What Makes Monogamy AND Polyamory Work!!!

I just don’t really have any more to give…

I just don’t see it helping…

I just don’t think they’ll ever change…

Statements I’ve heard as people drop out of couples therapy…

I don’t know why, but I was kind of set up to work with couples from the very beginning of my journey into being a therapist. My very first client was a couple! In retrospect, I think that is a special kind of cruelty to put a grad student through, but without getting too much off track, I was just primed for my couples work. The professor that it was easiest to connect with in grad school was even the couples focused faculty member. So all roads seemed to lead to couples therapy. I got to focus more on working with romantic relationships as my career started to move along, there was just a problem. It never worked…

Couples Therapy Never Ended the Way It Was Supposed To…

There was a lot of pain in my early development as a therapist and my couples therapy was where I felt it the most. I was taught a differentiation-based model of couple therapy. The concept of differentiation in that way of doing therapy says that differentiation is the process of defining a sense of self-with flexibility that allows for growth while also being solid enough to have core internalized values. The idea is that intimacy can’t exist without a self to share.

That all makes sense right? Seems pretty intuitive whether I’m talking to my colleagues or people who know nothing about therapy. And the problem is I saw no one who was able to do anything with it. Even when people really liked this shift it never translated to a shift in their behavior.

And even when it did help, it still didn’t do what I had been told couples therapy was supposed to, which was restore closeness and intimacy. I was able to get some folks to a place where they were not fighting, but that’s also the EXACT report that I got from them: “We’re not fighting, there’s just not really much of a connection.” That was the statement I heard from the couple that I had helped the most during that time. I was heart-broken and furious! Is this the ceiling on how good relationships can be?!   

Then a friend got me into Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT). I had been exposed to EFT in my grad program and thought it was silly. EFT is based on Attachment Theory, and the jist goes that healthy functioning in couples revolves around whether both partners are attuned, responsive, and engaged enough for them to form a secure bond that fulfills attachment needs. Coming from the background I had, this did not sound healthy. It sounded enmeshed, codependent, or fused. I was so desperate at that point I still tried it, and it pretty much worked the way it was supposed to. I became an attachment theorist, I stopped thinking about differentiation for the longest time. I went all in on this model that was helping me help my clients. It was more effective than anything else I had learned at that point. Couples were talking about feeling reconnected…most of them…

There were still couples that I was not helping. Those “high conflict” couples as therapists refer to them. They are the couples where the fights are ugly, loud, attacking, and all around full of toxic behavior from one or both of the partners. And even after making this switch into EFT and pursuing advanced training and supervision around it, those couples just never shifted any of their negative behaviors toward each other. The most baffling ones still even reported feeling increased connection, intimacy, general positive emotion, all that jazz. And they still would just scream, curse, and tear each other down consistently. Meeting each other’s attachment needs now seemed like it had it’s limits too.

What Is Love?!

And Baby, did it hurt at this point! Because this is where my personal life started to come into the picture. I was also in my 20’s and in varying degrees flings, dating, and singlehood at this point in my life. I was now in a strange position. I was figuring out my own desires for what romantic connection could look like for itself, while also trying to help others with theirs. Even more at this stage, I had taken a job to focus on couples work where my caseload fluctuated between 85-90% couples. Guess I’ve always been a bit of a glutton for punishment. 

Differentiation theory sounded great on paper. Developing a coherent self so that you can share about your experience meaningfully and take responsibility for your actions. Sounds healthy to me! But no one could DO it! Attachment theory was more useful, I was helping more people point blank. And there were still people who forming a stronger attachment bond to their partner did NOT lead to them starting to be more kind to each other. 

And things were honestly made worse by my colleagues when I would voice frustrations to them. My friends on the differentiation side essentially gave me bleak answers about how most couples just can’t actually do the work. My friends on attachment side were not able to accept that it was not working, the message was always do the same thing slower and softer. On one side I was getting the message that I was silly for not having a more realistic idea of couples work; and on the other side, I was being told that I was not seeing what I was seeing. It really felt crazy making, and I just felt like I had no clue what made a relationship work in therapy. But something shifted around the time I started working with poly folk. There were a lot of things happening during that time, and this was a big shift for me still. I started working with nonmonogamous relationships, partially because monogamous couple work was becoming tedious and honestly with the clinic I was at, I was the most open and best suited to do that work. And I liked the work! Relationship therapy was at least interesting again instead of rote. There were still just those pesky relationships that just would not shift. 

Relationships Don’t Make Sense…and That’s Kind of Okay!!!

Then I had one of the worst weeks I’ve ever had as a therapist. Infidelity was found out by one of the partners in two different couples I was working with. I was floored. Both that it happened and that the responses in both relationships were so different. One played out like so many couples had; the Betrayed wanted to tell on their partner to me in session, the Betrayer got defensive, the Betrayed attacked the Betrayers character, the Betrayer tried to make it the Betrayed fault, and they dropped out at the end of the session. 

The other couple took me off guard in the other direction. They identified as swingers and had been in the lifestyle for well over 10 years. One of them found out that the other had broken several agreements and had been hiding dates with a partner that had not acted in good faith toward my clients’ relationship in the past. And it sure looked like the session was going to go the same way. To the point this part might not even sound real, but the first 25 minutes of the session felt exactly the same! The Betrayed started to tell on the Betrayer, who immediately became defensive. Then, the third beat was different. There was no attack on that partners character. I saw the Betrayed partner clench their jaw so hard that I started to wonder if something was physically wrong. I saw their hands clench, and knuckles turn so white I thought they might even start bleeding. They did not soften, but they let out a long exhale, they cleared their throat and I could tell they were trying not to yell. They turned to their partner and sternly asked, “what happened?”

And that’s when I realized that maybe I had my head too far in the books. In these moments, what made the difference was not that someone was able to show up and take responsibility for themself and their actions. And there was no soft-vulnerable turn that mystically lowered everyone’s defenses either. There was acceptance and a choice. When I reflect on what happened, I see a person accepting their partner as they are, and choosing to be with them. To go a step further, I saw them accept behavior from their partner that they knew was unkind and unacceptable, and they responded by trying to understand their partner. 

I figured out that being well differentiated or securely attached might be good pictures of what healthy functioning looks like, but neither of them can be the black or white. People are not healthy or unhealthy. If we hold the people to the standards in the books, no one really makes the cut. I’ve never met a differentiated person, everyone goes for the avoidance and relief of tension at some point instead of doing the much harder thing in tolerating that anxiety. I’ve never met a securely attached person, everyone numbs some pain at some point through withdrawal from or pursuit of their partner. And that’s just a human experience. I think that is why romantic connections mean something to me and why I still want to do this work. I kept my head buried in the books and research to the point that I really lost sight of the forest for the trees. It doesn’t mean much that we love our partners when they behave in ways we find acceptable or if they give us something we’ve never had before in relationship, that just makes sense. It means something that we love our partners because sometimes they don’t. 

If you’re looking for relationship therapy, please reach out!

Best, Ryan