October Newsletter

Dear Clients and Readers,

 

I have been thinking about a pattern I see often in my work with couples. Those who struggle most in their relationships are not always the ones who fight too much. Sometimes they are the ones who cannot seem to let their partner’s perspective in. In other words, they refuse to be influenced.

 

There is research on this. The Gottmans found that couples where one partner consistently refuses to be influenced by the other have an 81 per cent chance of divorce. When I first read that statistic, it surprised me. But the more I sit with couples, the more I see how hard it is for some people to truly take in what their partner is saying.

 

Last week, a client (who kindly allowed this story to be shared) described feeling cornered every time her husband suggested she try something, a new recipe, a different holiday destination. “It is like my whole body tenses up,” she said. “I can feel myself digging in, even when I know he has a point.” We spent time exploring what that digging in was protecting. It turned out that in her childhood home, admitting you were wrong meant being humiliated. Her father’s word was the law, and disagreement was met with rage. So now, decades later, when her husband gently suggests a different approach to something, any small thing, some part of her still believes that accepting his influence means being dominated.

 

This refusal to be influenced does not only happen between people. It happens within us too. Before we can genuinely hear our partners, we often need to notice that we are not even listening to ourselves. I think about clients struggling with bulimia. One part restricts, another binges. Neither will accept influence from the other. Friends express concern. Doctors warn about health. But the person cannot take those messages in because their parts are already disregarding each other.

 

This same pattern shows up everywhere. One part of you wants connection, another pushes your partner away. One part knows you are being unfair, another insists you are right. One part wants to apologise, another refuses to give in. When we are internally divided, we cannot genuinely hear anyone else either.

 

There is a difference between three types of interaction:

Control: “Do it my way or there will be consequences.”

Compliance: “I will do it your way to avoid conflict” (but resentment builds).

Genuine influence: “Your perspective changes how I see this.”

 

Only the third builds intimacy, within yourself and in your relationships. What lies beneath the unwillingness to be influenced is often fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of not being needed, fear of being hurt again. In our culture, we often confuse who we are with what we believe. To change our mind can feel like losing our identity.

 

I have been thinking about how Eastern contemplative traditions teach “releasing the clutch of selfing and unclenching the fist of righteousness into an open palm of receptivity.” The image of an unclenched fist stays with me.

 

Some clients tell me they have built successful lives through independence and strong convictions. Why should they give that up? You do not have to. But there is a difference between having strong values and being unable to consider that you might be mistaken in how you express them. When we absolutely refuse to take in new information, from our partner, from our own conflicting feelings, or from reality itself, we start to impose our own reality on others, often without realising it. That is fear confused with firmness and rigidity, not independence. And it can suffocate clarity and connection.

 

Erich Fromm wrote:

 

“The basic rule for practising this art is the complete concentration of the listener. Nothing of importance must be on his mind; he must be optimally free from anxiety as well as from greed. He must possess a freely working imagination which is sufficiently concrete to be expressed in words. He must be endowed with a capacity for empathy with another person and strong enough to feel the experience of the other as if it were his own. The condition for such empathy is a crucial facet of the capacity for love. To understand another means to love him, not in the erotic sense but in the sense of reaching out to him and of overcoming the fear of losing oneself. Understanding and loving are inseparable. If they are separate, it is a cerebral process and the door to essential understanding remains closed.”

 

That fear of losing the self, our dignity and identity is valid but it is often based on old information. Learning to balance self-respect with openness to one’s partner or others is a sign of maturity. It is the strength to stay rooted in who you are while still being moved by what someone else has to offer.

 

I see it in couples when they start to open their grip and really listen to each other, and communication and connection return. I see the same revelation with individuals who begin to listen inwardly.

 

If you are noticing these patterns in yourself or your relationship and would like to explore this more deeply, appointments for both couples and individuals are filling quickly, though more remain available online.

 

Warmly,

 

Katerina Nemcova

Clinical Psychologist