NJ couples therapy

Couples Therapy: When Needs Conflict

Even though feelings are subjective (and always make sense in some subjective way), relationships are full of struggles over who’s feelings are right and who’s are wrong.

This comes up quite often in couples therapy.

Even though we are not responsible for other peoples’ feelings, knowing that someone is upset with us can cause us to feel that we are responsible. Relationships are hard because they require us to balance our own needs with those of people we care about a whole lot- and sometimes our needs conflict.

For example, in a relationship, one partner may desperately want some alone time at the exact time that the other partner may be craving connection/time spent together.

When both partners feel a strong need at the same time for mutually exclusive things in the relationship, it can be hard to keep in mind that just because both people can’t get their needs met, doesn’t mean that one is right and the other is wrong.

But we often act as if that is the case.

When one person’s needs cause difficulty for the other (for example, if an exhausted wife chooses to go to sleep even though she knows her husband is up with the crying baby and that he’ll be exhausted the next morning at work), it can be painful- sometimes causing guilt over one’s own needs or resentment of the other’s needs.

When we care about a relationship, it can be very hard to accept the fact that both people can’t always be happy at the same time. Sometimes couples manage to find a compromise that gives each partner a little bit of what they want- some of it, but not all of it. Both partners get some of what they want, so things feel equal and fair, as well as somewhat acceptable.

But it doesn’t always work out so nicely.

Sometimes both partners find the available compromises unacceptable (for example, when the wife is absolutely unwilling to spend time with her difficult in-laws because it leaves her stressed out for months afterwards, while the husband wants to be with his family for the holidays and considers this a cherished tradition), or else no appropriate compromise can be found (for example, when one partner wants to have children and the other one doesn’t). Things get especially hard when two people in a relationship are both triggered into vulnerable emotions, and each partner’s way of managing vulnerability negates the other partner’s way- for example, when one partner becomes anxious and controlling and the other becomes withdrawn and distant. Both can easily create panic and desperation in the other if they push too hard for an agenda that increases the anxiety or vulnerability of their partner. Yet couples do this all time, and things often quickly escalate into a power struggle of sorts. It can be hard at such times to step back and allow room for each person to validate the other person’s needs without feeling either guilty or resentful.

This kind of struggle recently came up in a couples therapy session I was conducting. Matt and Sarah were angry with each other over money issues- but more than being angry, each felt absolutely unable to validate the other person’s point of view.

Sarah felt that Matt wasn’t thinking of their future when he kept buying gifts for her or the kids instead of depositing the money into savings. Matt felt that Sarah was trying to control him and deprive him of being able to provide the family with small indulgences that would make him feel good about himself as a provider. In my office, Sarah and Matt began to escalate as each tried to explain to me why his/her position was the right one. It quickly turned from a couples therapy session to a mutual blame session, and no matter what I said, neither one was willing to consider the other’s feelings or perspective.

To me, as an outsider, it was clear that Sarah was panicked about their future and her ability to feel secure and protected in the relationship. I knew that this came from trauma in Sarah’s past in which she was homeless with two children after leaving her first partner, who was abusive. Sarah longed for nothing more than to have some money in the bank for emergencies. For her, this represented safety and relief from the fear that her past trauma would repeat itself in the future.

Matt, on the other hand, was coming from a relationship in which he had been criticized and controlled for every move he made. No matter how hard he worked, it was never enough to please his first wife. She was always complaining that he didn’t bring home enough money. At this point in his life, he was finally bringing home a nice check and, even though he didn’t have enough money to save much each month, he felt that at least he was covering their bills and even bringing home a little bit of extra cash so that he could splurge every now and then and give his family some luxuries. Matt desperately wanted to be able to indulge his family a little bit here and there and to feel successful as a breadwinner, but Sarah’s constant worries and admonitions about saving left him feeling that he could never measure up no matter what.

Watching the couples therapy session from an outside vantage point, it was easy to see how both of their needs and vulnerabilities were intersecting. I could see the legitimacy of Sarah’s need for security and some savings, and I could also see Matt’s need to feel affirmed as a provider and to be able to enjoy indulging his family and feeling that his income was enough to please the people he loved and to feel appreciated for doing so. So, what was it that made it so hard for Matt and Sarah to make room for each other’s perspectives and feelings?

To me, it seemed that each partner felt guilty about his/her position, leading to a need to prove that each one’s feelings were justified- or right. And while feelings aren’t right or wrong from the perspective of a couples therapist, couples often look to an outside “authority” for validation that each has the right to his/her feelings- and sometimes this includes an expectation that the therapist will take sides, choose one person’s feelings over the other’s. I knew that my job was not to take sides, but rather, to help both Sarah and Matt see that there was room for both sides in the relationship.

So, as we explored things some more, we were able to get clear that Sarah felt that Matt was invalidating her right to want security and to feel a sense of mastery over her past trauma. To Sarah, this meant that Matt did not actually care that much about how much she had suffered when she had left her first husband and found herself homeless with two children. She felt that Matt’s dismissiveness towards her need to save indicated a lack of empathy for what she had suffered.

Matt, on the other hand, felt that Sarah was treating him like a financial failure, an extremely painful position for him due to his past experiences. He felt that he could never measure up to her expectations and that his efforts to do something nice for her and the children were completely dismissed by her, leaving him feeling ashamed and unacknowledged. Matt also felt that Sarah’s anxiety about saving money meant that she didn’t trust him to take care of her and that the amount of money they had in the bank meant more than his intentions.

In fact, as we all came to understand as the couples therapy progressed, Matt did want Sarah to feel secure…but his idea of security was different from hers’. Matt hoped that his generosity towards Sarah, his ability to cover their basic bills, and his protectiveness towards her would give Sarah the security she desperately wanted…but Sarah had to learn to let go of one image of security and develop a different one, in order to be able to experience the feelings she was looking for in the relationship. As Sarah began to pay more attention to Matt’s resourcefulness and wish to take care of her, she began to trust that they would somehow find a way to manage if their financial situation were to change in the future- even without the dollar signs in the bank that represented security for her.

And Matt started to realize that there were things he could do to help Sarah feel more secure, such as making a budget together with her, or giving her some cash instead of a gift when he got a bonus at work, so she could decide if she preferred to put it in their saving account instead. Seeing how happy this made Sarah allowed Matt to feel successful as a provider and acknowledged for the affection behind the gesture.

Couples often come in to couples therapy determined to find out who is right and who is wrong, but sometimes all it takes is some good communication to realize that one person’s right and the other person’s wrong can often be reconciled- with a little validation and some genuine open-mindedness to each other’s vulnerabilities.