Marriage is not destroyed by your weaknesses or shortcomings. It’s not about people at all, but about what happens between them, says systemic family therapist Anna Varga. The cause of conflicts is in the broken system of interaction. The expert explains how bad communication creates problems and what needs to be done to save the relationship.
Society has undergone important changes in recent decades. There was a crisis of the institution of marriage: about every second union breaks up, more and more people do not create families at all. This forces us to rethink our understanding of what a “good married life” means. Previously, when marriage was role-based, it was clear that a man should fulfill his functions, and a woman hers, and this is enough for the marriage to continue.
Today, all the roles are mixed up, and most importantly, there are many expectations and high demands on the emotional quality of life together. For example, the expectation that in marriage we should be happy every minute. And if this feeling is not there, then the relationship is wrong and bad. We expect our partner to become everything for us: a friend, a lover, a parent, a psychotherapist, a business partner… In a word, he will perform all the necessary functions.
In modern marriage, there are no more generally accepted rules for how to live well with each other. It is based on feelings, relationships, certain meanings. And because he became very fragile, easily disintegrates.
How does communication work?
Relationships are the main source of family problems. And relationships are the result of people’s behavior, how their communication is organized.
It’s not that one of the partners is bad. We are all good enough to live together normally. Everyone has the tools to build the optimal system of interaction in the family. Patients can be relationships, communication, so it needs to be changed. We are constantly immersed in communication. It happens on the verbal and non-verbal levels.
We all understand verbal information in approximately the same way, but subtexts are completely different.
In every communication exchange there are five or six layers that the partners themselves may simply not notice.
In a dysfunctional family, in times of marital crisis, subtext is more important than text. Spouses may not even understand “what they are quarreling about.” But everyone remembers well some of their grievances. And for them, the most important thing is not the cause of the conflict, but the subtexts — who came when, who slammed the door, who looked with what facial expression, who spoke in what tone. In every communication exchange, there are five or six layers that the partners themselves may simply not notice.
Imagine a husband and wife, they have a child and a common business. They often quarrel and cannot separate family relationships from work relationships. Let’s say the husband is walking with a stroller, and at that moment the wife calls and asks to answer business calls, because she has to run on business. And he walks with a child, he is uncomfortable. They had a big fight.
What actually caused the conflict?
For him, the event began at the moment when his wife called. And for her, the event began earlier, many months ago, when she began to understand that the whole business was on her, the child was on her, and her husband did not show initiative, he could not do anything himself. She accumulates these negative emotions in herself for six months. But he knows nothing about her feelings. They exist in such a different communicative field. And they conduct a dialogue as if they are at the same time point.
She accumulates these negative emotions in herself for six months. But he knows nothing about her feelings
By requiring her husband to answer business calls, the wife sends a non-verbal message: «I see myself as your boss.» She really sees herself that way at the moment, drawing on the experience of the past six months. And the husband, objecting to her, says thereby: “No, you are not my boss.” It is a denial of her self-determination. The wife experiences many negative experiences, but she cannot understand it. As a result, the content of the conflict disappears, leaving only naked emotions that will surely emerge in their next communication.
Rewrite history
Communication and behavior are absolutely identical things. Whatever you do, you are sending a message to your partner, whether you like it or not. And he somehow reads it. You do not know how it will be read and how it will affect the relationship.
The communicative system of a couple subjugates the individual characteristics of people, their expectations and intentions.
A young man comes with complaints about a passive wife. They have two children, but she does nothing. He works, and buys products, and manages everything, but she does not want to participate in this.
We understand that we are talking about the communicative system «hyperfunctional-hypofunctional». The more he reproaches her, the less she wants to do something. The less active she is, the more energetic and active he is. A classic circle of interaction that no one is happy about: spouses cannot get out of it. This whole story leads to divorce. And it is the wife who takes the children and leaves.
The young man marries again and comes with a new request: his second wife is constantly unhappy with him. She does everything before and better than him.
Each of the partners has their own vision of negative events. Your own story about the same relationship
Here is one and the same person: in some respects he is like this, and in others he is completely different. And it’s not because there’s something wrong with him. These are different systems of relations that develop with different partners.
Each of us has objective data that cannot be changed. For example, psychotempo. We are born with this. And the task of the partners is to somehow resolve this issue. Reach an agreement.
Each of the partners has their own vision of negative events. Your story is about the same relationship.
Talking about relationships, a person creates these events in a sense. And if you change this story, you can influence events. This is part of the point of working with a systemic family therapist: by retelling their story, the spouses rethink and rewrite it in this way.
And when you remember and think about your history, the causes of conflicts, when you set yourself the goal of better interaction, an amazing thing happens: those areas of the brain that work with good interaction begin to work better in you. And relationships are changing for the better.
From the speech of Anna Varga at the International Practical Conference «Psychology: Challenges of Our Time», which took place in Moscow on April 21-24, 2017.