What do you think is the number reason why relationships fail?
Falling out of love? Different values? Getting bored? Your partner is not the person you thought you fell in love with? Communication issues? Trust issues?
All those reasons may exist, but the biggest predictor, according to John Gottman, is how you and your partner fight. If even one of you regularly expresses contempt, your relationship is doomed.
Relationships can fall apart
That reason why relationships fail is known by many. Just telling someone not to have contempt won’t work. Under stress, that behavior will return. I once had a partner who was wonderful most of the time, but when she was exhausted or stressed, then her personality changed. This happens with most of us, and it can be a little hard for a partner to deal with at times. This behavior can be a defense mechanism that you, or your partner, developed as a result of past trauma, including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or past relationships.
From my personal history and a few decades of working with people, I’ve noticed that we don’t often discuss the effect that the stress (survival) response has on relationships. When things are going well, as they tend to in the beginning of relationships, negative behaviors aren’t expressed. As the stress mounts, the controls holding the negative behavior weakens, or perhaps there is a state change; meaning the physiology of stress cause a different physiological and psychological state. Once a person is in that new state, there is disassociation or a disconnect with their normal state.
Being able to name the problem does little to change it. Relationships fall apart because one or both of the people start operating more from their survival physiology than from their relaxed place. In survival, everything is viewed as a place of being a possible threat. When you feel threatened your first instinctual act is not to reach out to connect. It’s to fight or flight—to attack or withdraw.
Turning Around a Failing Relationship
There are some very powerful therapies such as Somatic Experience, developed by my friend Peter Levine, Ph.D. They can release old trauma and the lingering effects of PTSD.
We see people modifying their survival response on their own by slowly allowing themselves to feel what occurs on a deep level when they feel their reactionary survival behaviors kick in. When you feel the urge to “survive”—attack or withdraw or disengage. Go beyond the reaction to the vulnerable feeling behind it.
It’s not that we had trauma or stress. It’s that when we did experience it wasn’t safe to feel the emotions associated with them. As you begin to feel those emotions, the behaviors that sabotage your true desires and your relationship will decrease. A simple practice that works.
In the moment of feeling your panic, the last thing you want to do is become vulnerable. I know from personal experience. It was hard for me to start to turn this around by slowing down and allowing myself to feel and then express.
Your head might say it’s safe. Your body wants to run or fight, or possibly just check out— “freeze,” as Peter would call it. At that moment just feel a little more of your panic than you ever had before. You do that a few hundred times, you will be a different person and your relationship will transform.
You don’t need to do this work alone. There are therapists who understand this behavior and will work with you to change it. If you feel like you don’t want to pursue therapy, you can join or create one of the deep men’s groups we help create. One of these groups will help you open up to other people in a safe, natural manner.
Courage for the Connection
Courage is doing the right thing when it’s difficult. Being with your emotions is the right thing and that can be difficult. You can do it, and you can make it safe for your partner to do it. It might not happen immediately, but in in time, you and your partner will feel safe to let down emotional walls and eschew potentially toxic survival behaviors. That will have you feeling safer.
Rebuild connection, trust, and intimacy by being vulnerable–it works.
You can wait for the next incident and all of the negative emotions that come with it to address this, or you can be proactive and initiate a conversation in which you discuss this matter with your partner. Share with your intent and your fear. Be open.
Let us know how it goes. We want you to have better relationships. You can do it.
