Conversation 7: Keeping Your Love Alive
“Anyone who’s bored in marriage just isn’t paying attention.”
— A colleague’s husband
Do you guys see the incredible changes you have made in your relationship?” I ask one of my most delightful couples at the end of a very positive session. Inez, loud, red-haired, and always full of passion, replies, “Yes, but can we keep it, this feeling? My sister, she’s mean. She tells me, ‘You think you have found this love again with Fernando. But marriage is just about habit. It has a “best before” date like milk. In six months, you will be back to all the old nonsense. You can’t keep a hold on love. That is just the way it is.’ I feel afraid when she tells me that. Maybe we will slip back into all that fighting and loneliness?”
The session ends there, but as I write up my notes I find I have two voices in my head. One offers a quote from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “All things flow, nothing abides.” This has to be true of love, I muse. Just consider the high relapse rates from couple therapy. Maybe Inez’s sister is just being realistic. But then the other voice pipes up with a quote from the eleventh-century Chinese poet Su Tung-p’o: “Year after year, I recall that moonlit night, we spent alone together, among the hills of stunted pine.” Perhaps moments of deep attachment are powerful enough to hold lovers together year after year. I think of our research showing that couples hold on to the satisfaction and happiness they create in EFT sessions, even through hugely stressful lives.
Then I know the answer to Inez’s question. In the next session, I tell her, “Everything moves and changes, but for love relationships there is no ‘way it is’ anymore. We are finally learning how to ‘make’ and ‘keep’ love. And it is up to you and Fernando now to decide the way it will be in your relationship. Probably, if you don’t actively care for your relationship, the gains you have fought for will fade. But love is like a language. If you speak it, it flows more and more easily. If you don’t, then you start to lose it.”
A.R.E. conversations are the language of love. They shore up the safe haven that is your relationship and nurture your ability to be flexible, to explore, and to keep your love alive and growing. Conversation 7 is a road map for taking your love into the future. The steps entail:
• Recapping and reflecting on the danger points in your relationship where you slide into insecurity and get stuck in Demon Dialogues. This will allow you to figure out detours and shortcuts that lead you back into safe connection.
• Celebrating the positive moments, big and small. This involves, first, reflecting on the moments in your daily lives that foster openness and responsiveness and reinforce your understanding of the positive impact you have on each other; and second, articulating the turning points in your recent relationship history when your love intensified.
• Planning rituals around the moments of separation and reunion in your daily lives to mark recognition of your bond, support, and responsiveness. These rituals are a way of holding your relationship safe in a distracting and chaotic world.
• Helping each other identify the attachment issues in recurring differences and arguments and deciding together how to defuse these issues up-front to deliberately create emotional safety and trust. This will allow you to resolve problems without letting hot attachment issues get in the way. I call this the Safety First strategy. Once emotional safety is established, one partner can bring up a problem in softer, less aggressive ways, and the other partner can stay emotionally engaged in the discussion, even if he or she does not agree with the view that is being presented.
• Creating a Resilient Relationship Story. This story describes how the two of you have built and are continuing to build a loving bond. It tells how you get stuck in conflict and distance and how you have learned to repair rifts, reconnect, and forgive hurts. It is a story about falling in love again and again.
• Creating a Future Love Story. This story outlines what you want your bond to look like five or ten years down the road and how you would like your partner’s help in making the vision a reality.
Conversation 7 is built on the understanding that love is a continual process of seeking and losing emotional connection, and reaching out to find it again. The bond of love is a living thing. If we don’t attend to it, it naturally begins to wither. In a world that is moving ever faster and requiring us to juggle more and more tasks, it is a challenge to be present in the moment and to tend to our own and our partner’s need for connection. This final conversation asks you to be deliberate and mindful about your love.
Let’s see how this works in action.
DANGER-POINT DETOURS
Small moments of danger are easy for Inez and Fernando to identify. They had been doing the Protest Polka for years, a polka made wilder by Fernando’s excessive drinking and Inez’s flamboyant threats and vengeful flirting. Now, in this conversation, Inez can tell Fernando, “When you go still and turn away from me, that still freaks me out. I want to be able to tell you then, ‘Hey, Fernando, please can you stay with me here?’ Do you think you could hear that? That would really help me. I don’t think my anxiety would get away from me then.” Fernando in turn tells Inez that what he wants is for her to simply say she is mad at him and state exactly what has upset her, rather than immediately throw out ultimatums. Both agree that these detours could help each of them keep their emotional balance and stay out of negative spirals.
Another couple, Christine and Darren, had nearly divorced over his infidelity. “I think we are recovering from the affair,” she tells him. “But I want you to know that right now, even the slightest suggestion that we may not be having enough sex makes me want to run and hide. Just for a second, the fear that you will always want more than I can give just leaps out at me. It doesn’t take over anymore, but I still feel sick to my stomach at that moment.” Darren responds, “I understand. When I made that kind of remark the other night, it was my clumsy way of trying to tell you that I desire you. How can I help here?” Christine, obviously relieved, murmurs, “Maybe just tell me right off the bat that the sex we have is good and that you are happy to be with me.” He smiles and replies, “I can do that.”
CELEBRATING MOMENTS OF CONNECTION
Mostly we don’t tell our partners the specific small ways that they touch us with a spontaneous word or gesture and create a sense of belonging. Fernando, with a little embarrassment, confesses that when Inez, after all they had been through, introduced him to a colleague by saying, “And this is my dear one, my husband,” he melted inside. It made him feel that he was “precious” to her. He thinks of it every day.
No one forgets the turning points when love suddenly comes into sharper focus. These A.R.E. moments stay with us. And it’s important to share them. Kay tells Don, “A key moment for me in healing our rift was that night when, even after forty-five years of being married to me, you told me how much it means to you that I hold your hand. You always reach out your hand, and I guess sometimes I take it and sometimes I don’t. When you told me how important it was for you that I take your hand, how for you that means that we are together, that we can do anything, I was touched. I suddenly saw you as someone who needed me, rather than this big dominating man who liked making up rules.”
In a session with another couple, we are discussing how Lawrence’s depression has devastated his life. “I don’t think I would have made it without you,” he tells his wife, Nancy. “Even though I was so withdrawn, you kept being there for me. That day when I went for that job interview and they gave the job to that other guy, and I came home feeling like the biggest failure in the world, do you remember what you said?” Nancy shakes her head. “You kissed me and said, ‘You’re my guy. No matter what. We’ll make it through. I love you, mister.’ I’ll always remember that. And it still helps me when things get rough and I doubt myself.”
Even when partners are caught in Demon Dialogues, one of them can make a leap of empathy that just takes my breath away. I encourage th
em to hold on to that moment like a light in the dark as they struggle to renew their relationship. Maxine, who is usually angry at Rick for his “silences,” suddenly very quietly tells him, “I think I understand. You look so calm. But you are scared. You are that little lonely boy I see in that picture of you as a kid we have on the fireplace. The loneliest boy in the world. You never belonged anywhere. So now here you are with me, the most talkative woman ever, and I overwhelm you. So you just go inside and try to calm yourself down. That’s so sad. You must still be very lonely in there somewhere.” Rick remembers this as the moment when he suddenly felt seen and understood, that although his wife was angry with him, she loved him.
A major part of keeping your love alive is to recognize these key moments of connection and hold them up where you both can see them, just as we do with family photographs of good times. They remind us of how precious our relationship is and what close connection feels like. They remind us of the simple ways that we can transform our partner’s world with the power of our caring.
MARKING MOMENTS OF SEPARATION AND REUNION WITH RITUALS
Rituals are an important part of belonging. They are repeated, intentional ceremonies that recognize a special time or connection. Rituals engage us, emotionally and physically, so that we become riveted to the present moment in a positive way.
Religion has used ritual forever. I remember a famous study led by psychologist Alfred Tomatis of a group of clinically depressed monks. After much examination, researchers concluded that the group’s depression stemmed from their abandoning a twice-daily ritual of gathering to sing Gregorian chants. They had lost the sense of community and the comfort of singing together in harmony. Creating beautiful music together was a formal recognition of their connection and a shared moment of joy.
Among all primates, meeting and separation are key attachment moments. We recognize this with our children when they are small. We habitually kiss them goodbye and hold and greet them when they return to us. Why not take the time to formally recognize our relationship with our lover in the same way? Regular small gestures that convey the message “You matter to me” go a long way in keeping a relationship safe and sound.
Partners sometimes have a hard time recognizing these separation and reunion rituals. Joel looks blank when I ask him to identify such ceremonies in his marriage to Emma. He tells me, “Hell, I know that the dog always flings herself around and greets me when I come home, and I always sit and pat her for a bit. But I guess I go a bit unconscious with Emma. What do I notice and what do I deliberately and regularly do from day to day that kind of keeps us humming along? I’m not sure.” As he scratches his head, Emma giggles and then helps him out. “You silly, it’s not just the dog! Except when we lost each other for a while, you always walk into the kitchen, you say, real soft, ‘How’s my sunshine?’ and then you pat me, too, usually on my backside. And I like that a lot. I count on it.” Joel looks relieved and tells her, “Oh, right. Good. Well, from now on, maybe we should make that two pats and a kiss. For you, I mean, not the dog.”
What you don’t recognize slips away. Distressed partners sometimes complain bitterly about the loss of these small rituals. Cathy tells Nick, “You don’t come and hold me before you leave in the morning. In fact, you don’t even say goodbye anymore. It’s as if we are roommates. We live in totally separate worlds, and that is fine with you.” After a number of A.R.E. conversations, Cathy and Nick decide to reinstate this ritual and to embellish it a little with questions about what the other person is going to do during the day. Sometimes we extend these rituals into family life. I can remember Sunday supper changing from a special twosome meal to a family event when my kids came along. I also remember my son, many years later, complaining, “I’m busy. Why do we have to have these Sunday suppers, anyway?” My small daughter replied witheringly, “ ’Cause it’s Sunday and we are a family and that is special, stupid.”
I help couples design their own bonding rituals, especially recognizing moments of meeting and separation or key times of belonging. These are deliberately structured moments that foster ongoing connection. Here are some that come up again and again.
• Regularly and deliberately holding, hugging, and kissing on waking, going to sleep, leaving home, and returning.
• Writing letters and leaving short notes for each other, especially when one person is going away or when a couple have come together after a spat or a time of distance.
• Participating in spiritual or other rituals together, such as formally meeting for special family meals, planting the first spring flowers in a family garden, praying or attending religious events together.
• Habitually calling during the day just to check in and ask after the other person.
• Creating a personal sharing ritual, that is, a time that is just for sharing personal things and connecting, not for problem solving or pragmatic discussions. Pete and Mara have a daily connection ritual that starts when one of them asks, “So how are you right now?” or “So how are we doing together?” to shift the conversation away from other issues. Sarah and Ned have set a specific weekly time. On Friday night after supper, they linger over coffee for at least thirty minutes. They call it their “share” time.
• Arranging a special time just to be together, for example, Sunday morning to have breakfast in bed without the kids, or shifting schedules to eat breakfast together every day.
• Maintaining a regular date night, even if only once a month.
• Once a year, taking a class together, learning something new, even doing a project together.
• Recognizing special days, anniversaries, and birthdays in very personal ways. When I am tempted to play down these kinds of acknowledgments with my loved ones, I always remember they are concrete symbols of the fact that they exist in my mind and that this is what secure attachment is all about.
• Deliberately deciding to attend to your partner’s daily struggles and victories and validating them on a regular basis. As we discussed earlier, small comments such as “That was hard for you to do, but you went for it,” or “You worked so hard on that project, no one could have tried harder,” or “I really saw you struggling to be a good parent there” are nearly always more effective than concrete advice. We often give our children this validation but forget to give it to our partner.
• Taking opportunities to publicly recognize your partner and your relationship. This can take the form of a ceremony, such as a renewal of vows, or it can be a simple thank-you to your partner in front of friends for making a wonderful supper or helping you reach a personal goal.
Some partners need these kinds of formal structured arrangements to shake a habitual lifestyle that makes any kind of close connection almost impossible. Sean and Amy, working hard to move from mutual withdrawal into a much closer connection, realized that they had created lives so consumed by career demands, long commutes, and kids’ activities that, even on weekends, they were hardly ever together in the same room for more than ten minutes.
Chronic obsessive overwork and burnout have become part of our culture. We think it’s normal. Juliet Schor, professor of sociology at Boston College, notes in her book The Overworked American that the United States (and Canada is similar) is the “world’s standout workaholic nation, leading other countries in the number of days spent on the job and the number of hours worked per day.”
The Chinese get three weeks of mandated holiday. Most Europeans take six. But Sean was a typical American. He worked every weekend, was on call for any accounting or fiscal crisis in his company, and took his BlackBerry and his computer on his annual two-week family holiday. Cecile Andrews, a leader in the Voluntary Simplicity movement, reports in her survey that North American couples spend an average of twelve minutes a day talking together. Sean and Amy estimated that for them five or six minutes was more accurate, and that their talk was mostly about scheduling and chores. Lovemaking was a nonissue. They were always too tired.
They de
cided to put their relationship first. In Sean’s accounting terms, they would take care of their “main investment.” This meant cutting back on the kids’ activities, setting up a monthly date, creating time on Sunday mornings to make love, and getting up three mornings a week to have breakfast together. Amy works at home, so Sean phones during the day just to say hello, sometimes calling her sexy names. If anyone with Amy asks who is on the phone, Amy says, “It’s the Relationship Repair Man.” This couple has taken back their time and deliberately found ways to nourish their relationship so it can grow and deepen.
SAFETY FIRST
Sorting out attachment issues from practical problems so that the latter can be easily tackled together is a key part of keeping your love strong. In our very first research study using EFT in the 1980s, we found that the couples who learned to reach for each other and create a more secure bond rapidly became skilled at solving the everyday problems that had plagued their relationship. They were suddenly cooperative, open, and flexible. We understood that this was because mundane problems were now just that. They were no longer the screen on which partners’ attachment fears and unmet needs played out.
Jim and Mary can now discuss Jim’s deep-sea diving trips without getting caught in Demon Dialogues. But it was not so long ago when just the mention of these trips would spark Mary’s rage and anxiety at Jim’s “macho distancing” and “crazy risk-taking.” Now when the logistical difficulties around Jim going on a long diving trip come up, Jim first asks Mary if she needs some help feeling safe in this conversation. Does she have any feelings that she needs to share?
Mary appreciates being asked, and says that she is a little afraid. She no longer feels deserted when Jim goes on these trips, but she still feels anxious about them. She brings up that one of Jim’s diving buddies is well known for being reckless. Jim assures her he will absolutely follow the safety rules that they had already agreed on, and he also offers to forgo the trip if the diving team really worries Mary. Mary feels heard and reassured and so can stay open to hearing how this trip is special to her husband. Then together, in about ten minutes, they solve the significant practical problems involved in Jim taking this trip.
Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love Page 19
