Repair
Just as the isolation created by irrelationship leads to damaged relationships, the repair process must be interactive if healthy interdependence1 is to displace isolation. This reverses the adaptation undertaken by individuals who, in early childhood, were left alone with the anxiety they suffered as a result of inadequate caregiving—anxiety that never resolved later in life.2
No issue, problem or blow-up is too large or too small to be addressed effectively by the interactive repair process, i.e., the 40-20-40—the technique that teaches us to build reciprocity and mutuality. This includes any type of issue, from a bad experience in a restaurant to extramarital affairs to violence. In fact, processing such experiences through the 40-20-40 adds trust to the relationship that would be difficult to create without sharing the process of failure and repair. In short, such experiences build relationship sanity.
Exercise: History of Repair (Individuals)
In the following table, there are examples of changes one partner made to address a relationship issue without consulting her or his partner. Reading left to right, the table lists what the net effect was.
Now write down examples of specific measures you’ve taken to address relationship issues or conflicts without consulting your partner and describe the outcome.
Exercise: History of Repair (Couples)
The next table gives examples of identified relationship issues that are addressed with joint problem-solving, which instills joint accountability and increases trust and intimacy.
Measures or Strategies Taken Jointly to Address Relationship Issues |
What This Measure Looks Like |
Impact This Measure Has on Your Relationship |
We’re deliberately accountable to each other for our financial contributions to the household. |
Transparency and accountability improves the quality of our financial decision-making. |
Practicing financial accountability has created increased mutual trust in other aspects of our relationship. |
When processing a relationship issue, instead of finger-pointing, we take turns disclosing to each other how we feel we contribute to our issues. |
When a problem arises, we try to practice addressing it in this way as soon as possible after we identify it. |
We feel safe with each other when we have to discuss an issue. |
Using the table as a guide, list ways that you’ve tried to fix relationship issues together, what the outcome was, and why you think it did or didn’t work. It might be useful to experiment with the 40-20-40 and try to gain insight into your experience, thus far, of your caretaking roles and trying to “fix” your relationship.
Honeymoon to Hell and Back Again
“What a great year we’ve had,” Evelyn reflected. “The honeymoon didn’t even go away even after Eli was born.”
Jacob, Evelyn’s second husband, agreed, “I still hate leaving the house in the morning!”
From her first marriage, Evelyn had learned an important lesson the hard way: believing nothing’s wrong doesn’t mean nothing’s wrong.
Her marriage to Jacob, however, was a totally different scenario. After nearly two years of what seemed like marital perfection, Jacob and Evelyn woke one morning—literally it happened almost overnight—to find that something had changed in their feelings for one another. They had no idea how this could be and certainly didn’t connect it with other life-events that had created a sudden major change in their household: Evelyn had lost her job. Of course, this was a knock to her ego, one that Evelyn wasn’t able to bring herself to talk about with Jacob. It was also a blow to their financial plans centering on their new baby. However, most destructive of all, perhaps, was that Evelyn and Jacob were afraid of creating further emotional upset by confiding in each other how worried they were about their new financial uncertainty.
Up to this point, they’d believed themselves to be a good team and used their sexual connection to weather relationship difficulties. Suddenly, however, that solution didn’t work. Finally they hesitatingly agreed they were going to have to sell their apartment—a predictably disturbing and disheartening decision because of the passion they’d shared and nurtured in that space, though they admitted it wasn’t a suitable home for a new young family.
Both Evelyn and Jacob had histories under their belts that were a setup for irrelationship. Her previous marriage had been built—and failed—around her insistence on her role as a Performer. Post-mortem therapy, however, convinced her that awareness of irrelationship would prevent her re-enacting that role in future relationships. It didn’t work out that way: Jacob’s having grown up in a family in which he played Audience to his narcissistic father was right on time when they encountered their marital-financial crisis. He was only too willing to stifle his own anxiety in the crisis and affirm Evelyn as star of the show even after she became unemployed. The end result was that they blocked one another’s need to share the crisis and their feelings, especially the anxiety it created in both of them.
“Ignoring our own and each other’s emotions quickly made us feel that our connection had just vanished. I told myself that stress from having a baby and the financial thing exposed the truth: we just weren’t suited for each other—it had all been a big mistake. We ended up threatening each other with divorce without ever having talked about what had happened since I lost my job.”
“Well,” Jacob rejoined, “what really did the damage was how abandoned we both felt—abandoned by each other! And no wonder: nobody was talking and nobody was listening. It didn’t take long for it to turn into a game of one-upmanship and mutually assured destruction, complete with talk about divorce and throwing our wedding rings at each other.”
“Yeah,” Evelyn filled in. “I got so sick of how you obnoxiously held your hand up to make sure I saw you taking off your wedding ring—until finally I’d had enough of it and flushed both of them. God, how I was screaming inside! Only now I know I was screaming for you as much as at you!”
Reaching the Bottom and Choosing Repair
Interactive repair is often a hard sell. Jacob and Evelyn were both at a place where the choice of finding a way to start over was only slightly more appealing than conceding failure and walking away. They believed that having had a new son was what swayed them toward not compounding the disaster.
“At first it was all but impossible to believe that our bitterness was exactly where Jacob and I had to go to find the answer,” Evelyn commented.
When Jacob and Evelyn first tried using the 40-20-40, or Self-Other Assessment, keeping their focus on their own contribution to any issue totally went against the grain. But staying with 40-20-40 paid off: it finally started to create a calm enough space for them to remember how much they actually loved each other and find a new footing—or, perhaps, rediscover the old footing—for their being together.
This is the model for interactive repair: it allows partners to negotiate in the 20-percent shared space in the middle while owning the feelings, missteps, and defenses that each contributed to the outbreak of crisis—their respective 40 percent. Perhaps the most surprising benefit of this process is that, through it, participants allow themselves to be seen, known, and accepted as they really are, which is precisely what irrelationship is designed to prevent.
Reminiscing about past relationships, Evelyn said, “I could see a long line of people—and not just boyfriends—that I kind of forced into caring about me because I made them feel better. And it hasn’t been easy to let go of; in fact, I don’t think I even knew it was happening. But it’s how I controlled pretty much all my relationships with others. And then I lost my job, and poor Jacob was stuck with somebody who was not only totally lost, but I had no idea what to do with myself or how to really fix anything.”
“And for once,” Jacob said, “all I was looking for, really, was my wife. I didn’t give a damn about any of the other stuff. Screw the job: I needed her. The ‘everything’s okay’ stuff didn’t help me or anything else. I just needed Evelyn to show up, to be there.”
“But,” Evelyn remembered, “the only thing we seemed to be able to stick to was fighting. It was lousy all the time—even when we weren’t arguing. But I guess—no, I know—at least the fighting kept us connected.
“Well, then this couple we know got us interested in a couples’ group that practiced what was basically the 40-20-40: listening without blaming, no matter how angry you felt. Sometimes it was hard to go to that group. And sometimes it was hard to stay for the whole thing. In fact, sometimes I didn’t. But we went, and we kept going. And we heard and saw other couples going through what we went through—or worse. Some of it was horrible—threats, violence, screwing around, you name it. And there they were, right there in that group, putting it back together, basically, by just telling the truth about how they felt when all that stuff was going on. One guy even talked about how he was feeling when he got violent with his boyfriend. I don’t understand why, but when you get honest like that, it somehow starts changing the chemistry of the whole thing.”
“Yeah,” Jacob added. “For some reason that I still don’t get, when you expose yourself like that—or when your wife does—it’s like you’re going back to what made you fall in love in the first place. And when that starts coming back, you almost don’t have any choice but to listen. Then, before you know what’s happening, you begin to trust and depend on each other like you never did before.”
By talking with one another about their vulnerability, Evelyn and Jacob began repairing what had been wrong from the very beginning of their relationship as well as what had been wrong in themselves individually even before they met. The bonus is that sharing this process created intimacy they’d never enjoyed with anyone, ever.
“I doubt if I would ever have been able to figure this out,” said Jacob. “That word Audience is exactly where I was: I was a good Audience so my partner would feel good. I had no clue that doing that actually created a barrier, so we could keep real issues out of our sightline. The two of us doing this—Evelyn performing and me watching—meant we never had to talk about anything that made us nervous or we were worried about. We had our deepest, scariest feelings on the shelf—or more like a locked cabinet! Funny thing is that the first place it all began to fall apart was in the bedroom, where it had been so good before. But too many things can’t be faked when you’re naked together. Well, when the sex started to go south, it added big time to how mad we were at each other. It was like betrayal but without any infidelity.”
“Learning how to do this doesn’t mean we never fight anymore,” Evelyn laughed. “But our anger doesn’t last as long—usually. And we both know when something isn’t right, we can ask for a 40-20-40 and get to the bottom of it before we start going off the rails without knowing why. And each time we do it, everything about being together gets a little better—including the sex!”
“But it sure was embarrassing,” Jacob said, “when we had to go back to the jeweler: those rings had been custom made for us and how do you explain that we’d lost not one but both of them?”
Exercise: Chronic Issues (Couples)
Identify one or two ongoing issues in your relationship that you’re willing to work on together using the techniques in this book, including the DREAM Sequence technique that you’re reading about now.
Individually, write brief descriptions of the two issues. Then under each item, write your part in that issue. If either partner doesn’t want to write about her or his part, or is unsure what her or his part is, then make a note of that.
Next share what you’ve written with your partner. If areas of disagreement about the issues arise, write those down too.
From the list, agree on one item to work on together. It’s best not to use an issue on which you’re at an uncomfortable stalemate or which is creating resentment. Instead, choose something you can talk about honestly without creating bad feelings between you.
Having reached agreement, discuss together the following questions.
1. What do you think this issue is really about? For example, if the issue has to do with dividing up household tasks, do you believe one party is avoiding a particular task for a reason other than that she or he simply doesn’t like doing it? Are underlying or undiscussed feelings or attitudes involved? Do you think your partner should give you a pass because of something else you do?
2. Why is this a problem that you both believe needs to be addressed rather than allowing it to “ride”?
3. What impact, direct and indirect, has this issue had on other aspects of your relationship? On your family, your household, and beyond?
4. What benefit do you get from not resolving this issue?
5. How could you begin to resolve the issue by breaking it up into smaller or more manageable parts?
6. How does open discussion change your perception of the issue and your willingness to work on it?
Exercise: How Am I Not Interactive? (Couples)
To make interactive repair work, all parties have to feel safe. That’s a big reason for the rule against finger-pointing when doing the 40-20-40. But committing to repair also has to include committing to honesty about your own part in what goes wrong between you and your partner.
Both parties have to be willing to honestly try to answer this question: How does my part in relationship issues prevent our finding solutions?
For this exercise, you and your partner write out her or his own personal traits or behaviors that may get in the way of joint problem solving. Remember, according to the rules of the 40-20-40, your part cannot account for more than 60 percent and no less than 40 percent of what happens between you. With practice, the middle 20 percent—the space for negotiation—grows as you become less attached to what you think you believe about yourself or your partner, which makes you more able to rethink how you understand any given conflict—a major marker of relationship sanity.
Exercise: Attempts at Problem-Solving (Couples)
The best way to get around taking your partner’s inventory, or finger-pointing, is to take your own. In fact, it’s the only way the 40-20-40 works. Otherwise you just add to the mess that has to be cleaned up for the relationship to become healthy.
Jointly think of problems in your life together—either interpersonal or household issues—that you have both identified and tried unsuccessfully to solve. Then write down how each of you perceives that issue, how you’ve tried to fix it, and what you think has stood in the way of fixing it.
Going off the rails in crises or even in less serious conflicts and then putting it back together sums up interactive repair. But it requires the ability to share the process through hearing and understanding the experience of your partner with that issue—in other words, through compassionate empathy. Learning to use that process routinely takes users through the rest of the DREAM Sequence.
Exercise: Compassionate Interactive Repair (Couples)
Take another opportunity to practice the Joint Compassion Meditation Exercise from Chapter 1. It’s been tweaked here to highlight its purpose in approaching the work of interactive repair. Remember that nonjudgmental observation of your thoughts and what your partner shares is vital to moving forward productively.
• Set a timer for three to five minutes. In a comfortable, seated position, sit quietly together with your attention on your own breath.
• Note the stream of thoughts passing through your mind and then return your attention to your breath.
• As often as necessary, remind yourself that this practice has no right/wrong or good/bad: its purpose is to learn about your thoughts, your impulses, and the things that you are uneasy about or even resist.
• After the allotted time, make notes about how the idea of interactive repair affects you, both positively and negatively.
• Share with one another about how what you’re experiencing, jointly and in your own thoughts, may affect your relationship.
Staying on Target: Indignation and Self-Righteousness versus Repair
Compassionate empathy opens the door to intimacy, making repair interactive. This interactivity creates the space for relationship sanity. This is where the rubber hits the road as you’re challenged to develop healthy interdependency (versus dependency) so you can recover from irrelationship.
Key Takeaways
• We recognize how irrelationship affects you as an individual as well as how it affects us as a couple.
• We learned how to overcome natural resistance and repression and are coming to understand and break out of dissociation.
• We learned how to engage our partner in an interactive repair process.
• We understand how our habit of hiding from connection with others can be changed.
• We have come to believe that we can safely accept what others have to offer—especially those closest to us.
• We learned that listening, caring, and being present for and with each other can become new ways of managing anxiety.
• We let go of the idea that somebody has to be blamed.
• We recognized the patterns of interaction between our partners and ourselves.
• We recognized and communicated about themes of conflict.
• We recognized ways that our song-and-dance routines impact conflict—its eruption, handling, and resolution—in other relationships.
• We developed a roadmap for using our experience of conflict resolution—with each other and others—to more fully and consciously engage in interactive repair.
• We understand how the concept and practice of interactive repair—using each conflict as an opportunity for building empathy, intimacy, and mutual trust and reliance—is changing our relationship.
• We addressed what impact interactive repair can have on other relationships in our lives.
Going off the rails in conflict or crisis and then getting back on the rails together is what happens in interactive repair. The shared commitment to working together to fix what’s wrong resolves conflict and creates a shared space of intimacy, as well as a growing sense of mutual trust and reliance. Along the way it generates profound, durable buy-in into the repair process, which improves the quality of decision-making for the couple, both as individuals and jointly. This increases trust and interpersonal reliance, which further resolves barriers to intimacy.
Each shared act of Repair is, by definition, reciprocal and complementary. This includes repairing everything from minor misunderstandings to devastating crises, including infidelity and violence. Not only can the 40-20-40 address each incident of “getting it wrong,” but it can convert such experiences into new dimensions of trust that would be less likely to develop without such episodes.
Once again, pause, look at each other, and then use free association to discuss thoughts or thought fragments, feelings, reflections, and analysis of where you were and where you now see yourselves along the road of relationship sanity.