Why Butterfly's Marriages Work so Well

This week, all my clients seem to be teaching me about what blocks people from letting go of their patterns.

From the outside, it makes no sense that after the second, third, and especially after the thousandth time of yelling at your partner, it still doesn’t make them change, you’d think it would give the yeller pause. But no.

I just started working with a couple whose fights are so mean I wouldn’t stick around for the end of the first one, much less the second one they have on most days!

I offered them an alternative way of expressing their needs, and since they are both quite bright they not only caught on, but amazingly are able to use the skills even during their screaming fights. (I’m not sure I would have the presence of mind to remember something I’d just learned, much less try it under those circumstances, but they are better suited to this nuclear-reactor of a marriage than I am)

As expected, it created a “softer” communication right away, and they reported having days of peace after each session.

So on our third session, after they had this same experience: a couple a days of softness, and then falling back into war, I asked the husband what started it up again?

 

“I did,” he said, nonchalantly.

“Really, why?”

“Because in the soft quiet, I began to feel invisible. At least when I scream at her, she notices me.”

Another couple I’m just finishing up with is having a similar problem. When they use the skills, they feel connected and resolved, but there is one area for each of them (what I call their Hidden Needs) in which they would rather fight than use the skills they know would work.

In all of these cases, each person prefers the negative attention they are used to, rather than getting the actual satisfaction (which in both of these marriages is completely available to them with their present-time spouse).

Carolyn Myss, in her book “Why People Don’t Heal” talks about this. Healing isn’t just the end of the uncomfortable problem; it’s an opening to a whole new level of energy. “Things speed up”, she says, “the person gets lighter, faster, feels things more intensely and becomes more responsible for their own lives.”

For a lot of people, it isn’t a given that this is what they want. People are so used to relating to the problem, and to seeing their partner as the one who has to change, that the idea that, even though they know it will make the problem go away, their life will not be the one they know but without the problem. It will be so different they will actually be living a whole new life.

When caterpillars are made this same offer, by and large, they take on their completely new existence as a butterfly.

Many marriages fail, because the Mature Marriage isn’t a caterpillar thing, and only butterflies get to live their lives aloft, sipping the sweet nectar of love.

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Marriage Is About Difference

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How to Change Your Partner: Accept Them!

We worked with a couple who were fighting about their teenagers. This was a second marriage for both of them, and she had raised her kids in a give-and-take way, listening to their ideas, and developing their sense of self-respect and autonomy. For her second husband, she married a Greek immigrant, very old-world who believed in discipline and authority. Needless to say, he and her two teenage boys didn't get along at all. She had dragged him into mediation, she thought, to get reinforcements to fight with his power-mongering, but we could see right away how scared and baffled he was by the situation. She had been trying to batter down the gates of his fortress for a couple of years, and now their relationship was on the rocks.

After listening to his litany of how bad the boys were (judgment) and a restatement of his firmly held belief that all they needed was a little discipline, I reframed his position this way: "So you grew up with discipline and the requirement that children respect their elders, and that created a safe and stable environment for you as a child."

"Right!"

"And parenting in that same way meets your need for continuity: it worked for your father, and you always expected to be that same kind of father."

"Yes!" he says, and looks at his wife and points to me as if to say, 'See, he understands.'

"And making a decision and sticking to it is important to you. Having your ideas understood and followed would meet your need for respect."

"Yes! But they fight me at every turn!"

"Okay, so bringing your father's style of parenting into this new family meets your needs for continuity, autonomy and respect. How is it doing in terms of your need for cooperation and peace?"

"Terrible. No peace. No cooperation!"

"So if we were to come up with a different strategy which continued to get your needs for respect and autonomy met, and which ALSO met your need for peace and cooperation, would you be willing to consider that?"

"Definitely!"

"And if in the bargain, it also happened to meet the boys need for respect and autonomy as well, would that be a problem for you?"

"No. No problem. I want the boys to feel good about me and the family and themselves. I just want them to listen."

"So you are not feeling heard? Perhaps we can start there. Let's see if there is a new way you can communicate which will get your need to feel heard met as well."

"Okay!"

This actual conversation demonstrates how willing even the most rigidly held strategies surrender when the underlying need is addressed. The wife in this couple was stunned by her husband's willingness to let go of something which seemed unassailable to her. As so often happens in couples, she was assigning blame to the other person, for their reaction to her approach.

As we worked with Petre on his inherited strategies, which were a part of the cultural identity that he loved and valued, we were amazed at how willing he was to notice that what he had assumed to be his culture, was actually a set of strategies. He came to see that those strategies probably didn't work all that well for his father, either, at least not every single one in every single situation. It became possible for him to value his culture, and become flexible about the strategies he employed with his new family to achieve the the same values he loved about his own family.