Skip to main content

Relationship Vow

"When I see partners in a successfully maintained couple bubble, one standout feature is their ability to care for, influence, and manage one another, much the way expert parents do with their children.  Both partners seem to have read and carefully studied the owner's manual for the relationship and for each other.  Each is familiar with operational details that no one outside of the bubble is likely to know.
"For instance, these partners know what has the most power to push the other's buttons.  When the other is feeling bad, they immediately sense why.  Not only that, they know how to remedy the situation.  They know the right words to say, or deeds to perform, that have the power to elevate, relieve, excite, soothe, or heal each other.  From a neuroscience perspective, these partners possess strong orbitofrontal cortices; well-balanced left and right brains; well-developed smart vagal systems; well-regulated breath and vocal control; and honed communication skills that keep love close and war at a far distance.
"How did they get to be so adept?  Are such people perhaps in possession of a perfect partner chromosome?  Trust me, no.  Do they have some kind of secret superpower that allows them to manage their partner emotionally?  Well maybe.  ...some of us got a better start in life than did others, with a lots of positive interactions with safe adults who were interested in and curious about us.  We all come to the table with primitives that don't want us to be harmed, and ambassadors that at times can be annoying.  Truth is, we can be, all of us, pains in the rear.  When we recite our relationship vows, perhaps we should say, "I take you as my pain in the rear, with all your history and baggage, and I take responsibility for all prior injustices you endured at the hands of those I never knew, because you now are in my care."  - Stan Tatkin, Psy.D. in Wired for Love

Would you be willing to take that vow?  That is commitment.  As parents we are to take that vow.  Can we do it for our main relationship?  Secure partners do this for one another.  It is not easy when our partner has a lot of baggage.  And what I see in my counseling office is that when one partner has a lot of baggage then the other one does too.  This is a difficult situation that needs a third party sometimes to help.

Renee Madison, MA, LPC, CSAT is a counselor in Colorado.  She can be reached for appointments at 303-257-7623 or 970-324-6928.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Accepting a compliment

"Nearly everyone who is asked, 'What is the proper response to a compliment?' replies, 'Say 'thank you.''  But when actually offered a compliment, only a third of people accept it so simply and smoothly, found linguist Robert Herbert of Binghamton University. "The difficulty lies in the fact that a compliment ('What a nice sweater!') has two levels: a gift component (accept or reject) and a content component (agree or disagree).  The addressee is confronted with a  dilemma--how to respond simultaneously to both: 'I must agree with the speaker and thank him for the gift of a compliment while avoiding self-praise.' "Contrary to conventional wisdom, women aren't worse than men at accepting compliments.  It is the gender of the compliment-giver that most influences the response.  Women and men are both more likely to accept a compliment coming from a man than from a woman.  When a man says, 'Nice scarf," a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Drug use and crime in USA

"Gil Kerlikoske, the White House director of national drug control policy, said a study by his office showed a strong link between drug use and crime.  Eighty percent of the adult males arrested for crimes in Sacramento, California, last year tested positive for at least one illegal drug.  Marijuana was the most commonly detected drug, found in 54 percent of those arrested. "The study found similar results in four other cities: New York, Denver, Atlanta and Chicago.  Among the cities, it included examinations of 1,736 urine samples and 1,938 interviews with men who were arrested.  "Researches found that marijuana was the most popular drug used by men who'd been arrested in all the cities, ranging from a low of 37 percent in Atlanta to a high of 58 percent in Chicago.  Chicago also had the highest overall positive test results, with 86 percent of the men found to have at least one drug in their bloodstreams. "Cocaine ranked as the second most ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Couple Therapy

"What I learned confirmed Bowlby's message that patterns of relating created by attachment, separation, and loss during the first few years of life become fixed and impact all future relationships.  It also confirmed that couples' narratives (i.e. their presenting problems) are the logical products of the cortex playing catch-up with the emotional part of the brain.  The limbic system reacts almost instantaneously.  This understanding supports the view that couple therapy should concentrate not on the espoused content of the partners' conflict but rather on their underlying core dynamics. "Dr Walter Bracelmanns, who was developing his own integration of couple therapy.  I thank him for the support that he gave to the new idea that the focus of the work is the relationship, not the growth of the individual self of each partner." - Marion Solomon in Love and War in Intimate Relationships Couple therapy theories vary greatly.  So many different t...
Post a Comment
Read more