While healthy adults are able to self-regulate and self-soothe when upset, we don’t outgrow our need for soothing and regulation from others, especially intimate others.
—Mona DeKoven Fishbane
In an intimate relationship, there is an overriding ultimate equation for success: Do less of the bad and do more of the good. Do less of the stuff that creates disengagement, distance, and resentment and do more of the stuff that creates closeness, trust, and empathy. The choices we make when facing difficult moments with those we love powerfully shape the course of events. In this lesson we will explore practices that help us do more of the good in our intimate relationship, because actively working to build the cushion of positive connection reduces the chances of slipping into hostility and suffering. We will talk about two practices, both of which begin within and have impact between: making mindful language choices and embracing love languages.
Although the escalated language of fight and the icy silence of flight are obvious, there are some subtle language choices that we make in our intimate relationships that aren’t as clear-cut but that still send us down a slippery slope. Let’s look at seven common but problematic relational language choices, or intimacy-preventing traps. For each of these seven intimacy-preventing traps, I am offering an alternative—an intimacy-inviting reach. These are language choices that support a brave shift toward vulnerability and authenticity, allowing us to reach across the space between self and other with an invitation to connect. It is amazing how subtle or small shifts in language affect how you perceive and experience the moment with your partner and consequently profoundly shape how your partner experiences you. Committing yourself to speaking from the intimacy-inviting reaches goes a long way toward building a cushion of relational positivity that’s good for everyone.
On the low road, things—you, your partner, the world—feel very out of control, and you may begin talking to your partner like this: “You need to ________________ [apologize to me…take responsibility for your actions…call your brother…stop spending so much money].” This is the language of control, and it is guided by the fear-based belief that if the other person changes, you’ll feel better. Even if this happens to be accurate, this language is intimacy-preventing because we tend to mount resistance in the face of another’s effort to control us, and a battle of wills ensues. Does this sound familiar? “You need to send that e-mail.” “No I don’t!” “Yes you do!”
When you feel out of control like this, rather than saying, “You need to… ,” see what happens when you begin to see the urge to control your external world and the people in it as a cue to you that something must feel awful inside of you. Instead of trying to control others, tune in to that awful feeling and give it voice. For example, instead of saying, “You need to get a job,” try saying “I feel so scared about money. You have been out of work for six months, and the bills are piling up. I am terrified, and I feel as if my concerns are being ignored.” This is the brave language of vulnerability. Letting your partner into your world invites empathy, collaboration, and closeness.
When we are upset in the face of another’s actions or inactions, it is so easy to move into blame, saying, “You make me feel so ________________ [awful, ugly, worthless, stupid, angry, exhausted].” This kind of statement is intimacy-preventing for three reasons. First, this language implies intent that may or may not be there. The impact of your partner’s actions may be that you feel awful without your partner intending for you to feel that way. Be careful not to travel too deeply into another’s head! Second, this language is the essence of abandoning yourself. In this language, you have given away your power and put yourself at the mercy of another. When you abandon yourself, there can be no intimacy with another person. Third, this language reflects that you have forgotten about that precious and precarious space between stimulus and response. Your partner acted in a certain way (stimulus). There is a space. You feel awful (response). What else, besides a thin story of intentional hurt and blame, is possible in that powerful space between stimulus and response?
When upset, I love the suggestion from Drs. Howard Markman and Scott Stanley (2010) to use an XYZ statement. An XYZ statement goes like this: “When you do X, in situation Y, I feel Z.” For example, “When you roll your eyes as I’m talking about the fight I had with my brother, I feel angry, invalidated, and unimportant.” The difference is subtle yet powerful. In an XYZ statement, you are doing three intimacy-inviting things at once: holding the other person accountable for his or her actions (but not for your feelings), giving context, and taking responsibility for your feelings. This brave reach changes everything—within you and between you and your partner.
During a therapy session, Mary explained a struggle she was having in her intimate relationship. She said, “You just don’t know whether you should stay or go. You feel like he’s a good guy but you feel scared.” I invited her to shift her language. “Mary, what you’re saying is so important, but I’d really like you to say it again, this time using ‘I’ instead of ‘you.’” Mary looked puzzled but agreed: “I just don’t know whether I should stay or go. I feel like he’s a good guy but I feel scared.” As Mary shifted her language, her face softened and tears filled her eyes. When I train new therapists, I urge them to listen vigilantly for this subtle yet meaningful language choice, and I urge them to invite their clients to shift from the disembodied “you.” It is much more than just a minor detail or semantic concern. It’s about how you stand vis-à-vis your story.
The alternative to the disembodied “you” is to commit to saying “I” when talking about yourself. When you do this, you engage your story as deeply and uniquely yours and insist on connection to yourself, knowing it is the precursor for connection with another person. When you catch yourself slipping into the disembodied “you,” ask yourself what is going on. Is the disembodied “you” an attempt to avoid your pain? What if you invited your pain in, held it as you would a distressed child, and trusted your resilience?
Asking “Why did you… ?” or “Why didn’t you… ?” invites defensiveness.
Asking “What kept you from… ?” invites collaboration. If you ask your partner, “Why did you lie to me?” you invite him or her to explain the cause of his or her behavior to you. In all likelihood, your partner’s voice will sound and feel defensive to you, the story he or she tells isn’t going to feel satisfying to you, and the pain of the lie will remain. Instead, try asking your partner a constraint question (Pinsof et al. 2015): “What kept you from being truthful with me?”
A constraint question orients you and your partner toward the behavior you desire: truth. It invites your partner to talk with you about what gets in the way of truth, putting you both on a path toward a systemic conflict story. Your partner’s answer may be: “What kept me from telling you the truth is my fear of your reaction.” The story has just gone from linear (“you lied to me”) to systemic (“something is keeping you from being honest with me”).
What is your stuff? What is my stuff? What is our stuff? That becomes the work! The possibility for side-by-side collaboration emerges. Your pain in the wake of the lie (or other behavior) remains valuable, because it invites you both to mine together for the complex truths that exist within and between you.
Musterbation is the desire for a set of rules for how things should be. Dr. Albert Ellis coined this term to capture our tendency to argue with our present reality as it exists right here, right now. Usually musterbation appears in our relationships in the form of a “should.” For example, “You should plan a night out for us. That’s what people do for each other.” Similar to “you need to,” the language of “should” reflects a quest for control and a difficulty remembering that all we can ever control is ourselves. Slipping into the language of should and shouldn’t creates a barrier between you and your partner. It also creates a barrier between you and happiness!
Use your “should” language as a signal to yourself that an unmet need or longing within you is desperate for attention. Give voice to that instead. Far more vulnerable and therefore intimacy-inviting, asking for what you need soothes you and changes the course of the conflict. “I am longing for…” “I am desperate for…” “I would love for you to…” “It would mean a lot to me if you would…” For example, instead of using a “should” statement, see what happens if you say: “I would love for you to plan a night out for us. I am really longing for some time together, and it would mean a lot to me if you took the lead on it.”
In the face of conflict, it is easy to become polarized, reflected by use of words like “always” and “never.” Insisting that your partner always or never does something or says something probably isn’t accurate. And even if it happens to be accurate, it is another invitation for defensiveness. In the face of your “always” or “never,” your partner will probably do one of two things:
The linear back-and-forth blame game will continue, and you’ll end up feeling farther apart.
Recognize that “always” and “never” language is usually an effort to turn the volume up in order to be heard. You need to be heard, and you deserve to be heard. But if you find yourself slipping into “always” or “never” language, try softening to “often,” “lately,” or “rarely.” Another option is to remember that perspective shapes perception; frame your observation as coming from your point of view by saying, “It seems to me that…” or “It feels to me like…” This intimacy-inviting shift lets your partner know that even as you’re feeling hurt and confused, part of you knows there’s more to the story than what you can see right now.
This final intimacy-preventing trap is one that is likely said inside your head or over a glass of wine with a friend. And it’s sneaky. Saying “How can I get him to…” is problematic. Voicing your concern in this way indicates that you believe that you do not have authentic power and that you must resort to indirect means of getting what you want. If this is your perception, use it as a warning sign that something is amiss within your relationship because in a healthy intimate relationship, wants and needs are legitimized, validated, and given space. Whether, how, and when the want or need gets met is a separate matter, but in a healthy intimate relationship each partner is able to verbalize his or her longings.
The antidote to this trap is the Name-Connect-Choose process. Name your longing or your unmet need, connect with the vulnerable feelings attached to the unmet need, and choose to directly ask for what you want. Here’s an example.
It may also be helpful to let your partner know that you are stuck in this intimacy-preventing trap. This way the two of you can wonder together about what is getting in the way of asking directly for what you need.
Changing your stance changes the dance. Standing in your vulnerability invites others to do the same (Brown 2015). Your journey toward wholeness invites others to embark on theirs. But it does not guarantee that they will. Be aware of your significant other’s response to your vulnerable disclosures. Vulnerability deserves to be met honorably and without shaming, and vulnerable disclosures ought not to be used against you. The space between you holds the potential to be a crucible for witnessing, for truth, for accountability, and therefore for transformation. In my therapy office, I encourage clients to view vulnerable disclosures as sacred gifts that warrant the utmost respect in return.
The power of these traps and reaches begins with you, but that’s not where it ends. As Vietnamese Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh offers, “When someone you love suffers, you’re motivated to do something to help. But if you don’t know how to handle the suffering in yourself, how can you help the other person to handle his suffering? We first have to handle the suffering in ourselves. Whenever a painful feeling or emotion arises, we should be able to be present with it—not fight it, but recognize it” (2011, 77).
So what happens when it’s your partner who is using intimacy-preventing language? What can you do, especially when he or she is upset with you? When this happens, it is truly an invitation for your prefrontal cortex to show you what it’s made of! Can this exquisite part of your brain keep you driving along the high road in the face of somebody else’s upset? It is not easy to stay brave and open, especially because your partner’s opinion of you is likely quite central to how you experience yourself. But it is possible.
When someone you care about is upset with you, you can ask yourself the question, “What would love do?” Love tries mightily to stay regulated even in the face of another’s disappointment and upset. Love listens with the third ear—a term coined by psychoanalyst Theodor Reik. Listening with the third ear means listening in order to understand rather than listening in order to respond. Our default setting tends to be the latter: formulating our response while the other person talks. Yet what the other person seeks is not our response. It is our understanding—love manifest in the form of compassion. What an offering it is to suspend our ego’s desire to explain, defend, and clarify in order to make space for the experience of another person!
When you listen with your third ear, you are truly a conduit of love. In addition, when you listen with your third ear in response to the other person’s intimacy-preventing trap, you actually receive two gifts. First, you get the experience of witnessing firsthand how the fight-or-flight urge softens and transforms when met with steady love. Second, you get the experience of witnessing yourself behave in a brave and loving way. Everybody wins.
Another cushion-building practice is respecting the power of love languages. Relationship counselor and best-selling author Dr. Gary Chapman (2015) uses the term “love languages” to capture the idea that there is more than one way to give and receive love. Love speaks more than one language, and each of us has a preferred “tongue” for giving and receiving love. Love languages are both unique to the individual and impactful on the couple. I especially like how Dr. Chapman presents the five languages as simply different from each other. There is no hierarchy.
Here are the five languages of love, according to Dr. Chapman:
Disconnection happens when we, knowingly or unknowingly, value our own preferred love language above all others, judging our partners for not loving the way we do. Intimacy flows when we consciously give love in the language our partner can best receive it. And like everything else, our love language is often learned in the classroom of our childhood home.
I wish Todd and I had understood years ago how individual love languages impact intimate relationships, because it would have saved us a lot of drama. Here’s an example. My mom’s primary love language is giving and receiving gifts. As a kid, when my birthday approached, I would make a wish list. The day itself was a grand event, including meals of my choice—shrimp salad on cheesebread at Jacobson’s for lunch, and spaghetti and meat sauce for dinner—and an elaborate “birthday table” of gifts.
Todd grew up in a family whose primary love language was quality time. Birthdays were a chance to gather together and do something fun, but gift giving was minimal and secondary. The differences in our primary love languages created plenty of misunderstandings in our early years. Imagine my disappointment when he gave me a balloon and a bag of gummy bears for my birthday. Imagine his confusion and discomfort when I would spend lots of time wrapping gifts for him. I wish we had known that love languages just are. Accepting and embracing the amazing is-ness (they are what they are) of love languages makes life so much easier.
Today, instead of buying gifts, I plan an adventure for Todd’s birthday because I know, accept, and embrace that receiving gifts not only doesn’t feel good but actually feels stressful to him. And we have agreed that if I would like a gift from him, I identify it, ask for it, and feel grateful if and when I receive it.
Respecting the power of love languages is as simple as it is profound. Identify your love language and humbly acknowledge that yours is not the best and only. Identify your partner’s love language and be willing to “speak” it. Invite him or her to speak yours, but embrace that when love speaks to you in a language that is not your native one, it’s still love. See how it feels when you welcome, rather than judge, love that speaks a little differently.
As Dr. Mona Fishbane’s quote at the beginning of this lesson makes clear, intimate relationships invite us into a dynamic interdependence in which my choices and your choices commingle, like watercolors on canvas, changing us before our eyes. When I remain in touch with myself, I am responsible for my part of our dance, and the contributions I make can build the cushion of positivity and connection between us. I can expect and invite, but not demand, the same from you.
Build a cushion of relational positivity by committing to practices that embody love—choosing intimacy-inviting reaches and embracing unique love languages.
Traps and Reaches
The seven Intimacy-Preventing Traps identify which of these you are prone to using. Try practicing the intimacy-inviting reach that corresponds to your intimacy-preventing trap. When you are able to use an intimacy-inviting reach, give yourself lots of praise. These patterns are tough to change! How did the intimacy-inviting reach shift your emotions? How did your intimacy-inviting reach shift the other person’s experience?
Love Language
What is your primary love language? You can take an online assessment in order to find out at: http://www.5lovelanguages.com. Is your love language the same as or different from the love languages spoken in your house when you were growing up? Reflect on your intimate relationships. Have differences in love languages been a source of tension? If so, how can you use this newly gained knowledge to handle these conflicts differently going forward?
The previous few lessons have explored some powerful ways of thinking about and navigating conflict, so this table is offered as a way of putting it all together. Review the table and circle what feels especially new and helpful to you.
Low Road | High Road |
---|---|
Linear conflict story |
Systemic conflict story |
Reactive |
Vulnerable |
Fight or flee |
Embrace the pause |
Self-protective survival strategies |
Speak from vulnerability |
Secondary feelings: angry, enraged, furious, insulted, agitated, irritable, disrespected |
Primary feelings: sad, ashamed, lonely, inadequate, disappointed |
Intimacy-preventing traps |
Intimacy-inviting reaches |