.
A draft copy of our upcoming book Being the Right Partner can be found on our website www.beingtherightpartner.com. Each of the 10 sections of the Mindful Choices for Couples Self-Assessment has a corresponding chapter which constitutes an action planning guide for developing positive relationship skills..
It’s rarely too late to create a personal relationship vision, and a shared relationship vision created with your partner. What would your ideal relationship look like?
Did you know that long-term healthy relationships evolve through several predictable stages, moving from the euphoria and enmeshment of romantic love to a stage where interdependence is balanced with each partner being differentiated, feeling good about being a full complete individual? Can you imagine great self-acceptance while enjoying secure attachment with a partner?
THE DEVELOPMENTAL MODEL
I am currently in a year-long training program on the Developmental Model of being a couple. It's making sense to me.
Ellyn Bader, PhD, and Peter T. Pearson, PhD, in their book In Quest of the Mythical Mate: A Developmental Approach to Diagnosis and Treatment in Couples Therapy, ask: "What do we do after we fall in love?" Bader and Pearson draw upon the research of Margaret Mahler and her theory of infant developmental stages. The authors see similar qualities characterizing the development of long-term relationships between adult partners.
Couples move through developmental stages with specific tasks to be mastered in each stage. Difficulties follow when individuals fail to master stage specific developmental tasks and therefore get stuck on a particular stage.
Couplehood, according to Bader and Pearson, evolves through five stages. The first stage, Symbiosis, is the stage of being newly in love. According to Bader and Pearson:
"Here there is a merging of lives, personalities, and intense bonding between the two lovers. The purpose of this stage is attachment. To allow for the merger, similarities are magnified and differences are overlooked."
The second stage, Differentiation, is where differences emerge, and a power struggle may develop. Again, according to Bader and Pearson:
"This stage is rarely easy! As time passes, one person may start thinking about wanting more space from the other. As a couple, they begin noticing differences and feel that they don't want to spend quite so much time together. They may want more privacy and may feel guilty and ask, what’s happened? Why don't I feel the way I used to?"
The third stage is Practicing. Bader and Pearson state:
"Autonomy and individuation are primary; at this point, the partners are rediscovering themselves as individuals. Developing self becomes more important than developing the relationship. Here, issues of self-esteem, individual power, and worthwhileness become central."
This is a stage where conflict may be increased, and couples need to be really good at managing and resolving conflict while maintaining a balance between needs for emotional connection and self-development.
The fourth stage, Rapprochment, is a stage where partners have developed their own identity and feel safe again turning toward the relationship for intimacy and emotional support. According to Bader and Pearson:
"Vulnerability reemerges. Partners now seek comfort and support one another. They alternate between periods of increased intimacy and efforts to reestablish independence. Although partners in this stage may find either the intimacy or the independence at times to be threatening, their anxiety will be resolved more quickly because negotiation is not as difficult as before."
Finally, the fifth stage is Mutual Interdependence or Constancy. Again, according to Bader and Pearson:
"Here, the two well-integrated individuals have found satisfaction in their own lives, have developed a bond that is deep and mutually satisfying, and have built a relationship based on the foundation of growth rather than on one of need."
Bader and Pearson have developed a Developmental Model for working with couples. They look at where each individual is in the developmental phases of the relationship. They found many problems occur when there is an imbalance between developmental stages producing a "see-saw" effect where couples alternate between conflict and withdrawal. Diagnosing the couple’s developmental issues helps therapists figure out what skills are needed by each partner as well as determining joint issues to be addressed.
I find Bader and Pearson's Developmental Model to be very useful, particularly while working with couples in long-term relationships.
We are now in our fourth decade of marriage, and the Developmental Model certainly makes sense looking back. In our Symbiotic stage we were caught up in romantic love, forming a strong bond and satisfying a deep need for attachment. We were struck by how similar we were in so many ways, and differences seemed unimportant. It was so easy to be mutually nurturing.
In the Differentiation stage, we realized we had very different interests and began reestablishing our own boundaries. In the Practicing stage we found ourselves having more and more interests and relationships away from each other and developing a sense of self became as important or more important than developing or nurturing the relationship. Issues of self-esteem became central and yes, there was conflict.
"In long-term relationships… We are called upon to navigate that delicate balance between separateness and connectedness… We confront the challenge of sustaining both - without losing either." Harriet Lerner
In Rapprochment we had become more comfortable in our individuality, each feeling competent and secure in our identity. We looked again to the relationship for a secure emotional connection. There was some back and forth between increased intimacy and reestablishing independence. And there was increased vulnerability.
Finally, in a stage of Constancy or Mutual Interdependence, we find ourselves growing together, comfortable with the differences, and fully committed to helping one another on our shared journey. We've fully accepted that we are different people, and that's okay. We have deep respect for one another and readily work together.
ADULT ATTACHMENT STYLES
Earlier, I mentioned “secure attachment.” It’s one of four adult attachment styles and the style that should be reflected in your relationship vision. Here is more about the four styles.
Early learning led you to have certain beliefs about how people are likely to respond to you, and how worthy you are of being loved. Anxiety about relationships may have developed in your relationships to your earliest caretakers.
Like many adults, you may be vulnerable to attachment related anxiety. Attachment is a crucially important subject in understanding your couple relationship. I will continue to emphasize attachment in subsequent blog articles and guide you to a deeper understanding of secure attachment and how you get it.
The following chart illustrates four adult attachment styles, according to Susan Johnson, a founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy. Of course, we want everyone to be securely attached but the most common pattern we see is for one person to be anxiously attached with a partner who is avoidantly attached. We have previously referred to this as the Magpie/Mole Syndrome.
In the demand/withdraw cycle illustrated below, Jane is anxiously attached and questions Sam's love and commitment. Sam is avoidantly attached and finds all this emotional stuff very distressing. Jane is stuck in reactive anger while Sam is stuck in shutting down and being numb.
Taking a deeper look at the demand/withdraw cycle, you can see that Jane is the anxiously attached pursuer whose autopilot response is to be attacking, critical, and complaining. She believes Sam doesn't care about her. Her surface emotions, or secondary emotions, are frustration and anger, while the deeper feelings are her fear of abandonment, sadness, and emotional pain. Her unmet attachment needs are to feel loved, needed, and important to Sam.
Sam, on the other hand, is avoidantly attached with a knee-jerk reaction of avoiding conflict, escaping difficult emotions, and shutting down. He fears he isn’t good enough and sees Jane as controlling. His secondary emotions are frustration, anger, and simply being numb. His deeper emotions have to do with his fear of failure, his feeling of rejection, his sadness, and his disappointment in himself and in the relationship. His unmet needs? His needs are the same as Jane’s, to be loved, needed, and an important part of his partner’s life.
The crucial ask for both Jane and Sam is the development of self-awareness and the ability to self-manage constructively. They each need to be fully aware of their destructive cycle and together practice calmly dealing with deeper emotions and unmet attachment needs. They each need to develop mindful and empathic listening skills along with allowing themselves to be vulnerable, co-creating a climate of mutual respect and safety.
Of course, there are other cycles as well. There is a danger that Jane will give up pursuing and shut down emotionally. At that point, we would have a withdraw/withdraw cycle.
Another possibility is Sam reacting angrily with all of his pent-up frustration and resentment. If Jane responds in kind, open conflict could become quite destructive. At that point, we might have an attack/attack cycle.
Our solution would be to teach Jane and Sam to recognize their cycle and to join forces in changing it. Of course, if a couple has been locked in the destructive cycle for a considerable period of time, change is very difficult.
We provide daily practice and plenty of homework aimed at mindful awareness and a team effort for bringing about positive changes. It needs to be Jane and Sam against the cycle instead of Jane and Sam against each other.
A huge milestone would be the development for each of a "mindful pause," the creation of a space between stimulus and response. With practice, Jane and San can learn to suspend their habitual responses and instead turn toward one another with empathy, compassion, and relationship enhancing choices.
I have presented some thoughts about what a great relationship might include. Next, let’s develop your personal relationship vision.
On the next page, you will find instructions for your personal relationship visioning. Take your time. You can actually work on your personal relationship vision over several days, and you can add to it in the future as you have new insights about your relationship.
Finally, on the last page, you and your partner will find instructions on completing a shared relationship vision. For this vision, you and your partner will combine your thoughts, eliminating things you don’t agree upon, arriving at a shared vision that you both can commit to and be guided by.
FOR ME / FOR YOU / FOR US
Relationship Visioning
There are three sections to this exercise. Use a sheet of paper or create a document on your computer screen. You may use as much space as you need.
WHAT DO I WANT FOR ME?
Think about everything you want out of a relationship. Think about your ideal relationship and all that it would encompass. Try to come up with as much detail as you can. Sit back, close your eyes, and imagine being in a great relationship. What do you see? How do you want to experience love? How do you see the two of you treating each other? What would make you happy?
WHAT DO I WANT FOR YOU (my partner)?
What would you like to see your partner get out of the relationship? How do you want to see them benefit? Be careful not to talk about how you want your partner to change. That would come under the heading of what you want for you. Here you’re describing what you would like to see your partner get that they would actually like to get. How would you like to see your partner experience a relationship in ways that make him or her happy?
WHAT DO I WANT FOR US?
Finally, what are your thoughts about what you would like to see for the relationship? How would you like to see it grow? What would a great relationship look like? Imagine the relationship of your dreams. Imagine our relationship with the two of you are thriving because of the qualities of your relationship. What are those qualities?
OUR SHARED RELATIONSHIP VISION
WHAT DO WE WANT FOR US?
Once you and your partner have worked on your personal relationship visions, it’s time to combine them, coming up with one shared relationship vision.
Step 1. The first step is for each of you to come up with a list of about 20 items that you think belong in a relationship vision.
Step 2. Each item should be stated as though it is happening now. For example, you might have items such as “we communicate openly about sex and intimacy, without defensiveness,” or “we have an active lifestyle, and enjoy physical activities such as tennis or hiking on a weekly basis.”
Step 3. Combine your lists. If items are slightly different, but acceptable to both of you, play with the wording until you have the statement that you are both satisfied with. If one item is not acceptable to a partner, discard that item. This is not a place for focusing on the things you don’t agree on. You can deal with that separately.
Step 4. Finalize your shared relationship vision. Each partner gets a printed copy of the vision, and a copy needs to be posted in a conspicuous place.
Step 5. Your Shared Relationship Vision can be revisited many times and amended as necessary. It should serve as a guide to what both of you want your relationship to be.
Happy visioning!
Dr. Bill
Relationship Visioning
by Dr. Bill
If you have built castles in the air, your work
need not be lost; that is where they should be.
Now put the foundation under them.
Henry David Thoreau
Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. The starry-eyed couple build their dream castle in the air, and they live happily ever after. Life is perfect!
Isn’t that how the story is supposed to end? What if it’s not an ending at all, but merely the beginning? What if falling in love is the simple part?
Obviously, there is more to the story if you want a shot at “happily ever after.” Don’t you need something else? Is love really all you need? Is love enough to sustain your relationship? I suppose “happily ever after” means a lifetime relationship, and a lifetime can be a long, long time And I’m not talking about just staying together. What about going beyond merely keeping a relationship to thriving in your relationship?
Being in love is wonderful and exhilarating, but it’s not the same as having a relationship that is solid and satisfying over the long haul — and so much more is expected of intimate relationships today than in previous times.
It’s only in the last two centuries that people marry for love and intimacy rather than to gain political or economic advantage, or for social and family reasons. Free choice is now the norm, and love is now the main reason for choosing a life partner. Now people seek a relationship that satisfies all their emotional and sexual desires. Most recently, we expect our partner will be a lifetime best friend, co-parent, financial ally, confidant, and soulmate. We expect a lot out of our relationships, perhaps unreasonable expectations, and we often believe that love is all we need. Love conquers all! Or does it?
In a rather amusing statement, George Bernard Shaw talked about marriage as an institution uniting two people “under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most elusive, and most transient of passions. They are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.”
Romantic attraction and romantic love constitute natures anesthetic. It gets us together and leads us to believe that nothing can ever get in the way of living happily ever after. However, sooner or later the anesthetic wears off and you find yourself dealing with real differences with the person you thought of as your perfect lifetime partner, your soulmate.
Having a lasting relationship is hard. Most long-term relationships don’t make it. No, I’m not trying to discourage you. We all need a secure emotional attachment with another person, and you can have it, but it takes more than being in love. Love merely activates a process that we hope will last a lifetime. However, there is work to be done, and things to be learned and practiced to fulfill your relationship dreams. As Thoreau said: “Now put the foundation under them.”
Imagine skillfully building a great relationship, a relationship that grows and lasts. If your relationship has problems, imagine getting a less than great relationship on track.
You need a great relationship vision. In the words of Yogi Berra, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably wind up someplace else.” It’s a funny line from a guy known for funny one-liners, but it’s also true.
You need a vision and a roadmap showing details of your path for living the vision. In this article, you will get a chance to develop a strategic plan for your relationship. I will also provide some ideas of what you might include in your vision.
I invite you to dream big dreams and aim high. No matter where your relationship is at present, I want you to envision the relationship of your dreams. While there are no quick fixes or easy solutions to relationship problems, the journey will be much easier with a vision of what might be.
Besides suggesting a personal relationship vision, I will also share some thoughts on how to have a shared relationship vision, with the two of you developing a collaborative vision you can both embrace and be guided by.
Let’s start with awareness, awareness of where you are in your relationship, awareness of where you want to be, and awareness of what it takes to get there.
How aware are you of what you bring to your relationship? Do you show up as the best possible version of you, or do you sometimes get sidetracked and unwittingly sabotage what you want most — a safe and satisfying emotional connection? Does your defensiveness get in the way? How about fears and insecurities? How about ego?
Self-awareness is being awake to the realities of the here-and-now, along with your strengths and capacity for future change and growth. Self-awareness also opens the door to thoughts about what your relationship might be and opportunities for growth.
According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Wherever You Go There You Are; Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life, "Our minds are such that we are often more asleep than awake to the unique beauty and possibilities of each present moment as it unfolds." Jon Kabat-Zinn continues:
"TRY: Seeing your own life this very day as a journey and as an adventure. Where are you going? What are you seeking? Where are you now? What stage as of the journey have you come to? If your life were a book, what would you call it today? What would you entitle the chapter you are in right now? Are you stuck here in certain ways? Can you be fully open to all the energies at your disposal at this point? Note that this journey is uniquely yours, no one else's. So the path has to be your own. You cannot imitate somebody else's journey and still be true to yourself. Are you prepared to honor your uniqueness in this way? ... can you commit to lighting your path with mindfulness and awareness? Can you see ways in which you could easily get stuck, or have in the past?"
Are you awake to possibilities for your relationship? What do you believe? Do you believe you can influence the development of a great relationship, even if your relationship has problems at present?
There are three most important questions that are helpful for both your vision and your roadmap
What are the three most important questions? I'm glad you asked. The questions are central to our Mindful Choices Therapy, and they have relevance to your relationship vision.
When applied to your relationship, the questions are:
1. Where am I in my relationship at the present time? Am I caring? Skillful? Do I contribute to the relationship lasting? Am I contributing to our happiness? Do I have blind spots, emotional reactions, and behaviors that damage or threaten the relationship that take away from our happiness?
The answers to these questions reflect accurate self-awareness.
For very specific information on your present relationship skills, take my Mindful Choices for Couples Self-Assessment on the website www.beingtherightpartner.com. If you are honest with yourself, you will discover areas that need attention. Positive change requires an honest self-appraisal. You can’t change anything you are unaware of or unwilling to look at. Nobody’s perfect and if you get a perfect score, we have an altogether different problem.
2. Where do I want to go in my relationship? If I show up in my relationship as the best possible version of myself, what would it look like?
The answers to these questions reflect a personal relationship vision.
This is the focus of the article you are reading. I will present ideas for a great relationship vision, give you a chance to work on your personal relationship vision, and conclude with some information about you and your partner developing a shared relationship vision.
3. How do I get there? How might I continuously ratchet up my daily experience toward my vision?
The answer to this question reflects a roadmap for relational success.
A draft copy of our upcoming book Being the Right Partner can be found on our website www.beingtherightpartner.com. Each of the 10 sections of the Mindful Choices for Couples Self-Assessment has a corresponding chapter which constitutes an action planning guide for developing positive relationship skills..
It’s rarely too late to create a personal relationship vision, and a shared relationship vision created with your partner. What would your ideal relationship look like?
Did you know that long-term healthy relationships evolve through several predictable stages, moving from the euphoria and enmeshment of romantic love to a stage where interdependence is balanced with each partner being differentiated, feeling good about being a full complete individual? Can you imagine great self-acceptance while enjoying secure attachment with a partner?
THE DEVELOPMENTAL MODEL
I am currently in a year-long training program on the Developmental Model of being a couple. It's making sense to me.
Ellyn Bader, PhD, and Peter T. Pearson, PhD, in their book In Quest of the Mythical Mate: A Developmental Approach to Diagnosis and Treatment in Couples Therapy, ask: "What do we do after we fall in love?" Bader and Pearson draw upon the research of Margaret Mahler and her theory of infant developmental stages. The authors see similar qualities characterizing the development of long-term relationships between adult partners.
Couples move through developmental stages with specific tasks to be mastered in each stage. Difficulties follow when individuals fail to master stage specific developmental tasks and therefore get stuck on a particular stage.
Couplehood, according to Bader and Pearson, evolves through five stages. The first stage, Symbiosis, is the stage of being newly in love. According to Bader and Pearson:
"Here there is a merging of lives, personalities, and intense bonding between the two lovers. The purpose of this stage is attachment. To allow for the merger, similarities are magnified and differences are overlooked."
The second stage, Differentiation, is where differences emerge, and a power struggle may develop. Again, according to Bader and Pearson:
"This stage is rarely easy! As time passes, one person may start thinking about wanting more space from the other. As a couple, they begin noticing differences and feel that they don't want to spend quite so much time together. They may want more privacy and may feel guilty and ask, what’s happened? Why don't I feel the way I used to?"
The third stage is Practicing. Bader and Pearson state:
"Autonomy and individuation are primary; at this point, the partners are rediscovering themselves as individuals. Developing self becomes more important than developing the relationship. Here, issues of self-esteem, individual power, and worthwhileness become central."
This is a stage where conflict may be increased, and couples need to be really good at managing and resolving conflict while maintaining a balance between needs for emotional connection and self-development.
The fourth stage, Rapprochment, is a stage where partners have developed their own identity and feel safe again turning toward the relationship for intimacy and emotional support. According to Bader and Pearson:
"Vulnerability reemerges. Partners now seek comfort and support one another. They alternate between periods of increased intimacy and efforts to reestablish independence. Although partners in this stage may find either the intimacy or the independence at times to be threatening, their anxiety will be resolved more quickly because negotiation is not as difficult as before."
Finally, the fifth stage is Mutual Interdependence or Constancy. Again, according to Bader and Pearson:
"Here, the two well-integrated individuals have found satisfaction in their own lives, have developed a bond that is deep and mutually satisfying, and have built a relationship based on the foundation of growth rather than on one of need."
Bader and Pearson have developed a Developmental Model for working with couples. They look at where each individual is in the developmental phases of the relationship. They found many problems occur when there is an imbalance between developmental stages producing a "see-saw" effect where couples alternate between conflict and withdrawal. Diagnosing the couple’s developmental issues helps therapists figure out what skills are needed by each partner as well as determining joint issues to be addressed.
I find Bader and Pearson's Developmental Model to be very useful, particularly while working with couples in long-term relationships.
We are now in our fourth decade of marriage, and the Developmental Model certainly makes sense looking back. In our Symbiotic stage we were caught up in romantic love, forming a strong bond and satisfying a deep need for attachment. We were struck by how similar we were in so many ways, and differences seemed unimportant. It was so easy to be mutually nurturing.
In the Differentiation stage, we realized we had very different interests and began reestablishing our own boundaries. In the Practicing stage we found ourselves having more and more interests and relationships away from each other and developing a sense of self became as important or more important than developing or nurturing the relationship. Issues of self-esteem became central and yes, there was conflict.
"In long-term relationships… We are called upon to navigate that delicate balance between separateness and connectedness… We confront the challenge of sustaining both - without losing either." Harriet Lerner
In Rapprochment we had become more comfortable in our individuality, each feeling competent and secure in our identity. We looked again to the relationship for a secure emotional connection. There was some back and forth between increased intimacy and reestablishing independence. And there was increased vulnerability.
Finally, in a stage of Constancy or Mutual Interdependence, we find ourselves growing together, comfortable with the differences, and fully committed to helping one another on our shared journey. We've fully accepted that we are different people, and that's okay. We have deep respect for one another and readily work together.
ADULT ATTACHMENT STYLES
Earlier, I mentioned “secure attachment.” It’s one of four adult attachment styles and the style that should be reflected in your relationship vision. Here is more about the four styles.
Early learning led you to have certain beliefs about how people are likely to respond to you, and how worthy you are of being loved. Anxiety about relationships may have developed in your relationships to your earliest caretakers.
Like many adults, you may be vulnerable to attachment related anxiety. Attachment is a crucially important subject in understanding your couple relationship. I will continue to emphasize attachment in subsequent blog articles and guide you to a deeper understanding of secure attachment and how you get it.
The following chart illustrates four adult attachment styles, according to Susan Johnson, a founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy. Of course, we want everyone to be securely attached but the most common pattern we see is for one person to be anxiously attached with a partner who is avoidantly attached. We have previously referred to this as the Magpie/Mole Syndrome.
In the demand/withdraw cycle illustrated below, Jane is anxiously attached and questions Sam's love and commitment. Sam is avoidantly attached and finds all this emotional stuff very distressing. Jane is stuck in reactive anger while Sam is stuck in shutting down and being numb.
Taking a deeper look at the demand/withdraw cycle, you can see that Jane is the anxiously attached pursuer whose autopilot response is to be attacking, critical, and complaining. She believes Sam doesn't care about her. Her surface emotions, or secondary emotions, are frustration and anger, while the deeper feelings are her fear of abandonment, sadness, and emotional pain. Her unmet attachment needs are to feel loved, needed, and important to Sam.
Sam, on the other hand, is avoidantly attached with a knee-jerk reaction of avoiding conflict, escaping difficult emotions, and shutting down. He fears he isn’t good enough and sees Jane as controlling. His secondary emotions are frustration, anger, and simply being numb. His deeper emotions have to do with his fear of failure, his feeling of rejection, his sadness, and his disappointment in himself and in the relationship. His unmet needs? His needs are the same as Jane’s, to be loved, needed, and an important part of his partner’s life.
The crucial ask for both Jane and Sam is the development of self-awareness and the ability to self-manage constructively. They each need to be fully aware of their destructive cycle and together practice calmly dealing with deeper emotions and unmet attachment needs. They each need to develop mindful and empathic listening skills along with allowing themselves to be vulnerable, co-creating a climate of mutual respect and safety.
Of course, there are other cycles as well. There is a danger that Jane will give up pursuing and shut down emotionally. At that point, we would have a withdraw/withdraw cycle.
Another possibility is Sam reacting angrily with all of his pent-up frustration and resentment. If Jane responds in kind, open conflict could become quite destructive. At that point, we might have an attack/attack cycle.
Our solution would be to teach Jane and Sam to recognize their cycle and to join forces in changing it. Of course, if a couple has been locked in the destructive cycle for a considerable period of time, change is very difficult.
We provide daily practice and plenty of homework aimed at mindful awareness and a team effort for bringing about positive changes. It needs to be Jane and Sam against the cycle instead of Jane and Sam against each other.
A huge milestone would be the development for each of a "mindful pause," the creation of a space between stimulus and response. With practice, Jane and San can learn to suspend their habitual responses and instead turn toward one another with empathy, compassion, and relationship enhancing choices.
I have presented some thoughts about what a great relationship might include. Next, let’s develop your personal relationship vision.
On the next page, you will find instructions for your personal relationship visioning. Take your time. You can actually work on your personal relationship vision over several days, and you can add to it in the future as you have new insights about your relationship.
Finally, on the last page, you and your partner will find instructions on completing a shared relationship vision. For this vision, you and your partner will combine your thoughts, eliminating things you don’t agree upon, arriving at a shared vision that you both can commit to and be guided by.
FOR ME / FOR YOU / FOR US
Relationship Visioning
There are three sections to this exercise. Use a sheet of paper or create a document on your computer screen. You may use as much space as you need.
WHAT DO I WANT FOR ME?
Think about everything you want out of a relationship. Think about your ideal relationship and all that it would encompass. Try to come up with as much detail as you can. Sit back, close your eyes, and imagine being in a great relationship. What do you see? How do you want to experience love? How do you see the two of you treating each other? What would make you happy?
WHAT DO I WANT FOR YOU (my partner)?
What would you like to see your partner get out of the relationship? How do you want to see them benefit? Be careful not to talk about how you want your partner to change. That would come under the heading of what you want for you. Here you’re describing what you would like to see your partner get that they would actually like to get. How would you like to see your partner experience a relationship in ways that make him or her happy?
WHAT DO I WANT FOR US?
Finally, what are your thoughts about what you would like to see for the relationship? How would you like to see it grow? What would a great relationship look like? Imagine the relationship of your dreams. Imagine our relationship with the two of you are thriving because of the qualities of your relationship. What are those qualities?
OUR SHARED RELATIONSHIP VISION
WHAT DO WE WANT FOR US?
Once you and your partner have worked on your personal relationship visions, it’s time to combine them, coming up with one shared relationship vision.
Step 1. The first step is for each of you to come up with a list of about 20 items that you think belong in a relationship vision.
Step 2. Each item should be stated as though it is happening now. For example, you might have items such as “we communicate openly about sex and intimacy, without defensiveness,” or “we have an active lifestyle, and enjoy physical activities such as tennis or hiking on a weekly basis.”
Step 3. Combine your lists. If items are slightly different, but acceptable to both of you, play with the wording until you have the statement that you are both satisfied with. If one item is not acceptable to a partner, discard that item. This is not a place for focusing on the things you don’t agree on. You can deal with that separately.
Step 4. Finalize your shared relationship vision. Each partner gets a printed copy of the vision, and a copy needs to be posted in a conspicuous place.
Step 5. Your Shared Relationship Vision can be revisited many times and amended as necessary. It should serve as a guide to what both of you want your relationship to be.
Happy visioning!
Dr. Bill
Relationship Visioning
by Dr. Bill
If you have built castles in the air, your work
need not be lost; that is where they should be.
Now put the foundation under them.
Henry David Thoreau
Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. The starry-eyed couple build their dream castle in the air, and they live happily ever after. Life is perfect!
Isn’t that how the story is supposed to end? What if it’s not an ending at all, but merely the beginning? What if falling in love is the simple part?
Obviously, there is more to the story if you want a shot at “happily ever after.” Don’t you need something else? Is love really all you need? Is love enough to sustain your relationship? I suppose “happily ever after” means a lifetime relationship, and a lifetime can be a long, long time And I’m not talking about just staying together. What about going beyond merely keeping a relationship to thriving in your relationship?
Being in love is wonderful and exhilarating, but it’s not the same as having a relationship that is solid and satisfying over the long haul — and so much more is expected of intimate relationships today than in previous times.
It’s only in the last two centuries that people marry for love and intimacy rather than to gain political or economic advantage, or for social and family reasons. Free choice is now the norm, and love is now the main reason for choosing a life partner. Now people seek a relationship that satisfies all their emotional and sexual desires. Most recently, we expect our partner will be a lifetime best friend, co-parent, financial ally, confidant, and soulmate. We expect a lot out of our relationships, perhaps unreasonable expectations, and we often believe that love is all we need. Love conquers all! Or does it?
In a rather amusing statement, George Bernard Shaw talked about marriage as an institution uniting two people “under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most elusive, and most transient of passions. They are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.”
Romantic attraction and romantic love constitute natures anesthetic. It gets us together and leads us to believe that nothing can ever get in the way of living happily ever after. However, sooner or later the anesthetic wears off and you find yourself dealing with real differences with the person you thought of as your perfect lifetime partner, your soulmate.
Having a lasting relationship is hard. Most long-term relationships don’t make it. No, I’m not trying to discourage you. We all need a secure emotional attachment with another person, and you can have it, but it takes more than being in love. Love merely activates a process that we hope will last a lifetime. However, there is work to be done, and things to be learned and practiced to fulfill your relationship dreams. As Thoreau said: “Now put the foundation under them.”
Imagine skillfully building a great relationship, a relationship that grows and lasts. If your relationship has problems, imagine getting a less than great relationship on track.
You need a great relationship vision. In the words of Yogi Berra, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably wind up someplace else.” It’s a funny line from a guy known for funny one-liners, but it’s also true.
You need a vision and a roadmap showing details of your path for living the vision. In this article, you will get a chance to develop a strategic plan for your relationship. I will also provide some ideas of what you might include in your vision.
I invite you to dream big dreams and aim high. No matter where your relationship is at present, I want you to envision the relationship of your dreams. While there are no quick fixes or easy solutions to relationship problems, the journey will be much easier with a vision of what might be.
Besides suggesting a personal relationship vision, I will also share some thoughts on how to have a shared relationship vision, with the two of you developing a collaborative vision you can both embrace and be guided by.
Let’s start with awareness, awareness of where you are in your relationship, awareness of where you want to be, and awareness of what it takes to get there.
How aware are you of what you bring to your relationship? Do you show up as the best possible version of you, or do you sometimes get sidetracked and unwittingly sabotage what you want most — a safe and satisfying emotional connection? Does your defensiveness get in the way? How about fears and insecurities? How about ego?
Self-awareness is being awake to the realities of the here-and-now, along with your strengths and capacity for future change and growth. Self-awareness also opens the door to thoughts about what your relationship might be and opportunities for growth.
According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Wherever You Go There You Are; Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life, "Our minds are such that we are often more asleep than awake to the unique beauty and possibilities of each present moment as it unfolds." Jon Kabat-Zinn continues:
"TRY: Seeing your own life this very day as a journey and as an adventure. Where are you going? What are you seeking? Where are you now? What stage as of the journey have you come to? If your life were a book, what would you call it today? What would you entitle the chapter you are in right now? Are you stuck here in certain ways? Can you be fully open to all the energies at your disposal at this point? Note that this journey is uniquely yours, no one else's. So the path has to be your own. You cannot imitate somebody else's journey and still be true to yourself. Are you prepared to honor your uniqueness in this way? ... can you commit to lighting your path with mindfulness and awareness? Can you see ways in which you could easily get stuck, or have in the past?"
Are you awake to possibilities for your relationship? What do you believe? Do you believe you can influence the development of a great relationship, even if your relationship has problems at present?
There are three most important questions that are helpful for both your vision and your roadmap
What are the three most important questions? I'm glad you asked. The questions are central to our Mindful Choices Therapy, and they have relevance to your relationship vision.
When applied to your relationship, the questions are:
1. Where am I in my relationship at the present time? Am I caring? Skillful? Do I contribute to the relationship lasting? Am I contributing to our happiness? Do I have blind spots, emotional reactions, and behaviors that damage or threaten the relationship that take away from our happiness?
The answers to these questions reflect accurate self-awareness.
For very specific information on your present relationship skills, take my Mindful Choices for Couples Self-Assessment on the website www.beingtherightpartner.com. If you are honest with yourself, you will discover areas that need attention. Positive change requires an honest self-appraisal. You can’t change anything you are unaware of or unwilling to look at. Nobody’s perfect and if you get a perfect score, we have an altogether different problem.
2. Where do I want to go in my relationship? If I show up in my relationship as the best possible version of myself, what would it look like?
The answers to these questions reflect a personal relationship vision.
This is the focus of the article you are reading. I will present ideas for a great relationship vision, give you a chance to work on your personal relationship vision, and conclude with some information about you and your partner developing a shared relationship vision.
3. How do I get there? How might I continuously ratchet up my daily experience toward my vision?
The answer to this question reflects a roadmap for relational success.
A draft copy of our upcoming book Being the Right Partner can be found on our website www.beingtherightpartner.com. Each of the 10 sections of the Mindful Choices for Couples Self-Assessment has a corresponding chapter which constitutes an action planning guide for developing positive relationship skills..
It’s rarely too late to create a personal relationship vision, and a shared relationship vision created with your partner. What would your ideal relationship look like?
Did you know that long-term healthy relationships evolve through several predictable stages, moving from the euphoria and enmeshment of romantic love to a stage where interdependence is balanced with each partner being differentiated, feeling good about being a full complete individual? Can you imagine great self-acceptance while enjoying secure attachment with a partner?
THE DEVELOPMENTAL MODEL
I am currently in a year-long training program on the Developmental Model of being a couple. It's making sense to me.
Ellyn Bader, PhD, and Peter T. Pearson, PhD, in their book In Quest of the Mythical Mate: A Developmental Approach to Diagnosis and Treatment in Couples Therapy, ask: "What do we do after we fall in love?" Bader and Pearson draw upon the research of Margaret Mahler and her theory of infant developmental stages. The authors see similar qualities characterizing the development of long-term relationships between adult partners.
Couples move through developmental stages with specific tasks to be mastered in each stage. Difficulties follow when individuals fail to master stage specific developmental tasks and therefore get stuck on a particular stage.
Couplehood, according to Bader and Pearson, evolves through five stages. The first stage, Symbiosis, is the stage of being newly in love. According to Bader and Pearson:
"Here there is a merging of lives, personalities, and intense bonding between the two lovers. The purpose of this stage is attachment. To allow for the merger, similarities are magnified and differences are overlooked."
The second stage, Differentiation, is where differences emerge, and a power struggle may develop. Again, according to Bader and Pearson:
"This stage is rarely easy! As time passes, one person may start thinking about wanting more space from the other. As a couple, they begin noticing differences and feel that they don't want to spend quite so much time together. They may want more privacy and may feel guilty and ask, what’s happened? Why don't I feel the way I used to?"
The third stage is Practicing. Bader and Pearson state:
"Autonomy and individuation are primary; at this point, the partners are rediscovering themselves as individuals. Developing self becomes more important than developing the relationship. Here, issues of self-esteem, individual power, and worthwhileness become central."
This is a stage where conflict may be increased, and couples need to be really good at managing and resolving conflict while maintaining a balance between needs for emotional connection and self-development.
The fourth stage, Rapprochment, is a stage where partners have developed their own identity and feel safe again turning toward the relationship for intimacy and emotional support. According to Bader and Pearson:
"Vulnerability reemerges. Partners now seek comfort and support one another. They alternate between periods of increased intimacy and efforts to reestablish independence. Although partners in this stage may find either the intimacy or the independence at times to be threatening, their anxiety will be resolved more quickly because negotiation is not as difficult as before."
Finally, the fifth stage is Mutual Interdependence or Constancy. Again, according to Bader and Pearson:
"Here, the two well-integrated individuals have found satisfaction in their own lives, have developed a bond that is deep and mutually satisfying, and have built a relationship based on the foundation of growth rather than on one of need."
Bader and Pearson have developed a Developmental Model for working with couples. They look at where each individual is in the developmental phases of the relationship. They found many problems occur when there is an imbalance between developmental stages producing a "see-saw" effect where couples alternate between conflict and withdrawal. Diagnosing the couple’s developmental issues helps therapists figure out what skills are needed by each partner as well as determining joint issues to be addressed.
I find Bader and Pearson's Developmental Model to be very useful, particularly while working with couples in long-term relationships.
We are now in our fourth decade of marriage, and the Developmental Model certainly makes sense looking back. In our Symbiotic stage we were caught up in romantic love, forming a strong bond and satisfying a deep need for attachment. We were struck by how similar we were in so many ways, and differences seemed unimportant. It was so easy to be mutually nurturing.
In the Differentiation stage, we realized we had very different interests and began reestablishing our own boundaries. In the Practicing stage we found ourselves having more and more interests and relationships away from each other and developing a sense of self became as important or more important than developing or nurturing the relationship. Issues of self-esteem became central and yes, there was conflict.
"In long-term relationships… We are called upon to navigate that delicate balance between separateness and connectedness… We confront the challenge of sustaining both - without losing either." Harriet Lerner
In Rapprochment we had become more comfortable in our individuality, each feeling competent and secure in our identity. We looked again to the relationship for a secure emotional connection. There was some back and forth between increased intimacy and reestablishing independence. And there was increased vulnerability.
Finally, in a stage of Constancy or Mutual Interdependence, we find ourselves growing together, comfortable with the differences, and fully committed to helping one another on our shared journey. We've fully accepted that we are different people, and that's okay. We have deep respect for one another and readily work together.
ADULT ATTACHMENT STYLES
Earlier, I mentioned “secure attachment.” It’s one of four adult attachment styles and the style that should be reflected in your relationship vision. Here is more about the four styles.
Early learning led you to have certain beliefs about how people are likely to respond to you, and how worthy you are of being loved. Anxiety about relationships may have developed in your relationships to your earliest caretakers.
Like many adults, you may be vulnerable to attachment related anxiety. Attachment is a crucially important subject in understanding your couple relationship. I will continue to emphasize attachment in subsequent blog articles and guide you to a deeper understanding of secure attachment and how you get it.
The following chart illustrates four adult attachment styles, according to Susan Johnson, a founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy. Of course, we want everyone to be securely attached but the most common pattern we see is for one person to be anxiously attached with a partner who is avoidantly attached. We have previously referred to this as the Magpie/Mole Syndrome.
In the demand/withdraw cycle illustrated below, Jane is anxiously attached and questions Sam's love and commitment. Sam is avoidantly attached and finds all this emotional stuff very distressing. Jane is stuck in reactive anger while Sam is stuck in shutting down and being numb.
Taking a deeper look at the demand/withdraw cycle, you can see that Jane is the anxiously attached pursuer whose autopilot response is to be attacking, critical, and complaining. She believes Sam doesn't care about her. Her surface emotions, or secondary emotions, are frustration and anger, while the deeper feelings are her fear of abandonment, sadness, and emotional pain. Her unmet attachment needs are to feel loved, needed, and important to Sam.
Sam, on the other hand, is avoidantly attached with a knee-jerk reaction of avoiding conflict, escaping difficult emotions, and shutting down. He fears he isn’t good enough and sees Jane as controlling. His secondary emotions are frustration, anger, and simply being numb. His deeper emotions have to do with his fear of failure, his feeling of rejection, his sadness, and his disappointment in himself and in the relationship. His unmet needs? His needs are the same as Jane’s, to be loved, needed, and an important part of his partner’s life.
The crucial ask for both Jane and Sam is the development of self-awareness and the ability to self-manage constructively. They each need to be fully aware of their destructive cycle and together practice calmly dealing with deeper emotions and unmet attachment needs. They each need to develop mindful and empathic listening skills along with allowing themselves to be vulnerable, co-creating a climate of mutual respect and safety.
Of course, there are other cycles as well. There is a danger that Jane will give up pursuing and shut down emotionally. At that point, we would have a withdraw/withdraw cycle.
Another possibility is Sam reacting angrily with all of his pent-up frustration and resentment. If Jane responds in kind, open conflict could become quite destructive. At that point, we might have an attack/attack cycle.
Our solution would be to teach Jane and Sam to recognize their cycle and to join forces in changing it. Of course, if a couple has been locked in the destructive cycle for a considerable period of time, change is very difficult.
We provide daily practice and plenty of homework aimed at mindful awareness and a team effort for bringing about positive changes. It needs to be Jane and Sam against the cycle instead of Jane and Sam against each other.
A huge milestone would be the development for each of a "mindful pause," the creation of a space between stimulus and response. With practice, Jane and San can learn to suspend their habitual responses and instead turn toward one another with empathy, compassion, and relationship enhancing choices.
I have presented some thoughts about what a great relationship might include. Next, let’s develop your personal relationship vision.
On the next page, you will find instructions for your personal relationship visioning. Take your time. You can actually work on your personal relationship vision over several days, and you can add to it in the future as you have new insights about your relationship.
Finally, on the last page, you and your partner will find instructions on completing a shared relationship vision. For this vision, you and your partner will combine your thoughts, eliminating things you don’t agree upon, arriving at a shared vision that you both can commit to and be guided by.
FOR ME / FOR YOU / FOR US
Relationship Visioning
There are three sections to this exercise. Use a sheet of paper or create a document on your computer screen. You may use as much space as you need.
WHAT DO I WANT FOR ME?
Think about everything you want out of a relationship. Think about your ideal relationship and all that it would encompass. Try to come up with as much detail as you can. Sit back, close your eyes, and imagine being in a great relationship. What do you see? How do you want to experience love? How do you see the two of you treating each other? What would make you happy?
WHAT DO I WANT FOR YOU (my partner)?
What would you like to see your partner get out of the relationship? How do you want to see them benefit? Be careful not to talk about how you want your partner to change. That would come under the heading of what you want for you. Here you’re describing what you would like to see your partner get that they would actually like to get. How would you like to see your partner experience a relationship in ways that make him or her happy?
WHAT DO I WANT FOR US?
Finally, what are your thoughts about what you would like to see for the relationship? How would you like to see it grow? What would a great relationship look like? Imagine the relationship of your dreams. Imagine our relationship with the two of you are thriving because of the qualities of your relationship. What are those qualities?
OUR SHARED RELATIONSHIP VISION
WHAT DO WE WANT FOR US?
Once you and your partner have worked on your personal relationship visions, it’s time to combine them, coming up with one shared relationship vision.
Step 1. The first step is for each of you to come up with a list of about 20 items that you think belong in a relationship vision.
Step 2. Each item should be stated as though it is happening now. For example, you might have items such as “we communicate openly about sex and intimacy, without defensiveness,” or “we have an active lifestyle, and enjoy physical activities such as tennis or hiking on a weekly basis.”
Step 3. Combine your lists. If items are slightly different, but acceptable to both of you, play with the wording until you have the statement that you are both satisfied with. If one item is not acceptable to a partner, discard that item. This is not a place for focusing on the things you don’t agree on. You can deal with that separately.
Step 4. Finalize your shared relationship vision. Each partner gets a printed copy of the vision, and a copy needs to be posted in a conspicuous place.
Step 5. Your Shared Relationship Vision can be revisited many times and amended as necessary. It should serve as a guide to what both of you want your relationship to be.
Happy visioning!
Dr. Bill