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Duo Dynamics…
By The Love Doc | June 17, 2007
Hey Doc,
I was your student a few years back and I remember you talking about improving our relationships by improving our sex lives. (and I still love your line, “You wanna save your relationship? Introduce ORAL SEX (if you haven’t already)! No, I’m serious, it’s true!”) Well, we tried that (we also made a few trips to Lovecraft, thank you!) and it helped, but there was still a lot of conflict in the relationship. So I then tried really hard to be nicer, since I can admit that I wasn’t always the best boyfriend. But the relationship didn’t seem to improve, instead SHE started to get nastier! I mentioned this to her and she acknowledged my efforts to improve (yes, we even used the “how to communicate effectively” techniques from the text!), but she can’t explain why she’s been acting worse ever since. Any advice prof???
Signed, A former student and former dick
Hey A former student and former dick,
First, I’m really glad that you’ve been able to apply some of the class material to your own life–I’m always encouraging that–heck, I’m flattered that you remembered it…I’m also happy to see that you’re using the text (especially the section on communication in relationships in Chapter 10).
Gottman, J. (1994). Why marriages succeed or fail. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Gladwell, Malcolm (2000). Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Boston: Little, Brown.
Creighton, S. M. (1992). Don’t go away mad. New York: Doubleday.
Anyway, in some classes I discuss what I tell my “couples counselling” clients, which is that every relationship has its own “dynamic,” both positive and negative. That is, once one of the people in the relationship “triggers” the negative dynamic, it’s such a predictable pattern that I tell my clients (jokingly but respectfully) they don’t even have to be in the room any more…it has a life of its own.
Greenberg, L. (2001). Emotion-Focused Therapy: Coaching clients to work through their feelings. Washington, DC: APA Press.
Greenberg, L. & Johnson, S. (1988). Emotionally focused couples therapy. New York: Guilford Press.
Greenberg, L. Rice, L. & Elliott, R. (1993). Facilitating Emotional Change: The Moment-by-Moment Process. New York: Guilford Press.
Well, for one thing, if you change one part of the dynamic through how you act or react, it usually causes other changes in the dynamic/relationship. Sometimes the other changes come quickly; other times it takes a while to see the resulting changes and you have to make sure to keep up your positive change. This is especially true when the first change that comes after your own improvement is NEGATIVE. I call this the “compensation period.”
That is, let’s say the relationship dynamic consists of 10% nastiness. If you contributed the majority of this nastiness and then try to reduce your portion, the relationship dynamic, which has a life of its own remember, will struggle to maintain this 10% nastiness quotient. This is a natural phenomenon, where things automatically try to regain their equilibrium (like how your furnace works, or when you shiver when you’re cold, sweat when you’re hot, regain the weight you lose, etc.) But you’re not contributing as much nastiness to the relationship as you used to, so where will that missing nastiness come from? You got it: your partner.
This is a natural part of the change process in many cases (sometimes the couple is lucky enough to skip it and move directly to the positive changes following one or both partners’ attempts to improve the relationship). So, knowing this, I hope you and your partner both keep trying to move forward to try to improve your relationship.
And keep in mind that improving the relationship is literally a “lifelong process.” That is, for the entire life of the relationship, there will always be ways you can improve it. Things may be going great for (long) periods of time, but there will eventually be times you need to look at yourself and the relationship and see what can be improved.
For couples who are not in that “great” period, it takes much more time and effort and positive changes may take quite some time to see/feel. But everyone has to work at making or keeping their relationship healthy, even couples who seem to be in a “perfect” relationship (or, they had to put effort into making their relationship so great after the initial “honeymoon period”).
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Please send your questions to lovecraft72@gmail.com
Topics: Sex Advice |
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:21 pm
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