According to Family Therapist, Terry Real, there are 5 main Losing Strategies that invariably push couples apart and create distance.
Being right is a double-edged sword, as it often comes down to being right according to whom?
As we Couples Therapists say: ‘Do you want to be right or do you want to be in a relationship?’
A fixed, I-know-it-all attitude is highly destructive and makes it very hard for our loved ones to get close to us. We can be unconsciously pushing them away.
Recognise you are both ‘right’. Each of you are different people with different perspectives.
Trying to assert your version of the ‘truth’ as the right one only creates greater separation between you and your partner.
If you experience these things intensely and a lot of the time, they are powerful conscious and unconscious ways of being controlled or controlling your partner.
For the most part we learn relationship patterns from the relationships that are modelled to us growing up. This is known as Pattern Imprinting. So it’s likely if you are familiar with controlling or being controlled this is something you saw and learnt from your home environment growing up. It probably wasn’t great for you then and it’s not great for you and your relationships now either.
Nobody likes to be controlled, it makes us feel suffocated and undervalued. It creates a bad energy in the relationship, and it’s hard to relax and be spontaneous.
Similarly, when we control our partner, we start to lose respect for them. This is a lose-lose scenario.
Controlling behaviour can be defined by forbidding your partner from doing something or telling them what to do. When we feel our control mechanisms are not working, we could even place further demands on our partners by threatening them. These threats can come in many forms like judgement, yelling, name-calling, withdrawal, rewards and even threats of leaving.
1: Being Right
Mainly we learn relationship patterns from the relationships that are modelled to us growing up by our parents. Then as we grow it is their relationship with each other that starts to really solidify what we think is acceptable behaviour.
Ever feel like you’re walking on eggshells around your partner? Or you’re making your partner tip toe around you?
Ever feel annoyed your partner isn’t doing what you’ve told them to? Or do you anxiously worry when you’ve said or done something you know your partner will disapprove of?
Do you feel entitled to give your partner a telling off, “keep them in line” or know what’s best all the time?
Or do you dread your partner’s reprimands, silent treatment, criticism or scathing remarks?
2: Controlling Your Partner
When I’m working with a couple, what I see very often is one member of the couple is very quiet and the other is very vocal.
We all carry different things for the relationship. Often there is someone carrying the hurt, someone carrying the financial worry, someone carrying the anger, someone carrying the physical caring for the family.
Depending on what we are carrying and how we are experiencing it, our need to disgorge that can sometimes go into Unbridled Self Expression.
This means that we can offer unfiltered, un-thought-out, and often hugely unhelpful, almost stream-of-consciousness expressions of our pain to our loved ones.
And whilst it may feel good while it’s happening, as you vent your anger, or distress, or frustration, or fear, it is actually very destructive.
This is the home of reactive and angry monologues, incessant criticism, sarcasm and snipes, passive aggressive insinuations and ‘reminders’, cutting remarks, rhetorical questions, unfunny 'jokes', loud sighs and snorts, rolling our eyes, banging of doors and storming from rooms.
Unbridled self-expression is particularly important to recognise in ourselves because like so much of our behaviour, it can quickly become habit. So if you notice that you can regularly sound off, be reactive, and feel entitled to just say whatever hurtful or angry thought passes through your mind, you may wish to recognise that this will not ease that pain or soothe that hurt. Often we are an open wound in that moment, and lashing out at the person we so want to heal us. This behaviour keeps us angry, keeps us hurt and keeps our partner very, very far away from us.
In a couples session, I try to help the more vocal partner become more boundaried, constructive and thoughtful about how they express themselves. And I work with the quiet partner on being able to speak more and express more. From this place actual conversations can take place, and understanding and care is more likely.
3: Unbridled Self-Expression
We all carry different things for the relationship. Often there is someone carrying the hurt, someone carrying the financial worry, someone carrying the anger, someone carrying the physical caring for the family.
It’s hard not retaliating, isn’t it? When we’re having a difficult conversation or in some kind of conflict, our reactivity and sensitivity to feeling hurt, misunderstood or dismissed is at an all-time high. So we need to fight back, don’t we? We need to stand up for ourselves. Set the record straight. Have a voice.
I spend a lot of time working with my clients around having a voice. Having an appropriate voice is about speaking honestly and openly, sharing the parts of us that we would like to be seen and heard; it’s a real act of love. It comes from a place of courage and integrity. Retaliation is not that.
Retaliation comes from the animal in us - our most primitive urges of survival and dominance come into play when in a situation where we are triggered to retaliate. Retaliation is about fighting back, winning, and destroying someone else if necessary.
In our intimate relationships we really need to sidestep this reaction and survival response as it can and does result in huge damage.
Terry Real coined a phrase I think is so accurate: Offending From The Victim Position. Retaliation can often hide in this behaviour. We feel entitled and unjustified to react aggressively to someone else because we feel a victim of some hurtful slight.
It’s hard to realise that in that moment we are not the victim but the persecutor…
4: Retaliation
Ah yes, I am sure we have all either experienced this or done this at some point in our lives. Otherwise known as Stonewalling, this strategy only creates even further resentment and makes it impossible for differences to be resolved.
It is usually perceived as a signal of giving up on the relationship or a passive-aggressive form of retaliation. Either way this strategy just hurts you and your partner.
When people are shut out they feel like you don’t care and this has a far more negative impact on the relationship than sticking around and sharing your anger, even if it results in a strong worded fight.
If however you do need a time-out to process, then inform your partner this is what you are doing, and make an agreement to return to each other or this conversation at a later stage.
5: Withdrawal
