Jamie and Mark started marriage counseling 6 years ago. They weren’t feeling connected anymore, and they were fighting…a lot. After Jamie had become pregnant with their first son, things were never the same. Their therapist told them that this conflict and distance were symptoms of not being connected and that they needed to take steps to reconnect. She prescribed date nights, sex, accountability charts, readings, and getting vulnerable with each other. Jamie and Mark followed through with every homework assignment, and they were in therapy for about 18 months. Through it all they felt like they weren’t fighting as much, and that things were calmer, so they ended the therapy. But neither really felt that the steps to reconnect that they’d taken had done the trick.

Six years later, sitting in my office, they were feeling terrible. They weren’t fighting anymore, but they both felt like the spark had gone out. They were wondering how it was they still didn’t feel connected, and they thought something must be terribly wrong with them. When I suggested that they might stop all of this trying to get connected—that perhaps their experience was trying to tell them something—they thought I meant that they should give up and get a divorce. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Perhaps We Are Missing Something

After 21 years as a marriage counselor, and after 18 years as a married person, I am clear that the solutions to marital discord have very little to do with the monumental efforts people are making to reconnect. It’s certainly not for a lack of trying and definitely not a lack of character, intent, or intelligence. So, what the heck is going on?

Behind closed doors, therapists tend to conclude that their clients just aren’t getting it…that they were too far gone or waited too long to start marriage counseling. They theorize that people’s attachment styles are just incompatible or that they are too damaged to be able to achieve a healthy marriage. And then they start diagnosing and even encouraging spouses to diagnose one another.

But maybe something else is going on. Perhaps we can start to consider that maybe the ‘diagnosis’ as “lack-of-connection” or even “lack-of-a-healthy-connection” is missing the mark. Perhaps it is time to consider the possibility that instead of a lack of connection or of having the “wrong kind of connection”, humans evolved to be highly connected to and concerned with each other, and that we now tend to suffer under this intense connectivity…period. No bad guys. No need to diagnose spouse with Asperger’s or NPD or “gas lighting” or an attachment disorder. Just a normal and natural process that we inflame with how we address it.

When we narrowly focus on connection with spouse (or with any family member), our ability, in the moment, to be open and relaxed diminishes and so do the good feelings we are longing for.  If this is the case, then we must consider the possibility that taking steps to reconnect, as is prescribed in conventional marriage counseling, makes things worse either in the short or the long term. Perhaps we just need a different direction—a calm response to a normal, natural, human problem.

A Tension We Can Work With

While we evolved to be highly connected with each other, we simultaneously have a kind of allergy to it. As much as we need to be together, we also need to be independent in order to function well in life. Perhaps the constant tension between these two instinctive human drives is the problem. For example, Mark wants more sex than Jamie, and he doesn’t do well emotionally without it. Jamie reacts to his pressure with a kind of automatic shutting down, and her own sexuality becomes the last thing she will be interested in. He is pushing for togetherness and she is avoiding it—which just seems to increase the togetherness tension rather than diminish it. This kind of emotional reactivity is a kind of glue that sticks us together in rigid positions. Like a centripetal force that sucks us in, unable to step away, to relax, or to open up.

Addressing this tension tends to move people towards resolution—towards settling down, relaxing, and creating the open space required for mature intimacy. Addressing this tension has something to do with the practice of maintaining an independent self that avoids mentally or emotionally:

• Pushing
• Shoving
• Cajoling
• Convincing
• Begging or
• Avoiding

These are all related to togetherness at the cost of the individuality of both people. Addressing this tension also avoids:

• Martyrdom
• Self-righteousness
• Ultimatums

All of which are more togetherness at the cost of individuality.

In dealing with this tension between individuality and togetherness there is a moving towards—not a moving towards spouse—we are already narrowly focused on, concerned with, and highly reactive to spouse. Rather, it is a moving towards one self. Moving towards one self is characterized by:

• Persistent, quiet, humble moving towards a deeper knowing of self—of one’s internal world but also of how one impacts others—minus blame
• A broader view of human relationships
• A focus on process rather than getting stuck in content.

This moving towards self slowly opens things up by relaxing the tension between togetherness and individuality. It’s almost like we have to get out of the way of connectedness, give it some breathing room, for it to find its sweet spot.

Moving Towards Defining a Self

Here are a few ideas to consider as you deepen your journey towards defining a clear self in relation to important others.

• Consider your brain. We are only just beginning to understand how central the brain is to our mental, emotional, physical, and relational well-being. With the discovery in the late 1960’s of neurofeedback, we now have a safe and effective way to deal with sub-optimal brain function. To not seriously consider this as an option for any client seeking either individual or marital counseling seems a tragedy. We offer professional grade neurofeedback in our offices and via home rentals. If you have tried many other routes to get your relationships on track, it might be time to consider this very powerful bio-hack.
• Consider your family. Besides neurofeedback, in my 21 years as a marriage counselor, I have seen nothing more effective than learning to think about family differently. If you want more information about what I mean by this, have a look here. By the way, I am quite aware that most folks don’t go here. We want to leave our families behind. That was then. This is now. But I had a client recently describe it this way. If you have a room in your house where you stuff all your junk or extras or unopened boxes from your last move…and you close the door to this stuffed-to-the-gills room…just because you’ve closed the door and don’t see all the stuff in there, doesn’t mean it’s not weighing you down.
• Consider thinking outside the box. Outside the box thinking, to me, means non-linear thinking—also knowns as systemic or ecological thinking. In so much of what I read online and on the bookshelf about relationships, I find linear thinking. If you take these 3 steps or have these 8 dates, you will be on your way to getting the love you want. Ugh! Non-linear thinking means thinking in terms of process. It means beginning to understand that there are automatic emotional processes that are much bigger than we mere mortals. It means understanding that the river of life is much bigger and deeper and faster than we are. It means resolving relationship issues has something to do with accepting this and learning to ride the waves rather than trying to swim against them.

Blocks to Moving Towards Defining Self

There are many of course. Here are a few that can be rather resistant to change:

• Martyrdom—Have you ever heard or said this one: “I’m doing MY work. He or she isn’t doing theirs.Or “I don’t want to be the ONLY one who is doing their work. It’s YOUR turn!&!@!# As true as it MAY be, this stance will get you deeper and deeper into togetherness and further from your own independence and freedom and availability for calm, open connecting.
• Isolation—The fewer outside connections we have with friends and family, the more intense we seem to focus on spouse and kids.
• Brain processes—If you are someone who is dealing with anxiety, PTSD or CPTSD, insomnia or poor sleep quality, brain fog, focus, or memory, then you might consider your brain is part of what’s getting in the way of new thinking on old problems. (Although this one is a bit less resistant to change now that we have neurofeedback technology!)

Steps to Reconnect?

The very steps to reconnect we are told will work, may tragically work to do the very opposite of what we want. We are already highly connected, and Pulitzer prize winning science and current research are demonstrating this more and more, not as theory, but as fact. And I think the last thing we need is conventional theory inadvertently, yet negatively diagnosing us or our relationships when things feel bad. Life is hard. Relationships are harder. But we make them unworkable when we diagnose them and then try to “fix” them. Instead we can consider our own part in the natural processes inherent in our relationships and in evolution itself. It’s a fine balance between togetherness and independence. Consider the following questions to help facilitate your process:

• What steps can you take to reconnect with self in kindness?
• Where does your own humility come into your relationship?
• How grounded can you be in your own realistic view of self when in a challenging moment with spouse or offspring?
• Do you have a realistic view of self?
• How much self-control do you have in one of those stressful relationship moments?
• Where does your own self-awareness come into the relationship?
• What about radical personal responsibility?

We have more options than perhaps we know. And perhaps, our relationships are less “sick” or “broken” than we fear.