COUPLE
Much of life satisfaction depends on our ability to create and maintain meaningful and mutually satisfying relationships. Our attachments to partners can be a great source of love, comfort, soothing, and pleasure. Emotional, physical, and sexual intimacy together form the cornerstone of couple bonds.
When partners achieve sufficient intimacy, they are more likely to create a secure bond. When the couple's attachment bond is secure, individuals experience themselves and their partners positively. However, when individuals have difficulty balancing their needs for connection and needs for respectful boundaries, intimacy in relationships is compromised.
Relationships seem to evolve through various stages. Initial feelings of connection may subside and problems may begin to emerge with an increase in emotional distance and negative feelings over time. During this period, conflicts often escalate and the relationship is no longer experienced as a source of comfort and nurturance. When corrosive anger, unyielding hurts, sadness, and fears of rejection and abandonment begin to emerge, partners become filled with feelings of insecurity and their attachment is undermined. Partners will manage these challenges differently depending on their relationship history, their ability to deal effectively with emotions and needs, and their sense of self and self-esteem.
Relationships seem to evolve through various stages. Initial feelings of connection may subside and problems may begin to emerge with an increase in emotional distance and negative feelings over time. During this period, conflicts often escalate and the relationship is no longer experienced as a source of comfort and nurturance. When corrosive anger, unyielding hurts, sadness, and fears of rejection and abandonment begin to emerge, partners become filled with feelings of insecurity and their attachment is undermined. Partners will manage these challenges differently depending on their relationship history, their ability to deal effectively with emotions and needs, and their sense of self and self-esteem.
The CFIR couple therapist will create safety in the therapeutic environment. He or she will not ‘side’ with any one partner, but instead will explore how emotional, physical, and sexual intimacy has been blocked and how each member in the couple inadvertently may be contributing to the disconnection.
Partners will also struggle to negotiate and balance individual and relationship needs. These relationship challenges can provide partners with important opportunities to further deepen a sense of who they are as individuals and build greater capacity for emotional intimacy.
Building emotional communication is an essential part of couple therapy so that partners can identify emotions and assert their needs for autonomy and connection within the relationship. CFIR therapists explore earlier attachments to caregivers and other relationship partners to understand current dynamics within and between partners that block connection. Difficult relationship patterns are changed to promote novel and rewarding ways of interacting.
You may wish to consider couple therapy if you have or are experiencing the following:
You may wish to consider couple therapy if you have or are experiencing the following:
- Corrosive, circular fighting with no satisfactory resolution
- Communication involving critical attacks
- Chronic hurt, excessive fears of abandonment and rejection
- Loss of trust in the aftermath of infidelity, betrayals, abandonments
- Loss of respect
- Fears of losing one’s self/identity in the relationship
- Greater emotional distance, less investment in your partner
- Feelings of subjugation
- Persistent sexual dissatisfaction
- Loss of emotional closeness, intimacy
- Difficulties finding a ‘we’ and preoccupation with ‘I’ versus ‘you’