Counseling Couples Who Battle

Ted and Alice - fictitious names - distort what they hear. Each feels betrayed by the failure of the other to meet their expectations. They misinterpret and exaggerate events. Explanations are not listened to or are discounted. Motives are overgeneralized. They score points by finding inaccuracies in each other's perceptions and statements.

Arguments escalate through blame, retaliation and rebuff. Each feels there is going to be a winner and a loser. They are stuck repeating their positions without getting through.

A third party can help. A counselor is necessary to teach, coach and model the skills needed to break through the impasse. I've found this technique effective in helping couples like Ted and Alice.

The couple is instructed to cease private discussions about areas of conflict. These discussions will take place in counseling sessions. Private attempts have gotten nowhere and further failure just leads to more discouragement. All "hot" issues are put on hold. This reduces tension and the anxiety of needing to solve the problem - which usually results in more fights.

So what do they talk about if they can't argue? Small talk. Other non-emotional topics. This may come as a welcome relief from the unrelenting conflict they have been experiencing. If they can't quite bring themselves to be loving and warm with each other, they are challenged to be at least neutral or pleasant with each other.

Active listening. The couple is taught "active listening" techniques. One partner is asked to be the listener, the other is the speaker and the counselor acts as a coach.

The listener can't interrupt, offer an opinion, rebut or dispute what is being said. The listener is to track the speaker's line of thinking, ask questions, draw the speaker out and reflect back the main points being said.

The listener is coached to explore deeper and to help the speaker connect the complaints to other situations, usually in their childhood, when similar feelings may have been felt. Pain and hurt from the past are brought out. In the process, the listener may discover something unique and special about their partner. Behind the complaints and conflict is a man or a woman with a past, with feelings and a legitimate point of view.

Reversing roles. The speaker and listener roles are reversed. The new speaker responds to his or her side of the previous topic with the former speaker now having to hear the other side of the story. They are taught to stay in the listener role when their partner has the floor. They are taught how to ask for the floor respectfully and be willing to take no for an answer if their partner still needs to finish a thought or point.

Once they have talked a topic through in a session with good understanding established, the couple is encouraged to have follow up discussions at home using the speaker/listener technique. This technique is used in subsequent counseling sessions with main points of marital conflict being addressed one by one. The new communication skills are practiced until they become comfortable.

The improvement in communications has to be matched by efforts at being more loving and considerate with each other. Knowing that your partner understands and still chooses not to change feels worse than not getting through. If little progress is being made, one marital partner may be resisting change or has a significant "family of origin" issue that is preventing the relationship from moving forward.

The role of coach. Listening is hard to do for people not used to concentrating or keeping their own thoughts and emotions under control during sensitive discussions. The listener has to learn to sit on their emotional reactions and mounting frustration while highly personal material is being discussed.

The coach prompts, reminds, models and suggests lines of response that keep the listener on task to identify and restate feelings. The coach teaches the listener to not overreact to detail or provocative expressions. The listener is taught to use milder terms with the same meaning when reflecting the message back. Also, the listener may need to be coached on nonverbal communication such as body posture, facial expressions and tone of voice to project a more caring attitude.

The more detached and relaxed the listener becomes, the more the speaker experiences the listener as emotionally available. The speaker is free to share deeper feelings instead of calculated retorts. The speaker, too, becomes more detached, relaxed and unemotional in their thinking and presentation of ideas.

Initially the coach may have to help the speaker avoid provocative or abrasive expressions that arouse the defenses of the listener. The speaker is also coached on how to confine their comments to a few sentences so the listener is not overloaded.

Stopping the cycle. The teaching of "active listening" balances power between husband and wife. The pattern of blaming, attacking, interrupting, criticizing, labeling, ignoring, interpreting, discounting, withholding and denying is short circuited. Automatic assumptions and thoughtless comebacks about the partner's motives and feelings are stopped short. The couple becomes free to learn about each other.

These new communication skills are like a light bulb that has been turned on. The couple canexperience intimacy and find their partner to be an emotional resource. Learning good communication skills offers new hope for marriages of couples caught in a cycle of emotionally draining fights.