Blog - Marriage & Couples Counseling & Therapy in NYC: The Loving at Your Best Plan

Helping Your Marriage Survive the Pandemic in New York

Travis Atkinson — Sat, 09 Jan 2021 19:40:00 +0000

The pandemic has put a massive strain on the world as a whole. The COVID-19 virus is pushing our healthcare system to its breaking point, our education system is scrambling to adapt to the challenges of virtual learning models, and the tension of it all is affecting our marriages and love relationships. According to an August Ipsos poll, one in five married or partnered people in the U.S. are fighting with their significant other more often than before the pandemic. Even worse, nearly one in ten married or partnered people say it’s likely they will separate from their significant other at least in part due to issues related to the pandemic!

In New York, tiny spaces and limited activities can make marriage and love relationship tension even more acute. So if you feel like the pandemic is causing more issues in your relationships, romantic or otherwise, you’re not the only one! Unfortunately, many marriages or love relationships – even previously healthy ones – are suffering because of isolation and the turmoil the pandemic has brought. To address these issues, we need to talk about them. And if you need some encouragement to talk about them, we need to normalize these problems. Let’s discuss some things that you – and other couples – may be experiencing because of the pandemic.

Relationship Problems are More Intense

During the past “normal times,” it may have been easier to gloss over our marriage or love relationship problems or act as if they were nonexistent. Now, since we are together more than we ever may have imagined with our partner or spouse, without our habitual escapes, our problems are right in our faces; they affect our marriages and love relationships with much more intensity. Couples may be struggling with infidelity or deteriorating sex life, or “day-to-day” issues such as finances or taking care of the kids. Regardless of the nature of our problems, many people have no choice but to face their marriage and love relationship issues head-on. Working through our challenges is even more challenging in close quarters.

You’re Eager to Move Forward in Your Relationship

If you or your spouse/partner took the opportunity to fast-track your marriage or love relationship when the pandemic hit by moving in together or making more significant commitments to each other, you aren’t the only ones! Social distancing led many couples to face big decisions much faster than they would have otherwise: to move in together or to wait it out apart? And who knows exactly how long time apart will last!

Of course, rushing forward with these kinds of decisions, rather than letting them happen organically, could lead to tension down the road. And that’s okay! Many people did the same thing and are now working through the longer-term effects – and possibly sometimes questioning the decisions they made. Rest assured, this is not a typical time, so the “normal” progression of marriage and love relationships is out the window. It’s okay to feel overwhelmed, as long as you work through difficult situations together and reach out for help when you need guidance to navigate it all. Don’t be too hard on yourself or your spouse/partner. This is everyone’s first time through a global pandemic!

You’re Hesitant to Move Forward in Your Marriage or Love Relationship

On the other hand, maybe moving forward in your marriage or love relationship sounds like the last thing you can tackle right now! With so much uncertainty and question marks about the future, it’s hard to make plans or think ahead to “What’s next?” Maybe you don’t want to plan a wedding or engagement until the future becomes clear, or perhaps you opted to wait to move-in together. Time feels like it has been suspended for many months, but putting off decisions may now be taking a toll on many couples. Maybe you want to wait a bit longer to plan the future, but your spouse/partner wants to move forward -- or vice versa. Regardless, that disconnect of future planning may be affecting your marriage or love relationship.

You’re Letting “Couple Stuff” Slide

Remember that long couple’s bucket list of things you wanted to do together someday when you “had more time?” Suddenly, we seemed to have all the time in the world! How is that bucket list coming along? Are you cooking together more? Improving your sex life? Making intentional time for each other?

If you can answer “yes” to those questions, good for you! But don’t take it as a bad sign if you and your spouse/partner are struggling with this. So many couples are struggling with intimacy and “couple stuff,” as well. It’s hard to miss each other and to create the need for novelty when you coexist 24/7 in the same space, and it’s challenging to designate “together time” when you’re always together!

It’s okay if you and your spouse/partner are struggling with this. Not only are we living completely different lifestyles, but our brains are in survival mode because of pandemic stressors. We’re not on our A-game, so cut yourself and your spouse/partner some slack.

You Feel Like a Break-Up is Inevitable

Combine the stress of the pandemic with brand-new lifestyles and constant togetherness, and you may feel like your marriage or love relationship is on its last leg. Maybe you both thought more time together would help your marriage or love relationship, or perhaps you knew that extra time would cause more issues. Either way, a break-up in the pandemic is... less than convenient. So some couples are choosing – sometimes subconsciously – to postpone the break-up until after the pandemic is over. Sounds like a lot of fun, right?

If you find yourself in this situation, let us reiterate: don’t beat yourself up for any of it. These are unprecedented times for our generation, and these challenges can bring hidden issues to light. If you need to talk about this trying situations, at the minimum, be sure to reach out to a close friend you can trust. If the challenges in your marriage or love relationship have escalated, talk to us at the Loving at Your Best plan – our highly trained marriage therapists can help you navigate these tricky circumstances.

Your Marriage or Love Relationship is Better than Ever!

On the flip side, maybe the pandemic has strengthened your marriage or love relationship more than you ever thought possible! Some couples have found that an unexpected side effect of isolation is a stronger, deeper connection with each other. They’ve had a unique opportunity to learn more about one another, how they handle crises as a couple, unveil more of their personality than before – and grow the love in their marriage or relationship because of it!

If you find yourself even more in love than before, talk to your spouse/partner about it. Discuss what you’ve enjoyed and what have been learning moments; own the things that work well together, and talk about the things that don’t. Above all, celebrate the bond you with your spouse/partner have, and work to keep nurturing it – even long after the pandemic has passed.

The marriage therapists and couples counselors at the Loving at Your Best plan are here to support your journey with your spouse/partner, no matter what effect the pandemic has had on you two – helping others live satisfying marriages and love relationships is our passion!

7 New Year’s Resolutions to Improve Your Marriage

Travis Atkinson — Sat, 26 Dec 2020 22:05:59 +0000

You’ve heard the typical New Year’s resolutions before: lose weight, learn to play an instrument, save more money! These resolutions are all well and good, but they rarely last through the whole year. Most people will start strong for the first 2-4 weeks of the year but grow tired of forming new habits and let their resolutions fall to the wayside. But what if your resolution is a bit more...personal? What if you resolve to strengthen your relationship with your significant other? You don’t want to let that fall to the wayside after 2-4 weeks!

The key is to set smaller, specific goals, rather than establishing one broad-sweeping claim. Instead of declaring, “My New Year’s resolution is to have a happier relationship,” you need a plan to get there! Setting a couple of specific, actionable goals with your other half can make a huge difference in your relationship – and it’s much easier to stick with small commitments in the long run. To help you and your partner start your New Year right, here are seven New Year’s resolutions that will improve your relationship.

1. Limit Your Screen Time

I know – at the end of the day, it’s so lovely to “turn your brain off” and scroll mindlessly through Instagram! But if you’re giving your phone more attention than you’re giving to your partner, your relationship is bound to suffer. On the flip side, you could be the one feeling like a second priority to screen time and wishing you had the attention of your other half.

Make a resolution together, as a couple, to set a time limit for screen time at home, or designate some “unplugged” time when you’re together. Don’t just lock your phone screens; put your phones in another room entirely, and just focus on each other. You could do simple, fun things like playing a board game or use the time to do some serious soul searching together – it’s totally up to the two of you! As long as the screens are off, you’re doing it right.

2. Practice Everyday Moments of Thoughtfulness

Everyone gives and receives love differently — what does it for you may not do it for your mate. The five love languages we use to express love are physical touch, words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, and acts of service. Maybe acts of service, like sorting the laundry or doing the dishes, are signs of love and commitment to you, but your partner finds romantic fulfillment through gifts or physical touch.

This year, commit to discovering each other’s love language and showing love in that preferred language once every day. You can take a quiz at 5lovelanguages.com to find your primary love language and use that knowledge to share your passion for one another in more impactful, meaningful ways.

3. Commit to Sex

Yep, you heard me! A healthy sex life is critical for a happy relationship. Boosting your intimacy game comes with other benefits, too, like more physical connection and reduced anxiety, so it’s a top priority to improve your relationship! Unfortunately, sex is often the first thing to suffer when things get busy – so you’ve got to commit to it.

As unromantic as it may sound, one of the best ways to reconnect sexually with your partner is to schedule a weekly sex date. Plan a time for intimacy every week and guard it closely! Scheduling a specific time takes away any pressure you or your partner may feel around initiation and reciprocation and will help you focus on the real purpose of sex – enjoying the pleasure together!

4. Sit Close When You Watch TV
Maybe you and your partner already have a healthy sex life and have no problem showing your affection in that way. But what about non-sexual affection?

When you’re watching TV or a movie together, do you sit on opposite sides of the couch, or do you sit right next to each other? Sitting close to each other increases the chance of non-sexual, affectionate touch, which seems to evaporate in long-term relationships. Stay proactive by cuddling on the couch. Bonus points if physical touch is one of your love languages!

5. Have Intentional Talks About Finances

Having money is a great thing, but if you don’t have honest conversations about it with your significant other, things can deteriorate quickly. It may be uncomfortable to discuss your finances, but it’s essential to do so – especially since 70% of married couples say they argue about money. Even unmarried couples can attest to tension and stress solely due to finances!

Rather than tiptoe around this touchy subject, regularly schedule an intentional time to discuss money with your partner. You could talk about your financial lives once a month, or every two weeks on payday, as long as you have an open dialogue. Discuss your financial goals with each other, your spending habits, and any investments you’d both like to make. Remember to keep a proactive mindset rather than a reactive mindset, and approach every conversation as a team – not opposing players.

6. Go to Bed Together

Wait, we’re talking about sex AGAIN? Nope! This time, “go to bed together” means just that – hit the hay at the same time that your partner does. Now, this may be difficult if you work opposite schedules, but try to go to bed together when you can, even if it’s just once or twice per week.

Why is it so important? The moments after crawling into bed can be special for you and your other half! You can take this opportunity to have some quiet time together after a long day of work; whisper to each other in the dark, cuddle close, connect with one another. And don’t forget to put those screens away when you do go to bed!

7. Make Time for Yourself

Yes, alone time for yourself can make your relationship better! It doesn’t have to be a major trip or vacation; it can be something as simple as getting a manicure, meeting a friend for coffee, or perusing the bookstore in solitude. Whatever you enjoy and “fills your cup,” do it for yourself!

People will often lose themselves in relationships or put everyone else’s needs first before attending to their own. But that could lead to exhaustion, burnout, and even resentment towards your partner! Make sure you show love and affection to yourself. It will allow you to be happier, which can only make your relationship a happier one, too.

Regardless of which resolutions you choose to adopt or the upcoming year, Loving at Your Best is here to help your relationship flourish. From marriage counseling to couples counseling, from family therapy to relationship therapy, we want to help you achieve happiness and satisfaction in your personal life. Book now to make your resolutions a reality!

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How to Navigate Your Teen's Radical Politics

Paul Chiariello — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 15:39:44 +0000

by Paul Chiariello, LMSW, MSc. Ed., Staff Psychotherapist, Loving at Your Best

Uncertainty across the country is rampant, with a deadly pandemic, turbulent protests, and highly ambiguous school plans that could change at any moment. At the same time, your teen may have taken an active interest in social and politic issues. Great!! Well… depending on what they’re advocating.

Practicing openness, curiosity, and acceptance with your teen goes a long way to help build a healthy parenting/teen relationship.

Whether you, parent, are conservative or liberal, there’s a decent chance your teen’s moving further and further away from your worldview and what you believe is best for our society. Maybe they’re joining riots to dismantle the system and begin a communist revolt. Or maybe they’re taking a different direction and entertaining incel or neo-nazi groups. Point is, you feel you can’t stand idly by as your teen wanders into more extreme positions.

Regardless of the direction, here are three basic points to both help your teen and maintain your relationship:

1. Focus on your long-term relationship with your teen, not agreement in the short-term.

You’ll have to let go of getting them to agree with you here and now. Hard to hear, but true. Humans generally, and teens especially, just don’t go, “oh, you’re right,” in the middle of a confrontation about something they’re passionate about. In fact, it’s much more likely that arguing will cement their beliefs even further.

Note: this does not mean you’ll abandon trying to change their mind. It just means you have to take a long-term, pragmatic approach. Specifically, your teen will only accept influence from you if you already have two fundamental ingredients:

a). They feel that you respect them and want to understand them

b.) They respect your values, even when they disagree

First, nobody listens to people they don’t feel connected to. We’re all social creatures, with teens excessively so. To use an old metaphor, relationships are like bank accounts. You deposit money over the years by spending quality time together, caring for them, and listening to their ideas. In contrast, telling them that the beliefs they’re passionate about are wrong leads to a huge withdrawal. So if you don’t have enough in your emotional account with your teen, they will not likely accept influence from you. Instead, your teen will much more likely rebel and push you away further.

Second, work with your teen to help them understand and respect where you’re coming from. In fact, it’d be irrational for them to defer to you on moral issues if they don’t respect your morals to begin with. So make sure your teen:

a). knows what you stand for – compassion, fairness, equality, and so on

b). sees you living those values

For instance, you might regularly give blood together or help out a neighbor in need, or maybe sit down and explain which charities you donate to and why. The more your teen respects you, the more likely they’ll think to themselves, “Huh, maybe there’s something to what they’re saying.”

2) It’s not about the broader issues. It’s about their personal values.

Don’t – I repeat, do not – get bogged down with intellectual arguments with your teen. Ultimately, these details don’t matter as much as your teen’s underlying values. First and foremost, be curious. Start by asking about the deeper concerns that make them so passionate, and then just listen. For instance, you might ask what’s driving them, what good or bad outcomes they’re concerned with, or how they’re planning to help the situation. Not only does this avoid getting into an argument (unintentionally making a withdrawal in your relationship), but it builds trust in your relationship (depositing money in your emotional account).

During this “curiosity phase,” make sure to avoid shaming them. Instead, validate what they’re saying. Chances are they’re motivated by issues of justice, compassion, and so on. Or maybe they have deeper fears or shame rooted in their righteous anger. Even if their intellectual details are off, it’s important to praise or empathize with their underlying concerns. After all, you likely share at least some of their concerns! If you share their values, make sure they know you genuinely respect their drive and agree with them. If they’re motivated by deeper personal issues, treat them as serious matters you want to understand, and ask if and how you can help (without intruding on their journey).

More pragmatically, you need to start with curiosity to understand where your teen is actually coming from. If instead you assume things about them and you’re wrong, well… I’m sure we can agree that won’t help your relationship. Only after you have a solid grasp of what’s really leading your teen to their conclusions can you begin a more productive conversation about the details of the issues that compel their actions.

With political and social unrest erupting at a fever pace, many parents are struggling to understand and interact with their teens.

3) Model honest self-reflection.

To put it bluntly: you might be wrong. Be open to this fact. Remember, you’re asking them to question beliefs that to them probably feel completely “right.” To avoid being hypocritical, question your own beliefs, and be open to accepting influence from your teen to be more flexible about seeing and understanding all sides. Model being a healthier parent by practicing self-reflection.

Trust me, not only is it more likely that your teen will experience you as more open and willing to listen, but you can show your willingness to accept influence by saying, “huh, I didn’t think about it like that.” Your curiosity toward your teen can make a bigger deposit in their emotional bank account than any other single thing you can do.

Keep in mind, your teen is still growing and learning. And they learn best by watching adults model healthy behaviors. Once you’ve shown your teen how to self-reflect, you’ve opened the door for them to do the same. Not only will they see how it’s done, but you’ve signaled the safety that they need to know that you won’t shame or hold something over them.

If, at the end of the day, you and your teen still sharply disagree about a topic or belief, and you both believe the other’s conclusions are causing some of society’s biggest problems, emphasize two key points to your teen:

Ask for patience. Your beliefs have probably developed over at least a few decades, so rethinking how they may have developed, what influenced them, and whether they are still applicable in the same ways is challenging. Also, make sure to remind them that you’re inviting them to practice the same type of self-reflection and critical thinking!
Emphasize commonalities. Remind your teen that deep down inside, humans are more alike than different. You and your teen probably share many of the same values, and are both trying to navigate challenges and to improve a difficult world. And those shared goals count for something. Right?

Paul Chiariello, LMSW, MSc. Ed.

About the author:

“Paul has a diverse background in conflict resolution, education, and clinical social work that he applies to his therapeutic practice. He focuses on helping clients as they explore and become their best versions of themselves.

Paul’s clinical approach is grounded in unconditional positive regard, mindfulness, cognitive and dialectical behavior therapies, and schema therapy. He specializes in working with relationships, men’s issues, identity formation, religion and spirituality, shame, depression and anxiety disorders. Paul works with adult individuals and couples, along with adolescents.

He earned his Masters in Clinical Social Work from Columbia University. In addition, Paul is certified by the International Association of Trauma Professionals as a Certified Trauma Professional, and is currently completing certification in Advanced Cognitive Behavioral Therapy at New York University.

Before his career as a psychotherapist, Paul worked in sociology research, conflict resolution, and curriculum development. After completing a Fulbright in Indonesia and earning his Masters of Science in Sociology of Education at the University of Oxford, he worked with humanitarian non-profits and think tanks in post-conflict contexts in Uganda, Bosnia, and other countries abroad.

Thereafter, he developed and led socio-emotional, critical thinking and ethics curricula for camps and school programs for adolescents.

Paul loves to read, play chess, travel, explore the outdoors, binge watch TV shows, and occasionally gets lost in abstract philosophical discussions.”

What are the warning signs for an affair in your marriage or love relationship?

Travis Atkinson — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 23:09:51 +0000

Why do affairs start in the first place?

For some partners, they want to end a marriage or love relationship, and don’t know another way of getting out. Other partners want to chase after a “rush” that comes from new situations. For most couples, the origins of an affair for one partner is usually more about the attention they receive from another person outside of the marriage or love relationship who ends up becoming an affair, after they have lived for sometimes many years in a primary relationship that is the equivalent of an emotional desert.

How are affairs defined?

The meaning of an affair can differ for couples, as some partners may accept a more open stance of flirtation from their mate., For most couples, infidelity is experienced as an emotional and/or sexual connection that is a threat to the primary relationship. The hurt partner often experiences trauma symptoms that studies show are nearly as harmful as physical abuse in a relationship. If a marriage or love relationship is going to survive after an affair, the hurt and damage caused by the betrayal need to be addressed and resolved, or the relationship will stay stuck in a repetitive pattern where the hurt partner’s attention can’t move beyond the pain. In my clinical practice, I have worked with couples where an affair from 20 or 30 years ago comes alive in the room as if it were still happening—not surprising considering how most partners experience a betrayal as a loss of trust that is traumatizing.

When a marriage or love relationship is in a secure state, both partners know that their partners think of them throughout the day, and that they can rely on each other to be there for them when needed. When trust is broken, the affair can threaten the existence of the relationship. Partners who have been betrayed often go into separation protest, pursuing a connection with the betraying partner while also falling into anguish and despair from the intense hurt resulting from the betrayal. The violation of trust between partners can question the entire relationship’s validity, and until the injury of the affair is addressed, the hurt partner most likely will not be able to move forward in the relationship.

Partners who experience betrayal face an intensification of anxiety, sadness, and often shame. They struggle to regain a sense of stability, when the partner they may have known for years suddenly feels like a stranger. This person broke their trust. Is the entire relationship negated? The betraying partner’s reaction to the discovery of the affair can make a dramatic impact. With couples, I ask specifically how the affair was discovered. Did the betraying partner disclose the affair, or was it an unexpected discovery that most likely shocked the hurt partner? Does the betraying partner take responsibility for their actions? Do they reach out and respond to the betrayed partner in a way that shows a deep understanding of the pain the hurt partner may be experiencing?

What predicts separation in a marriage or love relationship?

Though sustained hostility ranks as the highest factor predicting separation in a relationship, affairs are intensely painful. Hurt partners can’t just “forgive and move on.” The brain won’t allow for such a simple process when survival feels like it is on the line, and simple phrases often minimize and dismiss the betrayed partner’s experience. Images of the affair can overwhelm the hurt partner, often appearing in their nightmares.

As painful as betrayals can be, partners who have caused the pain through acts of betrayal can sometimes face even worse judgments when they arrive in an office for marriage or couples therapy. Some therapists may show contempt for the betraying partner through subtle looks or explicit words that shame them. As hurtful as affairs can be, an experienced couples therapist also knows that affairs rarely happen due to random occurrences or through chance. In fact, research shows there are 24 precursor steps that lead to and predict future betrayals.

The common stages that lead to affairs include:

1. Poor conflict management skills: hostile or avoidant styles of engagement with conflict in the relationship

2. Loneliness: negative patterns of engagement lead to a sense of being alone

3. Opportunity: the lonely partner meets a nice, warm person at a conference or at the gym

4. Comparison: the new, nice, warm person is a caring listener who laughs at jokes and comforts when needed

5. Plunge: the other partner in the relationship is left behind in the betraying partner’s mind as they fall for another person

While many couples may shift into loneliness or dissatisfaction at times in their marriage or love relationships, many do not shift into negatively comparing their partners to other potential mates. The key factor that leads to the final step into an affair is when the betraying partner believes “the grass is greener” elsewhere. The tumult of betrayal is established, and a cycle of hurt and pain ensues.

PTSD and the betrayed partner

Betrayed partners often experience symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), similar to veterans returning from war, living in a state of hyper-arousal as enemies may lurk behind every tree. Not uncommon for betrayed partners, every waking hour is preoccupied with pouring over emails, texts, instagram feeds and receipts as they search for signs of betrayal. Betrayed partners often experience images of their betraying partners with the affair, bringing waves of rage, pain, anxiety, and numbness, rising into panic and sinking into depression. Insomnia and nightmares may persist, as the trauma of the affair hijacks their central nervous system. This is one of the reasons a hurt partner struggles to accept an apology from the betraying partner. Attacks, incriminations and interrogations may continue by the betraying partner until the affair is effectively addressed.

Symptoms of danger in a marriage or love relationship

Partners in marriages or love relationships typically share daily updates, including excitement and stressful complaints in their personal lives. These exchanges help wall-off threats from others. However, when emotional hurts occur that are often subtle, partners stop confiding in each other, withholding daily stories and avoiding discussions about the relationship that could address problems. When the “friendly” other person suddenly appears, the partner is susceptible to their charm, and a connection can develop, usually starting with joking or storytelling that grows into deeper confiding and even complaining about the primary marriage or love relationship.

Is the betraying partner just a bad person?

Research from John Gottman shows that affairs do not occur because of a weak character or an immoral personality. Untamed lust or overwhelming temptation are also not the key factors leading to affairs. instead, affairs are caused by a progressive erosion of trust in the marriage or love relationship that begins long before the affair. Trust breaks down in small, subtle ways in the beginning as partners turn away from each other. Actions of thoughtfulness dissipate in the primary love relationship, while negativity seeps into how each partner sees the other.

Seeking professional help

As partners enter marriage therapy or couples counseling, they are often struggling to rebuild a dynamic that feels on the verge of collapse. An effective therapy for couples involves helping both partners heal the trauma of the betrayal, working to rebuild trust. The hurt partner asks questions about the details of the affair, without getting caught in the rabbit whole of obsessiveness, like avoiding specific questions about the sex during the affair. Symptoms of PTSD can be worsened if the hurt partner is encouraged to obsess over all the details of the affair. Instead, the betraying partner shares their experience openly and honestly.

What can the betrayed partner ask the betraying partner?

Typical questions a betrayed partner may ask the betraying partner include:

When and how did you first meet the person?
When did the relationship become physical?
Did you take them to (any specific place)?
Do any of your friends know? If so, who?
What attracted you to them?
Do you love them? If so, when did that happen?
What stopped you from telling me the truth?
When did you last see or talk to them?
What makes you want to stay in our relationship?
What is making you choose me and not them?

Should limits be placed on either partner?

In therapy, we work to help both partners in their communication so that they can avoid being flooded with attacks. It is easy for couples to get overwhelmed with so much hurt that anger or even rage come out. The betraying partner deserves safety in the process of therapy as much as the betrayed partner for the marriage or love relationship to heal. A key component of healing lies in the ability of the betraying partner to be receptive to the hurt and pain of the betrayed partner, working toward helping the betrayed partner feel understood. Effective marriage therapy or couples counseling works to help the betraying partner connect to the depth of the pain from the injury, and apologize sincerely for specific actions that were betraying. They are able to express remorse for their actions, and allow the betrayed partner to share their pain without shirking responsibility by becoming defensive.

Second, a crucial aspect to heal the injuries and secure safety in the marriage or love relationship is to help couples work to understand the larger dynamic in the relationship that may have lead to conditions that were ripe for an affair. How can the betrayed partner predict that the betraying partner wouldn’t betray them again without a clear understanding of what went wrong between both partners in their marriage or love relationship? A couple is defined by two partners, and an affair is almost always the result of a breakdown in the couple’s dynamic. This does not excuse the incredible pain and hurt the affair may have caused on the betrayed partner in any way—it is not an excuse or a “pass.” Instead, partners are able to trace the moves both of them made in their relationship that led to a pattern of distance and isolation. Usually a couple is able to identify moments when emotional distance occurred, including injuries outside of affairs, when one partner felt abandoned or attacked by the other partner in ways that left scars.

Are there ground rules?

In the final phase of treatment, a couple works to rebuild their trust in each other, entering into the vulnerable state of sexual intimacy together. Partners work on improving their sexual life, and clearly define what works and what they want to improve. Together, both partners also work to define specific consequences of a future betrayal. Since the hurt partner often is holding this under the surface, it is helpful when the couple defines consequences together.

Some ground rules are set in the therapy process, including an agreement that the affair must end for the couples therapy to continue. Both partners are supported to help create a safe enough dynamic in therapy to help heal the affair. The hurt partner is encouraged to share their feelings, ask questions, and invite the betraying partner to understand their pain. Even if the relationship that led to the affair was destructive, both partners can work on creating a new dynamic built on a foundation of trust that leads to security.

Healing from affairs in three phases

The three phases of healing focus on helping partners clearly see their negative patterns that led to conditions susceptible to an affair. Initially, the hurt partner usually gets stuck in blaming the betraying partner, a dynamic often echoing the default pattern of the relationship. Through choreographed interventions in couples therapy, partners work to become more accessible and responsive to each other—not just the betraying partner. Repeated experiences help the couple develop a new pattern inviting responses from each other that are comforting, understanding, reassuring and validating. The new interactions between both partners create and build a foundation that helps the betrayed partner heal from the affair, and move far beyond the negative patterns of their past. The couple creates a new narrative of their marriage or love relationship, understanding clearly where they got off track so that they can avoid repeating the devastation that resulted from the affair.

It may be true that an affair can bring a couple closer together, as some couples therapists have proposed, though I think more optimal ways of achieving closeness are preferable to most couples, rather than having to suffer through the depths of trauma and loss. Prevention of an affair for any couple is an ideal goal, and learning from past mistakes helps us remember that we are all human, and are capable of learning and healing.

References:

What Makes Love Last: How to Build Trust and Avoid Betrayal by John Gottman and Nan Silver (Simon & Schuster, 2013).

Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by Sue Johnson (Little, Brown & Spark, 2008).

Surviving turbulent times in your marriage or love relationship

Travis Atkinson — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 18:48:17 +0000

Knowing how to grieve together can strengthen and deepen your love connection.

We all want life to give us certainty, and all desire a sense of permanence. At the same time, there are moments when we are faced with the reality that life is uncertain, and volatile. Even with the latest advances in medicine, and our eternal struggle for immortality, we still face a reality that at some point, we will lose loved ones around us, and eventually, we will die. How we navigate our longings and desires in a world where we are forced to face certain realities is an area that can challenge our well-being, and the connection in a marriage or love relationship.

In moments of uncertainty, volatility, or loss, we reach for other people that we trust to respond in ways that help us through life’s storms. Is our partner or spouse emotionally available for us in a way that helps us feel safe to reach out when we are vulnerable? Does he or she provide soothing responses that help us feel connected, rather than isolated?

Loss

brings up the most intense needs

For couples, it is precisely these moments of need that can shape and define the path of a love relationship. We need our partner or spouse when the vulnerability hits us. Some people may not realize how much it matters to continue giving soothing responses long after the vulnerability or loss has struck.

For instance, the sudden death of a parent can bring overwhelming feelings of loss and grief to one partner. The intense need for understanding and comfort from the partner or spouse may never be higher. As we are forced to face loss, many people experience grief in waves that may continue for years after the event.

A challenge in a marriage or love relationship is to embrace each other in those moments of vulnerability, even when it may seem that the loss should already be healed. Grief can be complicated, and a loving and caring partner or spouse shows compassion toward his or her mate through the long haul.

Ask yourself: can you count on your partner or spouse to be emotionally available for you during times of vulnerability, uncertainty, or loss? Can you imagine feeling safe and comfortable enough to reach out to him or her and ask for what you need in those moments? Have there been times in your marriage or love relationship when you’ve experienced intense vulnerability, and your partner or spouse let you down?

In our love relationships, we need to know that we can count on our primary connection to consistently respond in ways that help us feel better. This is not a state of perfection, but being able to predict that most of the time you'll get what you need forms the basis of a satisfying and long-lasting marriage or love relationship.

The good news is that inviting and receiving positive responses is not the result of something we are “born with.” We can learn a set of skills that help us thrive in our love relationships. With secure connections, we can plan for our future, reflect on the nature of our lives, and search for deeper meanings together. We find comfort in our connection with the person we love most, sharing our vulnerabilities together, while receiving empathic responses that lessen the dread and isolation of life's uncertainties.

Are your needs being met in your marriage or love relationship?

Travis Atkinson — Thu, 16 Nov 2017 21:00:22 +0000

Scientists have identified seven inherent needs that exist in our brains. How much or how little each of these needs is stimulated by ourselves and our partners can have a significant impact on the satisfaction and happiness in marriages or love relationships.

The neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp first described these needs as systems in our brains coordinating our emotional, behavioral, and physical responses related to our survival needs, such as sleep, procreation, protection, and more. In a marriage, partners differ on how much they need each area stimulated. Understanding your own needs, and those of your partner or spouse, can help you find roles together that will help you both feel more satisfied in your relationship, and in your lives.

What are these needs that stem from inherent personality traits, and how do they work? Each need originates from nerve-based circuits in the brain that connect electrochemical signals, meaning nerve cells transmit messages to each other until specific parts of your body receive the information needed to perform the behavior to get your need met.

How important are these needs? They are connected directly to your brain’s sense of survival, responsible for functions including reproduction, sleep, attaching to others, and obtaining power. You and your partner have your own comfort zone within each need that affects your own personality, and at different times in your life you may feel under-stimulated or overstimulated. The symptoms you experience when a need is out of balance may include feeling anxious, sad, angry, or shame.

Your task to help stay in a balanced zone in your relationship is to first define which needs are higher priorities, and then to learn more about your partner’s needs to see where you have similarities and differences. How you manage each other’s needs affects both your short and long-term marital satisfaction. When a need is consistently out of balance, you or your partner may feel persistent negative emotions, and may start to feel distant from each other. You may not realize that the level of distress in your love relationship may be coming from not getting your basic needs met, traits that stay relatively consistent throughout your life. You can help your relationship by learning more about these needs, and helping each other to maintain a balance in your lives, individually and as a couple.

Researchers have found that we are all pre-wired with these needs, regardless of our environment, as part of our evolutionary development. Specifically, the needs that affect you and your partner are:

1. Commander-in-Chief: responsible for coordinating functions of dominance, control, and power, especially when perceiving a threat or that you are being treated unfairly. When this need is optimized, you feel confident about the challenges in your life, and you ask for what you need. When your need is overstimulated, you may be full of anger or rage, acting aggressively; when under-stimulated, you may feel powerless and become overly passive.

2. Explorer: responsible for learning and the need for novelty and adventure in your life, you may feel most satisfied when traveling to a new destination, feeling a high sense of excitement and pleasure at discovering new things. When overstimulated, you may continue to pursue adventures, despite the consequences of being exhausted or depleted; when under-stimulated, you may feel a sense of boredom or restlessness that comes out as irritability or deflation.

3. Sensualist: responsible for sexual gratification and reproduction, producing sexual functions, erotic dreams and fantasies, sexual attraction and excitement, along with flirting, kissing, and more. In balance, the sensualist side of you feels energized and pleasurable; when overstimulated, your sexual side may lead to destructive behaviors, such as coercing others sexually, or taking sexual risks with strangers or through affairs; when under-stimulated, you may withdraw or avoid sexual contact with your partner, leading to loss and sadness.

4. Energy Czar: responsible for rest and care to maintain health. If you’re working too much without enough rest, the “energy czar” sends signals to your body to stop and rest. This need also ties in with physical aspects of food, water, and other physical needs related to your physical comfort and survival. When balanced, the energy czar helps you feel physically comfortable, allowing for optimal emotional well-being; when overstimulated, you may feel fatigued or anxious, or you may gain weight; when under-stimulated, you may experience significant health problems related to deficiencies in sleep, nutrition, exercise, and hydration, to name a few.

5. Jester: responsible for recreation, play, and diversions, this need includes entertainment, fantasies, jokes, and having fun. The jester helps you relax, and feel renewed, and is especially important in childhood. When in balance, your jester helps you feel both joy and content; when overstimulated, you may feel “wound up;” when under-stimulated, you may feel reserved, “dull,” lethargic, and sad.

6. Sentry: responsible for danger in your environment, the sentry is activated through anxiety and hypervigilance. When your sentry is well-balanced, you avoid danger, taking adequate precautions such as wearing a bike helmet or locking the door to your car; when overstimulated, the sentry floods your body with fear even when danger is not present, such as with phobias of flying or driving, or through anxiety disorders such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or Social Phobia; when under-stimulated, you may not be vigilant enough, such as thrill-seekers who seem to continually “cheat death,” until they don’t.

7. Nest-Builder: responsible for nurturing and bonding behaviors, typical of parent-child relationships and romantic love relationships, your nest-builder pushes you to make new friends, join groups, and hold your child when he or she is sad. When your nest-builder is well-balanced, you feel comfort and support in your life, and feel like you belong. This is your attachment circuit activated when you experience loss as well, including death, separations, or the loss of a friend. When your nest-builder is overstimulated, you struggle with maintaining your identity and subjugate your needs to others, hoping to get approval; even small separations can make you feel quiet anxious, and how you react to your fears can impact your marriage or love relationship. When under-stimulated, your nest-builder may influence you to feel lonely and isolated, bring up anxiety and sadness. Over time, if your nest-builder is consistently under-stimulated, you most likely experience bouts of depression and higher anxiety.

In marriage therapy, I help couples to identify the range of needs each partner has, helping them understand why certain activities or events may feel so important to both partners in different ways. Each partner pinpoints which needs feel well-balanced, overstimulated, and under- stimulated. As a therapeutic team, we then help each partner improve their connection through becoming more thoughtful of what matters to both themselves, and to each other, and develop a plan to help both partners get their needs met in a balanced way. Partners can see and understand how effectively managing each partner’s needs helps lead to more satisfaction over the long-haul in a marriage or love relationship.

Seeing danger signs in your marriage

Travis Atkinson — Mon, 01 May 2017 19:22:32 +0000

When a couple is stuck in a negative pattern, even the slightest action can turn into an explosive eruption. For most couples who come for marriage therapy, they realize that they are not able to get out of it on their own. This acceptance is a first step to identify the problem behind the pattern, and then develop a plan for change that involves creating a new way to connect with each other.

Patterns in marriages are similar

The ingredients of a conflict are mostly similar with most couples in a negative pattern. In most cases, one partner criticizes or blames, and another defends or withdraws. For some couples both partners go into an attack mode, with one or both eventually retreating. In the worst cases, both partners stop attacking, but in a withdrawal state, the relationship is on life support.

In effective marriage therapy, we help couples stop the damage, reverse it, and build a new pattern. Ultimately, we want both partners to learn how to manage conflict effectively. The more intimate you are with your mate, the more likely you are to have conflicts—but the conflicts don’t spiral out of control. Instead, both partners see them as opportunities for growth. You can learn more about yourself, and about your spouse, during and after a conflict, if you both know how to navigate the fight.

Communication skills can help

I work to help couples learn how to address each other better, and how to respond to needs that are often under the surface. While it is true that criticism and contempt don’t work in a relationship, a couple needs help to get out of that negative pattern, and telling them not to follow the same pattern is not enough. I help partners manage their conflict more effectively, in realistic and practical ways. Couples need to learn more than conflict management skills, but some skills are useful.

For instance, instead of criticism, masters of relationships start their conversation with a complaint. “I’m getting overwhelmed because the garbage is piling up” is a lot easier to hear than the critical counterpart of “Why can’t you even take the garbage out!” The more inviting start of the conversation could be followed by invitation that lets a partner know how much he or she is valued, basically communicating how the spouse can be a superhero. “If you could take the garbage out, you would really help relieve the stress that I’m in right now.”

Seeing the warning signs that can doom marriages

A pattern of criticism and contempt signal major warning signs in a love relationship, and should be addressed before a couple spirals into negativity. We have more warning signs to be aware of, including defensiveness and “stonewalling,” when a partner ignores and tunes out the other. These patterns combined, without an effective intervention, lead to separation or divorce in over 90% of couples, as John Gottman found in his research with thousands of couples. Considering how high the damage can be, if you and your partner can’t get out of your negative pattern, effective marriage therapy can turn the tide, even for relationships in severe distress. So often couples feel overwhelmed with hurt and pain, and don’t realize how quickly these patterns can change when both partners are motivated to make their relationship better.

Are you in a politically discordant marriage or love relationship?

Travis Atkinson — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 19:27:03 +0000

Can an election, or a political party division, lead to divorce or separation? Do partners or spouses need to both be Democrat, Republican, or Independent for a marriage to survive? Marriage and relationship research tells us that while partners who belong to the same affiliation are more likely to match, once they are in a relationship, political differences themselves don’t have to derail a marriage.

A love relationship breaks down over many factors, but they are quantifiable and predictable. When a couple enters a relationship, often the chemistry that attracts them can paint the partner in the most positive light, and blind them to negative aspects. For instance, one partner’s “lack of expression” in the beginning of the relationship is experienced as calming. As the relationship continues, the spell can turn to a surprising awakening that the partner is “cold” and dismissive.

The dynamic in the relationship shifts from romantic notions of connection to feelings of loneliness. The couple is headed toward a negative sentiment override, John Gottman’s term for a couple seeing more negative than positive aspects in their partner. With this shift, suddenly the support for Clinton or Trump from one partner becomes an elephant in the room, yet another reason the other partner is viewed as “selfish” or “too sensitive.”

When a couple enters negative sentiment override, the choice of a political candidate isn’t the real issue that is harming the marriage. A couple needs an effective intervention to help them regain mostly positive feelings toward each other. A healthy dynamic includes a couple being able to discuss and honor the similarities and differences of each other. This does not mean necessarily agreeing with your spouse, but you can see where he or she is coming from, and understand why he or she believes what he or she does.

Whatever the outcome of the elections next Tuesday, a marriage does not have to be threatened by differences. Can you understand your partner, and appreciate his or her perspective? Perhaps creating a “we” in a relationship means appreciating and making space for two “I’s.”

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What are your relationship deal breakers?

Travis Atkinson — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 20:21:34 +0000

Did your man or woman pass your love test?

When you met your partner or spouse, did he or she pass your "deal breakers" test? If you are like many couples, the chemistry that drew you to your partner may have been nature's way of cementing the bond between you, and many of the items on your "deal breakers" list may have been tossed to the side. Perhaps the next question may be, how much do "deal breakers" matter down the road, and if the person you fell in love with passed your test without any deal breakers on your list appearing, are you more likely to stay together over the long haul, happily?

Elizabeth Bernstein writes in the November 2, 2015 Wall Street Journal that partners in love relationships focus more on the negative qualities of a partner than positive attributes when considering a deepening of commitment. The potential for risk can outweigh the potential for rewards. Studies published in October of this year show that women have more deal breakers than men, perhaps related to evolutionary factors influencing the survival of raising a child. Participants in the study with higher self-esteems were much more choosy than those with lower self-esteems, having more items on their deal breaker list.

Both men and women in the studies scored a potential mate being "unclean" as a deal breaker, followed by "lazy" and "too needy." Women ranked a partner not having a "sense of humor" as a breaker, perhaps because humor is associated with higher intelligence (men did not score this as a high factor). For men, "low sex drive" and "talking too much" were higher deal breakers (women rated "bad sex" as a breaker). For a long-term mate, the top deal breakers were "anger issues," "dating multiple partners," and "untrustworthy." Shorter-term relationship deal breakers topped off with "health issues--like STDs," "smells bad," and "poor hygiene."

Were you too picky? Or not picky enough?

Was your list overly picky, or not picky enough? The studies show patterns in mate selection, but may have a more difficult time reading in-between the lines to explain the patterns. My observations as a marriage and couples therapist in New York using the Loving at Your Best plan are that partners usually have high sexual chemistry when they meet, and emotional chemistry builds over time. Initial deal breakers that stop the possibility of a relationship from forming are usually apparent from the start: desire for children, religious or political affiliations, smoking habits, financial and social status, and pet preferences, to name a few filters.

However, the factors that matters the most related to long-term happiness in a marriage or love relationship doesn't include any of the qualities mentioned so far on the "deal breaker" list. The key element for a couple's happiness boils down to two words: emotional responsiveness. This may seem simple, but a lot goes into whether a mate can turn to his or her partner and share even the most vulnerable parts of him or herself, and trust that his or her partner will respond in a way that can help him or her feel better. I have seen many couples where one partner started couples therapy determined not to have a child. After some hard work in the relationship, the couple is able to frame the real block as a matter of trust: can I trust you to still be there for me, that I won't get lost in your eyes if we bring a child into this world together? Usually key relationship experiences in this person's background give them every reason to be wary of having children, and once those reasons are understood and validated, an opening can occur to help the couple identify what is needed to take a leap together.

What are key questions we ask in love relationships?

Reading between the lines of the long-term relationship deal breakers, they all involve key questions we all ask in love relationships: can I count on you to be there for me when I really need you? Can I trust that I am in your mind, that you would not purposefully hurt me? The top deal breaker in the studies of "anger issues" usually is related to how a partner manages his or her emotions in the love relationship, and how the other partner responds to him or her. What some on the outside see as purely an "anger management" issue usually reflects more on a disconnection occurring between the partners that leads to protests in the form of anger: what does it take to get through to him or her? This is a breakdown in the couple's connection. "Dating multiple partners" and "untrustworthiness" are probably related to the same issue of mistrust. A lot of factors influence infidelity, though for most caught in its painful web, a couple has experienced a series of disappointments or even emotional betrayals, and a partner chooses to cope with the hurt by seeking validation or support outside the primary relationship. Certainly there are times when this is not the case, such as a partner who comes into the relationship with a sexual addiction, or a person who is challenged by limits and feels entitled to act however he or she chooses to, though these are the rare cases that I have seen.

What initially drew you to your partner can develop into an allergic reaction

Couples also often identify that the qualities that initially drew them to their mate can become the things that drive wedges between the two in a marriage or love relationship. For instance, Jan claims that Chris's calm demeanor was very attractive, instilling a sense of safety that felt like a reprieve from Jan's childhood growing up with an alcoholic parent. However, as time and experiences showed, this "calmness' that Chris showed became a way to dismiss emotions, and brought out anger and resentment in Jan. The root problem was how the couple connected, not an inherent flaw in Chris. Fortunately, the couple was able to identify the problem, and make strides so that Jan could feel that Chris was safe to go to when feeling vulnerable, and Chris could feel confident to know how to respond in a way that helped Jan feel better.

The studies also show the notion of a couple magically being sexually connected. We have all seen this in Hollywood movies, and plenty of couples have not recovered from sexual challenges that involve deep emotional themes. Satisfying sex in a marriage or love relationship over time requires the safety to communicate wants, needs, desires, and fears. When the safety is lacking, one or both partners start to withdraw, avoiding sex and intimacy, or becomes overly demanding, which ends up pushing the other partner away. Sex and intimacy that is satisfying and fulfilling in a love relationship requires a safe connection between both partners.

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Are you in an unpredictable marriage?

Travis Atkinson — Fri, 30 Oct 2015 21:00:30 +0000

Can you count on your partner?

The cost of being in a marriage or love relationship when you do not know whether you can count on your partner or spouse may surprise you. Tara Parker-Pope writes in the October 26, 2015 issue of the New York Times about new research from Brigham Young University showing that relationships where one or both partners can’t count on his or her spouse for love and support affect that partner’s health negatively (NYTimes). This is not a surprising finding in my twenty years of experience working with couples as a marriage therapist in New York City. The body can easily be flooded with adrenaline during a conflict, especially when high levels of anxiety are present. When partners are distressed, anxiety can take over every element of the dynamic. Research shows that after two minutes of adrenaline being pumped into the nervous system, cortisol is released, a damaging hormone that lowers the immune system. Distressed partners have a lot of cortisol releases, and a lowered immune system takes a toll on overall physical health.

Some key findings from marriage and couples researchers include:

Harsh startups almost never end well: 96 percent of the time the outcome of a conversation can be predicted by the first three minutes of a 15 minute conversation
When all four ingredients of criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling are present in a relationship, the chances of the marriage or love relationship ending increase to 94%, unless there is an active intervention to change the dynamic
Criticism boils down to: what is wrong with you?
Defensiveness sends a message to a partner that “the problem isn’t me, it’s you”
Contempt is feeling disgust toward a partner or spouse: it is the result of a repeated pattern of negativity in a relationship. The recipient of contempt in a relationship is physically ill 33% more than a partner in a healthy relationship
Stonewalling involves tuning a partner out, emotionally. The partner often sees this pattern as a way to stave off the worst affects of a conflict, without realizing how stonewalling escalates most fights—until both partners enter this stage, usually when a relationship is hanging by a thread)

A Happy Heart: Calming Effects

Additional research backs up the findings from the Brigham Young University study, including observations of couples having a conflict showing that marital fights lacking warmth or including a controlling tone were as predictive as smoking or high cholesterol for poor heart health. A University of Virgina study by James A. Coan showed that couples in satisfying relationships had a calming effect on the brain similar to pain-relieving drugs, while couples in distressed relationships did not show the same calming benefit. In some ways, being sometimes supportive and sometimes not is more difficult for our brains to accept than knowing the response won’t happen.

Problems in a Marriage Can Become Intractable

Get help before the problem becomes intractable

As the lead researcher in the University of Virgina study, James Coan, suggested, even couples in distressed relationships could seek counseling before the problems in the relationship became intractable. This is echoed by John Gottman’s findings, warning that the average couple enters marriage or couples therapy after a disconnection has become nearly insurmountable. Yet, dramatic change in love relationships can happen, and often relatively quickly, when both partners are motivated to make their relationship better. As long as one or both partners have not “checked out” of the relationship, couples can shift from distress to happiness in a relatively short time period.

A Clear Path to Positive Predictability in a Marriage

From my experiences with couples seeking marital therapy, they have gotten stuck in patterns that are all too familiar in their life histories, and just need to first understand how they got into the pain, and find a way out through experiencing each other differently, repeatedly. This is the dynamic couples focus on in therapy: understanding negative patterns, and creating new ways of connecting that can be healing and securing. Although painful at times, the reward of couples therapy can far outweigh the discomfort when often years of hurtful experiences get supplanted by positive responses in a marriage or love relationship--changes that help both partners feel the other is predictable in a positive way.

Are you in an ambivalent relationship? Take the online quiz: AMBIVALENT?

Sources: the New York Times, October 26, 2015, and The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman (Harmony, 2015).

What happy couples know

Travis Atkinson — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 14:04:04 +0000

Happy couples know the details of each other's lives

Do you know the intimate details of your partner's life? Do you know what he or she likes and dislikes, and what makes him or her happy and sad? What are his or her favorite movies, music, television programs, books, and activities? What about his or her work life: do you know about his or her coworkers and the name of his or her boss? If you know the answers to these questions accurately, you have made space for your partner in your life, and your marriage or love relationship is most likely in a good place.

The small things in your daily life are where you will notice your partner. For instance, when you're at a restaurant and the waiter asks what your partner wants, you have a good chance of being able to answer his or her top choices on the menu. You're more likely to record his or her favorite program on the DVR because you know he or she would enjoy watching it together. You have a connection when you know each other's goals in life, what you're both afraid of, and what you're both striving to achieve.

If you don't know the answers to these questions, what state is your marriage or love relationship in? Most likely, you're feeling distant from each other. Your love may not be as strong as it once was. Perhaps an injury has occurred that stopped you from making the effort to update your partner's likes and dislikes. Maybe you tried to be there for your partner, but suddenly realized that he or she wasn't there for you.

Do you have "Date Night" with your partner or spouse every week?

Knowing the intimate details about each other's lives is a sign of a strong, healthy bond in a marriage or love relationship, and it helps you cope much more effectively with the predictable and unpredictable stressors in life that we all face. But the couples who are healthy and happy together weren't born with a supernatural gift for being in relationships. Most likely, the purposely are doing things that unhealthy couples either stop doing, or never got into a habit of doing from the beginning.

Healthy couples make it a habit to talk about their deepest hopes, desires, and fears. Regardless of how busy they are in their lives, they take the time to make each other a priority. At least once a week, they go out for "date night," and instead of sitting at a restaurant across from each other in silence, they're engaging with each other and sharing each other's lives together. The more you know and understand about your partner or spouse, the more likely your marriage or love relationship will stay on track and will grow even stronger. It isn't enough just to know each other. You need to use what you know about your partner or spouse to help build your love for each other to help make each other's dreams become realities.

Share Your Experiences

Do you have a pattern as a couple that helps you stay close and up-to-date on each other's lives? Do you sometimes feel lonely, like your partner doesn't really care about what is happening in your day-to-day life? Share what works and what is hard in your relationship. If you found this message helpful, share it with a friend or family member by clicking the share button below.

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Have You Fallen Madly In Love?

Travis Atkinson — Mon, 15 Sep 2014 19:09:10 +0000

Doesn't everyone want to fall madly in love?

Do you try intensely to keep intimate, meaningful, and deep connections with a partner or spouse in your love relationships? Falling madly in love is part of a fantasy many people have to find their true "soul mate." If you relate to this drive, you probably do all that you can to keep the other person in your life, and to feel as close as possible to him or her. Most likely, if you focus strongly on having a deep connection with your mate, you also are relatively good at reading other people's emotions and empathizing with their plights.

While some people may enjoy going out on a date with a partner along with a group of friends, if you focus on connection, you probably would rather have deeper experiences that inspire more intimate conversations to get to know your date. Your focus is more likely to build a deeper bond with the man or woman you desire.

Trying to get to know another person intimately also involves risk. You may open yourself up to being vulnerable faster than other people, and then get hurt if your attempts to reach out are not responded to. Helping build a stronger buffer for hurt and rejection can help you to continue along your path of finding your true love, and help keep your relationship strong.

The Negotiator Trait in a Love Relationship: Who Matches Best?

In her book "Why Him? Why Her?" Helen Fisher, a key creator of chemistry.com, calls this type of personality style a "negotiator," meaning a partner who seeks a long-term commitment and marriage more than most other personality types. Feelings are held supreme, along with a person's thoughts and motives. Of the four personality types Fisher describes, negotiators are the most romantic, and fall in love much more than the other three personality types she describes. A romantic evening and weekend may be at the top of your list of plans, along with expressing love verbally and physically.

Are some personality types better suited in marriages and love relationships than others?

Sex is a key part of strengthening the bond of a relationship, and for people who most fit this style, casual sex most likely feels empty and meaningless. Fantasy can easily take over, however, and reality may not quiet meet the expecations of your dream. For you, sex is most likely a point of discussion, since a good sex life is linked to a healthy, loving relationship.

If you identify with this personality trait, you place a priority on connecting with your partner, but this isn't necessarily expressed through clingy behavior or becoming demanding. Instead, if you aren't getting your needs met, you most likely start to feel like you're carrying a weight on your shoulders, and feel that you need to break free of what may start to feel less like a soulmate and more like a source of deprivation. Nothing less than unconditional love is expected, and loneliness with a partner or spoues who doesn't know how to love can amplify your unhappiness. A drawback of this personality trait may be that you stay far too long with a partner or spouse who is not a good match for you.

Are You and Your Partner or Spouse a Good Match?

How do you know if your partner or spouse is a good match? Helen Fisher describes four personality traits, but she is not a marriage or couples therapist, and does not offer remedies for partners who have different traits to make a relationship work successfully. Fisher claims that negotiators are not usually strongly attracted to other negotiators. If they are, both partners may share many traits that work smoothly together, and may also experience challenging matches, not being able to make up their minds when a decision is necessary, or giving each other little space to develop individually.

Do You Relate to this Personality Type in Your Marriage or Love Relationship?

Is this a series of traits that you relate to? If so, have you found it easier or more difficult to relate to certain types of partners? A key philosophy at the Loving at Your Best Plan is that personality traits do not have to determine the success of a marriage or love relationship. Even people with extremely similar interests, values, and styles can have a terrible relationship, and mates with almost nothing in common who share the most important thing in common, each other, can have fantastically happy marriages and love relationships.

Reference: "Why Him? Why Her?" by Helen Fisher, Henry Hold and Company, 2009.

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Does Your History Matter?

Travis Atkinson — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 19:58:55 +0000

What lessons did you learn from your family about emotions? Your caregivers communicated a belief about emotions, whether you realized it or not, that probably affects you today in your marriage or love relationship. How has this emotional philosophy affected you when you've experienced key moments of vulnerability in your life?

How your family and caregivers dealt with emotions can have a significant impact on how you connect with other people in your life today. Your awareness of what you're feeling, your ability to express your emotions, and how you reach out to others for connection all are influenced by your earlier experiences. At the same time, your awareness of what your partner or spouse is feeling, and how you respond to his or her needs are equally influenced by your earlier experiences.

Why Does Your Emotional History Matter So Much?

One of the strongest contributors to how you'll connect with your partner or spouse is your emotional experience, and this helps shape your ability to connect in your closest relationships, unless you're able to realize how the past may be interfering with your present situation. We all respond to situations in different ways, and one of the strongest influences on how we react is our family history.

Why Not Just Forget About Your Past? If you work on understanding it, won't you just get stuck in it?

Exploring your family history isn't always easy. Why not just forget about the past? In reality, our brain never forgets our experiences, and when those situations haven't been put together in a way that helps us make sense of our lives, we're open to being subjected to the past overwhelming us and being imprisoned by our past instead of responding in the present with a reaction that best fits the now.

For example, when you meet someone for the first time, he or she may remind your of someone significant in your life, like a sibling, a past lover, or a past friend. These associations can have positive or negative assumptions to them that may not fit the actual person in front of you now, yet you may immediately start to treat him or her like the person your brain is associating him or her with. We can see how this could lead to some bad scenarios.

You can work to become more aware of these associations in your life, when you're having an "outsized" reaction to someone or something that doesn't seem to fit what is in front of you. Journal writing is one key way that can help you determine the difference between the past and now. Writing a description of how you are experiencing the person or the situation can often give you insight into what may be reminding you of the past situation, and even more importantly, what is different about then and now.

We use many tools at the Loving at Your Best Plan to help couples work detangle past experiences without becoming mired in or overwhelmed by the past. You can contact one of our therapists and meet with him or her to help uncover what may be holding you back from getting the love that you really need and deserve in your life.

Share Your Experiences

Have an experience when a past event shaped your response to the present? Share your experiences to help others relate to them. If you liked this article, feel free to forward it to a friend or loved one.

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What Helps You Deal With Stress?

Travis Atkinson — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 13:58:48 +0000

Can you turn to your partner when you are feeling sad, anxious, or bad? Your answer matters.

Hint: He or She Probably Sleeps Next to You Each Night

When you feel safe with your partner or spouse in your marriage or love relationship, your ability to cope with challenging situations is significantly strengthened. Despite many dangers in the world, with the support of the man or woman you love, your sense of security can be solid. John Bowlby, the father of attachment theory, described how necessary it is for humans to have a connection that provides a “safe haven” and a “secure base” to explore and learn about the world. Even when facing extreme stressors and traumatic situations, having the support of your loved one helps you to weather the storms. Without that security from a loved one, you may feel isolated and alone, leaving you more vulnerable to threats in the world. Confidence in yourself can decline, and your connections with other people may be hindered.

How Do You Manage Your Feelings?

What are the patterns you’ve established to connect with the people you love most in your life? How do you manage your feelings, and how do you respond to your partner or spouse when he or she has intense emotions? Attachment theory identifies specific patterns we have that either strengthen or weaken our closest relationships, and how we experience the ups and downs in life. If you don’t have a close person to turn to in times of stress, you’re much more likely to suppress your emotions and feel isolated. As a child, if your caregiver easily got overwhelmed by his or her own emotions, most likely you’ll do the same in your adult romantic relationships. Both of these patterns leave you more vulnerable to the harms of trauma that can occur in life.

What Are Relationship Traumas?

Traumas may include physical separation, alienation and loss of key connections in your life. They may also include a singular trauma that can occur in war, or through physical or sexual abuse. Survivors of childhood sexual, physical, or severe emotional abuse are often identified as having borderline personality disorder (BPD) symptoms. The prognosis of BPD can be significantly influenced by a love relationship’s security, or lack thereof.

A safe connection in our romantic lives protects us, while an insecure connection leaves us open to the painful after-effects of trauma. Even worse, if your trauma was caused by a caregiver you counted on to help you survive in the past, your symptoms in the present may be intensified and can hinder your ability to connect in your adult romantic relationships in three key areas:

Creating and growing secure connections
Managing your own emotions when faced with situations associated with your trauma
Responding effectively to your partner or spouse when he or she needs your support

Want to Succeed in Your Love Relationship? Key Points to Remember

Connection is a motivating force that drives us to seek and maintain contact with key people in our lives. We are all emotionally dependent on key caregivers in our lives. The key question: is your dependency on your loved one secure or insecure?
A secure connection with a caregiver helps you feel more confident in yourself. Rather than being enmeshed, a secure connection means being integrated—appreciating both your connection and the differences within your relationship.
Contact with key caregivers helps you survive the challenges in your life. You feel strengthened to face stressors in your life when you know your partner or spouse has your back.
A secure connection provides a “secure base” to explore your world and adapt to different situations. You feel confident to face risks, to learn, and continually navigate the world around you.
Being available to your partner and responding when you need each other builds security. Emotional engagement with each other is vital to sustain a love relationship. Any response, even anger, feels better to your central nervous system than no response.
Uncertainty in your love relationship activates your connection needs. You seek closeness to the one you love when you are threatened, and are most in need of your partner's response in those key moments. You need proximity with your partner to help you manage your emotions, especially during times of vulnerability.
Distress when separated from your partner or spouse is predictable. If your partner isn’t responding to you when you need him or her, you’ll likely protest this void by getting angry, clinging to him or her, or getting depressed and withdrawing. A natural response to loosing a connection with your loved one is to get depressed.
Patterns of connection in a love relationship are limited, and can be identified. When your needs for connection aren’t being met, you’ll either protest through anger or detach and withdraw from your loved one. Your built-in attachment circuit in your central nervous system gets set off when you feel a lack of connection, driving your response to aggressively reconnect, or to suppress your need and focus on tasks instead of the connection. The two patterns can easily become habits. A secure connection involves a partner calming distress when separation occurs, and then reaching out for reassuring contact when your partner returns. An anxious connection occurs when you experience extreme distress when you separate from your partner, and lash out upon his or her return. A partner’s attempts to soothe you often don’t make a difference. If you tend to withdraw when your connection needs arise, most likely you experience physiological distress but show little emotion when you separate or reunite from your partner. Instead, you focus on behaviors or activities. Both anger and withdrawing are self-maintaining patterns attempting to manage emotions. The patterns often reinforce each other.
How you connect with your loved one shapes how you view yourself and close relationships. Strategies to connect show how you deal with emotions, both your own and the emotions of your partner. When you have a secure connection with your partner, you're more likely to feel worthy of his or her love and care, and to feel good about yourself. A secure connection is related to feeling secure about yourself: you believe significant others will respond to you when you need them, and you feel that your partner is dependable and trustworthy. This model of connection becomes a healthy schema, a core belief you have that biases how you see yourself, relationships, and the world.
When you feel isolated and experience loss of a connection, your attachment circuit experiences trauma. We know why deprivation, loss, rejection, and abandonment by your partner have such intense effects on you. This loss impacts every area of your life, and makes dealing with overall stress in your life more difficult. If you’re in a relationship with a partner you feel you can’t count on, you probably use words to describe your relationship that are framed in life or death terms.

If you’re a survivor of past violations of connection from key caregivers in your life, you most likely have even more intense fears involving symptoms of depression and hyper-vigilance with separations. For instance, with a history of childhood sexual abuse, trusting your adult partner to be a source of safety and comfort can feel impossible, and how you react when your attachment circuit gets activated to your partner may actually make it less likely that you’ll get a response that you need to feel better.

In a Marriage or Love Relationship, Patterns Can Change

Patterns of connection are not set in stone—they can be flexible and change when repeatedly exposed to responses that are healing. A survivor of trauma from the past may have a hard time reaching out for a partner’s help during a flashback, but when his or her partner manages to respond with care, new ways of engaging can emerge in the relationship. This is not an easy experience, and requires managing intense emotions, but it is possible, and most importantly, can lead to dramatic changes.

How you reach for each other, and how you respond to each other are skills--they can change, with practice.

How you relate to each other in your marriage or love relationship is not pathological, but stems from adaptive strategies to get your needs met. For instance, numbing yourself to minimize your needs for connection can help if you’re faced with a volatile and abusive partner, protecting you from the pain of rejection. This numbing strategy can help maintain the proximity of a less-than responsive caregiver. Over time, when these patterns become rigid and constricting, they pull for strong responses from your partner that reinforce your initial fears that you can't count on him or her for emotional support. Conversely, when a partner responds in a way that doesn’t fit your negative expectation, your brain has a hard time making sense of his or her positive responses, and often doesn't trust them. Repeated exposure to positive responses is necessary for the brain to change the expectation of your partner's response.

Marriage and Couples Counseling in NYC: It's How You Love That Counts

In your marriage or love relationship in NYC, if you've been stuck in negative patterns that don't get better, have you found ways to break through these impasses? The Loving at Your Best Plan offers top-rated methods to help break through even the most challenging couples dynamics. Combining schema therapy with emotionally focused couple therapy, Gottman Method Couple Therapy, and Mindsight provides couples hope to not only live happier together, but to heal individual wounds and injuries that may have been with you throughout your life.

References: Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy with Trauma Survivors: Strengthening Attachment Bonds by Susan M. Johnson; Schema Therapy: A Practitioner's Guide by Jeffrey E. Young, Janet S. Klosko and Marjorie E. Weishar

Still Hung Up On That? Why Our Mind Has a Hard Time Forgetting

Travis Atkinson — Wed, 20 Aug 2014 21:32:58 +0000

New York couples have been faced with extreme tests when emotional injuries may have occurred, including 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy

Have you felt an intense amount of pain from an event in your marriage or love relationship? An experience when one partner or spouse fails to respond at times of urgent need strongly influences the strength of the emotional bond between partners. Without an intervention, if one partner feels abandoned or betrayed, the fall-out from that experience can destroy a relationship.

Events that are still raw and bring up intense emotional reactions can overwhelm the injured partner. How the other partner responds to the injured partner can go a long way to either heal the injury, or to make it worse. If one partner withdraws from his or her partner at a key moment of need, and in the aftermath is unwilling to talk about the incident and address the injured partner's hurt or pain related to the event, the injury can easily overwhelm new, positive experiences together.

Negative events call for forgiveness, but forgiveness is not the grand prize. An injured partner's mind will not let go of the injury until he or she has the confidence that his or her partner would never abandon or betray him or her again.

What Counts as an Injury in a Relationship?

The subject of the injury matters far less than the meaning and significance of the event to the injured partner. An affair or infidelity by one partner is far from the only event that can lead to a relationship injury. An injury results from an experience when one partner is experiencing heightened levels of vulnerability and need, and is met with a response that is dismissive or absent from the other partner.

Why Does an Injury Hurt so Much?

Extreme levels of emotional harm in a relationship leads to isolation and separation between partners, and increases a sense of vulnerability. Even though relationship injuries may not have the same degree of effect as childhood traumas, they can cause damage to the relationship connection that may lead a couple to separate or divorce. Until the injury is healed, in times of stress, the relationship becomes a source of danger rather than a place a partner can turn to for safety and refuge.

If you and your partner are mostly doing well together, but have never recovered from the effects of a particular injury, you may notice that you continue to loop back into the injury automatically, or that a distance persists between the two of you that won't mend. Injuries cause intense emotional reactions that lead to constricted emotional responses and rigid patterns between partners. When the injured partner is reminded in some way of the injury, he or she either gets very angry, or withdraws intensely (this is not a passive withdrawal, but a very abrupt and "loud" reaction). The language of trauma is present in the relationship, as words convey life-or-death finality focused on abandonment, betrayal, and isolation. The injured partner takes a stance that he or she will never be in a vulnerable position with the other partner again. The reaction of the other partner is often intense anger or a strong withdrawal as well, reinforcing the pain of the injured partner. Without breaking this impasse, the couple is unlikely to create positive interactions and feel closer to each other, the way healthy, secure couples can.

For couples working with the Loving at Your Best Plan, a sequence develops that can cause pain at a certain point. The withdrawing partner becomes more emotionally engaged, and the more angry partner works to express his or her hurts and fears. He or she then slowly takes new risks with the other partner. During this stage, when a couple should be experiencing a renewed closeness together, the injury often flares up even more, and can be experienced by the injured partner similar to a traumatic flashback. Commonly, couples then argue about what happened during the injury, and how the event should be defined. A challenge for both partners is to express his or her vulnerabilities, and to engage with each other in a way that moves the event to become the top priority. If the couple doesn't do this, trust will most likely remain allusive, and the relationship usually remains in distress.

The Nightmare Scenario of a Relationship Injury

When one partner is in urgent need for support and caring that he or she expects from his or her partner, and the response from the partner is that he or she is inaccessible or unresponsive, a nightmare scenario occurs when the injured partner feels helpless and desperate. Trust in the partner can be wiped away, and the injured partner may plunge into emotional isolation. An injured partner's feelings of abandonment or betrayal are the key markers of an injury, not whether an outside person determines whether the actual event warrants the definition of an injury. Common events in the life cycle of a relationship are particularly ripe for injury, such as the birth of a child, physical illness, disorienting life transitions like retirement or immigration, and times of loss (miscarriage, death of a parent, child, loved one, or pet).

If a partner discounts, denies, or dismisses the injury, this response prevents healing of the injury in the relationship, and can make the injury worse. In Latin, trauma means "wound" or "injury" and stems from the Latin word injuria, meaning "to wrong." Not all painful events lead to a trauma, but if a partner is particularly sensitive to trust and abandonment themes from his or her past, he or she is much more likely to define events in the relationship as injurious. This sensitivity does not take away from the meaning of the trauma, or the impact it can have on the relationship.

New York Couples Have Faced Key Moments of Vulnerability

Partners usually expect their loved one to be attentive, responsive, and supportive, especially in times of crisis. In New York, traumatic experiences such as 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy may have been key tests of the strength of the marriage or love relationship. Vulnerability and comfort was essential during these events, and if a partner was unresponsive, the mind of the injured partner is unlikely to let that go and "move on." The sense of trust can be shattered in the relationship, and a sense of helplessness evolves, becoming the strongest feature of the injury.

How Do You Know When Your Relationship has an Unresolved Injury?

When a person is without physical or emotional support, and at their most vulnerable, he or she most likely has the most difficulty regulating emotions. Injured partners often exhibit symptoms similar to classic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), including re-experiencing the injury repeatedly, numbing out whenever reminded of the injury, and becoming hyper-vigilant when associating with the injury. Memories and emotions linked to the injury often pop-up in the form of dreams, flashbacks, and intrusive memories (ruminating about every detail of the event and the reason the injury occurred). An apology from the other partner is rarely enough for the injured partner to let the injury go.

What's Wrong with the Status Quo?

Is there a cost to an injured partner resorting to the self-protective responses of avoiding and numbing? Numbing stops emotional engagement and interferes with resolution of the injury. Intrusive images and hyper-arousal reinforce the belief that the partner is a source of pain and fear instead of safety and comfort. An injured partner usually swings between accusations and clinging behaviors toward the partner, and then numbing and withdrawing intensely from him or her. The pattern becomes chaotic and aversive to both partners. Even when the injured partner can elicit comfort from the other, he or she does not trust it. The pattern between partners perpetuates the distance and isolation between them.

Exaggerated sensitivities and hyper-arousal experienced by the injured partner are symptoms of impending dangers from the other partner. Commonly, the injured partner "tests" the other partner, who almost always fails the tests.

Share Your Experience

If you've been injured in your marriage or love relationship, what have you done that has helped? Share your experience to help others cope more effectively. If you found this post helpful, please share it on your favorite social network.

Reference: Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy with Trauma Survivors: Strengthening Attachment Bonds by Susan M. Johnson, PhD.

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Travis Atkinson, LCSW, is the Creator and Director of the Loving at Your Best Plan in New York City.

Is a Ghost from the Past Haunting Your Marriage or Love Relationship?

Travis Atkinson — Sat, 16 Aug 2014 21:07:29 +0000

Ghosts from the past can be unwelcome intruders in your marriage or love relationship

Are you or your partner or spouse experiencing symptoms in your marriage or love relationship that could be related to a history of trauma? A common dialogue between a couple where one partner has a history of trauma might go like this:

Chris: Don't you dare come up from behind me and grab me like that again! I can't stand that, and you did it anyway.

Pat: What? Are you serious? I just came up and gave you a love squeeze. Why are you freaking out so much? You're impossible. I don't want to be with someone who is so cold and frigid. Ice queen... that is who you are.

Trauma is like a ghost from the past, an unwelcome intruder that many times can be strongly affecting a relationship without either partner seeing it. With a keen awareness, you'll notice these ghots come up through specific symptoms that may include a partner or spouse re-living the past trauma without knowing the partner is going through a trance into the past, numbing and detaching after being exposed to the thing that reminds him or her of the trauma, avoiding situations that are somehow linked to the trauma (a common source of sexual problems in a marriage or love relationship), being hypervigilant around the cue of the trauma, and experiencing irritability when something is connecting with the trauma.

When a trauma survivor is able to turn to his or her partner or spouse and ask to be held and comforted during a flashback, rather that to detach or hurt himself or herself, a new trust and sense of hope can emerge for the survivor.

Traumas involving key caregivers are "violations of human connection" (Herman, 1992). More than anyone else, your partner or spouse has the ability to help you heal from past relationship traumas. A partner or spouse can have the most effective healing power over past traumas for the person who has experienced past relationship betrayals and abuse. Partners or spouses can become healers.

If you are in a safe and secure marriage or love relationship, your immune system is more likely to be functioning well, and your ability to cope during stressful life events is significantly increased. In a distressed marriage or love relationship, both partners in the couple likely experience more depression and anxiety symptoms. The sense of community usually decreases in a distressed relationship, so your body needs the help of your partner or spouse even more.

In a secure connection, you are able to face your fears and maintain a strength that helps you cope, regardless of the stress. If you feel isolated and alienated from the larger world, you are much more vulnerable to outside dangers.

When you or your partner or spouse have been subjected to physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, your health may be impacted in each of those areas. Re-experiencing physical sensations can be effectively treated through exposure therapy, known as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Relationship symptoms do not respond in the same way to CBT, but are much more likely to respond to relationship therapy when a partner or spouse can serve as a source of comfort and safety. It is a partner or spouse that lies next to the survivor of trauma in the middle of the night, a time when anxiety is often peaking, as memories are being processed in the mind. If a partner or spouse doesn't know how to respond in key moments when threat is perceived, he or she may become part of the problem instead of offering key elements of healing.

At the Loving at Your Best Plan, the therapist works to address the symptoms of the trauma, and much more. A focus is to help create a safe and secure emotional bond between the couple in the marriage or love relationship, a connection that promotes safety and calms danger and threat. A history of trauma intensifies the need for a safe connection, and trust is the basis for a secure relationship.

Relationships where one or both partners have trauma in their histories are more likely to have intense negative patterns of interacting with each other, and without an effective intervention, these patterns can kill the relationship. Therapists at the Loving at Your Best Plan integrate top-rated interventions for couples with difficult and challenging histories, especially trauma. These therapies include schema therapy, emotionally focused therapy, Interpersonal Neurobiology, and Gottman Method Couples Therapy.

Do you or the person that you love have a history that includes trauma on an emotional, physical, or sexual level? If so, have you found ways to effectively navigate the symptoms in your marriage or love relationship in NYC? Share your thoughts.

If you found this article interesting or helpful, kindly share it with a friend, or post it to your favorite social media source using the buttons included.

Source: Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy with Trauma Survivors: Strengthening Attachment Bonds by Sue Johnson, PhD.

The Loving at Your Best Plan: It's How You Love That Counts

Is Your Partner Shutting You Out? How Can You Draw Him or Her Back In?

Travis Atkinson — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 17:57:10 +0000

In your marriage or love relationship in NYC, do you sometimes feel like your partner or spouse is shutting you out ? Many times this is most apparent during or in the aftermath of a fight, when the shut down can be literal, which means, you’re shut out.

Do you or your partner sometimes have a hard time staying connected and close to each other? For instance, if you reach out to your partner when you’re feeling afraid or if you’re feeling down, does he or she comfort and soothe you, or does he or she try to quickly come up with possible solutions to your problem? Are you sometimes even told to “snap out of it?”

If you're experiencing moments of being shut out, you may be in a pattern of connection that scientists refer to as an “avoidant attachment” style. It’s important for me to note that by style, I don’t mean a personality trait; rather, it’s a way of coping in situations in a relationship and individually, especially related to emotions.

What Is Avoidant Attachment, and Why Does It Matter So Much?

If you or your partner commonly use an avoidant style, you most likely value independence above anything else in your marriage or love relationship. If you depend on other people, especially in an intimate love relationship, you will set yourself up for being extremely disappointed and hurt, since you believe that other people will just let you down. Even worse, depending on others, especially a romantic partner, can be a sign of weakness, and even pathetic. The avoidant stance leads to distance in a marriage or love relationship, and can eventually lead to disaster—the end of the relationship.

How Does an Avoidant Style Develop?

A key word for an avoidant style is dismissive. Most likely, when you grew up as a child, you experienced a lot of dismissiveness from key caregivers. All of us do what we know, so as a child, if you were often dismissed, you grow up doing the same thing to your partner or spouse when he or she is most vulnerable or in need of our love and support. Specifically, I’m referring to your internal world being dismissed, a world where emotions and meaning takes place, instead being replaced by a sole focus on your outside world. The message as a child is loud and clear for an avoidant style: focus on your behaviors and keep your head up. Showing emotions is a sign of weakness and embarrassment. Getting too close emotionally or physically is to be avoided, so a focus on achievements or accomplishments can often take the place of human connections.

As an adult, if you mostly cope with your emotions and your connections with others through an avoidant lens, you most likely prioritize “alone time,” so when you are upset, you soothe or stimulate yourself alone instead of reaching out to your partner or spouse for what you really need.

And what do you really need on the inside? To be seen, and to be responded to from a partner or spouse who can stay present with you: he or she is available in the moment. You need a partner or spouse who can attune to you, seeing or imagining what you are experiencing on the inside. You need a partner who can resonate with your feelings so he or she feels what you're feeling without getting overwhelmed by the emotions. When your partner is present with you, attunes to you, and resonates with you, you’ll develop a trust in him or her.

What are some common ways a partner who is cut off may be shutting you out? Simple things can happen, such as tuning you out, especially when you’re upset. If his or her way of avoiding is more developed, he or she may also fall into a common symptom of soothing oneself without actually addressing one’s feelings: the world of addictions. He or she tries to numb out upsetting emotions on the inside to feel better on the outside. The problem is, as humans, we don’t have the ability to actually shut down our feelings, we can only distract or numb an awareness of our feelings.

Can You Shut Off Your Emotions?

Recent studies of the mind show that when a person tries to shut down his or her feelings, usually by trying to think about other things, he or she actually shuts off an awareness of the emotions, but not the feelings themselves. What occurs in the body is that the emotions actually intensify, and since awareness has been shut off, there is no way to address the issue triggering the emotions in the first place.

How would you know if you’re doing this? One key indicator is to look at what happens in your body. If you experience body aches, back pain, tension, headaches, or other symptoms, you may be shutting off the awareness of your emotions without addressing your feelings. The emotions get stuck in your body, without a way to be released. So when someone says they want to grab a drink to blow off some steam, it’s not actually releasing the steam, but blocking a way to relieve the tension.

A Brilliant Way of Coping

Why would a child develop this way of coping? In reality, children are brilliant at adapting to their environment. They need to survive at all costs. The avoidant style develops from childhood as a brilliant method to cope with caregivers who are unavailable emotionally, and even neglectful. Children who do not receive emotional support, affection, and touch actually die in orphanages, even though they are being properly fed. What this means is that the child learns that he or she is not going to get emotional needs met, even if physical needs are fulfilled, so the child tries to “turn off” the need for emotional responsiveness. Even though this can’t be shut off, it can feel a lot better to have no expectations than to never get the emotional needs met.

Does Your Partner or Spouse Sometimes Forget You?

If you’re in a relationship with a partner with an avoidant style, you may wonder how he or she can forget you so easily—one moment it seems that you’re the center of his or her life, and the next thing you know, it may seem like you’re almost completely forgotten. In reality, it may actually be true that your partner or spouse did forget you, since inside he or she believes relationships with others aren’t truly necessary. Remember, this is not necessarily a belief he or she is aware of, but it is a believe the guides his or her reality, and actions are based on this filter.

Whenever you try to get back on his or her radar screen, the avoidantly connected partner or spouse may experience your attempt as very uncomfortable, sensing that you are intruding on his or her way of dealing with internal emotional states and his or her world. The response you get from trying to reach him or her is most likely an even more intense withdraw—he or she is perceiving your attempt to connect and get closer as a threat to autonomy—the sense of who he or she is. When any of us feel like we’re under attack, we’ll most likely respond intensely, which is why you probably experience your partner’s withdraw as so severe.

How a Fantasy Starts to Feel Like a Nightmare

Loneliness is a common complaint that couples experience when one partner shuts the other out

When you are first dating a partner, it may be easy for him or her to bring you into a fantasy world. As you're getting to know each other, he or she is most likely not making any associations between you and his or her significant caregivers, so most likely he or she is not aware of the threat you naturally present to his or her independence as his romantic partner. As time and experience continues in your relationship, the fears start to brew, and eventually can boil over.

Is his or her fear of fusing with you the only fear he or she has? Most likely, more fear exists: he or she is likely also afraid that the closer you get to him or her, the more you’ll be able to see him or her from the inside, with flaws. This second fear, that there is something wrong with him or her, is a fear of shame, of not being good enough, and can lead to even more withdraw.

How High is the Bar Set in Your Relationship?

The avoidantly connected partner usually relies on his or her own ways to calm or stimulate his or her feelings and emotions, though at times he or she may attempt to connect with you. However, the bar is often set extremely high in terms of his or her expectations for your response, and if you don’t cross that bar, he or she can easily return to a withdrawn, isolated space. Because the bar is raised so high and you can’t always cross it, he or she feels disappointed in you, and this reinforces his or her core fears, that he or she can’t really depend on someone to come through for him or her, and that he or she truly is an isolated “I.”

How “We” Feels Like a Threat to “I”

Where does your partner or spouse get stuck? Most likely, when he or she needs to shift from an “I” to a “we,” the fears of dependence can easily surface, and in an intense way. The urge to withdraw comes on strongly. It may be possible momentarily for him or her to shift into a “we” for a time, but then he or she easily and comfortably goes right back to a more isolated “I” state, and holds onto his or her “I” in a rigid stance out of fear.

How Can You Help Save Your Marriage or Love Relationship in NYC?

What can you do to help draw your partner out, even when he or she is strongly shut down? The first step is to practice modifying your voice and what you say to help him or her shift how he or she is experiencing your attempts to connect, helping him or her know that being a “we” doesn’t mean surrendering his or her “I.”

You can help your partner regulate his or her emotions by slowing approaching him or her, and syncing up with his or her cues to get closer one step at a time, instead of a giant leap at a time. With experience, he or she will learn that being closer can actually feel good, and over time, he or she will learn that he or she can count on you to be there with him or her, without overwhelming him or her with your own needs.

Your challenge as you reach out to him or her is to practice your own ways of slowing yourself down, what we call the 3-R’s of the Loving at Your Best Plan: to stop and regulate yourself, monitoring your body to see where you’re upset, and modifying your breath based on your need; the second R is to reflect on what is upsetting you: what makes sense about what you’re experiencing? Do you know where you’re feeling sensations in your body, can you then identify the emotional state inside based on the sensation? Is the situation that is upsetting you with your partner reminding you of something you’ve experienced in a past relationship? If so, how could that be influencing how you are seeing the present situation with your partner? Can you then understand and make sense of what is upsetting you? Once you’ve done this, you can do the third R, which is to identify the Response that you need. You can express what you’ve reflected on to your partner, and reach out to him or her to invite him or her to meet your need, specifically.

What can your partner do? He or she can become much more aware of how shutting down stems from fears that are most likely outdated, hindering the safety in an adult romantic relationship. The goals are to regulate his or her central nervous system enough to then “make sense” of the muscle memory responses that come with his or her physical and emotional approaches that romantic relationships offer.

Share Your Experiences in Your Marriage or Love Relationship in NYC

Do you relate to being in a marriage or love relationship with an avoidantly attached partner or spouse? Or are you the partner or spouse struggling to get out from behind the wall of avoidance? Share your experiences on our blog, and join the conversation in our Marriage and Couples Counseling and Therapy in NYC blog.

What are the 4 S's of a Healthy Marriage or Love Relationship?

Travis Atkinson — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 00:12:33 +0000

How Can Your Marriage or Love Relationship in NYC Improve?

Daniel Siegel's new book, Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain, is for more than just teenagers. In fact, understanding how the brain, the mind, and relationships interact can help everyone improve their marriage and love relationship.

Watch this broadcast the Daniel Siegel presented recently underlying the key concepts that Brainstorm outlines. Daniel Siegel is the creator of the practice of mindsight, the ability to see inside yourself, empathy for others, and the ability to integrate the two with compassion and kindness, honoring the other's vulnerability.

The teenage brain has a lot in common with the adult brain, and dramatic differences. How can a book about teenagers help adults in their marriage or love relationship?

To have a healthy relationship, you need the 4 S's of Attachment: To be Seen, to be Safe, to be Soothed, and to be Secure. The most important factor in your ability to have a healthy marriage or love relationship and also to be a healthy parent, is how you have made sense of what has happened in your life, not the actual events that you've experienced. How do you understand your story? If you've made sense of your experiences in a compassionate and loving way, you can then give the closest people in your life what they need. Can you be present with what happens in your every day life? If you've made sense of your story, you're much more likely to be able to stay in the present rather than getting carried off into the prison of your past.

Need Marriage or Couples Counseling in NYC?

For more information, contact us at the Loving at Your Best Plan at (212)725-7774 or email: lovingatyourbest@gmail.com We offer marriage and couples counseling, individual therapy, and group therapy in Midtown Manhattan.

Effective Conflict is the Booby Prize in a Marriage or Love Relationship

Travis Atkinson — Sun, 03 Nov 2013 21:54:35 +0000

How do you fight in your marriage or love relationship?

Fighting better is only the booby prize, from my experience with couples. As good as it feels to be able to engage in conflict effectively, it's not the grand prize for a marriage or love relationship.

Join me for the next Marriage and Couples in NYC Webinar: Thursday November 7th @ 8:30 p.m. "Conflict is the Booby Prize in a Marriage or Love Relationship"

I'll cover details about the grand prize for all couples: how each spouse or partner responds to each other, especially in times of need.

The webinar is complimentary, but you must register to receive the link to join in on Thursday. We never share your information with third parties, so be assured your privacy is a top priority.

You can join via smartphone, tablet, laptop, computer (for the ability to join the chat section and include comments or questions that you have anonymously), or via phone.

Marriage and Couples Counseling and Therapy in NYC Webinar: Thursday November 7th @ 8:30 p.m.

Register now by entering your information below:

Name First Name Last Name

Email Address Would you like to receive eTips? eTips is our Marriage and Love Relationship Newsletter from the Loving at Your Best Plan. Your personal information is never given to third parties, and you may easily unsubscribe at any time. 11.7.13 Couples Webinar: Conflict is the Booby Prize in a Marriage or Love Relationship What comments or questions do you have that you'd like addressed during the webinar? Feel free to also include them in the "chat" section during the webinar if more come to mind. Zip Code

Travis Atkinson invited you to a meeting through Fuze:
-----------------------------------------
Meeting Number: 22014451
Subject: Marriage & Couples Webinar 11.7.13: Effective Conflict is the Booby Prize
Date: 11/07/2013
Time: 08:30 PM US/Eastern
-----------------------------------------

Please follow the directions to download the app on your smartphone, tablet, laptop, or computer. Allow yourself at least 10 minutes to complete this process, though it will most likely take less than a minute. Your comments and questions are welcome, and your name will remain private.

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Thank you, and I look forward to your participation,

Travis Atkinson, LCSW

Director, the Loving at Your Best Plan

Travis Atkinson, LCSW

About Travis

A recent, independently verified client review about Travis and his work:

'Inspired'

"It is not possible to simply explain what Travis does...but, he is wise, kind, empathic, and inspired. He is a therapist like none other."

Travis Atkinson, LCSW, is an expert in the field of marriage and couples counseling and therapy, not just a therapist with a few weekend trainings about couples therapy. He is a pioneer in schema couples therapy, working with the creator of schema therapy, Jeffrey E. Young, PhD, since 1994. Travis also trained in the top-rated couples therapy approaches available throughout the world.

Travis has completed advanced trainings and has certificates in the following specialties:

*Advanced Certified Schema Therapist, Supervisor & Trainer

*Certified Emotionally Focused Therapist & Supervisor

*Certified Gottman Method Couples Therapist

*Certified Group Psychotherapist

*Advanced Practitioner of Mindsight

You can be assured Travis has the expertise to deal with your areas of challenge in your marriage or love relationship in NYC.

Is Your Love or Marriage Stuck in a Rut?

Travis Atkinson — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 20:36:46 +0000

When your marriage or love relationship is in a secure place, you’re able to pause and observe what is happening when you and your partner or spouse are getting stuck or starting to disconnect. You are able to regulate your emotions, and then reflect on what the conflict between the two of you means to you and to your partner or spouse. Once you understand the meaning, you can then focus on the response that you and your partner need, ask for that, and remain open to responding to what your partner or spouse needs.

How Do You Know When You're Headed for Potential Relationship Disaster?

"There's a reason you get stuck and start spinning with your partner or spouse"

If your marriage or love relationship is distressed, you most likely will have difficulty regulating your emotions, reflecting on the meaning for both of you, and knowing what response you both need to feel closer and understand each other better. When you’re out of sync with each other, you’ll likely get stuck acting and reacting in typical negative patterns of the “Demon Dialogues” described in Hold Me Tight by Sue Johnson. How you fight most likely fit into one of three fight patterns:

Attack/Defend: this is a tit-for-tat patterns, where one partner gets angry or agitated and attacks, and the other partner defends himself or herself. The more one partner attacks, the more the other partner defends, which usually just escalates further attack, followed by more defensiveness. This is the most common pattern in a distressed marriage or love relationship. Instead of the deeper emotions of anxiety, sadness, or shame being described, anger and withdraw patterns take over the couple.
Attack/Attack: both of you are on a battlefield, making the other partner the enemy. Anger is the emotion most present, while deeper emotions of sadness, anxiety, or shame stay under the surface, hidden behind the “protection” anger provides. You feel “on edge,” tense, and ready to go on the attack at any moment.
Withdraw/Withdraw: you and your partner likely were stuck in one of the two above patterns of attack/defend or attack/attack, and over time, both of you started to “give up” the fight and shifted into withdraw/withdraw. This pattern may also be present if both of you grew up in families where open, expressed conflict was avoided at all costs. As the withdraw/withdraw pattern continues, resentment and sadness most likely grow, and feelings of loneliness can damper your relationship. If you’ve shifted into a withdraw/withdraw pattern from another, this is the most dangerous pattern in a relationship because this pattern can shift from withdraw/withdraw to checked-out/checked-out, when a relationship is not salvageable.

Do you see your pattern in one of the three cycles described above? If so, there's a lot you and your partner or spouse can do to change it. Listen to one of our upcoming webinars, or give us a call to talk to us about more ways to address your own challenges in your marriage or love relationship. You can also read more in Sue Johnson's Hold Me Tight, based on Emotionally Focused Therapy, a top-rated couple therapy model with empirical evidence that helps more than 70% of couples improve their marriage or love relationship.

Share Your Experiences in Your Own Marriage or Love Relationship in NYC

Have you been stuck in a negative pattern and found a way to improve it with your partner or spouse? What has helped your marriage or love relationship in NYC? Share your experiences with us and help our community grow.

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Effective Conflict is the Booby Prize in a Marriage or Love Relationship

How do you fight in your marriage or love relationship?

Join me for the next Marriage and Couples in NYC Webinar: Thursday November 7th @ 8:30 p.m. "Conflict is the Booby Prize in a Marriage or Love Relationship"

Marriage and Couples Counseling and Therapy in NYC Webinar: Thursday November 7th @ 8:30 p.m.

Register now by entering your information below:

About Travis

A recent, independently verified client review about Travis and his work:

'Inspired'

"It is not possible to simply explain what Travis does...but, he is wise, kind, empathic, and inspired. He is a therapist like none other."

Is Your Love or Marriage Stuck in a Rut?

How Do You Know When You're Headed for Potential Relationship Disaster?