Love: A Co-Created Narrative

“Love is a story we tell with another person. It’s cocreation through conarration.”

I am referencing an article in the This Life section of the Sunday New York Times that highlights the significance of a rather natural routine of couple’s joint storytelling, (for example, the “how they met story”). Storytelling is integral to the deeper process of establishing a bond with another person. It is both challenging and rewarding to create an intermingled identity with another. Couples may engage in joint narratives without realizing that it is a stabilizing vehicle as they try to embrace each other’s differences. Creating a shared story of the couple’s life and how it has unfolded actually strengthens the relationship. Often, new couples share the story of how and when they decided to partner up or marry with family and friends. The stories can include mystery, humor and laughter, synchronicity, hardship, and elements of destiny. As the couple’s life evolves over time, their story becomes more elaborate and the feelings deepen through their varied shared experiences and inevitable challenges. Possibly children are added, the spice of extended family, and all matter of ingredients are poured into the pot. The co-creation of the story establishes the identity of the couple and reinforces their shared life. Mr. Feiler, the author, notes that as couples construct a joint reality, it balances the “contradictory impulses of independence and interdependence or selfishness and selflessness”. Those conflicting needs battle within all of us as we try to establish an intimate bond.

Inevitable hardships and “unforgiveable” events become integral parts of the story; a break-up that threatened to destroy the relationship, difficulties with blending families, a betrayal – there can be many obstacles along the path of solidifying a relationship over time. After an initial attraction, there is a long road ahead and you either hang-in for the reward of a stable, committed bond with another or move on and start the search all over again.

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Couple Therapy Part 2: Fusion or Differentiation

In my work with couples for over thirty years, the balance ratio of fusion and differentiation is an important indicator of couple health. Let’s clarify these concepts beginning with fusion. The classic photo of two Americans traveling in similar Hawaiian shirts in Europe engenders the flavor — two matching bookends. Of course, individuals in a couple create resonance together that influences life style choices, plans, activities, outlooks on life and everyday habits. That resonance, as displayed in a variety of ways, helps the couple align and function with ease. The relationship can hum with the rhythm of basic routines, worked-out choices and habits that allow each individual a level of comfort in the similarity and consistency of their acquired lifestyle and tastes.

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Couple Challenges

Couple life can present many difficult challenges – while simultaneously providing the most stabilizing, anchoring force in one’s life. Living day-to-day with another can feel like receiving multiple abrasions. We often feel our partner has stepped on our toes as he walked by, and we instinctively retaliate and step decisively on his. We often feel rubbed the wrong way. Contending with major and minor incidents is one challenge facing most couples on a regular basis. If couples learn healthy ways to navigate ruptures, they can preserve and strengthen the fabric of their relationship. Learning couple skills takes trial and error and discipline.

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Psyche and Soma

Orgonomy embraces health with a functional mind-body approach that helps patients access their naturally abundant free flowing energy, and couples it with capacity for lively contact and clarity of perception in an unarmored body. This approach is distinguished from other therapies by its energetic concept of functioning. When there is blockage in our mind and body, our capacity to function at our fullest is limited by both aspects. Our physicality is part and parcel of the health equation. As mental health professionals – why not work with the body directly? Why not expand treatment beyond a strictly verbal analytic therapy model, as we increasingly realize the importance of body-mind components that factor into the etiology of physical disease, stress-related symptoms and capacity to heal. I hope to engage you in these questions and provide answers. I am incredulous that the vast majority of analysts never engage the patient’s body in the process; likely because somatic interventions are rarely taught in a methodical way that is congruent with theoretical principles of analysis. With verbal therapies, the mind and emotions are engaged, but not the body, therefore the mind-body split continues.

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Character Analytic Couple’s Therapy

My blog has often focused on character types and I am sure many of you have recognized aspects of these types in yourself and others you know. Those of you residing in couple hood may recognize characteristics in your mate as well. Or, maybe you don’t recognize your own character flaws, but recognize your mate’s problems with greater ease. That happens too; it is easier to see and be critical of our mate than look at our own contribution to the problems. It is quite challenging to live with another person day in and day out, as we are confronted with our own discomfort, disappointment, and even despair, and become chronically annoyed, irritable and resentful. We grapple with wanting things to be other than they are and that is the human condition. “If only he (or she) was like this or like that I would feel better.” And sometimes that is true too. Yet the comforts of companionship, familiarity, and shared experiences over time are intrinsically so valuable that it helps us get through obstacles that at times seem insurmountable. The longing to be bonded with another is a primitive need as we are basically social animals. That said, couples do struggle and reach boiling points when they can’t get back or forward to a stable place of harmony and safety with each other. It is at those times that a therapist can help illuminate, clarify, clear the logjam and help create permanent ways out.

There are various approaches to couple’s therapy. This post will discuss character analytic couple therapy, which clarifies how life-long character patterns create difficulty in relationship. As each character type engages from its chronic defensive positions, a couple’s dynamic is created. So understanding each character’s propensities helps a couple to understand their dynamics – as a couple’s ’system‘ has a life of its own.

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