When a couple walks into my office for their first counseling session, I know little or nothing about them.  All I know with any certainty is that they are mired somewhere in the power struggle.  They might be anywhere along that tortuous path.  They might be newlyweds reeling from the shock of discovering that they have married the wrong person.  They might be a middle-aged couple trying to cope with die stress of having two careers, teen-age children, and a relationship that has degenerated into a series of ongoing battles.  They might be an older couple who have lost all feeling for each other and are contemplating a 'friendly" divorce.  But, whatever their circumstances, I can rightly assume that they have journeyed past the romantic stage of marriage and become embroiled in conflict.
     Years ago my approach, and the approach of many of my colleagues, was immediately to wade 'into the details of the power struggle.  In the first few sessions I would determine whether a couple's main problems seemed to be with communication, sex, money, parenting, role expectations, alcohol or drug dependency, and so on.  Over the course of the next few months, I would help them gain insight 'into these problems.  An important part of the therapeutic process was teaching them to communicate their feelings more directly: "How did you feel when Mary said that?' Or "How did you feel when George acted that way?" At the end of each session, I would help them negotiate a contract that would specify a course of action.  George, for example, would agree to give Mary one compliment a day, and Mary would agree to express her anger directly to George instead of withdrawing 'in silence.  This was all fairly standard problem­oriented, contractual marriage counseling.
     The couples learned a lot about each other in the time that we spent together, and they became more skilled at communication.  But, to my dismay, few of them seemed able to transcend the power struggle.  Instead of arguing about their "presenting" issues, the problems that brought them into therapy, they were now arguing about who had violated which contract first.  At times it seemed as though my function as a therapist was merely to quantify and formalize their conflicts.
     In those early days, my work was being supervised, and I would share my frustration with my adviser.  What was I doing wrong?  Why were my couples making such slow progress?  All I seemed to be doing was giving people something new to fight over.  My adviser would smile knowingly and then chide me for having a vested interest in whether or not my clients were willing to change.  If they wanted to change, he assured me, they would.  Perhaps I was confusing my agenda with theirs.  My role, he reminded me, was to help people gain insight into their problems, teach them certain relationship skills, and let them go on their way.
     It was several years before I discovered that, in order to be effective, marriage therapy can't dwell on surface issues like money and roles and sexual incompatibility.  Underneath these superficial problems are unresolved childhood needs, and communication skills and behavioral contracts are not going to address these deeper issues.  In order to be effective, marital therapy has to address fundamental conflicts.  Armed with this knowledge, I began to work with couples more intensively, searching beneath surface phenomena for more primitive issues.
 

The Need for Commitment

Because every marriage is unique, my approach to each couple is a blend of formula and invention.  Sometimes a couple's therapy follows a predetermined course, but more often than not I have to tailor my methods to meet their individual needs.  If a couple comes to me because of a crisis - let's say, arising from a recently discovered affair - I do some triage and immediately attend to their shock and pain.  If, on the other hand, a husband and wife walk in for their first appointment totally numb to their pain, I sometimes find it necessary to stimulate conflict.  Unless they are aware of the nature of their problems, it's difficult for them to resolve them.
     However, somewhere in the first few sessions, I make it a point to establish some basic ground rules for therapy.  With slight variations, these will also be ground miles for doing the exercise section of this book.  One of the first rules is that couples have to agree to come to me for at least twelve consecutive sessions.  Barring genuine emergencies, they are to orchestrate their lives so that they can come to each and every appointment.  The reason I ask for this commitment is that I know from my own experience, and from statistical surveys, that a majority of couples quit therapy somewhere between the third and the fifth appointments, which is about the time it takes for unconscious issues to begin to emerge and for people to begin to experience some anxiety.  As we all know, a tried and true method for reducing anxiety is avoidance.  Some couples claim that therapy is making matters worse and fire the therapist.  Others can't find time to keep their appointments.  It is because this avoidance behavior is so common that I insist couples make a twelve-session commitment.  In many cases it is productive for couples to continue therapy for longer than three months, but at the very least I have the assurance that they will stay long enough to work through their initial resistance.
     When you are working on the exercise section of this book, you may experience the same reluctance to complete the process.  Some exercises will be easy for you - even fun.  But others will give you new information about yourself and challenge you to grow and change.  As you do the more demanding exercises, the temptation will be to put the book aside or alter the instructions.  It is precisely at these moments that you need to commit yourself wholeheartedly to the process.  You will discover that if, before you begin, you make a strong commitment to finish all of the exercises and do them exactly as prescribed, it will be easier to overcome your resistance.
     My second order of business with couples is to help them define their relationship vision.  Before I hear all the things they don't like about their marriage, I want to hear how they would like it to be.  Defining the vision turns their energy away from past and present disappointments toward a more hopeful future.  Achieving their vision is the goal of therapy.
     It is surprisingly easy for couples to create this vision - even couples who are in a great deal of turmoil.  To get them started, I ask them to list a series of positive statements beginning with the word "we" that describe the kind of relationship they would like to have.  They are to frame these statements in the present tense, as if the future were already here.  Here are some examples: "We enjoy each other's company," "We are financially secure...... We spend time together doing things we both enjoy." lp just one work session, they are able to define their separate visions, isolate the common elements, and combine these elements into a shared goal.
Once the vision is defined, I ask couples to read it daily as a form of meditation.  Gradually, through the principle of repetition, the vision becomes imbedded in the unconscious.
 

The No-Exit Decision

As soon as the work on the vision is completed, which is usually about the second or third session, I ask couples to make a second commitment, and that is to stay together for the initial twelve weeks of therapy.  The reason for this is obvious: marriage therapy isn't possible if there is no marriage to work on.  For three months they are not to separate or to end the relationship in a more catastrophic way by suicide, murder, or insanity. (Although separation and divorce are by far the most common ways my clients contemplate terminating their marriages, a significant minority have a feeling that they might go crazy, and there are numerous couples who fantasize more violent options.) I call the decision to close all four of these escape routes the "no-exit" decision.  When you turn to Part III, you will see that the no-exit decision is one of the first exercises you will be asked to do.
 

Fuser/Isolater Dynamics

A husband and wife often react to the no-exit decision in opposite ways.  Typically, one partner feels relieved; the other feels threatened.  The one who feels relieved is usually the "fuser" in the relationship, the one who grew up with an unsatisfied need for attachment.  The one who feels threatened is the "isolater," the one who has an unsatisfied need for autonomy.  The reason the fuser is relieved by the commitment is that the guarantee of a stable relationship - if only for three months - reduces the unconscious fear of abanddonment. (For the fuser this fear always lurks beneath the surface, but it is more acute in a troubled relationship.) The reason the no-exit decision makes the isolater feel apprehensive is that this agreement closes an important escape hatch, triggering the isolater's archaic fear of absorption.  Thus the no-exit decision tends to alleviate fear in one partner and exacerbate it 'in the other.
     During the period of this agreement, I try to ease the anxiety of the client who feels trapped.  I remind the client that the commitment is only for three months, and at the end of that time he or she is free to leave.  Because this is a finite amount of time, most people find they can cope.  Furthermore, I explain that the no-exit decision tends to make the partner less invasive.  "One of the reasons your partner is so needy of your attention" I explain to the isolater, "is that you're not emotionally available.  When you make a decision to stay together and work on your marriage, your partner will feel less obligated to chase after you." Ironically, bv making an agreement to stay within the relationship for three months, the isolater often ends up with more psychic space than before.
     A couple's response to the no-exit decision is a fascinating glimpse of more complex fuser/isolater dynamics.  Every day of their married lives, husbands and wives push against an invisible relationship boundary in an attempt to satisfy their dual needs for autonomy and attachment.  Most of the time, each individual fixates on one of those needs: one person habitually advances, in an effort to satisfy unmet needs for attachment; the other habitually retreats, in an effort to satisfy unmet needs for autonomy.  Some couples stay locked in this particular dance step for the duration of their relationship.  Others experience a startling reversal.  For a variety of reasons, the person who typically advances begins to retreat.  The partner who habitually retreats turns around in amazement: where's the pursuer?  To everyone's surprise, die isolator suddenly discovers an unmet need for closeness.  The pattern is reversed, like the flip-flop of magnetic poles, and now the isolater does the pursuing. it's as if all couples collude to maintain a set distance between them.  If one person starts encroaching on this sacred territory, the other has to back away.  If one person starts vacating the territory, the other has to pursue.  As with a pair of magnets with like charges lined up facing each other, there's an 'invisible force field keeping husbands and wives a critical distance apart.
 

Noncatastrophic Exits

One couple I worked with had mastered this game of push and pull.  A good indication of their success at avoiding intimacy was that they hadn't had sex in over three years.  As an assignment, I asked them to spend just one day together doing something they both enjoyed.  The very next day, which happened to be a Saturday, they agreed to go for a hike in the country and then go out to dinner.
     The next morning, 'ust as they were about to leave the house, the wife suggested that they invite a mutual friend along on the hike.  It had been a long time since they had seen this friend, the woman reasoned, and, besides, the friend always liked to get out of the city.  Her husband said that sounded like a bad idea.  The whole purpose of the day was to spend time together.  Why did she always want to louse things up?  They argued heatedly for a good hour; then the husband gave in.  The wife called the friend, who was happy to come along.  As they waited for him to show up, the wife read the paper and straightened the house, while the husband disappeared into the den to work his way through a stack of bills.
     The friend arrived and the three of them got in the car and drove out to the country.  On the drive, the two, men sat 'in the front seat of the car - ostensibly because they had longer legs and needed the leg-room - while the woman sat 'in the back seat, reading a book.  During the actual hike, either the wife or the husband was engaged in a conversation with the friend, while the partner tagged along behind.
     When they got back to the city, the friend went home and the couple made plans to go out to dinner.  They decided to go to a restaurant that featured live entertainment.  At the restaurant the husband suggested they choose a table right in front of the musicians so they could pay more attention to the music.  They had dinner and tried to carry on a conversation, but gave up because the music was so loud they couldn't hear each other.  They left the restaurant at precisely a quarter to nine so they could be home in time for a favorite TV show.  As soon as they entered the house, they automatically poured themselves a couple of drinks and stationed themselves in front of the television.  The wife went to bed at eleven o'clock (after ritually urging her husband not to drink too much), and the husband stayed up until one in the morning, happily nursing his Scotch and watching TV.  With consummate skill, they managed to spend the whole day together without a moment of intimacy.  Although they didn't realize it, they were living an invisible divorce.
 

The Invisible Divorce

To one degree or another, most couples who are involved in a power struggle follow a similar pattern: they structure their lives in such a way that true 'intimacy is virtually impossible.  The way that they do this is often ingenious.  By asking my clients a simple question, "What does your spouse do to avoid you?," I have come up with a list of over three hundred different answers.  Here's a fragment of that list.  According to my informants, their mates were: "reading romance novels," "disappearing into the garage camping out on the phone," "worshiping the car," "spending too much time with the kids," "volunteering for every committee at church," "spending too much time with the boat," "spending time at her mom's," "having an affair," "avoiding eye contact," 'memorizing every word of The New York Times," "falling asleep on the couch," "being a sports junkie coming home late for dinner," "fantasizing while making love," "being sick and tired all the time," "not wanting to be touched," "four Scotches a night spending too many evenings at the Rotary" "lying," "refusing to make love," "having sex but not making love" "living on the tennis court," "bulimia," "jogging ten miles a day," "going on weekend fishing trips" "going shopping," "having his own apartment," "daydreaming," "refusing to talk," "smoking mariuana" "working on the house all the time," "masturbating," "playing his guitar," "keeping separate bank accounts," "picking fights reading magazines," "doing crossword puzzles," "refusing to get married," and "going to taverns."
    The fact that so many couples perforate their relationships with exits raises an obvious question: Why do men and women spend so much time avoiding intimacy?  There are two very good reasons: anger and fear.  Why the anger?  In the romantic stage of a relationship, people find it relatively easy to be intimate, because they are filled with the anticipation of wish fulfilment.  Their partners seem to be Mommy and Daddy and doctor and therapist all rolled into one.  Months or years later, when they come to the realization that their partners are committed to their own salvation, not theirs, they feel angry and betrayed.  A tacit agreement has been broken.  In retaliation they erect an emotional barricade.  In effect, they are saying, "I am angry at you for not meeting my needs." Then they begin systematically to seek pleasure and satisfaction of their needs outside the relationship.  Like a hungry cow stretching its neck over a fence to munch on green grass, they look elsewhere for gratification.  The husband who stays late at the office even when he has finished the day's work, the wife who spends the entire evening reading to the children while her husband watches TV - both of these individuals are trying to find pleasure that is missing from their relationships.
     The other reason couples avoid 'intimacy is fear, specifically the fear of pain.  On an unconscious level, many people react to their partners as if they were enemies.  Any person - whether parent or partner or next-dooor neighbor - who is perceived by the old brain to be a source of need gratification and then appears to be withholding that gratification is catalogued by the old brain as a source of pain, and that raises the specter of death.  If your partner does not nurture you and attend to your fundamental needs, a part of you fears that you will die, and it believes that your partner is the one who is allowing this to happen.  When a basic lack of nurturing is coupled with an onslaught of verbal and in some cases actual physical abuse, the partner becomes an even more potent enemy.  The unconscious reason some people avoid their partners, therefore, is not that they're scouting for greener pastures, but that they are fleeing death.  The appropriate image in this case is not the bucolic scene of a cow foraging for food, but that of a terrified lamb running away from a lion.
     In most cases the fear of the partner is unconscious.  All that couples are aware of is a mild feeling of anxiety around each other and a desire to be with other people or to be involved in other activities.  Occasionally the fear is closer to the surface.  One client told me that the only time she felt truly safe around her husband was when the two of them were in my office.  He had never physically abused her, but their relationship was so filled with conflict that she was convinced that her life was in danger.
 

Closing the Exits

No matter how valid the reasons are for the avoidance behavior, however, it is important in the initial stages of the healing process that couples gradually draw their energy back into the relationship.  Until they close some of their numerous exits, they will always be seeking pleasure in inappropriate places.  And when their relationship needs are diverted to their children or to their jobs or to substitute addictions, it's not always apparent what is wrong with the marriage.  Their basic problem areas need to be defined before they can be resolved.
     Surprisingly, it is harder for many couples to close the dozens of small exits in their relationships than it is for them to close the catastrophic exits; in other words, it may be harder for them to cut down on TV viewing for three months than to agree to give up the option of divorce.  Part of the reason is that closing the smaller exits deprives them of pleasure.  And as long as their partners are not giving them what they want, they are reluctant to let go of established sources of need gratification.  Another reason for the resistance is that, as couples become more focused on each other, they often have to come face to face with their repressed disappointment, anger, and fear.  They have minimized their degree of unhappiness by distracting themselves with outside activities.  They hadn't poked holes in their relationships casually or maliciously - they did it for the important reasons of need gratification and safety.
     To help couples overcome their resistance to becoming more intimate with each other, I rely on the principle known as "gradual change."  The basic idea behind this concept is that it's to tackle a difficult task if it is divided into manageable units.  If the units are then ranked according to difficulty, and the easiest units are tackled first, the project becomes even more manageable.
     When you come to Part III, you will find complete instructions for closing your exits.  For now, here is an overview of how this process works.  Let's imagine two people who are trapped in an unsatisfying relationship.  To make up for the emptiness of their marriage, they have filled their lives with substitute pleasures.  Let's focus on the woman's exits.  In addition to the responsibilities involved in having a career and raising two children, she has an active social life, a position on the community board, a passion for physical fitness, two music lessons a week, and an addiction to science-fiction novels.  These activities help reduce her underlying feeling of despair, but they draw vital energy away from the relationship.
     If this woman were to decide to cut back on some of her activities, she would first have to determine which of her numerous involvements could properly be termed an "exit." Like many people, she would probably find a degree of validity in virtually everything she did.  When you do the no-exit exercise in Part III, you may have this same initial confusion: what is an exit and what is an essential activity or a valid form of recreation?  The way to find out is to ask yourself the following question: "Is one of the reasons I'm doing this activity to avoid spending time with my spouse?" Most people know whether or not this is the case.
     Let's suppose that this woman has asked herself this question and identified activities that she would be willing to curtail or eliminate.  Next she would rank them according to difficulty and choose the ones that would be easiest for her to give up.  For example, she might decide it would be relatively easy to make two changes: jog three days a week instead of five, and read her novels on her lunch hour, not 'in the evenings, -,when she could be spending- time with her husband.  She might also decide that it would be difficult but not impossible for her to find someone to take over her position on the community board.  Other changes would be more difficult.  If she were to go ahead and make the two easy changes, however, she would liberate several additional hours a week to devote to her relationship.  This would be a good place to start.  Other changes, if necessary, could come later.
     At the same time that this woman would be eliminating her exits, her husband would be going through a similar process.  He, too, would be examining his activities, identifying his exits, and beginning a systematic program of reduction.  As a result of this exercise, the husband and wife would be spending significantly more time together.
     The reaction to this heightened 'interaction varies from couple to couple.  Some couples enjoy the additional contact.  Others find that closing their exits leaves them fewer avenues of escape from a painful situation.  Although this is not a pleasant outcome, they get something from the exercise nonetheless, and that is a clearer delineation of their areas of conflict: they know exactly why it is they have been avoiding each other, and this is an important step in therapy.
 

Till Death Do Us Part

When I lead couples through these series of commitments - an agreement to: 1) come to a minimum of twelve therapy sessions, 2) define a relationship vision, 3) stay together for a specified period of time, and 4) gradually close their exits - I let them know that all of these separate agreements ideally lead to a larger commitment: a decision to join together in a journey that will last the rest of their lives.  Although this decision cannot be made at the beginning of therapy, I want couples to know that, in order to obtain maximum psychological and spiritual growth, they need to stay together not for three months or three years or even three decades, but for all of their remaining years.  Childhood issues do not present themselves to be resolved in one tidy package.  They come to the surface slowly, usually the more superficial ones first.  Sometimes a problem has to present itself a number of times before it is even identified as a significant issue.  And sometimes a psychological need is so deeply buried that it is only triggered by a crisis or the demands of a particular stage of life. Ultimately it takes a lifetime together for a couple to identify and heal the majority of their childhood wounds.
     In a culture where serial monogamy is a way of life, the idea of a permanent commitment to one partner has a quaint, old-fashioned ring to it.  The prevalent question of the 1950s - "Can this marriage be saved?" - has now become "Should this marriage be saved?" And millions of people decide that the answer is no.  In fact, ironically, many of them have come to view divorce as an opportunity for personal growth. It's not within marriage that people grow and change, according to this increasingly popular view, it's when the marriage falls apart.  People believe that this opens their eyes to their self-defeating behaviors and gives them an opportunity to resolve those problems with a new partner.  But unless they understand the unconscious desires that motivated their dysfunctional behavior in the first marriage, and learn how to satisfy those desires with the new partner, the second marriage is destined to run aground on the same submerged rocks.  The feeling of growth and change between marriages is an illusion: it is merely the pain that comes from exchanging one set of habituated behaviors for another.
     Ironically, the more I have become involved in a psychological study of love relationships, the more I find myself siding with the more conservative proponents of marriage.  I have come to believe that couples should make every effort to honor their wedding vows to stay together "till death do us part" - not for moral reasons, but for psychological ones: fidelity and commitment appear to be conditions dictated by the unconscious mind.
    In Part III, you will have an opportunity to deepen your commitment to each other and begin a process of growth and change.  The suggested time period for completing all sixteen exercises is ten weeks.  Dedicating two and a half months of your time to improving your marriage may be all that you need to begin realizing your relationship vision.