To Have and to Hold

Home > Other > To Have and to Hold > Page 17
To Have and to Hold Page 17

by Molly Millwood, PhD


  Earlier in the hour, Sam had spoken of his anger about his wife’s endless criticizing of him: “Nothing I do is good enough for her. I’m a good guy, but somehow I wake up every day feeling guilty. I hear Ivy’s voice in my head, telling me one more thing I need to do better or more or differently. I’m sick of it.”

  I listen to the story of how they got here. I listen as Ivy describes how overwhelmed she has felt since the twins were born, and I listen to Sam defend himself against the accusation—unspoken in this first session but apparently a recurring theme in their arguments—that Ivy would be less overwhelmed if he did more: “You act like it’s my fault that we had kids. We both wanted them, and you were the one who wanted to try for a daughter. I would’ve been fine with our two boys.” Sam’s words rile Ivy, who, I would later learn, privately wrestles with a sense of regret about having a third child. She loves their daughter profoundly, but she does not love who she has become now that she is the mother of three children. She is, she says, a shell of her former self. There is no time to attend to her own needs, let alone to nurture the marriage. “Our relationship has been on the back burner,” she says. “I keep telling myself that eventually I’ll find the energy and motivation to pay more attention to Sam, but it hasn’t happened. And I can’t help but feel that it would’ve happened by now if Sam had been willing to share more of the burden.” Ivy seems to move among feelings of guilt, sadness, and bitter resentment. She tearfully states, “I miss him, but I’m too tired at the end of the day to turn to him.” Minutes later I hear her say, “If he feels so ignored, then maybe he’s getting a taste of his own medicine. He has been ignoring my pleas for four years.” Sam wonders what pleas she could possibly be talking about. He has only heard barbs and insults and endless demands.

  With three children under the age of four, there was no doubt this couple was, as they say, in the weeds. Though they kissed each other hello and good-bye and said “I love you” every day, neither one could remember the last time they really looked at each other. At best, they were like ships passing in the night, crossing paths only briefly when he returned from work each evening a half hour before she left for her nursing shift at the hospital. At worst, they were embroiled in conflict, arguing about unwashed dishes and late arrivals and not enough sex. They wound up in my office after a particularly ugly fight, when Ivy told Sam she’d been happier while he was away on a business trip: “I was taking care of everything myself, like usual. Only I didn’t have to resent you for not helping, because you weren’t even here. It felt so good to be out from under all that anger.”

  Ivy and Sam portrayed so many of the dynamics typical of couples with small children. Though both partners worked full-time outside the home, there was no question—even in Sam’s mind—that Ivy took care of far more than 50 percent of the responsibilities on the home front. Their children figured prominently in her mind whether she was with them or not, while Sam acknowledged that when he was at work, he didn’t think much about the kids or what needed to be done around the house. Ivy envied him his capacity to concentrate exclusively on his job, especially because she constantly worried she would make a mistake, in her overtired and preoccupied state, at her high-stakes nursing job. Both agreed that Sam’s time with the kids in the evenings was a substantial contribution to their shared parenting duties, and also a special time for him and the kids. He enjoyed being on his own with them and felt more competent as a parent when Ivy wasn’t around, and the kids loved their “Daddy nights.” But this, too, stirred up envy and bitterness in Ivy, who experienced herself as short-tempered and bogged down by unrelenting obligations when she was with her children every day. Often, she eagerly anticipated the handoff to Sam when it was time for her to go to work, only to be distracted, once at the hospital, by guilt about not savoring her time with the kids enough. She wondered what her family was doing at home without her. Longing to connect with them, she’d sometimes call to check in. Sam perceived these check-ins as an attempt to micromanage him, an indication that his wife didn’t trust him to take care of their children as well as she could. Ivy would detect the irritation in Sam’s voice from the moment he answered the phone, and their calls often ended angrily. With each recurrence of this exchange, the distance between them increased. Both Sam and Ivy felt increasingly alone, misunderstood, and unappreciated.

  As a couples therapist, I often feel like a translator. After ensuring I’ve accurately understood each partner’s internal world, I then go about finding language for each of their experiences that the other can more readily understand. During those difficult initial sessions with Sam and Ivy, I focused on the words they were not saying that, once articulated, might allow them to better understand each other. Prominent couples researcher John Gottman states that within every negative emotion, there is a longing or a wish.1 This is one of those nuggets of wisdom that always guides my work with couples. As the room fills up with angry accusations, defensive retorts, and heavy, despairing silences, I listen for what hasn’t been said. I listen for hidden longings. I look for the fundamental emotional states behind the words. I ask myself, If we could lift the veil of anger (or defensiveness, or stony withdrawal, or whatever the case may be), what would we see?

  With Sam and Ivy, I saw a tremendous amount of pain. Both were longing to know they still mattered to the other. On some level, Sam feared he had been replaced by their children in his wife’s priorities and affections; he no longer felt nurtured by his wife, who had once showed him so well, every day, how much she loved him. Ivy felt she was lost at sea, on the verge of drowning, desperately wondering why her husband, nearby in the safety of a lifeboat, would not just paddle over to her and say, “Get in.” Both were so distressed that neither could see the other’s vulnerable position.

  Typically, as a couple becomes more entrenched in a pattern of focusing on their mutually unmet needs, problems with both expressing and listening arise. The signal is distorted and the reception is impeded. Feelings that would normally prompt compassion and concern in each other are obscured by negativity. If a husband feels hurt because of something his wife has done (or failed to do) again and again, he is likely to withdraw in silence or conceal that hurt with angry, critical words, much like a tender wound is concealed by the hard edge of a scab. If she’s contending with her own wounds from things he has done (or not done), she is not very likely to reach for him when he retreats, or listen neutrally to his critical words while she attempts to decode them and pinpoint an underlying longing. But a third party may well be able to do just that. As a couples therapist, I reach for people who have retreated, and I wager a guess, out loud, about some softer feeling (loss, maybe, or fear or sadness) that may lurk beneath the anger that dominates the dialogue.

  In this case, Sam cannot hear or see Ivy’s longing for comfort, relief, and support because all he hears are criticisms and complaints. He sees only an unsatisfied, perpetually angry wife and expends his energy in defending himself from a perceived attack. Likewise, Ivy cannot hear or see Sam’s longing for affirmation, his need to know he is still special to her and that she desires him. She sees only another needy person placing demands on her. She feels he has no idea how little she has left to give, or how much his lack of support has impacted her connection with him.

  How did they get to such an impasse? A cynical, but nonetheless true, answer would be, “They had children.” Their marriage was a sturdy, genuinely happy, and loving one before they became parents. Nobody—least of all Sam and Ivy—would have predicted they would end up on a therapist’s couch contemplating separation, just six years into their marriage and with three young children in the house. It’s probably safe to say that had they chosen not to have kids, there would be far more harmony and closeness between them right now. But what we need to understand is why and how the transition to parenthood so often equates to the transition to marital distress.

  In chapter 7, we discussed the basic tenets of attachment theory, including the fact that at
tachment needs are lifelong, but not necessarily active or insistent at all times. I described the tenet of attachment theory that says our attachment needs become activated during times of stress or when there is a threat, real or perceived, to the attachment bond. I proposed that both are true when partners become parents. It is a time of enormous stress and strain, and the new triad—two parents plus baby—poses a threat to the original dyad. These factors give rise to strong emotions and motivate people to engage in attachment behaviors. Again, any effort a person makes to confirm, strengthen, or restore an attachment bond—regardless of whether the effort pays off or goes over well with the partner—is an attachment behavior. That means that just about anything I say or do in relation to my husband, if it’s in the interest of getting some assurance that he’s close by and he’s got my back and I still matter to him, is an attachment behavior. The theory says that I’ll do a lot more of those things, or do them with more fervor, if I’m having a tough time or if there’s any indication that maybe he isn’t there for me like I thought he was. I will start sending signal after signal that I need assurances, I need him, I need evidence that we are close and connected and he is holding me in mind. The question then becomes, will he be emotionally attuned enough to read my signals? If the goal is to stay happily married, the answer really needs to be yes.

  How does this emotional tuning-in play out in the everyday life of a marriage? Gottman and his colleagues characterize spousal responses to each other’s bids for connection as falling into three categories of behavior: “turning toward,” “turning away,” or “turning against.” For example, if I say, “Pasta sounds good for dinner tonight,” and my husband says, “Mmm, yes, it does. Maybe fettuccine with good olive oil and some of those mushrooms we got the other day?” that’s turning toward. If my husband says, “Sure, whatever,” that’s turning away. If he says, “I felt really cranky all day today,” and I say, with warmth and eye contact and genuine concern, “Why do you think that is?” that’s turning toward. In contrast, if I roll my eyes and say, “What else is new?” that’s turning against; I’ve not only failed to tune in, I’ve also shamed and alienated him with my sarcastic response. Research suggests that within the context of marriage, each moment of turning toward is like a deposit of intimacy and goodwill in an “emotional bank account.” Because those deposits eventually add up to substantial savings, they create a sense of security and protect couples from the damaging effects of occasional, inevitable moments of turning away or even turning against.

  Longitudinal studies that closely examine couples’ behavior as newlyweds and then track their happiness over time have revealed the important role turning toward plays. In Gottman’s research, couples who were divorced within six years had turned toward each other in the lab, as newlyweds, only 33 percent of the time on average, but couples still married six years later had had an average turning-toward rate, as newlyweds, of 86 percent. This is a striking difference. The evidence is clear: misattunement, or a lack of emotional responsiveness in couples, results in sometimes unbridgeable chasms.

  Why Attunement Matters

  Much has been written, within both the popular press and scholarly literature, about the importance of intimate, face-to-face interaction between parents and babies. Most of us seem to know intuitively, even if we are not familiar with this literature, how much our babies crave and delight in our close attention. Babies need us to respond to their cues, to the signals they give us that they are afraid, hungry, cold, or tired. When we respond to our baby’s cry with the voice of concern and a gentle touch, intent on determining what may be wrong and how we can help, not only do we meet the immediate and more concrete need of the child (the need for, say, a fresh diaper or to be rocked to sleep), but we also send a message of immeasurable value to the child: Your needs matter, and you will not be ignored.

  New mothers, in particular, tend to spend great swaths of their day engaged in such transactions with their infants. As psychologist Daphne de Marneffe points out, “In the seemingly mundane give-and-take of parenting—playing, sharing, connecting, relaxing, enduring boredom, getting mad, cajoling, compromising, and sacrificing—a mother communicates with her child about something no less momentous than what is valuable in life, and about the possibilities and limits of intimate relationships.”2 Though we may (and usually do) lose sight of this deeper meaning behind our day-to-day interactions with our babies, we still know on an intuitive level how much our attunement matters. That’s one reason many of us feel so guilty so much of the time: we know our children thrive on our close and careful attention, and yet we cannot give it to them unceasingly.

  What is somewhat less intuitive is that as adults, we need this same kind of close attention from the ones we love. And we need it particularly during times of stress. It isn’t just a lovely frosting on the cake of life, something we enjoy but could get by without. It is crucial for our well-being. Research on emotional attunement within couples may be relatively new, but it points unmistakably to the crucial role it plays in relationship fulfillment.

  Attunement is important in adult intimate relationships for exactly the same reasons it is important to developing babies: attunement allows for the fulfillment of fundamental attachment needs. When our spouses are not attuned to us, they are failing to send us the message so critical for a sense of well-being and felt security (and even, as we will later see, physical health): Your needs matter and you will not be ignored. I am here for you.

  It’s pretty simple, isn’t it? We should pay close attention to the human being with whom we’ve chosen to share a lifetime. We should stay engaged in a call-and-response kind of dance, aware of the ways our partner reaches out to us, and willing, most of the time, to extend a metaphorical hand in response. Nobody’s perfect, of course, and even exemplary spouses miss some of each other’s bids or just don’t always have it in them to respond appropriately. Still, it’s a straightforward and seemingly easy concept. Our brains are also wired for connection, and mirror neurons3—cells in the brain thought to be associated with empathy*—allow us to feel our way into the heart and mind of another. Why, then, is attunement so challenging for some couples? And how does a couple like Sam and Ivy, once adept at meeting each other’s needs, end up at war with each other? It turns out that in a most unfortunate irony, these inbuilt empathy and attunement skills often deteriorate when we need them most. Like when we are afraid and uncertain, for instance. Or when we are stuck in the swamp of prolonged marital conflict. And this is especially true for people who were not securely attached in childhood.

  For adults who did not have the advantage of secure, stable attachment relationships with caretakers as children, the neural pathways that signal interpersonal danger are well established, and it takes little to activate them. It’s as if there is a paved superhighway to fear and mistrust inside their brains; the on-ramps are abundant, but the off-ramps are few and far between. Once they’re traveling down that highway, they could reach the destination ahead with their eyes closed. They’ve been there so many times before. But they don’t want to go. Their hearts are heavy with dread or thumping with panic, and they’re looking for an exit. Failing that, they’re searching for a way to cope, to calm down while they resign themselves to being, once again, on this familiar journey. Maybe they’ll scream and shout and shake the steering wheel, or maybe they’ll go numb. But one thing is sure: They have no emotional resources to spare. They’re not looking around and wondering how the drivers of the other cars on the road are feeling.

  For securely attached people, the path to fear and mistrust is more like a dirt road with weeds popping up along it. It has not been worn smooth by regular travel. Certainly it could get them to the same place as those on the paved highway, but much more slowly, and not without a lot more effort to find the road in the first place.

  All of us, regardless of our fortune or misfortune in having our attachment needs met as young children, are biologically wired to seek and mainta
in close connection with others. All of us are biologically wired to react—to protest or panic or worry or seek reassurance—when our most important close connections are threatened. All of us register cues related to our partner’s perceived availability, and all of us react, internally if not also externally, to negative cues. This is what it means to be human. But two factors introduce a great deal of variability in how skillfully we read signals and how we react to them: the quality of our earlier attachment experiences (our “attachment histories”), and our current circumstances.

  These factors have powerful effects independent of each other. For instance, even the most fortunate person in terms of early attachment experiences—a highly secure person—will lose access to her customary emotional skillfulness, at least temporarily, when she learns that her spouse is cheating on her or when she is utterly overwhelmed by a baby who hasn’t stopped crying for three weeks. Conversely, even during periods of relative stability—say, when a couple has been getting along swimmingly and their stressful jobs are less stressful than usual—an anxious style of attachment in a husband can set him up to misinterpret his wife’s cues. She says, “I’m exhausted and need to go to bed early,” and he hears, “I’m not interested in being around you right now.”

  The picture gets exponentially more complicated when these two factors intersect with each other. Our attachment histories actually determine how we will perceive and handle our current circumstances. So trying times in a marriage, like bringing home a new baby, are generally a bit less trying if we have the benefit of secure attachment and high emotional skillfulness, and more trying if we do not. Furthermore, there is the obvious but often overlooked fact that just as I bring my attachment history to a relationship, so does my partner. The unique pairing of my attachment tendencies with my partner’s means that our dynamic might be quite different from the one I had with a previous, differently attached partner. Our unique pairing may serve us perfectly well during times of stability, but may hinder us considerably during periods of stress. This is precisely what happened with Sam and Ivy.

 

‹ Prev