Transforming Relationships

2010-11-28T06:28:00.000-08:00

After writing four different blogs for almost a year, I find that all my areas of interest involve staying present, increasing self- awareness, releasing habitual patterns of behavior, and transforming relationships.

So I've consolidated to two blogs — one for clients and one for coaches.

The articles I've written here will continue to be available (or find a summary at my web site).

Speaking of Love

2010-10-14T21:29:00.000-07:00

I mentioned Dr. Gary Chapman's The Five Love Languages in my last post. You can open new paths of communication with your significant other by discovering how each of you expresses love and wants to be shown love (some want words of affirmation, others look for quality time, gifts, acts of service, and/or physical touch).

The expression of love and the experience of being loved can also vary a great deal depending upon the personalities in the partnership.

Consider (tongue-in-cheek) which of the metaphors below is most characteristic of your approach to relationships; then ask your significant other to do the same, and compare your answers (if you'd like to know more about about the personality that might hold each view, click on that metaphor's link):

Love should be examined as if it's a gallery portrait, hunting for flaws in the brush strokes.
If grass can grow through cement, then love can find you at any time in life.
If love isn't blind, then at least it needs an eye test.
When you're in love, you get a taste of what it feels like to be a bit deranged.
Assumptions are the termites of relationships.
Love is a fire, but you can never tell whether it's going to warm your heart or burn down your house.
Love is more pleasant than marriage for the same reason novels are more amusing than history.
Love is like war: easy to start and difficult to stop.
True love is like a good pair of socks; it takes two, and they have to match.

Loop the Loop

2010-09-04T11:21:00.001-07:00

What do I mean by a "systems approach" to relationships? An analogy is our natural environment, where we easily understand two key principles.

A stable environment tends to maintain stability (homeostasis). For example, when sunlight is plentiful and atmospheric temperature climbs, phytoplankton on the ocean's surface thrive and produce more dimethyl sulfide (DMS); the DMS molecules in turn increase cloud condensation, and the increasing number of clouds lowers the temperature of the atmosphere.

Changes in one part of the environment will affect others parts. Think of what happened with the introduction of kudzu, jokingly referred to as "the vine that ate the South." Kudzu was brought to the U.S. from China in an effort to control erosion, but these non-native vines spread rapidly and killed many trees by shading them with leaves.

Those who introduced kudzu to a non-native environment were using what's referred to as "single-loop learning": Hey, this plant grows quickly and would stabilize some ground that's eroding. Let's try it! "Double-loop learning" would have been to consider that basic assumption in light of a bigger picture, the environment into which the kudzu would grow, whether or not it would have natural boundaries or constraints similar to those in its natural environment.

You can use the same principles in your relationships:

What do you do that continues to maintain homeostasis, even when you don't like the results? If your spouse expects you to manage the finances, for example, and you'd rather not, do you grouse as you balance the checkbook, or do you step back and ask Wait a minute, why does this keep happening even though I complain? Clearly my grousing isn't changing anything.

What have you introduced into a key relationship, thinking it would have a positive result, only to find it made things worse? For example, one of the Love Languages is "acts of service." I have a client who wanted more intimacy with her partner, and kept doing little things for him that showed her love. Instead, he withdrew more and more, interpreting these acts as implicit criticism that he couldn't do those things for himself. His Love Language is "words." All she needed to do was tell him what she loves about him, but until they stepped back and examined their assumptions about "love," her attempts to fix the problem were only making it worse.

The Book of Love Isn't Always Easy to Read

2010-07-25T17:04:00.000-07:00

"The most changeable aspects of [a] couple's situation, in our view, are in each partner's actions and interpretations of the other's actions. We call this changing the 'doing' and the 'viewing' of the couple's problem." Patricia O'Hanlon Hudson and William Hudson O'Hanlon, Rewriting Love Stories.

Most people who've been in long-term relationships have settled into at least some patterns that seem frustratingly familiar and frustratingly unchangeable.

Sometimes we're aware of how we reinforce these patterns, and sometimes not. Often, we interpret the intentions behind a partner's actions (or failure to act), characterizing them in general terms ("stingy," "thoughtless," etc.), and otherwise casting blame - unwilling to acknowledge our own faults for fear our words will be used as ammunition.

So, instead of thinking of your primary relationship as a battlefield, think of it as a book you're trying to understand. The Book of Love has four key sections:

Part I: The Love Story. In the beginning, we're all reading a love story. We're enthralled, infatuated, paying attention only to the obvious text, seeing only what we want to see, feeling emotionally and mentally alive. We love this book and recommend it to everyone!

Part II: Identifying the Characters. Gradually, we figure out who's doing what in our story, the roles and expectations, and suppressing ourselves somewhat for fear of upsetting/losing our partner. We begin to wonder if our story is what we thought it was going to be.

Part III: The Plot Thickens. We all long to be truly known and show all of ourselves, warts and all. We begin to read and be read "between the lines." When we don't like the way the story is going, our options are to:

see everyone but the partner as attractive;
try to make the partner what s/he "should be" through anger, disapproval, or withdrawal;
refuse to deal with the difficulties (and later repeat the pattern with someone else);
see this part of the story as an opportunity to pay conscious attention to our patterns and grow beyond them (see Part IV).

Part IV: The Love Story Re-Written. We can be good editors of our own stories. This happens when we shift attention away from how we and our partner "should" be and toward who each of us really is. Some suggestions from Bill O'Hanlon:

Acknowledge/validate each person's feelings and point of view. Be specific, give examples, vs. blaming. No need to judge here, just try to understand. Reflect back what you've heard.
Move the discussion from complaints about the past to what you would like to have happen.
Use "videotalk" ("Imagine it's the future. When I'm showing love what, exactly, am I doing? What, exactly, am I saying?")
Agree to what each of you will do that's different, and DO it, with a sense of humor, please.

(* For another view of this process, see The Partnership Path to Self-Knowledge.)

Soul-Mates

2010-06-11T12:24:00.000-07:00

Friends interested in each other at the soul level do not simply look at each other's lives and listen to each other's intentions and explanations. They look together at this third thing that is the soul, and in that mutual gaze they find and sustain their friendship. Thomas Moore.

All enduring relationships are friendships, whether pals, spouses, or other life partners. With truly mutual affection, we listen and are listened to; we know the other and are known.

Sometimes we're blocked from true mutuality, however, by automatic responses that are personality-bound. Some partners may resist giving up control, for example. Others may jump to judgment, suppress their own needs, feel competitive over their partner's successes, dream unrealistically of a more ideal relationship, have difficulty sharing their emotions or trusting others, avoid deep conversations, or give in too quickly to their partner's preferences.

These and many other personality attributes, while they can bring complementary gifts to a relationship, also have the potential to exaggerate each partner's down side.

With a couple I've coached, Barb is a highly relational person in partnership with Joe, who's more independent, more focused on thoughts than feelings. What felt like a complementary strength in the beginning had become a source of criticism:

Barb: "You never tell me you love me."

Joe: "It doesn't feel natural to me. You know I love you. Why do I have to say it?"

Barb: "I've lost a lot of weight and have new clothes, but you never tell me how good I look."

Joe: "Well, you can see that in a mirror. Why do you need to hear that from me?"

When Barb and Joe began to examine their relationship as a system, focusing on what Moore refers to as a "mutual gaze," they noticed how, when Barb pushed Joe to share his feelings, that only led him to withdraw. They agreed to two practices that began to change their automatic responses.

First, Barb agreed to pull back some so Joe had space to enter the pool of emotions, one toe at a time. This gradually reduced his fear of drowning in feelings. She and I also explored her sense of self to develop more intrinsic awareness of her attractiveness as a person (not tied to her outward appearance or compliments).

Second, Joe had a private session with me where we invented some playful ways to interrupt his pattern of shy withdrawal from emotions. To him, saying "You look great in that outfit" seemed superficial, especially because he'd loved Barb equally before and after her weight loss.

Joe does spend a lot of time in his head and has a terrific, Far Side kind of humor. So I knew I had his interest when we played with ways to exaggerate comments to Barb:

"My darling, you are the goddess of the universe!"
"My beauty, you are the oil paint on the canvas of my life!"
"You look so stunning in that outfit, it makes me want to sing!"

No, Joe didn't actually say those things to Barb (though she would have been good-natured about it because they were focused on mutual development). But creating those outrageously inauthentic phrases made him laugh, and then a simple "I love you" or "You look nice tonight" began to seem easy.

This is what's meant by soul-mates.

Mother and Child Reunion

2010-05-07T08:20:00.000-07:00

Because so many of my friends and clients are worried about their adult children in a tough economy, this month I'll explore a pattern in the relationship system that can emerge when parents help so much they create dependence.

Key to teaching about systems is helping people shift their perspective to look for patterns. "When you look at a river, you're looking at processes. In processes there are patterns you can learn to observe." Leverage Points Blog.

What if one of your adult children needs a car to get to work, requires a lawyer, has a medical emergency, can't provide for your grandchildren? When operating from inside the pattern, the solution appears to be simple: If you have the resources, you offer them to your son/daughter/grandchild. What could possibly be wrong with this picture?

Consider this story:

A naturalist watched a big worm spend many hours squeezing through a tiny pinhole in its sack, until a slender butterfly with powerful wings emerged and vigorously flew away. Observing a second cocoon, the naturalist became impatient and made a thin cut in the sack so the creature wouldn't have such a struggle. This butterfly emerged after twenty minutes, but with weak wings and a heavy bottom. Without the exertion that pushed juice up into its now flaccid and flabby wings, it couldn't fly!

Upon hearing this story, my client Maureen significantly changed her approach with her adult son. Mike had finally found a job after a long struggle and had managed to pay $800 for a friend's old car and ante up for car insurance on his own. After a few weeks of work he'd found himself stranded on the freeway when the car's engine seized up (oil leak) and couldn't be repaired. Searching for options and knowing he didn't have good enough credit to finance a car, he'd called Maureen to discuss the possibility of a loan.

She'd immediately dropped her plans for the day and flown to his rescue, helping him choose a better used car and paying for it up front so the title could be in his name. Two days later, when that car broke down, Mike contacted the dealership, arranged for a pick-up and loaner car, then called Maureen to talk over options. Again her first response was to take it on as her problem but this time she suffered an anxiety attack which spilled over into resentment that "he couldn't do anything for himself."

When Maureen and I observed her relationship with Mike as a system of interconnected parts, where each element in the system sustained another element to contribute to the whole, she realized her generosity had not been free of strings. Yes, she wanted him to "grow up" and take care of his own problems, but she also had a fundamental story: "If I don't take care of people, they won't love me." So her unconscious motivation was "I need your appreciation;" whereas the message to Mike was, "You can't get along without me."

In actuality, Mike did not lay the whole problem on Maureen. He wanted to discuss options in the first call, and when the second car broke down, it wasn't clear to him that it was his car. Yes, his name was on the title, but she'd paid for everything and sent him off with a smile. Yes, she was angry when he called to tell her it broke down, but would she have been angry if he hadn't called her? Hard for him to know.

Also, they had a history of the same dynamic showing up time after time, so Mike was conditioned to look to Maureen for help, even though he thought less of himself when he couldn't seem to manage on his own.

With my encouragement, Maureen shared with Mike the idea of their relationship as a system, and how they'd both played a part. Together they agreed Mike is responsible for his own life and Maureen is available if he wants to bounce around ideas before he makes his own decisions.

Maureen did slip into her old pattern a week later when she sent an email asking him to please call because she didn't know if his not contacting her was good news or bad news. This was his response:

All is well and everything will be great with my car. They're putting in a "new" engine which will have fewer miles than the original and they're going to warranty the whole car. We're cool, Mom. Please get some rest, don't worry, and I will call you on the weekend.

Sailing Into New Waters

2010-03-31T14:04:00.000-07:00

When my granddaughter Corwin was 6 years old and my then-husband Dick's granddaughter Andrea was 7, we took them with us for a week on our catamaran, docked in Beaufort, SC. We'd planned well and thought we had everything covered, from safety harnesses they'd wear clipped to the lines when out on the deck to a portable TV and kids' movies to keep them occupied during the long drive from Cincinnati and as back-up entertainment on the boat.

On arrival we had the usual luggage and supplies to cart aboard, though tired from the long drive and from our new responsibility to assure the well-being of two little girls. They were beyond excited but we were a bit grumpy and told them in rather sharp terms to go to their cabin and get ready for bed.

Finally unwound, I was sitting in the salon sipping a glass of wine when four little bare feet pranced up next to me and Corwin (the brave one) said, "Grammy, we'd like to say something. We've never been on a boat so we don't know what to do, and when you and Dick get mad it scares us."

Such straight talk from this dark-haired imp brought me to full awareness that we hadn't created the sense of fun we wanted the week to hold for them. With Dick's amused agreement, I said, "Well, you know, girls, everybody has a good side and a naughty side that sometimes pops up when we aren't even aware of it. So let's give a name to Dick's naughty side and mine. Then all you have to do if you feel scared or upset is to call us by our naughty name, and that will remind us to show how much we love you and not act so serious and grown-up."

After much giggling, the girls named Dick's grumpy side "Black Bart" and mine "Cruella." Of course they tested us, but even that turned into a game. The girls would look at one of us with arms akimbo and "Black Bart" would stalk toward them like a bear as they ran away with happy screeches, or "Cruella" would grab for them with fingers bent like claws and cackle as they danced around, laughing.

And, this was not simply a child's game. Whenever people of any age can lay bare a pattern of behavior, they're using systems thinking to identify an archetype. You can do the same in any relationship by naming the pattern and its effects without blame, stepping back together to see the bigger picture, and finding a playful way to interrupt the pattern.

Try it, you'll like it!

Playing a Bigger Game

2010-03-03T11:13:00.000-08:00

Remember Games People Play? The relationship games described by Eric Berne are so familiar from our own interactions, it's relatively easy to notice when someone else plays them. In truth, though, if you're in a game, you're a player, too. When we view relationship interactions as systems, we can see how all players contribute to the pattern.

The popular "Why don't you--yes, but" game is described in 50 Psychology Classics as beginning "when someone states a problem in their life, and another person responds by offering constructive suggestions on how to solve it. The subject says 'Yes, but...' and proceeds to find issue with the solutions. In Adult mode we would examine and probably take on board a solution, but this is not the purpose of the exchange. It allows the subject to gain sympathy from others in their inadequacy to meet the situation (Child mode). The problem solvers, in turn, get the opportunity to play wise Parent."

The Parent, Adult, Child references are from Transactional Analysis, popular since the sixties and still highly relevant.

Now look again at the players in "Why don't you--yes, but." Either party can start the game. The problem solver might be in the role of wise Parent, or might be playing parent, period, whether reacting to the other or initiating advice. How many times have you described a situation to a friend, co-worker, or life partner where you wanted a listener or someone to brainstorm with as you talked it through, only to have the other person jump in and tell you what you should do about it?

When you re-read the above example of "yes, but..." notice the assumption that one player (the "Child" in this case) creates the pattern, and the "wise" Parent is the blameless bystander. Looking at our interaction patterns this way promotes blaming and judgment. Yes, we all play games, and yes, sometimes one party is less emotionally healthy than the other, but by definition an interaction takes two people.

Instead of judging the interaction games in your relationships as someone else's fault, notice how a pattern is perpetuated, by either or both of you, and look for inventive ways to interrupt the pattern. If asked for your opinion by someone who's typically responded with "yes, but," for example, say "I'm not sure what the best thing would be for you," or "What have you considered?" or "What do you think might work?"

And, of course, pay close attention to the games you initiate. They wouldn't be games unless both people wanted to play.

Mind-Bending Metaphors

2010-02-08T12:59:00.000-08:00

In What is Metaphor and How Can Metaphor Resolve Problems and Conflicts? Thomas H. Smith writes,"Metaphor is a primary way that we frame, categorize and conceptualize... by drawing attention to unnoticed similarities and connections, offering new ways to perceive and understand."

One of my clients wanted coaching on how to approach her landlord about necessary repairs to the house she's renting. We had, of course, talked about assertive communication and she knows how to ask for what she wants without attacking. But that didn't relieve her concern.

"I don't like confrontation," she said. "It's not fear, it's anger. I don't want to go into a rage. In my last e-mail I gave him the facts and said, 'I'm sick of it.' Now I dread looking for his e-mail response."

I asked her, "If your landlord were an animal, what animal would he be?"

She answered without hesitation, "A hyena! They're scavengers, annoying, bottom-feeders, goofy-looking."

"And what animal represents you?" I asked.

"I'm a tiger. I may purr and be all kitty-cat, but If you piss me off I'll bare my teeth."

When we talked the following week, after her confrontation with the landlord, she said, "I wasn't nervous. It was kind of matter-of-fact. When he started pointing the finger at me, I felt defensive, but then I visualized him as a hyena, realized that was his M.O. to throw people off. And I was fine."

Owning Up*

2010-01-23T15:10:00.000-08:00

As follow-up to exploring how both partners in a relationship contribute to interaction patterns ("Hands Off"), the following exercises will be most useful if both partners complete and discuss them.

Nonetheless, it's possible for one of you to significantly change your relationship if you think through and write down your responses to the following:

First, What is characteristic of you in regard to intimacy? (a) Think of a recent situation with your partner where your characteristic behavior played out. Run through it mentally from the beginning. (b) Now think of another situation. And another. (c) What do these three situations have in common? What do you notice about yourself and intimacy?

Second, identify ten things that annoy you about your partner. For each, explore: (a) What is your reaction to your partner's behavior? (b) How do you provoke that behavior?

Next, describe five painful situations that have occurred in your relationship: (a) What were the consequences for you? (b) What was your responsibility in each situation?(c) What keeps the situation alive for you (what is the pay-off in the present)? Examples are illusion of control, getting a charge from the anger, not having to face your own fear of intimacy, etc.

Finally, describe ten positive characteristics of your partner and the effect of each on your relationship. Reflect on how you might integrate more gratitude into your relationship and into your life.

*Based in part on a workshop with Claudio Naranjo and Suzana Stroke.

What's Good Enough?

2010-01-16T18:16:00.000-08:00

Several of my clients have been looking at their marriages lately, for a variety of reasons. One couple -- while their marriage is already more than good enough -- wanted some fine-tuning and gave rave reviews of a workshop I recommended with Drs. John and Julie Gottman in Seattle, "The Art and Science of Love."

With a client who wants to refresh her marriage, we began exploring "what's good enough?" I learned about this concept from Carolyn Bartlett, who uses it in The Enneagram Field Guide. Initially coined by psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott, "good enough" describes a nurturing relationship that provides the basic safety, love, mirroring, and containment needed by a developing child. It's also a template for effective therapy. And we can easily extend it to effective partnering in adult relationships.

Interestingly, healthy "containment" is not restrictive. Quite the opposite: the term refers to an emotional, mental, and spiritual space where both partners are available, expansive, and secure; where both feel calm and safe; where each can experience and express perspectives and emotions -- with the expectation of support and comfort, and without fear of judgment or rejection.

Clearly, this definition of "good enough" does not mean compromising or lowering standards. It simply recognizes the fact that no human being and no partnership of any kind is or has to be perfect. And it inspires open communication to make sure each partner's needs are being met.

In "Bad Relationships: Change your Role and the Rules of Engagement," Dr. Tara J. Palmatier quotes Gottman's "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:" criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Palmatier suggests two scenarios that can have "mutually satisfying, long-term relationship outcomes" (the remaining eight are "either 'get out now' or 'live a life of resignation' outcomes"). In response to your concerns, your partner could:

Hear what you say, be accountable, respect your feelings, and actively try to change.
Hear what you say, be accountable, respect your feelings, communicate which of your behaviors are contributing to the situation, and you both actively try to change.

From a systemic view, I prefer the second scenario, and suggest that you also (1) look together at how the pattern operates that you've created together, and (2) agree on an interesting and inventive way to interrupt the pattern. Michelle Weiner-Davis addresses this in Divorce Busting, especially Chapter 6: "Breaking the Habit: Interrupting Destructive Patterns."

Forget everything you thought you knew about change

2010-01-07T15:09:00.000-08:00

Greg was a college professor who loved mental gymnastics but wasn't very comfortable with emotions. He especially dreaded extended family holidays because his wife Suzanne thought his relatives were cold and arrogant, and invariably a member of his family would say something that upset her during their visit. She would then go into what he called "a dramatic meltdown." Greg's response? He didn't want to talk about it with Suzanne; he wanted to hide. This upset her even more, which increased his desire to withdraw. Greg wanted Suzanne to stop reacting "so emotionally." She wanted him to "quit being so intellectual and support her."

I asked Greg to think of a way to go with the pattern instead of trying to avoid it; he suggested to Suzanne that they find a private space and take ten minutes every hour, when with his family, so she could vent and he would take her feelings seriously.

Greg loved the idea of expecting and planning time for Suzanne to blow off steam, because he wouldn't be distracted wondering when or how it might happen. Suzanne responded positively because he was acknowledging her right to her feelings about his family.

As it turned out, they didn't need to take ten minutes every hour. Just knowing they could do it was freeing. "That outing," Greg later said, "turned out to be our very best family visit. While we hoped to be able to make it through two days, we actually stayed three days extra."

More in Out of the Box Self-Coaching Workbook.

"How," not "Why," is the Question

2009-12-28T10:54:00.000-08:00

To more fully understand the couple in the Plus ça change blog entry, it helps to know that people with the husband's personality -- referred to as "style Nine" in the Enneagram personality system -- tend to go along with others' ideas, yet feel unspoken resentment when they stifle their own agenda. At the same time, they are peacemakers and want to be reassured that even their unexpressed annoyance has not created a disruption.

Thus the husband wanted to snuggle up to his wife, who was very aware of his "pouting" and didn't feel so inclined.

Those of the wife's personality -- referred to as "style Eight" in the Enneagram -- typically have plenty of ideas but often succumb temporarily to their enthusiasms and/or forget to include their partners. This couple might have been drawn together initially because of their mutual comfort with the wife providing structure, then both began to feel some pain from that same dynamic.

What's fascinating about this couple is that we did not spend time exploring their personality styles so they could understand why they were having difficulty. Instead, I asked questions to help them look closely at what each of them did and said, so they could see how they were unwittingly feeding their interactive pattern. This works in the same way as interrupting a personal pattern. You look carefully at how the pattern operates, then find a way to playfully interrupt it, so it loses its "juice."

Hands Off

2009-12-15T23:08:00.000-08:00

Often when we experience relationship problems we conclude it's the other person who's "touchy," "unreliable," "critical," etc. Operating from this premise, you may unwittingly attempt solutions that reinforce or even exaggerate the perceived problem.

Let's say Anne and Bill have a family business and Anne, a perfectionist, thinks Bill gives employees too much autonomy.

Anne presses Bill to be more hands-on, questioning him frequently and in detail. Bill doesn't keep her posted on the ways he is hands-on because "She'll just nit-pick anyway." This confirms Anne's belief that Bill isn't paying enough attention to details, which leads her to follow up more frequently. Bill responds by retreating even more, leading Anne to check in even more, and so on.

Instead, they could reframe the situation as an interaction problem:

Problems that occur between people are situational difficulties -- both are doing something to maintain the problem.
It's normal and appropriate to resist attempts by another to "fix" us; such so-called resistance is more usefully labeled as a source of energy when released for positive purposes.
It may seem paradoxical, but going with the other person's energy is much more likely to make a difference than lecturing, advising, or scolding.

This approach requires relationship partners to develop the ability to:

focus on observable behaviors in the interaction (vs. only the behavior of the other person),
do something to alter the interaction (as opposed to trying to change the other person).

A particularly interesting application of this concept relies on the paradox of going with a behavior in order to change it. Following this premise, Anne could release the positive potential of Bill's management style by saying something such as "I respect your value of trusting our employees to do their jobs well. Let's talk about how we can help them be more autonomous." This is a win-win situation:

If Bill "resists" Anne's suggestion, he becomes more "hands-on," increasing his oversight of employees and eliminating her basis for criticism.
If they work out standards that ensure employees do their jobs without frequent follow-up, again there is no longer a basis for Anne's complaint.

For more about this approach, read The Tactics of Change, by Fisch, Weakland, and Segal.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

2009-12-09T16:52:00.000-08:00

You've no doubt heard the epigram first made public in January 1849 by Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, founder and editor of Les Guêpes:

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Usually translated as "the more things change, the more they stay the same," plus ça change refers to what happens when we attempt to resolve problems within the paradigm in which they were created. What does this mean in everyday terms? To borrow again from the French:

On ne fait pas d'omelette sans casser des œufs.

Translation: "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs." I'm tempted to leave you with these powerful metaphors. But, I'll illustrate how plus ça change became the code for a married couple to interrupt an interaction pattern that was frustrating to both of them - to "break the eggs" they'd both been hatching and create a new "omelette."

This had been their pattern: When the husband perceived the wife as "interrupting" in conversation, he would shut down and "pout" (according to the wife). The wife, annoyed that he would blame her instead of speaking up for himself, kept talking while pulling back emotionally. He saw her withdrawing emotionally, wanted to have peace between them, so bypassed his feeling of being ignored and tried to draw physically closer. She felt "schizophrenic" - "He's critical and wants to get closer? Doesn't compute!"

In the past, the pattern had been the opportunity for each to give "feedback" to the other, not realizing that his telling her she interrupted, and her telling him he should speak up if he so desired, fed the plus ça change pattern so that it kept occurring, over and over. When they looked at their interaction systemically and saw how both of them kept it going the way it always had (plus c'est la même chose), they stepped back, let go of blame, and agreed that whoever saw the pattern occurring would simply say, "Plus ça change..."

A Parallel Universe

2009-12-09T16:37:00.000-08:00

I have great zeal for helping my clients learn how to interact more effectively instead of vying for power and control. But frankly, we often don't see how our own behavior plays a role in the difficulties that arise in relationships.

Instead, we tend to blame others for their behavior. We lose sight of the fact that the very act of "blaming" makes us players in the power game. In The Fifth Discipline Peter Senge describes how the underlying structure of a human system "causes its own behavior."

We have the power to alter these structures and create new patterns, but our interaction systems are subtle: we usually don't see the structures at play. In particular we don't see how our own behavior helps maintain the status quo in relationships.

Changing such patterns requires a complete change in context -- it requires that we step into a parallel universe of human interaction where the old, unexamined rules no longer compel us to act in certain ways, where we ask new questions:

"What's behind this other person's behavior?"
"What am I doing that keeps this dysfunctional pattern of interaction repeating itself?"
"What could the pay-off possibly be for me to have things remain the same?"
"How might either of us do something different?"