This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 12:14 pm and is filed under Couples therapy, Marriage counseling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
A common challenge faced by couples that are having marital difficulty is a pattern of starting conversations in a harsh or defensive tone. Writer and researcher, John Gottman, referred to this as harsh start up. This is when an attempt to connect with one’s partner starts out with a negative, blaming or critical way, which of course has the outcome of creating conflict, pain and unhappiness.
Harsh start-up leads to the shutting down of meaningful connections and leads to people feeling like they are being rejected.
When feeling rejected this frequently overwhelms people with negative emotions that they do not want to feel and in turn it is not uncommon to see one or both members of a married couple withdraw and become defensive which leads to responses that minimize, discount or create avoidance between the spouses in a troubled marriage.
Another common yet troubling habit can be a pattern of avoiding conversations that really need to take place so that realistic and effective problems solving can be accomplished. When this happens repeatedly in a marriage then there is a spreading discontent, frustration and conflict within the marital relationship.
Marital discontent can occur because problems are never resolved in effective ways. Frustration may arise because the same problems repeatedly and intensely reappear. Avoidance of issues can increase marital conflict which erodes the quality of any marriage or relationship.
Avoidance, frustration, conflict, marital discord, if these are attributes that you experience on a consistent basis in a troubled marriage, you might want to find someone to help you work through these habits and to develop some new, more effective ones. Marital therapy can greatly improve the above mentioned areas and help save your marriage and avoid divorce
To learn more about John Gottman’s concept about the Harsh Start-Up read The Relationship Cure: A 5 Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships
If you find yourself in a troubled marriage that is afflicted by marital problems we encourage you to speak with one of our relationship counselors.
June 29th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
I’m happy that your speaking about it so others can know! Definitely will keep in mind. Also, took me a while to get it right, you got to bring about the situation that first attracted you both and also prevent a ton of bad steps we all make naturally if you want to save marriage alone