The Truth About Coupleship

Are you struggling in your relationship? Are you wondering how other people navigate challenging conversation? Is it difficult to bring up concerns and issues without it turning into a total mess?

If you answered, yes to any of these questions, welcome to the truth about coupleship with the person that you love and the person that is your best friend or at least used to be.

When I work with couples I often ask about each person‘s reference point.

Most people have only one set of parents that modeled how to do relationship. And despite everyone’s best intention, most people revert to what their nervous system, brain and body learned as a little kid. Often, a painful pattern of dysfunctional behaviors and beliefs.

Even when couples have some idea of their deepest wound and they’ve communicated it with their partner, this does not mean, nor does it prevent the coupleship from running into the same problem.

For instance, I have heard one person in the relationship say that they told their partner that the only

thing they could not tolerate is infidelity, and sure enough it’s what they are in my office struggling with. The betrayed partner feels angry and humiliated.

The one who betrayed the other swears that it didn’t mean anything and had nothing to do with their partner.

Another example is where two people have history from their family of origin and they both know the pain of alcoholism. Yet in the marriage, one partner is abusing prescription medication and because they are not going to a bar until all hours of the evening like their parent did, they lack ownership and understanding that they are going down the same slippery slope. The numbing and medicating looks different, yet it brings about the same painful patterns of behaviors and beliefs.

It is challenging when working with addiction whether it’s chemical or behavioral, knowing that one of the chief symptoms is denial.

Even the partner struggles with denial. One minute they are so sure that their partner is an addict circling the drain, and the next minute they are defending their partners behavior to the addict’s work and family. Addiction is a sophisticated illness. The person with an addiction feels miserable and hopeless, and willing to get help, and then they switch, certain that waiting until Monday would be the better option. When this happens, both people in the relationship feel similarly, lonely, crazy, afraid, and not sure of what to do.

When couples begin to ask for help, The power of isolation and secrecy lessons. Even if just one person begins to share honestly about what’s happening and how they’re feeling, change starts to happen and there’s a sense of relief for the person who is sharing. When one person begins to change their behavior, the power of the disease has less of a hold. When one person begins to make better decisions, the addiction has less power in the relationship.

A couple that recently completed their therapy journey, originally came to see me is in full blown chemical and behavioral addiction.

For the husband, this was his third marriage and for the wife it was her second. Both were at the end of their rope, and came from addicted, family of origin backgrounds.

They both shared that addiction had ended their previous marriages. It was my great honor to help them heal from their own experience of addiction and teach them how to refrain from caretaking, enabling, and participating in the dishonesty. This happened for them by learning about the illness and having accountability from other people that have walked this walk. Often this added layer of accountability is found in 12 Step Recovery, Celebrate Recovery, Dharma, or and Smart recovery. In their case, they each committed to their own individual therapy, attending meetings and coming to couple’s therapy.

I’m happy to report that they are doing well, relieved to not be going through another divorce, and they have joy in their relationship.

If any of this is resonating with you and or if we can be of any assistance to you at Relationship Enrichment Center, please reach out and let us support you one day at a time.

Most Sincerely,

Sheila Maitland