RELATIONSHIP HEALING:
MAKING RELATIONSHIPS WORK – SOME ASPECTS OF COUPLES / MARITAL THERAPY

The three essential life skills almost all of us weren’t taught at school:
- How to manage and make money
- How to be good enough parents
- How to be successful in relationships.

It’s estimated that couples / spouses who stay together for financial, religious, family, business, or other reasons when they really don’t get along without even a semblance of peace and joy in each other’s company, added to the divorce rate [over 54% in most western countries] would result in a finding that up to 80% or more of couples are in serious relationship trouble. Serious.

Unfortunately we tend to behave in ways that were modelled to us – by caregivers / parents / teachers / older siblings or extended family, and – alas! – horridly dysfunctional characters in most soap-operas and many books and movies. The problem with television-modelling is the immediacy and the repetitive nature of the characters’ interactions, and that it’s per se “allowed” in our homes. The unconscious mind is given the message that this is how people [may] behave in our home, work or other space. While a book may describe outrageous behaviour, we would interpret it idiosyncratically. (Think of how surprised you felt at times when a book was turned into a movie and the characters just look wrong compared to what you had in mind.)

In visual media, with colour, movement and sound added in screaming vividness, the modelling of behaviour, including facial expressions, micro-gestures, posture, tone of voice, etc., is exact. But we usually don’t get to feel the emotional and/or physical consequences of the behaviours thus modelled. No, we go for a sustenance break during the frequent adverts, and de-brief the impact.

But this does not happen in close real relationships. There we have to ride out the encounter not just for 11-16 minutes a day [all that’s left when advertising time, and subtitles or intro time is subtracted from the 30 minute program!], but we have to live “in the drama” 24/7, day after day, week after week, for months, for years.

It holds for all close relationships, not just romantic ones. Relationships with colleagues, managers or underlings may need to be managed – or survived – for 40 hours or more a week. Relationships with school-going kids draw us in for about 10 hours a day and may drive a parent to distraction during weekends and vacations! Yes, we drive the kids nuts too…

Fact is that our level of esteem for our Self, our trust in our self to care for our self, our regard and respect for our self as a worthwhile and respect-worthy entity, our enjoyment and discipline of self, etc, determines how we behave in relationships. Again, these factors are generally created by negative and positive experience of self-in-relation-to-significant-others when we are very young.

Donald W Winnicott [UK analyst, C20] talks about being a Good-Enough or Not-Good-Enough parent. A good-enough parent basically has relatively few failures in understanding, accepting, respecting and responding appropriately to the child’s needs (physical, social, mental and emotional). This parent’s few failures can be forgive [and usually forgotten] in the matrix of appropriately empathic interactions that provide a properly nurturing environment for the child.

Now let’s look at those qualities again:
- being empathic*, i.e., understanding the world from the child’s point of view, and responding appropriately to his/her emotions and needs
[*by the way, there’s no such word as “empathetic”, which is a bastardisation/erroneous amalgam of empathy & pathetic, two words with completely different meanings!]
- respecting, i.e., granting the child the right and power to impress his/her interpretation of events on the world [e.g. the parent] and have his/her needs and feelings validated
- valuing the child as precious / estimating the child’s value to be high, so that his/her needs and communications are judged high priority
- being consistently trustworthy in care for the child
- giving the child the constant message that s/he is worth respect, trust, adoration, affection and healthy discipline; that s/he is adore-able
- I’d like to add too the list Carl Rogers’ [1940s] idea of unconditional positive regard.

There are many excellent books that teach us how to have really great, functional, and healthy relationships. Some of my favourites are:
- Dr Phillip McGraw: Family First – a blueprint for healthy close relationships in context of family
- Dr Phillip McGraw: Relationship Rescue – for those who’ve already inflicted much injury
- Tony Humphreys: Myself, My Partner – an excellent book, sadly out of print but very worth buying “used”. It works from the basis of relationship with Self to that with Other
- David Richo: How to be an Adult in Relationships – The Five Keys to Mindful Loving – This great book, published in 2002, suggests a holistic, mindful approach, which really helps to improve various kinds of relationships swiftly and with great success
- Thomas Harris: I’m OK, you’re OK – based on Transactional Analysis as proposed in Eric Berne’s The Games People Play, this book is an easy to read, understand and apply in any relationships.

David Richo’s book has an easy 5 concept recipe for success that I have found useful in all relationship counselling or therapy, between adults in various roles, including marriage or intimate relationships, or friendship, or work relationships, as well as between children, and between child & adult,and groups in interaction. [It even seems to work in relationships with dogs – manipulators, cats – controllers, and pot plants – demanders!]

Richo pre-supposes that healthy relationships is our right and obligation – or even “calling”, and gives us the tools that are guaranteed to help us have wonderfully healthy relationships with Ourselves and Others. Here are his “Five A’s”:
- Attention: I am paying close, respectful attention to Me /You
[not ignoring, being unavailable, interrupting, etc]
- Acceptance: I accept me as I am / you as you are, in this moment
[not trying to make someone over to our specifications]
- Allowing: I allow me to be myself / you to be yourself, to be free to grow to the best Self possible
[not being controlling, demanding or manipulative]
- Appreciation: I appreciate myself / you for what I / you have been, and are
[not criticising]
- Affection: I have real affection for myself / you, no matter what
[not acting selfishly or abusively]

No matter what the “diagnosis” of the relational problem/s, behaving from such a mutual mindful and respectful approach, will result in healing. Note that it needs to be mutual to last, but it can start from one side only, eliciting similarly better behaviours from the other side over time: “You teach people how top treat you” – as Dr Phil often says. Also remember that you need to start behaving towards yourself in this mindful manner: not only will others tend to respond to you similarly to the measure they observe you respect yourself, but in doing so you will become your own ally – the “inner child” will no longer have to behave so defensively when there is stress, empathic failure, or disagreement.

But a quick diagnostic tool is useful. Observe how successfully the relationship is working on three tiers represented in this pyramid: 

 The base of the relationship pyramid is Communication. If this is not mutually healthy, clear, respectful and appropriately responsive, the relationship cannot be great [even if the sex is and both parties are equally wealthy!]. You can’t fix Intimacy if Communication is dysfunctional. The next tier is power. Is the financial, social, decision-making, [etc] power shared equally or fairly, according to the needs of both? If not, some aggressiveness / passive-aggression or withdrawal / sabotage is highly likely to subvert both Communication and Intimacy. Finally, if both lower tiers are good, but Intimacy [emotional, physical, spiritual, sexual etc] is not satisfactory, this may cause reflexive problems in Communication and how Power is used. I suggest you try applying the ”Five A’s” and other quality behaviours at all three levels, from the bottom up.

Finally, although self-help questionnaires, books and workbooks can be wonderfully effective, most people will probably need a trustworthy coach-mentor-referee-witness to accompany them on the healing journey, in order to maintain openness and balance different points of view, as well as reintroduce realty when necessary.

I would go to a specialist, not just any doctor at random, if something in my body was seriously impaired. Similarly, I suggest that couples and other people with relational problems, consult a therapist or counsellor [or lay counsellor etc] who is properly trained and knowledgeable, but also thoroughly experienced in the field of relationship therapy. Ask about experience and competency: it is your right, and your responsibility to yourselves and your relational well-being.