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OCTOBER’S PICK - THE INTIMACY FACTOR
by Pia Mellody

 
PART - I

Even though this book was written in 2003 and seven years ago equals dog years in the field of psychology, I read this with fresh eyes and liked it a lot. Pia Mellody is still at The Meadows in Arizona doing her good in the recovery field. She has a lot to say about how to make an adult, intimate relationship work, especially for those who come from wounded childhoods.

It’s good to remember the basics. This book is also one of the foundations of the Relational Living Model that I am now using with couples and marriages in my practice. The founder, Terry Real (yes, that’s his real name) worked at The Meadows with Pia Mellody and gives her plus another woman, Carol Gilligan (the Harvard psychology researcher and author of, “In A Different Voice”) a lot of credit for helping him grow and develop his model.

He’s a great guy, very smart, funny, charismatic, and compassionate, yet also can be grandiose. However, he is also a feminist, maybe because of these two women and his wife Bonnie Real, a family therapist. In my eyes, this helps to counteract his grandiosity!

So, I’m going to lay out the heart of Pia’s book. If it is familiar to you then you will be reminded and validated. If you haven’t thought about her concepts, then I think you will like it, too.

When couples communicate, despite our best attempts to use “I” statements, we are just human and often make mistakes. For example, if your wife is always late, your frustration may come out as: “You are so selfish! You never think about anyone but yourself! I don’t think you love me!”

He not only says it but his tone is loud, angry, and blaming. It is so easy to take this personally and get caught up in your husband’s fury. If you are consistently late, then you might apologize for that, but still need to keep the global (always, never) accusations (energy and thoughts) at a safe distance. If what he says really isn’t true, you still need to do the same. Getting defensive, trying to hammer your truth back at him will not help this situation.

If you have respect for him, then you will realize from your emotional distance that he is caught up in his own emotional bind This requires appropriate boundaries:

You do not dismiss what is being shared with you. Instead you recognize that the energy and misapprehension that your partner directed towards you do not fit you.

A lack of containment is often at the center of troubled relationships.

Staying self-contained in a relationship, especially when the dynamic pushes your buttons, is a difficult but excellent skill. Self-containment has to do with keeping an appropriate boundary around you that keeps you safe, yet allows you to relate. Picture a transparent egg that lets you see and hear everything but a trap door you can close if you feel there is a boundary violation. Your energies and thoughts directed at another and your partner’s energy and thoughts directed at you will become too distracting if your containment (boundary) is not set in place.

Going into the “red” of the feelings and thoughts of the Adapted Child will bring your relating into dysfunction. Staying in the green (Functional Adult)of containment brings things, at least at your end, back on track.. A healthy boundary creates controlled vulnerability.

Pema Chodrin says that vulnerability and compassion are the weak parts of the ego. The ego can not “block”us when we express and relate to the “soft underbellies” of  who we and our partner are. When you hear a complaint from your partner, listen more deeply for the longing being expressed.

Case Example: Martha had been in my office with her husband Fred three times. She was the one who had called me so I had started with her by gathering information. What she complained about, bitterly and repeatedly was, “We never get to talk. Fred’s at work, I’m at home with my two kids and by the day’s end we haven’t talked at all. Fred isn’t interested in hearing all about the kids and the minutiae of my day. Quite frankly, I’m bored with myself, too.”

Fred responded, “We talk all the time when I get home. We’re a team. We talk about all the things that need to be done before and after dinner. I spend an hour playing with the kids while she cooks. Then after dinner its bath time and bedtime stories. I talk about the office and stuff during dinner and I ask Martha about her day.”

Instead of Fred and Martha getting into a defensive and circular argument that never ended, I taught Fred  to “stay in the green” and not take what Martha had to say as an indictment against him.

I asked him, “Can you hear what the deeper longing is underneath Martha’s complaints?”

He answered logically. “Well, I guess she really wants some time with me that doesn’t focus on the kids.”

Martha nodded her head. “Of course that’s true. But that’s not realistic.”

“Listen more deeply,” I coached Fred. “What else is she really longing for?”

After working with Fred for ten minutes, he was able to speak a felt sense.

“I’m not sure I can put this into words,” he said, “but I think I’m hearing a longing for some kind of connection that we used to have before he kids.” Again, with my coaching, he described, . “A connection that has to do with just looking at each other and seeing how much we love each other.”

He was correct. He helped Martha understand her complaints as well. This felt sense is one that can be re-instated even during the most chaotic family times. They could re-instate this precious, delicate, and emotional communication once they both stayed out of the red and into the green, into self-containment around the family dynamics of having two young children.

Feeling truly understood helped them remember that this life is what they had chosen and created, out of love and optimismm and that they were in this together.

Wendy Allen, Ph.D, MFT specializes in couples and marriage counseling. Check out her website at: www.wendyphd.com