Marriage Counseling

After 30 years of counseling, I have determined that ONE QUESTION captures the essential dilemma for most relationships. The question is this:

• How can a husband disagree openly, honestly and respectfully with his wife and still be a good husband?
• How can a wife disagree openly, honestly and respectfully and still be a good wife?
• How can a son or daughter be different from or disagree with his or her parents openly, honestly and respectfully and still be a good son or daughter?

In a relationship setting the question is asked this way:

• How can a daughter feel pity for her father and respectfully disagree with him without feeling guilty?
• How can a wife set limits with her husband and still love him?
• How can children succeed when their parents insist on it?
• Is the husband who withdraws and isolates always leaving because he doesn't care enough about his wife or could it be that he cares too much about her reactions?
• Is the wife who attempts to control her husband compelled to do so because she only wants her way or could she be so afraid of his impact in her life that she defends herself this way?

These questions point to common relationship struggles that appear to make relationships very difficult and sometimes impossible. While most emotionally conflicted relationships appear to need more “closeness,” in fact they need more separateness in order to allow for less emotional reactivity and more thinking.

Relationships that appear to be distant and polarized are completely enmeshed not allowing separate thinking or responses. Reactions of one are immediately met with an equal and opposite reaction from the other.

The inability to determine where I stop and where you start is the weakness in most relationships.