Humans are creatures of habit and patterns when connecting with themselves and each other. I want to focus this blog on couples and how they connect within their relationships. Is their ability to connect healthy or destructive to the relationship?
The start of a relationship can be relaxed, happy and passionate. It’s a beautiful time to connect and get to know each other at a deeper level. After a while, the passion tends to slow down for most couples as they progress through life together. It’s an entirely normal experience. You may move in together, get married, have children, and so on. These events have the potential to be exciting and also stressful. When stress occurs, your relationship can suffer. If you and your partner don’t know how to communicate your needs effectively, you can be left feeling frustrated and resentful of the other.
Being an effective communicator means letting your partner know what’s wrong or what you need without causing conflict. Lack of communication is the biggest killer of a marriage. If you can’t communicate what you need, you internalise your problem, which can result in symptoms such as depression or anxiety or be expressed as anger. Eventually, communication may only happen through fighting, yelling, or not talking to one another for days. If this continues for an extended period, the new pattern you create is one of connecting through confrontation and connecting through disconnection. Although it’s unpleasant, it’s still a way to connect. For example, maybe you stop talking to your partner and wait for them to give you attention by asking, “What’s wrong?” Although it’s not a happy relationship, there is a connection at some level, and some needs are still being met. Or perhaps one of you starts an argument with the other so that you can connect.
New neural pathways are formed by repeating the same behaviour, so this becomes your connecting pattern.
This is usually when couples come to see me because not only has the communication stopped, but also being physically intimate has stopped. All the fun has been zapped out of the relationship. Now you’re connected but miserable, and it can’t be sustained any longer. If this behaviour continues, one of you will give up. Perhaps you’ll stay in the relationship, but the fire has disappeared. You can’t even be bothered to connect via arguing any longer; you’ve emotionally ‘checked out’ of the relationship, and the next step is to leave physically. At this point, you are both willing to work on the relationship, and there is still hope for it. New patterns and tools are needed to apply, and this is where marriage counselling has the potential to help.
