A Tale of Two Stories

Couples often come into therapy with quite different views of what the problems are. That’s part of the problem.

Couples often come into therapy with quite different views of what the problems are.

And this is part of the problem.

Maybe even the whole problem.

At the simplest level this can be a function of each person seeing the other as the cause of their relationship distress. “She has no empathy for me.” “He’s a jerk.” “We never have sex anymore” (meaning, my partner is the obstacle!).

Blame is a natural response to stress and helplessness in our culture — perhaps now more than ever. But it prioritizes division over healing.

However, people don’t usually start out in relationships blaming each other. How does this develop?

Each one of us has a different set of values, which I define as emotionally loaded beliefs. With any partner there will be some values that overlap and some that don’t. These range from the classic big ticket categories like money, parenting and sex, down to seemingly little things like how clean the kitchen counter is or what kind of music is played in the car.

Our values shape …