Communication Breakdown; It’s Always The Same

“Communication Breakdown, It’s Always The Same.”

Do you and your partner fight about the most mundane things? Do patterns of miscommunication, misunderstandings and hurt feelings cycle through again and again, often without resolution? If so, couples counseling may help.

As a marital and family therapist, I have spent roughly half my clinical work sitting with couples in conflict. Many couples present similarly: a feeling of disconnection is present, defenses are high, both feel misunderstood, and fear is ever-present. Will we work it out? Will this toxic pattern play out for the life of our relationship? How do we escape this merry-go-round of resentment, blame, mistrust, and pain?

My approach with couples is unique in that when I treat a relationship, I am actually working with four people in the room: the two individuals, and the two wounded inner children who desperately crave connection, attunement, safety and understanding.

A female client who I am working with has just recently come to understand how her childhood experience of distrust, betrayal and conditional love have come to play out as themes in her marriage. When I showed her this image, she looked at me with understanding and said, “every picture says a thousand words.”

The image depicts a couple that is fighting, and physically turned away from one another, while their inner children face one another with mutual understanding and playfulness. They understand that no argument is important enough to create the physical separation that has transpired. They know what is most important: love, play, belonging. They get it, but their adult selves have forgotten the truth.

We are all so different, yet so fundamentally the same in this regard. We crave a partner who will see us, validate us, and walk with us through life. Many of us already have this, and yet we find ourselves at war. Couples therapy allows partners to understand what is the problem of the relationship, and what needs to be worked through individually. Couples counseling, when performed from an attachment perspective, also helps partners to heal parts of themselves that keep them from receiving and absorbing the love their partner has for them.

We want and need love, yet we so subtly sabotage ourselves. Mindfulness of this pattern is an essential first step towards overcoming barriers to a loving relationship that can withstand conflict and even engage in conflict in a harmonious, connected way, with a mutual commitment to putting the sanctity of the connection above the issue at hand, as contentious and difficult as that may be.

I so strongly encourage you to enter into the relationship-saving work of diving into couples counseling, both for yourself and for your significant other. Relational satisfaction accounts for a portion of our health and longevity. A peaceful and emotionally attuned partnership is absolutely the most invaluable gift that you can or will give yourself.

Click here for more information on couples therapy.