When I work with couples, I feel like I am under the Big Top. There may not be elephants, clowns or trapeze artists (not literally, anyway) but there are definitely three rings. The work is exciting and keeps me on my toes. As counselor/ringmaster I have to be aware of what is happening in all three rings at all times.
The ring on my right features one person and the ring on the left, the other. The ring in the middle is where the mystery unfolds, for it belongs to both people. In the beginning the center ring is often either utterly deserted or bloody with the carnage of past gladiatorial battles that may erupt again any moment.
As ringmaster, I have (figuratively only!) a whistle, a spotlight and a bullhorn. I use the whistle to halt attacks. Attacks are not the same as discussion (even heated discussion) which can lead to negotiation and resolution. My first task is to ensure safety, so that the couple can find the courage to risk revelation and connection. The spotlight brings focus to one person or the other or to a particular issue or dynamic. The metaphorical bullhorn is not to make my voice heard but to help adjust volume. Often one person is speaking more softly, literally and figuratively, and needs to be amplified. Another person may be having difficulty hearing the other, because his or her own volume needs to be lowered a bit.
In the first session or two, I am often turning the spotlight back and forth to the two outer rings so that I can hear each person's story fully, without interruption. Although it seems like not much is happening in the center ring, slowly, in the half light, another as yet unspoken story is gestating. Even when the spotlight is on one person, I have to be intensely aware of the other. If all goes well, the one who is out of the spotlight joins me as a listener, begins to become a witness, not just someone waiting his or her turn. One man recently remarked, "I have heard her say most of these things before, but when a third person is present, I hear differently."
At first, each person tends to direct what they're saying to me. By the second or third session, my most oft repeated phrase is, "Talk to each other now." And yes it is thrilling to watch initial reluctance (each one keeping one eye on me) shift to full engagement. Then the spotlights converge on the center ring, and I sit in back in the shadows, watching and listening until I am needed. Sometimes something will come up from one or another person's past, and the spotlight is theirs again, often with help and encouragement from the other person.
By the third or fourth session, the couple is spending considerable time in the center ring, albeit sometimes circling each other warily. But now curiosity is beginning to come into play: curiosity about this other person who is surprising you at every turn, because the truth he or she is daring to tell does not match the assumptions you've always made; curiosity about yourself, questioning why you react the way you do instead of blindly defending your reaction; and curiosity about how things work or don't work, how life could be less painful and more delightful. Now the clowns can come in to lighten things up, now the laughter begins as the couple looks at their own and each other's absurdities with amusement and amazement instead of shame and rage.
When a couple heals their relationship, each person's own old wounds begin to heal, too. Then anything can happen in that center ring with enough practice. The couple can become trapeze artists and fly through the air with the greatest of ease trusting that their partner, and/or the strong net they woven together, will catch them.
Then the ringmaster applauds, tips her hat, and leaves the tent.
Elizabeth Cunningham has been in private practice as a counselor for 12 years. She has been married for 30 years.
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The couples that seem to gain the most are the ones who come in when things are going pretty well but they need some help getting over some differences or the ones who come in every year or two for a brief visits to keep their marriage running smooth. If couples visited the therapist every 3000 miles like we do for changing the oil in our cars, I believe marriages would last longer and be stronger during the tough times.
The therapist, from the very beginning, is focused on the third ring - or its absence. As the therapist moves the two partners to focus away from themselves and on the dynamics and the feelings between them, the third ring starts to take shape. It is when the couple becomes interested and cares about the relationship that the focus shifts from each of them to the third ring, from one working against the other to one and the other working together and putting their relationship first.
The second experience was with my current wife with whom I've been happily married for a long, long time. We were going through a rough patch: she was frustrated, I wasn't listening and basically shut her out when she tried to tell me something, especially about myself, or about my relationship with our kids (two, now grown). We went for marriage counseling and I'm glad we did. We worked out the communications problems about 15 years ago, and have had the most wonderful relationship ever since. Now are kids are gone, we have the place to ourselves, and we enjoy each other in the most wonderful ways.
I wouldn't say the marriage counseling was the only reason things worked out, but it did help tremendously when it was needed, while my first cycle of marriage counseling didn't work because some marriages just aren't meant to happen: if the love isn't there, there's no reason to stay together, and in that first marriage it wasn't there in the first place and never "grew" with living together; it only got worse.
How can a therapist help me, if I can't be completely honest with them? And why is it that most
therapist won't do an initial free consultation? Seems unreasonable and greedy to me. I know there are some good therapists out there, but I can't seem to find one. Don't therapists have the highest rate of suicide, over all other professions? That's scary. I find the analogy between patients and circus acts to be degrading and insulting... just expressing my opinion and some of my concerns.
I got a better job then posed the challenge : we stay married, we go to counseling to our ears bleed and we work through these issues. She refused and said "...why should I go I'm not the one with the problem..." and that's the final thought she ever expressed on the counseling idea. Months later she exclaimed "...if your not going to my mothers today, I dont want you here when I return..."
After that we never had a full sentence of conversation between us and I moved out. Haven't seen her since. Signed the divorce papers a year later and she took everything from credit cards to bank to possessions. All I left with were my clothes and a few pictures.
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