From Making Marriage Simple by Harville Hendrix
Harville begins this chapter with:
“Hopefully by now you realize that the conflict you’re experiencing is not only normal, but inevitable and even valuable. Don’t try to avoid it. Don’t try to deny it. Don’t run away from it, or wish it away. Stay with it, and you’ll discover something wonderful right around the corner.
While conflict makes you uncomfortable, it can also invite you to reflect on your situation from a new perspective. So you have a choice. You can act in ways that keep the conflict going. Or you can turn the conflict into creative tension, which gives birth to new insights and talents.” (p.37)
Real Love is a Journey
He goes on to remind us that real love is a journey with two necessary pit stops: the Romantic Love phase and the Power Struggle stage. “We highlight these pit stops because so many conflicted couples believe there is something wrong with their relationship. There is a myth in our culture. If you’re having problems in your marriage, it means you’re with the wrong person. This is not true.” (p.38). It is a myth.
My Relationship Re-examination
35 years ago that was his message in Getting the Love You Want which encouraged my partner and I to re-examine our relationship. He wrote then, that what often happens is, we get rid of our partner but keep the problem. At the time we were separated but what he said made sense to us so we decided to not waste the first 15 years of our marriage but to try and figure out what hadn’t work so we wouldn’t repeat the pattern.
Thankfully we did the necessary work and here we are celebrating our 50th anniversary this year.
Keep the Partner, Get Rid of the Problem
Harville goes on: “Better to keep the partner and get rid of the problem. How? By getting curious about what the conflict is trying to give birth to in your relationship.” (p.39) The trick is to use conflict to jump-start growth and to reframe the conflict as a chance to reclaim parts of yourself that were stunted growing up. Psychologists tell us that a reframe is “a process of re-conceptualizing a problem by seeing it from a different perspective”.
My weak suit growing up was my feeling function – the reframe was to see my stretching to meet my partner’s legitimate feeling needs as a growth step for me – a regaining a part of me that had been stunted growing up. The challenge of course is that “what we need most from our partner is what they are least capable of giving (which also means that we’re the least capable of giving them what they most need from us“. (p.44)
Helping Couples Become More Conscious
I have said before that half of what I do in the office is to help couples become more conscious, more aware. If they can step back from a problem and see that what they are doing is counter-productive, they can choose to do things differently. I use myself as an example. In those first 15 years of our marriage if my wife came on too strong I would shut down. When I stepped back and looked at that behavior it was pretty counter-productive but I did it for a long time. The challenge is to become more conscious, more aware and then take the necessary steps to stretch and grow.
The exercise at the end of the chapter is titled Misses and Wishes. Note what you MISS now but that you had in the Romantic Love stage of your relationship as well as what you WISH you had but don’t now and then share.
