Dividing Family Loyalties When You Marry

There is nothing like bringing home a close friend or partner to shine a spotlight on the unspoken rules by which every family, your family, lived and lives.

Every family that lives with one another for some time develops a set of patterns for emotional engagement that soon feels like the “family rules.” These expectations for behavior may start within a marriage and strengthen their grip as children are brought into the home. Once the children catch on to these patterns, they begin to live by them. Only family members know how that family works, even though no one may have ever spoken these powerful expectations out loud.

Many of these rules are quite helpful, and create a kind of emotional shorthand that members count on. Some rules families frequently live by are: this family lets one another know our whereabouts; this family goes to church/synagogue/mosque; this family values education; this family values friendship, and this family works hard. Others might be less helpful. They might be expressed as: this family avoids conflict; this family never questions mother/father; this family relies on men for money, women for support; this family doesn’t live outside our region; this family keeps secrets, and this family doesn’t trust anyone outside the family.

With these internal rules, members keep the connections of their family relationships, even unhealthy ones, intact. Once we bring another person into close relationship with this family system through marriage, the rules become more obvious; our new partner has no way of knowing or observing these internal rules except by bumping into them. Because they don’t have the years of unconscious training in working within the boundaries of these family expectations, newcomers invariably stir up distress and even conflict by disregarding these rules or even openly disagreeing with them. This is one way newcomers remain permanently on the outside of their partners’ family systems.

This is where the partner, whose family of origin is the one getting stirred up, has to bring his or her best self to the party or he/she will end up offending and damaging the new family and partner. If the rule is “no one can challenge the way Mom behaves,” Mom can run roughshod over the new wife of her son and her son gets caught between his loyalties toward his family of origin and that toward his partner. Because the loyalty to one’s family of origin is older and deeper, chances are that is the one that most easily wins.

In families where emotional connection has never been particularly intense or expected, this kind of division of emotional importance happens automatically. Parents have children, raise them, and expect that once their children marry, the old family changes. The new has come, and everyone has to adjust. In more emotionally intense, enmeshed, or distressed family systems, blending a new spouse and/or grandchildren into the mix may require an our-way-or-the-highway kind of behavior from the newcomer that can make for chronic distress for everyone.

I counsel couples who find themselves in conflict over family rules to think about loyalty as an emotional quality of relationships that can and must be shared unequally. One can be loyal to both one’s family of origin as well as to a new spouse, but the most successful marriages have partners who transfer their primary loyalties to their new partner. Mom or Dad may still be core relationships, but if there is any important conflict, decision, schedule, or issue to decide, the default must move to the spouse and couple.

If you and your partner seem to be in constant conflict over your visits back to visit your parents, your time spent with siblings, or the ever-present sense that you care more about pleasing your parents than you do your spouse, check in with yourself regarding that unequal balance of loyalty. If you feel miserably caught in the middle, it’s time to shift your focus. Unplug some of that urgency from your family of origin and give it to your new partner and children. And, of course, if it’s just not as easy as that for you, consulting with a local marriage and family therapist will help you more easily make that emotional transition.

(Originally written as a post for GoodTherapy.org, April 2013)

What is Structural Family Therapy?

I’m grateful to Sal Minuchin for helping us as family therapists understand, conceptualize and maneuver within the dynamic structures of families: the way that the emotional and legal connections of parents to their children over generations create fluid as well as fixed patterns of hierarchies, loyalties, rules, subsystems, coalitions and boundaries. While we may know these experiences instinctively, his theory gives us a vocabulary, structure and system of talking and thinking about these automatic family features.

I’m particularly glad for the way his ideas give us a way to talk about family power. How are marriages formed? How do parents use their power over children? What does it mean to be a grandparent, a sibling, a twin, a youngest or oldest child? Who creates the family rules? Who breaks them? Of critical importance is the way that this theory helps me to conceptualize children’s emotional dysfunction. I don’t have to think simply in individualistic, intrapersonal terms. I’m free to think, speak and intervene with children’s pain interpersonally by helping their parents better manage their own functioning, power, and relational well-being.

Every time I draw a new genogram, and hear about a conflicted marriage, a stressed child, or cut-off grandparents, and think about rules, power and family structure, I draw upon the core ideas of Minuchin and generations of clinicians after him who have helped us all become students of family structure.

1/2021: Here’s a great detailed look at Structural Family Therapy from a new counseling resource, Choosing Therapy: https://www.choosingtherapy.com/structural-family-therapy/

Sometimes it IS About You

As a family therapist and systems thinker, I view the conflicts and discussions in my therapy office as shared events and problems. We are all connected; what I do effects my spouse, my children and other close relationships, just as what they do effects me.

But there are times when one person’s habits, behaviors, attitudes, or choices are the source of a system’s pain. A problem frequently has a source. And it just might be you.

One of the most pained expressions I hear after couples therapy is the complaint that “therapy is always about me” and never focused on their partner. I hear it most frequently from my male clients. This reflects, I believe, the fact that men don’t often start conflict conversations in their relationships, leaving their women partners to do all that heavy emotional lifting. If their troubled patterns have been going on long enough, and the woman, despite how often she requests help or change, is always doing the complaining, the man is inevitably backed into his corner. Of course he feels that therapy is always about him. Because he has to travel so many emotional miles to catch up to where his partner has been.

In other situations, it may be that addiction is stealing away all the relationship and family stability. Or infidelity and secrets have damaged the sense of safety and closeness. Or one partner’s failure to care for their health, or work life, or family of origin problems weighs the entire family down. While all of these issues have system impacts, it just might be true that therapy, at least as we begin to unwind the issues, may truly feel like it’s All About You.

Core Long-Term Marriage Skills

One of my couple clients asked me to create a summary of our work together. I know these skills apply to nearly every long-term marriage, so I share them here.

1. Assume positive intent from your spouse. Trust him/her. Build positive interactions. Look for the good. Notice it, appreciate it. Stop trying to control the outcome of every interaction so that you feel less vulnerable. Protect yourself less, be open to one another more.

2. Self-focus: always pay more attention to how you are managing your own emotions/behaviors/words/tones than you are to your partner’s. Think: what can I do to improve our relationship? Journaling, prayer, ritual, reading about emotions/relationships/family of origin patterns.

3. Make every effort to improve your conflict conversations.
Don’t ignore important pain. If you find you are doing a lot of internalizing, mind reading, and stuffing emotions, it’s time to talk.  Bring up pain as complaints (about the issue – “I feel”) not criticism (about the other person – “You are”).

Start a conversation gently, “low and slow.”

Expect your partner to initially defend. Wait until that strong reaction passes before you respond. Ask your partner to lower their defense so they can listen, if necessary.

Listen for one another’s point of view. Appreciate whatever truth you can in your partner’s POV. Repeat it to them so they know they have been heard. Share your POV. Check to see if your partner gets what you are trying to say.

If conflict begins to hurt, STOP. Don’t escalate. Take some time out to calm down and return again to the conversation.

4. Cultivate your marital friendship. Remember, however well you think you know your partner, don’t assume you can no longer be surprised. Make asking questions of your partner’s day, experiences, dreams, hopes, memories, plans and pains a regular habit. Do some new things together. Allow one another the emotional room to do things independently. Too much intensity can be just as hard on a marriage as too much distance.

5. Flexible people are more satisfied in their marriages. Recognize and reflect on the fact that the that details of our lives we take for granted as we become adults – our bodies, minds, work, relationships with children, hobbies, friendships, emotions, goals – are changing all the time. Especially make peace with the ongoing aging of your body.

6. Keep emotion primary in your experience of life and one another since emotion is the way our bodies and minds give us moment by moment information. Continue to grow in your ability to notice, name, manage and understand your emotional life. Remember that your spouse is doing the very same thing. Think emotion before you attempt to use logic in hard conversations.

7. Know that the past never leaves us, but we can find creative ways to manage how it informs our present. Holding resentments or secrets is poison to healthy long-term relationships. When someone injures another, the healthiest couples use their spiritual resources of remorse, repentance, renewal and forgiveness to experience the hurt, commit to the healing of the injury and press on.

8. Build a positive appreciation for touch, smiles, eye contact, and physical proximity as expressions of affection and sexuality. Use your creativity to express sexual energy and desire in ways that work for both of you. Be sure to talk to one another during sexual activity so that you are clearer about what works and what doesn’t. If there is a difference in levels of drive and desire, work to blend masturbation and some kind of mutual sexual activity.

9. Share the leadership of your family/couple. Appreciate one another’s unique skills and allow for growth and change. Make decisions together, and think of your marriage as a team, a unit, even as you are always individuals.

10. Remember that life is short, and grows even shorter as we age. Set a daily intention to do the best you can as a person and a partner. Cultivate your spirituality and your sense of humor. Stop threatening divorce; take the word out of your imagination and vocabulary. Re-commit to your shared future; appreciate and marvel at all that you have already endured and experienced together.

Have some advice you’d like to share with long-married couples? Comment below!

What Every Husband Ought to Know about Marriage Conflict

Nobody likes to hear someone close to them be critical, blaming or shaming. It feels bad. And sometimes scary. It turns out that when women talk like that to their husbands, contrary to popular opinion, most men feel this intense criticism very strongly in their bodies. And because male bodies “rev up” faster than women’s in stress (heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension, tunnel vision), in order to protect themselves and their relationships from too much emotion, men frequently, readily, as a default, go into Defense mode.

It’s vital for happy, flexible marriages to have partners who know how to manage difficult conversations. There will be many of them over the years.

As I said in my last post, women have to learn how to bring up their complaints softly, gently, and with a caring touch.

Men need to recognize their usual default of Defensiveness, and learn to lower their emotional walls quickly.  If men can do this, while at the same time women practice being more gentle, the best situation for a positive interaction around difficult topics happens.

The most successful couples work on this communication posture change together. Trusting that the other is doing their best to move out of their “automatic” thinking/behavior/posture and tone to a more couple-friendly communication strategy.

Because I talk about these automatic couple missteps every day in my therapy practice, I know this is one of the most common couple problems. No one part of the couple can fix the problem completely on their own : each person in the marriage has a piece of the solution!

What Every Wife Ought to Know about Marriage Conflict

If I had the opportunity to share one essential marital tool with every wife in America, I know exactly what I would say:

Learn to bring up difficult topics with your partner in a calm, quiet and focused voice.

Marital researcher Dr. John Gottman has studied tens of thousands of marital conversations over 30 + years. He has found that there are 4 distinct communication habits that are poison to happy relationships. He calls them the “Four Horsemen,” like the biblical horsemen that bring in the end of times in the book of Revelation.

He has learned that men have a faster body response of adrenaline (increased heart rate, blood flow to the extremities, tunnel focus of attention) than most women to partner conflict. That means that when many women are just getting into the meat of their problem, their partner has become ready to run, fight and defend. It makes it very hard for men to stay focused and listen calmly without enormous effort.

If every woman could develop the personal skill of bringing up difficult discussions with their partner in a calmer way, their male partner is less apt to “flood,” focus and defend. And the conversation is more likely to be productive and problem-solving.

It’s a skill we practice in therapy all the time. Are you able to bring difficult topics up to your partner in a calm, cooperative way? If not, you may want to start working on this skill.

What is it that I wish I could tell every husband in America? Well, that’s for next time.

In The Therapist’s Office (now)

Every so often patterns seem to emerge from the diverse clients I see. Here’s what I’m noticing now:

1. Couples in my area are coming to counseling at higher distress levels. In our initial conversations, they easily say their problems go back years, not months. This often translates into one or both of the couple completely emotionally “finished,” and only coming to counseling out of a sense of obligation or the expectation that the divorce process in their county will expect some kind of counseling to occur.

Very often, men in these marriages are slow to agree to get counseling help. They may view the marriage differently, or be reluctant to reach out for support. When the wife begins to seriously talk about separation, the husband wakes up and says he’s ready and will often make the initial phone calls to therapists.

2. Couples have less confidence in counseling. Perhaps it comes from more choices for treatment (online, email therapy, coaching, prescription drugs) or a growing reluctance on many people’s part to give permanent change the time and energy it requires. I wonder if more people are willing to try therapy but quit when it gets hard to schedule or invest in, or if more people are choosing therapists by price alone. Many people will start therapy with less experienced counselors, but stop attending when the process gets bogged down.

Each of these issues makes helping couples heal and grow a true challenge. Therapy works best when there is less damage to heal, and works best when everyone is ready to invest themselves. Sometimes these factors don’t happen between partners at the same time.

Getting the Love You Want: Review

Getting the Love You Want : A Guide for CouplesGetting the Love You Want : A Guide for Couples by Harville Hendrix
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3.5 stars

Hendrix and I have preaching and church ministry as a young adult in common. I love this about him. What I don’t love is that his psychology model is born of psychoanalytic and Freudian models. He believes that we marry unconsciously to heal the wounds that our early lives have inflicted upon us, and that good marriages heal those wounds.

I believe instead that we marry others who feel instinctively familiar, like family, to us. In both good and bad ways. And that is our own work, our individual, relational and spiritual work, to heal our wounds. I think that is too heavy a load to lay on one relationship, particularly your spouse!

I am indebted to him, however, for teaching us/me the Imago Dialogue model. I use it almost daily in my practice to slow partners down, get them to listen to each other without reflexive defense, problem solving or arguing points of fact. It’s the best thing about his work that I value.

View all my reviews