Couples: Your Experience Is Not Theirs

In about the fourth session of seeing one young couple, I turned to the wife and explained to her that what she was seeing in her partner isn't anger--it is fear. " Fear of what?" she asked me.

I told her that sometimes people are fearful of what they want--closeness and caring, and when they get it, they can feel overwhelmed by it. Sometimes people shut down, sometimes people withdraw, and sometimes they push back, almost as though they are trying to give themselves some breathing room.

She was quiet for a moment, and then asked, " But how can you be afraid of love?"

There was some ridicule in her voice, disdain that came from not understanding how someone else could be afraid of something which she isn't.

Her'es the point--often our partners have different views of things, events, processes, that we have; and they have different experiences of things than we have had. It can be hard to appreciate those differences if we do not understand them, or even know of them. Often, it is hard for one partner to articulate them. Often too, the misunderstanind comes from not listening.

Listening means exploring someone's reactions and feelings--getting to the bottom of them, without putting ourselves in there. Frankly, it means putting our own reactions aside and --shutting up--long enough to create the space in which a partner can speak.