"Each partner is asked what he or she needs from the other, and therapy is designed to find ways that each can change to meet the other’s needs. What if there is an essential flaw in this accommodation premise that sets up couples to fail?"
What we call happiness is often relief about not being in those states. Too often our partner becomes a life preserver, keeping our head above water in the dark sea of pain, shame, and fear in which we float.
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it’s as though we’re stuck in a hole and the only tools our culture throws us are an assortment of shovels.
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Since in their relationship they can’t rely on aggressiveness or rationality anymore, many men just give up and hide behind stony walls of indifference and passivity
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I believe that because women’s focus is so much on caretaking others and on getting their exiles cared for by a relationship, they are no better at nurturing their own parts than are men.
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Because they get so little from you, they will be obsessed with finding someone they imagine can rescue them and, out of their desperation, will blind you to that person’s faults.
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Your partner will appreciate this arrangement because she won’t feel the weight of your emotional dependence or the sting of your rage when she is unintentionally neglectful
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by acting as though you care less than your partner, you can constantly stir her anxiety and keep her in line. The downside to this strategy is that you wind up numb, cut off from your heart and from your partner’s love, so you’re constantly dissatisfied
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Either way, life is predictable, and no one gets close enough to hurt them. The boredom and loneliness of either kind of controlled life seem like a small price to pay to minimize the threat of re-injury.
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It seems that the key to helping a couple lies less in reducing the number or even intensity of their fights and more in improving the repair process after a fight.
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since they both had been so vulnerable, their protectors were likely to return with a vengeance whenever the other made the slightest false move
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Most people dance the same dances, even with different partners, because they never bother to look inside. They spend their lives striving for redemption they don’t need and being disappointed in each chosen redeemer whom they try to change to fit the bill
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End of conversation
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