A Therapist’s Thoughts on Relationships and Divorce
Falling in love is a magical time when we desire to fuse with the other to become one against the world. We idealise our new partner seeing only their strengths. We are blinded to their weaknesses. We form an attachment, meaning that we can find safety, soothing and mutual dependence within the relationship. We can share our vulnerability and rely on our partner. We have trust and hope. We get married.
The intimacy of the romantic relationship is only matched by its most significant predecessor: the baby’s first relationship with its mother. This relationship sets the template for what we know about relating. Unconsciously, we are attracted to the familiarity of that template. It feels safe and right because we know it.
This means that if we experienced a loving responsive mother, we may find that we are attracted to loving responsive partners. If mum was intrusive or controlling, we may find a partner’s attentiveness attractive at first but later find it triggers negative emotional responses. If we grew up with criticism, that may feel comfortable. If we grew up with sexual abuse, we may not be able to set boundaries on acceptable behaviour. If it was all about Mum then we may have learned to mould ourselves to fit around others.
If we recognise that we do not want to repeat our childhood experience, we may seek the opposite. Charlie’s mum and dad were not physically affectionate so he sought a partner who was but she also had to be intelligent and strong like his mother. Jenny congratulated herself on not marrying her alcoholic mother nor her wife-beating father but later realised that she had married someone who repeated their emotional neglect. There is a powerful unconscious urge to repeat the childhood dynamic in some way.
By the way, this is not to blame mothers. It’s just that babies and young children learn unconsciously from their experience and extrapolate their learning to general rules about themselves and the world. For example, if mum doesn’t come quickly when I cry then I cannot expect responsive support from others. So, when I’m struggling at work, I won’t ask my manager for help.
So it seems we are set up to repeat the familiar childhood dynamic in our romantic relationships which can mean that childhood trauma of neglect or intrusion is re-experienced. This can lead to highly emotive reactions which activate our feeling right brain and switch off our thinking left brain. Without the capacity to think, disagreements can escalate.
We cope with conflict in two main ways: we either need to thrash it out here and now (pursuers) or we need to distance ourselves to calm down (avoidants). This is itself can cause a great deal of misunderstanding and hurt as many couples comprise one of each type.
Expectations play a role in how we experience our partner. If we expect to be judged for example, we are more likely to hear judgment in comments that were not intended to be judgmental at all.
There are also unconscious projective processes occurring whereby we can affect our partner’s behaviour. Hannah held the unconscious belief that all men are ‘useless’ (based on her Dad, her step-father and her mother’s attitude towards them) and found herself engaged to a man who seemed to match up to this expectation. She felt she couldn’t trust him with important tasks. He sensed that he could not be trusted and took on the role of being dependent and ‘useless’.
Romantic relationships are a melting pot of unresolved childhood traumas, distorted ways of relating, assumptions and projections which make it remarkable that any marriages survive at all especially as nowadays we live so long that 60 years together is a realistic prospect!
The marriages which last best are those with good communication and particularly those where the couple talk regularly about their sex life. Being open, honest, direct and playful is a recipe for maintaining connection and physical affection. Relationship issues can show up as physical manifestations in the bedroom such as loss of desire, erectile dysfunction, vaginismus, etc.
One of the ways that we fail to communicate in relationships is by assuming that our partner knows what we are thinking. Even after 30 years together, mind-reading cannot be relied upon. We need to articulate our feelings and needs clearly. Actually, the problem can be even more fundamental: we do not know what we want and therefore how to express it!
Looking back over a relationship, it is possible to identify critical incidents which changed the dynamic: a house move, birth of a child, loss of a job, death of a parent, an affair. At the time perhaps we just got on with it but there was a shift in the dynamic or a hurt that went unacknowledged.
When we do not feel seen, heard or understood by our partner, we may lose our sense of safety with them. If we cannot communicate effectively as a couple, our partner can feel like the enemy. Criticism, contempt, defensiveness and/or stonewalling create an adversarial atmosphere. We can literally feel under attack.
And yet, it can be so very hard to acknowledge that a relationship is not meeting our needs. Humans are hard-wired to live as a couple and stay together to bring up children. We form an attachment which is hard to break even when we have fallen out of love. Hence, we can go through a confusing period of contemplation where we go back and forth between wanting to stay and wanting to leave. It is the strong force of attachment which explains why victims of domestic abuse can return to their abusive partners over and over again.
When a relationship ends, there can be so much loss: the safety and soothing of an attachment figure, home and financial security, stable relationships with children, parenting cooperation, extended family, friendships, pets, hopes and dreams, sense of trust in oneself and the world,…. It can shake us to the core and make us question everything. There is a lot to mourn.
It may be some time after a divorce before we are able to reflect objectively on the narrative and dynamics of the relationship. There is huge value in this. Becoming aware of our unconscious beliefs, expectations, defences, attachment style and communication makes us a more conscious human being, able to choose our actions rather than reacting on auto pilot.
No matter how much responsibility our partner carries for the demise of the relationship, we played a role in the dynamic. Perhaps we didn’t speak up when we should have done, perhaps we did not set boundaries. Accepting responsibility for how we showed up is very powerful. This is how we make sure we do not repeat the same dynamic.
Fully processing a relationship to learn from it and building a positive sense of self sets us up to attract higher quality relationships in the future. We can trust our instincts to say “No thank you” to relationships which do not meet our needs. We can consider what we would like from a future partner so that we can recognise it when we find it. We can also aim to embody the characteristics we seek in another. We can become our best selves.
Divorce is traumatic. It is also an opportunity for rebirth.
This guest article was written for E J Coombs Solicitors by Josephine Lowry, who is a psychodynamic counsellor based in Danbury. She works with individuals and couples. www.lowrycounselling.co.uk
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