Tag Archives: Variety

The #1 Reason Marriages Fail

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And no, it’s NOT what you think!

Despite the fact that numerous couples interviewed after divorce cite things like ~

Incompatibility
Adultery
Boredom
Abuse
Marrying Young

(from Legal Zoom)

and despite the fact that numerous autopsy studies after a divorce cite things like ~

Getting in for the wrong reasons
Lack of individual identity
Becoming lost in the roles
Not having a shared vision of success
The intimacy disappears
Unmet expectations
Finances
Being out of touch … literally
Different priorities and interests
Inability to resolve conflicts

(thanks to Your Tango)

these remain symptoms of a much deeper problem, not the problem itself.

It’s as simple and as challenging as that!

Here’s why.

Core human needs will ultimately trump everything else.

What are core human needs?

I love using Tony Robbins’ list. It’s short, memorable and in alignment with Maslow – the “grandfather” of needs identification.

Below are some simple stories illustrating how these needs might be unmet in a relationship. I use the six terms Tony Robbins uses:

Certainty
Variety
Significance
Love and Connection
Growth
Contribution

I use actual examples from my clinical practice, with identifying names and circumstances changed, to build my case that it’s not the specific “crime” that brings the relationship down. It’s the inability of partners to negotiate, to advocate for their needs.

CERTAINTY / VARIETY

Max and Ira were international circus performers (yes – I meet fascinating clients!). They met when Ira was hired by the same prestigious group of performance artists and spent three years traveling the world with the group. They fell in love. They committed to one another and spent nearly every waking moment together for five years. Somewhere along the way, Max’s capacity for constant shift and adventure took a toll on another deeper need he felt for stability. For nesting. For settling down into a lifestyle he could count on. He wanted to be sure he’d know where he’d be 3, 6 18 months into the future. He wanted to put down roots. And he wanted Ira by his side.

Ira was still enchanted by the lifestyle that circus performing gave him; international travel, astonishing highs, a degree of fame. That almost lottery-ticket thrill of not knowing exactly what his apartment or city would look like 6, 9, 18 months out. He adored international vagabonding and performance art and he wanted Max by his side.

They knew other couples in their circus community who managed marriages and even families, but they could not negotiate a solution.

Max’s need for certainty, and Ira’s need for variety were, for these two, the stumbling blocks that ended their relationship.

As an interesting aside, the fastest growing segment of the population getting divorced is the over 50 set. It’s super high over 65. But, as Bridgid Schulte writes in The Washington Post “More than half of all gray divorces are to couples in first marriages. Indeed, 55 percent of gray divorces are between couples who’d been married for more than 20 years.”

Folks have been unable to negotiate sufficient variety in their lives or marriages… they’ve been drowning in their own long-outdated need for certainty!

SIGNIFICANCE

Oh, I could name scores of couples here where one partner was unable to communicate to their spouse / lover / former adored chosen-one how much they ached to be really seen. To be considered as relevant. As special. As worthy of time and attention.

But I’ll tell you the story of Cassandra and Rex. The classic beginning, they met in med school. Rex was a rare male going into Psychiatric nursing while Cassandra had a knack for surgery. They courted in the exhausting crucible of residency and first jobs and both were initially deeply supportive. They had a wide circle of friends, were generous and social, and married with a showy bash funded by Cassandra’s wealthy parents.

They came to me about seven years later. Their careers were flourishing. They were both superb at what they did, well paid, articulate, well-respected in their fields.

The core issue?

Underneath it all, Rex believed Cassandra did not value him, who he was, or his profession. He noticed how certain unkind comments slipped out at gatherings; how she said the word “nurse;” how she’d blow off commitments they had as couple with his friends, for non-emergency get-togethers with her friends (all surgeons).

The way Cassandra treated Rex fed into his own core insecurities. Rex had a core Part of himself who felt insignificant in his own eyes. This part needed Casandra to value him all the more. Meanwhile, Cassandra too had a powerfully insecure part cultivated in her high achieving family home. This part leveraged a sense of significance by looking down on Rex.

The way forward for them as a couple would have been for them each to meet and heal their core insecurities. They each needed to feel significant in their own eyes first. Absent that, their way of meeting their personal need for significance was coming at the expense of their partner.

But because they had spent so many years hiding from themselves, because the system they had evolved had Cassandra managing her insecurities by letting Rex see her as highly significant and Rex managing his insecurities by having Cassandra as his wife, they had caused one another too much pain and decided to divorce and move on.

CONNECTION AND LOVE

Because the need for love and connection is so central in relationships, it’s the inability of partners to negotiate this prime need that brings most couples in to see me.

Once that loving feeling has worn off, how do two people continue to express and receive love from one another?

We may have moved into the 21^st century, but Della and Rob’s situation is repeated with subtle variations in (dare I say this?) many couples in the USA?

Once the post-romantic-love high has worn off, couples settle into the business of living. Earning a buck. Making a home. Raising a family. Both Della and Rob love their work and in fact, increasingly, getting out the door in the morning to go to work is the highlight!

It’s on the home front that things are a battleground. Della has been totally unable to get Rob to see that “if he loves her” he will ~

Pick up his laundry
Fold the towels and put them away
Do the dinner dishes
Cook occasionally
Help her teach manners to their hyper-active toddler
Help her discipline their overly-sassy-pre-teen
Vacuum
Be OK with her time spent with girl friends on weekends

And Rob is increasingly loosing the battle to negotiate for the two things that spell love for him ~

Weekly sex
Weekend TV sports

As these individual but differing recipes-for-love go un-expressed and un-negotiated, they remain unmet. Each partner feels increasingly alone in the marriage, and they begin to drift apart. By the time Della and Rob came to see me they were ready to hit the “eject” button out of their marriage without having done the work necessary to prevent them from re-creating this same scenario again. The work? To figure out their core needs and learn how to negotiate for them fair and square.

For too many folks it seems easier to just start over with pockets full of hope than to do the important inner work that no one has taught them how to do anywhere along the way. (Yes, you hear my frustration with our educational system!)

GROWTH

Healthy couples allow space and room for each partner to grow. When one person wants to get a degree, start a business, travel the world, fly airplanes or learn Arabic and work with the International Rescue Committee – how they negotiate this expansion is key.

Both sides have work here – the one negotiating for the new thing will be wise to be mindful of their partner’s needs (maybe for certainty, maybe for significance after this new event) and the partner being invited to embrace these expanded horizons will need to manage their own fears and perhaps invite their own aspirations.

Elise and Frank came to see me on the brink of divorce, but are now in some solid negotiations with themselves and one another.

Elise has a promising break with her acting career which could take her to New York. Frank is heading for tenure at a good University in the mid-west. It’s a crux move in their marriage. Fortunately they are both willing to look inside themselves to see what triggers these two opportunities are igniting, and what needs these opportunities are meeting for each of them, and one another. Thus informed, their negotiations are grounded in self-awareness and understanding which is allowing them both to be creative, flexible and willing to do the work necessary to have a marriage in which growth is not only possible, but supported with enthusiasm.

CONTRIBUTION

Maybe with a twist of irony, think American Sniper here. For those who don’t know the story, here’s a summary lifted from the Amazon publicity spiel on the link above.

“From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy Seal Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history. His fellow American warriors, whom he protected with deadly precision from rooftops and stealth positions during the Iraq War, called him “The Legend”; meanwhile, the enemy feared him so much they named him al-Shaitan (“the devil”) and placed a bounty on his head. Kyle, who was tragically killed in 2013, writes honestly about the pain of war—including the deaths of two close SEAL teammates—and in moving first-person passages throughout, his wife, Taya, speaks openly about the strains of war on their family, as well as on Chris.”

Clearly it sounds as though this couple did a remarkable job of negotiating a way to allow Chris’s desire to contribute to his fellow Seals to continue as long as it did. And, it put enormous strains on their marriage and family.

Living with a “legend” isn’t always easy…

***********************************

So if – as I have come to believe after nearly 20 years of working with couples – the #1 reason marriages fail and relationships end is because one or both partners is unable to negotiate a way to meet their core human needs within the marriage, then these three things need to happen.

We need to understand more about our own needs

We need to spend time with ourselves and ask ~

What needs do I have?
How do I meet my own needs?
How do I choose which needs to meet if I have more than one and they seem to compete?
How do I negotiate my needs when I’m around others?

We need to understand more about our partner’s needs.

As we are getting to know a potential partner, we need to ask ~

What needs does my partner have?
How does my partner meet his/her own needs?
How does my partner choose which needs to meet if s/she has more than one and they seem to compete?
How does my partner negotiate his/her needs around others?

We need to understand how to negotiate our needs as a couple.

As we consider building a relationship together, we need to explore ~

What needs do we each have in this relationship?
How do we each advocate for our needs to be met?
What do we do when it seems as if our needs are in competition or mutually exclusive?
What does each of us do when we feel our needs are not being taken seriously by our partner?

STAY TUNED!

This is a huge topic and I’ll be exploring it for the next 3 posts.

FEATURED IMAGE

Thanks to the Your Tango article referenced in this piece.

FIRST TIME HERE?

This is the latest article in a year-long series on the “12-most-important-relationship-skills-no-one-ever-taught-me-in-school-but-I-sure-wish-they-had.”

Click the box for the full list. →

If you’re interested in reading this blog in sequence, below are links to the series to date, beginning with the first posting at the top.

OVERVIEW

SKILLS FOR UNDERSTANDING

SKILL ONE ~ Recognize (and get to know) the many “yous.”

SKILL TWO ~ Learn how to be pro-active: choose how y’all show up.

SKILL THREE ~ Accept (and get curious about) other peoples’ complexity

SKILLS FOR CONNECTING

SKILL FOUR ~ Master the Art of Conversation

SKILL FIVE ~ Learn How To Listen With Your Whole Self

SKILL SIX ~ Crack The Empathy Nut

SKILL SEVEN ~ Practice Kindness

SKILL EIGHT ~ Negotiate with a Win-Win Mentality

The #1 Reason Marriages Fail

Beyond Emotion Coaching-Listening For Your Child’s Needs

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Because children aren’t just small adults, listening to a child is a unique skill. Not knowing this can get parents and kids off to a rocky start.

In fact, very often when adults wonder why their child doesn’t listen to them, one explanation might be that the child is simply modeling the listening they’ve received. Oops!

← This is a terrifically helpful book on the subject of listening to your child, and it’s based on (to my mind) an even more wonderful book, Between Parent and Child, by Haim Ginott.

Both books speak to the importance of ~

listening for the emotions behind a child’s words or behaviors;
naming the emotions as your child experiences them;
listening empathically – which means avoiding the denying, minimizing, interrogating, pitying, defending the other person, advising, teaching, philosophizing and all the other things we do to manage our own discomfort when we are asked to simply be present to someone else.

Reading these books will help you become an emotion coach to your child, and studies show how emotion coaching helps cultivate emotionally intelligent kids. And, for success in life these days, EQ counts.

Here’s my favorite contemporary researcher talking about EQ. John Gottman writes:

Emotional intelligence means being able to read your own and other’s emotions, and being able to respond to the emotions of others in a cooperative, functional, and empathetic manner. Emotional intelligence is a kind of social “moxie” or “savvy” about even very complex social situations. It requires knowing who you are, knowing your own feelings, knowing your own needs, and being able to handle yourself and compromise these needs with the needs of sometimes very complex social situations. EQ (Emotional intelligence) is a much better predictor of how children will turn out than IQ or achievement test scores.

(For the whole article, click → EMOTIONALLY_INTELLIGENT_CHILDREN_Updated2 )

So its good stuff, right!

However, since great resources for emotion coaching already exist, and since I have experienced an even deeper level of listening – both as a child and a parent – I’m here with two questions to push a little deeper:

What is it that sets good-enough listening apart from great listening?
What does it take to go further than emotion-coaching your child?

Remember yourself as a kid?

Were there some adults with whom you could share your thoughts, feelings, hopes, fears, stories, and even your slip ups?

And others who could hardly drag a civil response from you?

What was it about the adults you talked to?

My guess is they checked some of these boxes for you.

When you were with them, you felt ~

safe but not smothered
exhilarated but not frightened
loved but not controlled
significant but not in a way that gave you false airs
capable but not burdened by expectations
inspired but not pressured

Sure these qualities speak to an emotional sensitivity on the part of the adult listener. But there’s more there, and cracking that nut will help you become not just a good enough listener, but a great listener. The sort of listener a child (whether a just-verbal toddler or an articulate teen) will joyfully and consistently turn to because~

not only do you listen
not only do you help the youngster understand him or herself more fully,
but your listening actually helps the child meet one or more of their deepest human needs.

I’m drawing upon Tony Robbin’s work on core human needs. Here are the six as he identifies them:

So – what does “beyond emotion-coaching” look like in the midst of real life?

Four-year old Ian comes running up to you from the sand box at the park where he’s been playing with some other kids using his shovel and pail. He is now empty-handed and screaming.

First – be his emotion coach. There are 3 steps.

1) Listen for the emotions behind a child’s words or behaviors;

Quietly assess what you see – a kid formerly engaged in sand play now running to you empty-handed and screaming … you can begin to guess what might haven gone down.

2) Name the emotion;

“Ian, looks to me like you’re super angry and maybe sad too?

3) Offer empathic listening.

“Tell me, what happened?”

Now you just listen. Pop him on your knee if you want, or crouch down and hold his hands. Look him in the eye and let him unburden all the yukky stuff he’s feeling. Probably some other kid took his things and he feels helpless, angry, frustrated, alone. Listen until you can see he feels fully heard. Keep helping him find names for his emotions, guiding as you go.

If, for example, Ian says “I hate that kid – he took my shovel” show him it’s OK for him to express his emotions to you, but notice the difference between parroting “You hate that kid”

and

“Right now you’re so mad at the kid who took your shovel you feel you hate him.”

See how the first example seems to set in stone that Ian hates the kid, whilst the second example places the emotion in the specific context of the situation so the person with the emotion can be seen to own the emotion – not the other way around!

The two books I recommend above have so much great information on how to listen in such a way that your child feels heard. This IS subtle work, but you can master this.

But now here comes the “beyond emotion-coaching” part.

Second, help him meet his deepest needs.

Knowing Ian as you do, what does Ian NEED right now?

And can you use your understanding of Ian’s needs – not just his developmental needs although those of course are in the mix, but his needs as a unique, particular human being – to help guide the next step?

Here’s the list of our core 6 human needs once more:

Certainty
Variety
Connection & Love
Significance
Contribution
Growth

So, back to little Ian who’s been able to share all his yukky feelings about the shovel and pail incident. Now what?

Does Ian need a bit more certainty, predictability and security?

Has Ian experienced a lot of change lately? Maybe a trip? New sibling? A move? A divorce?

Maybe what Ian needs now is for a solution that creates a bit more stability in his life? In the midst of uncertainty, a child needs certainty. This would not be the day to push him to share, or use his words to negotiate turn taking.

It might be a good day to find a place where Ian could count on having his shovel and pail to himself, with some calm and predictability.

Or, does Ian need a bit more variety, surprise and novelty?

Have things been in a bit of a rut for Ian? Does he play here a lot and often come to blows?

Maybe what Ian needs now is for a solution that opens up some exhilarating new ways for him to relate with this other kid, or with this predicament of his toys being taken without his permission? Or even with his response to the fact his toys get used by other kids?

It might be a good day to brainstorm with Ian to find all sorts of ways to respond to the situation. It might be great to get playful and fun and resourceful.

Or, does Ian need to feel more love and connection with you, or someone else in his life?

Have things been a bit rocky for Ian and his relationships? Has he been running to you screaming a lot and maybe you’re getting irritated and he feels this? Is grandma playing with his new baby sister and he’s feeling left-out and second best?

Maybe what Ian needs now is for a solution that builds connection and love.

It might be a good day to see if Ian would like to play with you a bit? Or it might be a good time for a huge hug and snuggle before he goes back to the sand box.

Or, does Ian need to experience himself as significant in your eyes? In his own eyes?

Has Ian been going through a bit of a regression developmentally so adults have been doing more for him and you sense he needs to reclaim his power a bit?

Maybe what Ian needs now is for a solution that offers him a chance to be brave and creative.

It might be a good day to remind Ian of some prior brave creative thing he did (or of a character in a story he admires) and see if he’d like to find a way to be that boy again in the sand box?

Or, does Ian need to contribute a bit today?

Have you noticed Ian trying to be helpful but not quite getting the thanks and recognition he might be craving? His attempts often fall short (since he’s only four!) but he’s often saying “I’m a big boy now!”

Maybe what Ian needs now is for a solution that offers him a chance to contribute? Maybe the solution involves thinking about how “big boys” might figure out what to do about two boys who want the same shovel and pail?

Or, is it time for Ian to be inspired to grow a little?

Does Ian have a pretty good life? Do things usually go well? Is he emotionally stable and loved? Could he handle a bit of a push?

Maybe what Ian needs now is for a solution that inspires in him an opportunity to grow into a bigger, kinder Ian. What might that look like? Could he lend his toys? Could he give them away?

* * * * * *

No matter the age of your child, this pattern of emotion coaching – followed by a deeply wise recognition of where the child’s needing-edge might be – will deliver to the two of you a connection built upon so much mutual trust, respect and delight that you will be, to your child, a uniquely satisfying resource. One he or she will turn to again, and again.

When s/he grows up, and someone asks , “Who could you turn to when you were young? Was there someone special whom you felt really heard you, really understood you?”

Your child will not hesitate, but will be able to turn with confidence and say

“Yes, absolutely. It was X. And do you know why? Well, when I was with them, I felt ~

safe but not smothered
exhilarated but not frightened
loved but not controlled
significant but not in a way that gave me false airs
capable but not burdened by expectations
inspired but not pressured

WOW ~ What a legacy!

FIRST TIME HERE?

This is the latest article in a year-long series on the “12-most-important-relationship-skills-no-one-ever-taught-me-in-school-but-I-sure-wish-they-had.”

Click the box for the full list. →