Turning a Painful Relationship Around Through Couples Therapy

 Recently in the midst of a particularly difficult therapy session, a husband threw his hands in the air and said, "This is just hopeless. It's never going to change. We're doomed."

When a couple is involved in an emotionally charged therapy session, what they don't realize is that it is the cycle, their destructive behavioral loop that is the enemy - not each other. They are caught in a cycle that has a strangle hold on them and are mired in the repetition of reaction and behaviors that is causing distress and distance in their relationship.

It is common for people who have been going around and around the same issues for years to mistake their behavior patterns for the relationship parforhold itself. They don't realize that this destructive behavioral loop is merely the knee jerk response to the deeper, more vulnerable needs that each person in the relationship is working so hard to protect.

Vulnerable feelings are the result of painful life experiences. We have all experienced situations that have felt hurtful or harmful. Instinctively, we push these tender feelings away or wall them off because they feel too overwhelming or painful to explore. We hide from the feelings that are the drivers of our reactive behavior. Our partner will say or do something that pokes at these tender places and without even realizing it, we are reacting in a way that is self-protective.