The Happiness Blog

Happiness for Couples - Part 5

Copyright © Dr Jim Byrne, 5^th May 2012

Introduction

This happiness blog seeks to spread happiness.  To spread happiness, it is first necessary to study the roots of happiness.  I have done that by studying the philosophies of Stoicism and Buddhism, and the wise words of generations of thinkers in the east and the west.

To promote happiness among married couples, which is the subject of the current series of blogs, it is necessary to understand the dynamics of relationship among adults, and their roots in the relationships between mothers and their babies.  I have studied those dynamics as expressed in the thoughts of the Object Relations school, Werner Erhard, Albert Ellis, Eric Berne, Erich Fromm, John Bowlby, Robert Bolton, Helen Clinard, and many others. 

In all of my studies, I have sought to follow the ways of the wise.  In following Confucius, I decided "...I shall pursue those things which I admire". (Analects, Book 7: 12).  The thing that has most motivated me has been the desire to cultivate virtue and to put into practice what I have learned from trying to live a good (relational) life, and to keep moving towards what I perceive to be right. (Analects, Book 7: 3).

Self belief

If you (whether a husband or a wife) knew yourself well enough, you would have the courage to let whatever happens in your relationship happen, and to deal with the consequences; instead of trying to control your partner so certain things won't happen. You would have boundaries, which you communicate to your partner, so your partner knows who you are and what you are attracted to and what you are repelled by.  This would allow them to choose their own actions accordingly.  If they displeased you enough, you should have a boundary which states, "I will walk away if X happens".

You are not a child.  You do not need to cling to your partner like a baby to its mother.

You are not your partner's boss.  You do not have the right to control your partner.

To have a happy marriage you must both be free to choose each other, over and over and over again. And the right to stop choosing your partner is enshrined in the Protestant reformation - the right to divorce!

The more you try to manipulate your partner from Parent or Child states; and the more you try to dominate your partner from Parent or Child states; the more your partner will be obliged to leave you, in order to be free!

The more freedom you can offer your partner within your marriage, the more your partner will be free to see your generous heart, and to be drawn to it.

Your love for your partner should be what is called ‘agape':

"Agape is love that seeks the welfare of the other.  It is love that has nothing to do with how someone is gratifying us at the moment.  It has to do with what is good for the other.  In short, agape is concerned with the good of the other person".  Cloud and Townsend, Boundaries in Marriage, page 117.

If you are desperately trying to control your partner's actions out of a sense of insecurity, then you need to stop that, and work on your own insecurities instead.

More next week.

Best wishes,

The Happiness Blog

Happiness for Couples - Part 4

Copyright © Dr Jim Byrne, 29^th April 2012

Introduction

Let's talk about boundaries in relationships

‘Boundaries' in relationships are different from ‘barriers' in relationships.  Psychological boundaries are like fences or hedges around your property; or like the walls of you home.  They block the intrusion of the bad and the unwanted and the illigitimate; but they allow in the good, the wanted and the legitimate; just as do the doors on houses, gates on gardens, etc.  Boundaries are designed to keep bad things out, and to let good things in.  Barriers in relationships, on the other hand, are like roadblocks.  They hold up all communication - the good and the bad.

Psychological and personal boundaries are rules which say what we want, like and will accept, and what we do not want, do not like, and will not accept.  They are important parts of how we maintain our autonomy as individual human beings, and our sense of self respect; as well as keeping genuine love alive.  Autonomy does not rule out intimacy.  Indeed, it is not possible to have intimate love without personal freedom and autonomy.  One partner can be autonomous from "their other half", and also be intimate with them.  They can accept those communications from their partner which do not step on their own psychological toes; and on the other hand, if things go wrong, they can say "Can we discuss a concern I have?  That particular action/statement of yours hurt me, and I want to negotiate a change in that, please, darling".  That would be a very clear boundary which helps to keep the relationship happy and healthy.

Boundaries are healthy aspects of mature relationships, which begin when (and if) we are children in healthy relationships with our parents.  Barriers, on the contrary, are unhealthy aspects of our adult relationships which arise out of unhealthy encounters with parents who either tried to control us inappropriately, or who were unresponsive, or unreliably responsive, and/or insensitive to our needs and our emotional states.  (Barriers often involve communications which we should have sent, but failed to do so!)

At the beginning of your life, you were a little part of your mother, inside her womb.  You had no separate existence.  You could be distinguished from her by a third party using a scanning device, but you had no consciousness of being ‘me' at that time.

When you were born, your mother ‘colonized' you; took you over and ‘processed your needs'; and you automatically related to your mother, because you recognized her smell, and because you were wired up by nature to seek an attachment figure who would protect you and care for you, to ensure your survival and flourishing.

For the first few months, you most likely felt as if you-and-your-mother were the same experiential existence.  When you cried, the breast arrived to feed you (or in some cases the bottle).  When you were wet, dry clothing were substituted for those nasty cold and damp things. If you were lucky, a big smiley face amused you, and friendly lips blew air on your cheeks to tickle you.  And a voice babbled strange sounds at you.

Probably, somewhere around five to six months of age, you began to recognize that You and Mother were not one, and that was the end of what Freud called the ‘oceanic experience of mind', and the beginning of ‘separate' or ‘individual' mind.

However, even at this stage, the connection with mother was intense and essential.  Even as you learned to crawl, and later to walk, you always referred back to mother for reassurance and approval, guidance and advice; and most of all for a sense of having ‘a secure base' to which you could retreat in the case of feeling threatened in any way.  If you found that secure base, then you will have developed a 'secure attachment style' with significant others in later life.  If you failed to find a secure attachment to your mother, you will most likely have developed an insecure attachment to significant others later in life.

You internalized this relationship with your mother in a particular way.  In CENT we say that:

Perhaps you are just the physical organism (which is reading these words)

With all of its cumulative, interpretive experiences

Including internalized representations of Good and Bad aspects of significant others (mainly mother, then father, and later siblings, peers, teachers, and so on)

And all of your Good and Bad adaptations towards them

And all of your Good and Bad reactions and rebellions against them

Which gave rise to your Internal Working Models of how they related to you, and how you related to them

Which also included your attachment styles towards them (secure and/or insecure)

All of which is stored in your long-term memory

In the form of electro-chemical corollaries of schemas, scripts, stories, frames and other narrative elements

Below the level of conscious awareness, and permanently beyond direct conscious inspection.

What does this mean?

It means that you form particular kind of non-conscious Internal Working Models of relationship, with mother and father, in the first couple of years of your life.

Those working models are a dialectical ‘strange loop' of braided strands of relationship-experiences; so you can have a secure relationship with one parent, and insecure with the other; or they can both be insecure; or they can both be secure.

Your attachment style, thus created, is both stable and malleable; so it can be improved or worsened by subsequent relationships.  However, in most cases, the stability of attachment style is probably more significant than its malleability.  Perhaps most people get stuck with the attachment styles of the first few years of life.

Why have I told you all this?

Because, when you fall in love, you choose someone who has a compatiable Internal Working Model of relationship, which meshes with yours; and you go back in time (with your partner) to the symbiotic, ‘oceanic experience of mind' that you first experienced with you mother.  It's blissful.  It's wonderful.  But it wears out, and then you enter into a phase of relationship which is dictated by your attachment style - secure or insecure.  And if it is insecure, you will tend to either feel (1) anxious, clingy and needy with your partner; or (2) you will tend to feel trapped, suffocated and want to escape into avoidance of your partner.  And when an avoidant and an anxious person get together, they are likely to make life hell for each other.  As Werner Erhard put it, they don't have a relationship.  They have an ‘involvement' or ‘entanglement'.  They make life miserable for each other, because the anxious party pursues the avoidant party, to try to get a grip on them, but they keep on retreating.  Neither party can give their partner what their partner really wants.

But there are ways to work on this mess.  And next week I will write some more about boundaries in marriages, or marriage-like relationships.

More next week.

Best wishes,

By Dr Jim Byrne

Copyright (c) Jim Byrne, 20th April 2012

Introduction

Over a period of almost fourteen years, working with married and co-habiting couples, I have identified a number of key problems with the way individuals and couples understand (or, rather, misunderstand) what a relationship is. 

Because they define relationship inaccurately, they often have grossly unrealistic expectations of their partner and their relationship.

~~~

Back in the late 1970s and early 80s, Werner Erhard came up with a three part definition of relationship, which went like this:

• (a) A relationship is an understanding and being aware of another person's way of being. That is to say, a relationship is the condition of understanding and being aware of another person. (Notice there is no "entitlement" to anything in this statement!)
• (b) Successful relationships are based on agreed on goals. That does not mean that my partner must agree to my goals, or vice versa. Instead it means, I support my partner in pursuing her goals; and she supports me in pursuing mine. (Notice there are no "sergeant majors" in this statement; no "directors"; no "leaders" and "led"!)
• (c) If you want to have a really powerful relationship with anybody, you have got to stop making them wrong. And making them wrong means describing them as being bad/wrong when their ideas/values/goals/behaviours deviate from our idea of what they should be! (It is much more effective to separate the person from the problem; talk about the problem in terms of your interests, not your positions; and aim for (mutually agreeable) compromises and trade-offs, not victories and win-lose outcomes).

If you were to review those three elements of definition, above, over and over and over again, day after day, week after week, and month after month, you would eventually develop a capacity for relationship which was extraordinary - in the top five percent of the population of the world!  But more importantly, you would be in a durable relationship, and you and your partner would be happy![1] (How do I know that this is the case?  Because that is what I did, back in 1984-86, and that is the kind of relationship I - in cooperation with my wife - was able to build as a result!)

In the process you would have moved into that area of human functioning which was defined by Dr Erich Fromm as: Respect for your partner; Taking responsibility for your side of the relationship; and: Showing care for your partner.

Over the years I have tried to identify the most helpful insights on managing happy, loving relationships, and I have passed these on to my couple-clients.  At the last count, I had collected, and/or developed, eighteen principles, or things you can do, which make the biggest and quickest contribution to improving your capacity to manage a happy couple relationship.  (The number eighteen does not include those principles mentioned above.  It also does not include Dr John Gottman's Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work***, which are also very helpful). 

[1] For more insights into couple relationships, please see my Couples Therapy page, at http://www.abc-counselling.com/id131.html.

The Happiness Blog

Happiness for Couples - Part 3
Attachment styles...

Copyright © Dr Jim Byrne, 14^th April 2012

Introduction

In my CENT paper on ‘My Story of Relationship'*** I describe how, at the age of 22 years, I had no idea what a relationship was; and how I was not in any significant way ‘linked' (or involved with) my mother (or father).

Now, more than 40 years later, I understand some of the problems of that time and those dynamics:

Firstly, I had an insecure attachment to with my mother, because she had not been sensitive and responsive to me when I was a child; and indeed, she had beaten me, and psychologically terrorized me.

Secondly, because of how she was, I had an ‘avoidant attachment style' towards her - that is to say: I kept her in view, and stayed (somewhat) physically proximate to her, but I denied any need for her, and did not communicate my feelings or thoughts to her.

Thirdly, this (avoidant style) became my style of relating to my father and my siblings, and later my school peers. I was avoidant and aloof, sombre and withdrawn. 

When I reached puberty and longed for the company of girls (or at least one girl) I was unable to communicate that need.  My winning formula was to deny my need for love and affection, for human warmth and connection.

Somewhere between 1984 and 1986, as a result of marriage guidance counselling (using Transactional Analysis) and the Erhard Seminars approach to relationship and communication skills, (and a whole lot of other therapeutic approaches), I learned to feel increasingly secure in my relationship with my then girlfriend (Renata), who I married in 1986.

When I came across Dr Albert Ellis and his REBT, in 1992, his philosophy linked up with my old attachment style.  His idea that we do not need to be loved or approved by anybody echoed my original avoidant attachment style, and I began to state that as my own belief, while at the same time (paradoxically, and thankfully!) managing to love and be loved by Renata.  It was not until after the disintegration of the REBT monolith, when Al was removed from office in 2005, and I began to try to understand what had happened to cause the Ellis Empire to implode, that I realized that Albert Ellis had had an avoidant attachment style, until he got together with Debbie Joffe, at which point she helped to shift him to a more secure mode of operation (at least in his relationship with her).  But he never recanted his extreme rejection of attachment needs in humans.  This weakness has now been excised from Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT).

Somewhere on YouTube - (see link below) - I have posted a recording of myself singing three of Al's ‘Rational Humorous Songs', the first of which includes the line, ‘Love me, love me, only me, or I'll die without you'.  This is a form of 'therapeutic scoffing' at the neediness of the ‘anxious attachment style' of some individuals.  And I now need to go back and do something about amending that video, so that I can communicate that the anxious attachment style can be helped to become more secure. (And scoffing, or even self-mocking, is unlikely to be the best way to do that! :-))

~~~

An aside on anthems of attachment: I now think that Al's song, 'Love me, love me, only me...' could be seen as the anthem of the anxious attachment style.  Here is a link to my video clip in which I sing this song (and two others): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti2U3jyvpKM. This will take just one minute to watch.

And if Al's song is the anthem of the anxious attachment style, I asked myself, what is the anthem of the avoidant attachment style?  The answer was not difficult for me to find.  It is the song I sang over and over again when my first marriage failed (back in 1976), and I wanted to deny my love for my ex-wife: 'I'm not in love', by 10cc, available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rgepWg4rzw

Which brings us to the question: Is there an obvious anthem for those individuals who enjoy a secure attachment style?  My immediate answer is this: A secure attachment style is not unemotional.  During the Strange Situation experiments, by Mary Ainsworth, the secure children became distressed when their mothers left the room.  But what characterized them was that they were quickly reassured by mother when she returned to them.  A secure love is not the same as a 'Mr Spock' (from Star Trek) kind of cerebral attachment.  It is a capacity to love and be loved, (and to be hurt), without too much sentimentality, clinging or avoiding.  So here are my two contenders for the anthem of the secure attachment types:

1. 'When You Were Sweet 16' - The Furey Brothers & Davey Arthur:  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz-G0gcpQko&feature=related

2. Al Green - 'Let's stay Together' (Live)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVzYxqG9N1c&feature=related

~~~

As indicated above, there are two insecure attachment styles, according to attachment theory: the avoidant and the anxious.  The avoidant style denies a need for love, and the anxious style demands and craves total love and devotion, like a fearful, needy baby.

But there is also the ‘secure attachment style'.  The secure attachment style can admit its need for love, without making a big song and dance about it, and without denying that it exists.  And that is where I am today.  I admit that I need to be loved, and that I enjoy being loved by Renata.  I do not deny that I have emotional needs. However, I am not a ‘need machine'.  I have both needs and a capacity to love; and I believe that if I love my partner there is a good chance that my own needs will be met in the process. (This is reminiscent of ‘exchange theory' of relationship dynamics).

In another of my CENT papers I have argued that Ellis and I are both correct:

(1) We do not need to be loved (as he argued) - if all we want to do is to survive, after a fashion.  (But it will not be much of a life). 

(2) We do need to be loved (as the attachment theorists argue) - if we want to thrive and to feel fulfilled as fully functioning human beings.

You can find out your own attachment style at this website: http://web-research-design.net/cgi-bin/crq/crq.pl.

You can learn some of the insights and techniques of emotional intelligence in relation to attachment styles by studying this book, which is available from Amazon.com: Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find and Keep Love***

You can also get this book in (British) bookstores with the slightly different title of, Attached: Identify your attachment style and find your perfect match, by Dr Amir Levine and Rachel Heller.

~~~

More next week...

Best wishes,