Sure! Basically, we were struggling a lot to connect emotionally and have productive conversations. We weren't able to solve problems together and really plan our lives at all. I 100% think that EFT saved our marriage because it taught us that:
1) I (being the pursuer) need emotional connection and attention. I need my partner to share how they are feeling with me. I also learned that my desire to have this need be met was actually causing a lot of problems. We had had several major fights in the past that led to a fear opening up on my SO's part, etc.
2) My SO had to learn how to identify and share what he was feeling (while I stayed quiet and gave him the space to do so without derailing him or judging him).
Basically, we identified our communication pattern (we call it our tornado), which developed as a result of our attachment styles in childhood. Once we could identify that pattern, we were able to stop it in its tracks. It became us against that problem, rather than us against each other.
Any EFT couples therapist is likely to recommend the book, Hold Me Tight by Sue Johnson. I recommend it as well, especially if you cannot get into therapy ASAP.
One thing to expect in the first session with EFT is being asked what initially attracted you to your partner/spouse and when was your first big fight was and what caused it. This can give the therapist a lot of insight into your pursuer/withdrawer patterns and once that comes to light, it is like BAM! Such an eye-opening experience.
Hope this is helpful!
You’re completely right. They are not in a place, even before whatever catastrophic event pushes them to the fringe, where a healthy relationship with an emotionally healthy partner is viable or even possible.
It’s now generally accepted in the literature, and I tend to agree, that we most often seek romantic relationships with people who resemble, more-or-less, the parent with which we had the most difficult relationship.
The reasons are complex, and I’ll not dwell on them here, but I am sure that with some reflection you will see this pattern in your own life. This is neither inherently good, nor is it bad. We seek the love with which we are most familiar, even (some might say especially) if that love is imperfect, or even harmful.
On some level, we hope for partners that love us the way our difficult parent did (or did not, you understand) but will do so better.
For example a man who as a child had a mother that was cold and aloof will most likely seek out high achieving and impressive women, but hope that this time he will be “good enough” to get the love he missed out on as a child. Were he to date a down to earth and supportive woman, even if he broadly understood and appreciated her qualities, and felt better, he would also feel worse in a way he couldn’t quite articulate.
It’s quite the problem! I’ll not moralize about “ThE sTaTe of THe FamILy”, but it’s possible that more people have more difficult relationships with their parents growing up, and that is the state they are in when they reach the stage of life where they want to start a family of their own.
My father’s father was a Major and a martinet. What was the result? My father was a <em>Lieutenant Colonel</em> and a martinet. . What was I like when I entered adulthood? Well, you can guess.
Then what happened in romantic relationships? Recreating that same dynamic by dating anxious and promiscuous Army Brats. We were both trying to ”fix” the imperfect love of our childhoods.
The solution to this has to be nourishing the hurt stemming from childhood that exists in people and impedes their relationships.
There are basically two (and a half) ways to do this:
First, people with “Good Enough” parents are generally secure in relationships. They set boundaries and select partners that are either also secure, or they are able to work with their partner and by providing a stable base in the relationship, studies show that over time their partner also becomes more secure. Being loved well gives us the ability to love well.
I would say that people entering relationships due to “good enough” parental love demonstrate one way.
Being introduced to secure love through a relationship with a secure partner really is only half because it puts a tremendous strain on the relationship, and requires active work from both partners.
The best alternative, and really the only realistic solution to people who had difficulty receiving love as children is therapy. It seems hard to believe, but for many people the reliable care and concern, and interest of a therapist is the first they’ve encountered and can change their lives.
> “So much depends on the emotional learning that adult neurophysiology permits. Can the neglected or abused child hope for a healthy life? Will his adulthood replicate his past and prove again the principles he knows too well? Considering the neural impediments to progress, how does healing happen? With Attractors ready to shoehorn reality into the mold of the familiar, how does an emotional mind break free?”
> “Psychotherapy grapples with these questions daily. A therapist does not wish merely to discern the trajectory of an emotional life but to determine it. Helping someone escape from a restrictive virtuality means reshaping the bars and walls of a prison into a home where love can bloom and life flourish. In the service of this goal, two people come together to change one of them into somebody else. Few agree on how the metamorphosis occurs. The secret identity of psychotherapy’s mutative mechanism has prompted enough hot-tempered debate and factional feuding to fill a history of the Balkans. And rightly so. The centerpiece of therapy is also the focal point of the human heart.”
A General Theory of Love, Thomas Lewis