Ask Dan and Jennifer » Marriage Counseling

How To Move Beyond Childhood Abuse And Have Healthier Relationships As An Adult

Melody Brooke — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 13:37:58 +0000

Jim looked at Shannon with a cacophony of feelings; love, lust, appreciation and fear and wanted desperately to reach for her.

Shannon could sense his looking at her, in spite of her back being turned to him as she washed the dishes. Her spine tensed and she felt afraid and then angry.

Jim felt her energy shift and could feel the coldness she projected out at him. He stood frozen in his tracks uncertain as to what to do.

He knew she loved him, and that she wanted to please him. He also knew she would succumb to him if he asserted himself, but she would be angry with him for days. He went back to clearing off the table and securing their doors for the night.

How it all began

“Jim and Shannon” are a composite of couples I have worked with over the years. Shannon is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and had yet to understand all the ways it impacts her relationship with Jim.

Shannon thinks Jim is too focused on sex and, unspoken she really believes he only loves her for what she does for him sexually. She feels shame that he can’t love her for who she is, but doesn’t really think anyone would.

Jim spent his life craving touch. His mother knew that she shouldn’t “coddle him”; her mother taught her well that boys need to be “toughened up”. She let him console himself when he fell and discouraged his affection toward her.

When Jim became a teenager he discovered the joy of touching girls, and the rush of hormones that came with that touch. Touch then, for Jim, became inseparable from sex.

When he met Shannon he thought he had found a woman who was very open and comfortable with sexuality. She never denied him anything he wanted and he felt loved for once in his life.

Ramifications of abuse

Now, as he stood in the kitchen wanting her so badly, he didn’t understand why she no longer seemed to be able to love him as she once had. He felt guilty for wanting her and confused at her rejection of him. His anger and resentment built every time she rejected him.

Shannon had started therapy and she told Jim her therapist said she should not have sex with him until she wanted, and to assert her own needs rather than always succumbing to his.

Shannon’s sexual abuse had taught her to please men, but not herself. The disgust and pain she felt at the thought of sex convinced her she could just as well live without it.

It made her angry that Jim continually pushed her to do something he knew was painful and not fun for her. It reinforced her belief that he could only love her if she gave in to his sexual needs. She felt resentful and angry at his insensitivity, a belief her therapist reinforced in each weekly session.

How to untangle the mess

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Getting Married? 6 Reasons Why You Need Pre-Marriage Counseling

Lisa Brookes Kift — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 14:57:35 +0000

Most couples spend more time planning their weddings than their marriages! With divorce rates at an all time high, it seems that couples are facing more challenges than ever in preserving their relationship stability.

In my relationship counseling work as a Marriage and Family Therapist, I’ve seen countless couples who come into my office at the “end of their ropes.”

Many have very shaky relationship foundations, diminished emotional safety and little ability to deflect internal conflict within their relationship, let alone the stressful external events that life sometimes can dish out.

If you think about the amount of financial and emotional investment that goes into preparing for the wedding itself, doesn’t it make sense to invest a little in strengthening the relationship at the onset?

Many couples preparing for marriage honestly believe they are strong going into the union – and they probably are in a lot of ways. Being caught up with all the loving feelings and other feel-good stuff going on ahead of nuptials, couples often don’t consider the potential pitfalls. Those “pitfalls” are often times what leads them into a therapist’s office some time down the line.

I strongly encourage couples to give their marriages the best possible start – to do all they can ahead of time to avoid marriage counseling later. Based on my experience with couples who see me for marriage counseling and the issues they bring in, there are a number of things that would have been helpful for them to have known about or worked on previously.

Here are six great reasons to get pre marriage counseling:

Strengthen Communication Skills

Being able to effectively listen, truly hear and validate the other’s position is a skill that isn’t necessarily a “given” for many people. Couples that really communicate effectively can discuss and resolve issues when they arise more effectively.

You can tune up your talking and listening skills. This is one of the most important aspects of emotional safety between couples.

Discuss Role Expectations

It’s incredibly common for married couples to never really have discussed who will be doing what in the marriage. This can apply to job, finances, chores, sexual intimacy and more.

Having an open and honest discussion about what each of you expect from the other in a variety of areas leads to fewer surprises and upsets down the line.

Learn Conflict Resolution Skills

Nobody wants to think that they’ll have conflict in their marriage. The reality is that “conflict” can range from disagreements about who will take out the trash to emotionally charged arguments about serious issues – and this will probably be part of a couple’s story at one time or another.

There are ways to effectively de-escalate conflict that are highly effective and can decrease the time spent engaged in the argument. John Gottman’s research (www.gottman.com) has shown that couples who can do this well are less likely to divorce in the end.

Explore Spiritual Beliefs

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Do You Know The Secret To Marital Bliss?

Melody Brooke — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:47:37 +0000

Wow! I’m so Glad I Married You!

The main thing I remember about being with my ex-husband is how angry I felt all the time.

I was always unhappy with him about something.

He didn’t care if the living room was covered with screws from the many computer parts he was constantly putting together.

He didn’t care that I was alone almost every night in a small town miles away from my family while he was working late at night. He disregarded my feelings about most things and pretty much did as he liked with no regard for me.

I had a long list of gripes, serious complaints and general dissatisfaction with him that ate me up every day. When I left him I felt such relief, just to not be carrying all that resentment any more.

Being Single for 10 Years Gave Me a New Perspective

After being single for nearly 10 years I finally met and married my current husband. And, I have to say, I did a lot of work on myself in the interim. The gripes that that I had regarding my ex-husband, I am chagrined to disclose, were mostly kept to myself.

That is, between my girlfriends and myself, they all knew; my husband didn’t.

So now, going into this marriage I was determined to speak my truths and not pretend that everything was okay when I was deeply or even shallowly perturbed with him. Needless to say my first year of marriage was tough.

After years of not speaking my truths I began to realize that my truths were not THE truth. The fact that there were other ways of looking at things, and other perspectives was a shock to me, in spite of my training and knowledge.

This left me with a new way to look at my life, and what was happening in my marriage. Maybe there were other ways to look at what was happening, and had happened in my previous marriages (yes, marriages, plural).

You see the funny thing is that both my most recent ex-husband and my current one are in the same line of work. They even share the same name, and initials, first, middle and last. Both are hardheaded and extremely bright. Both work very hard and care a lot about their family.

Yet the quality of my relationship with my current husband is light years from my previous one.

Honestly, while some of this has to do with their differences (they are not exactly alike, even with all the similarities) – I really don’t believe that explains it fully.

The Gift of Gratitude

The difference that counts is that I am different. I am so very different in many ways, but the one that hit me tonight is that I am now able to be grateful for my husband.

Understand, my husband is not perfect. He has, like all spouses, his quirks and…

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Empathizing With a Wife Beater?

Melody Brooke — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 16:42:34 +0000

Jim was a thirty-something man who was involved in a violent relationship. He was not proud of his part in the violence and had been attending an anger management group.

He felt to blame for what had happened and was clearly confused and ashamed that he had behaved this way toward the woman he loves. And worst of all, he had done it in front of his children.

He went on to tell of how he had completely lost his cool with his new wife and attempted to strangle her. She had called the police and now he is facing charges for domestic battery.

Understanding Domestic Violence

Most of us hear this story and feel aghast that someone could behave this way. How could someone react so violently toward someone they love?

A while back I remember seeing Oprah struggle to fathom how a wife batterer could take a frying pan to his wife’s head. She was understandably horrified at such a behavior. Most of us are. But what if we could understand it?

As I talked to Jim I listened to his story. He told of being verbally battered by his wife for everything from house cleaning to not having enough education to suit her. She couldn’t accept his not having a college degree and she couldn’t accept his relationship with his son. The night of the strangling event, she had squeezed his family jewels with her fingernails digging into his skin. Because he reacted in a self-defense measure to her intimate violence, he was arrested and will, no doubt have a record that follows him for the rest of his life.

When we feel that we are being attacked we will respond with whatever self-defensive measure we have at our disposal. When our communication skills are limited, as they are for many men, the only resource we have is to resort to some kind of self-protective measure. Now, he could and should have just left the scene. But honestly, how many of us can think that clearly when we are under attack?

Fight, Flight, or Freeze

Our brains are wired to respond to threat in certain ways. We have all heard of the “fight, flight, freeze” pattern because it is true of all mammals (yes, we humans are mammals). Our primitive brains are wired for our survival and chemicals are released in our brains that tell us to respond in a automatic pre-programmed ways when faced with threat.

Not all threat as is obvious as what occurred to Jim. Sometimes it’s “merely” verbal attacks. Funny, I heard a heavy metal song yesterday “You hurt me with your mouth”. How many times have we seen the public service commercial spot about words hurting as much as a fist?

Yet we expect men to react to the violence of language calmly and without anger. I am not justifying violence. What I am saying is that verbal violence is just as damaging to our loved ones as physical violence.

We forget that in the middle of a fight, don’t we? We are so bent on our own need for a sense of power and control that we will say and do almost anything to regain control. We have to feel on top, we have to feel that we are “winning” the argument.

Then we get angry and tell our friends how mistreated we are when our partners respond with angry, hurtful words or actions. We can always justify our own behaviors but rarely look at our partners’ reactions with empathy.

Understanding Our Partner’s Reactions

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How Therapy Can Actually Destroy Your Marriage

Melody Brooke — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 19:14:49 +0000

Generally speaking we choose to go into therapy when we can’t figure out how to make our lives work by ourselves. Maybe we’ve been aware of underlying sadness that doesn’t seem to go away no matter what we do. Or perhaps we have started having panic attacks for no noticeable reason that we cannot contain on our own. We could be tearful much of the time and don’t understand what is causing it.

On the other hand, we could enter therapy because we are unhappy with our marriage and we can’t get ourselves to leave or figure out how to change it.

When we go into therapy for any reason, and we are married, the odds of ending up divorced actually increase. I suspect this is because when we enter therapy we are looking at things solely from our own perspective. We go into therapy hoping to get a different perspective, but often what happens is that we get support in our perspective. Most therapists are kind, care giving types of people who have gone into the profession in hopes of helping people. So when you enter their office they give you support and encouragement, they help you feel better about yourself and your position. If you have a partner and you are unhappy with them, the therapist encourages you to stand up for yourself and assert your needs.

The downside of their doing this is that while it may make you feel better in the short run, it runs the risk of destroying your marriage in the long run. This is because what has happened is that you have gotten help in making you stronger, at the cost of the connection between you and your partner.

In supervision early in my career I remember my supervisor saying that once a person brings their spouse into therapy you become the marriage’s counselor and not the individual’s counselor. This made sense to me at the time.

Since then I have come to realize that when someone comes to me their relationships are as much a part of the therapy as they. This means that I do not take positions against the other parties. I support the person in discovering more about themselves and exploring how their current relationships are impacted by their past experiences. I do not make judgments about my client needing to end their relationships just because my client is unhappy in the situation.

One of my past supervisors habitually demanded that her clients cut off connections with their families. Now, at the time this made sense to me since some of those family connections were with parents that continued to be abusive. And, sometimes, this it can be important to take time-outs in these situations until the clients are strong enough to protect themselves. But most of the time what my clients need is to be able to develop a different kind of relationship with these important people in their lives by developing compassion for both themselves, and for their parents.

To do this the therapist has to themselves be…