The Couples Paradox: FINDING YOUR RELATIONAL SUPERPOWER

By William C. Shearer and Robin L. Shearer

Bill and Robin Shearer have specialized in working with couples for four decades. They are dedicated to helping couples overcome relational difficulties and move beyond stress, anxiety, anger, fear, and depression to deeply satisfying connection. Together, they have developed Mindful Choices Couples Therapy for a lasting relational transformation.

Mindful Choices Couples Therapy was created out of the Shearers’ recognition that relational well-being and thriving are multifaceted and rooted in awareness, choice, and healthy habit development. When mindful awareness is coupled with making great choices, and systematically practicing those choices to the point of powerful and enduring lifelong habits, relational well-being and thriving result. It’s transformative, and Mindful Choices Couples Therapy is designed to systematically bring about that transformation.

This book is about the application of Mindful Choices Couples Therapy to helping couples resolve “The Couples Paradox. If you are like most people, you have a natural tendency to respond when emotionally triggered in ways that are unhelpful to the relationship — even though being connected and securely attached is your biggest need.

The heart of Mindful Choices Couples Therapy is an incremental, step-by-step mastery of 10 Mindful Choice areas, all interconnected and all having great impact on couple well-being. The focus is on assessment-based awareness and systematic and focused practice using knowledge derived from neuroscience as well as many other powerful tools for change. We call our systematic habit development “Habitualizing.”

For the past 10 years, the Shearers have used Mindful Choices Couples Therapy with hundreds of couples. The results far exceed anything they and their clients experienced when the focus was on merely reducing conflict and relational stress utilizing traditional approaches.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798369400050

William C. Shearer

Both licensed mental health professionals, Bill and Robin Shearer come from diverse backgrounds. Bill started out as United States history teacher and went on to an Air Force career, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. He has been a licensed psychologist in California since 1977. Robin began her career as an RN before becoming a marriage and family therapist. Long on education and training, the couple has spent decades not only providing treatment in a mental health setting but living their values in real life. They engage in a variety of balancing and revitalizing practices such as yoga, meditation, and being surrounded by nature. Robin is an avid equestrian. Bill is a wildlife photographer and artist. In short, they practice what they teach, and they are on a mission. While specializing in treating addictions, eating disorders, problem relationships, and stress and anxiety disorders — problems characterized by a lack of balance and resilience — their main passion is helping others move beyond dissatisfaction with life or mental health issues, to a life of meaning, purpose, and deep satisfaction—a life of “thriving.” A previous book, Mindful Choices for Well-Being, offers a holistic action-oriented process of choosing and creating well-being using proven methods for transformational change. The Shearers developed Mindful Choices Therapy during more than three decades of clinical practice. Mindful Choices Therapy provides the tools for transforming great choices into powerful and effective habits.

Book preview

PART I

Why Are We So Bad at Getting What We Need the Most?

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CHAPTER 1

The Couples Paradox: Connection, Protection, and Disconnection

Your relationship is essential to your well-being, and we want you to be great at being in your relationship. We want you to be mindfully self-aware and relationally mindful—magic ingredients in your relationship success.

Our intention in this chapter is simply to acquaint you with an inevitable paradox that applies to most couples. Understanding the paradox can help you avoid the common pitfalls that derail most relationships. Instead, you can be masterfully conscious and intentional and have an unwavering commitment to being a rewarding partner who is mindful and responsive.

Relationships are difficult, and long-term success is elusive. However, there are solutions.

Four decades of working with couples have led us to one major conclusion; some people have better relationships because they are better relationship partners. This doesn’t come naturally.

The most important factors? Most people aren’t very good at being rewarding partners who are mindful and responsive, good at giving empathy and affection, and those are the crucial ingredients.

There are many things getting in your way, such as defensiveness, avoidance, past hurts, and reactivity. How about you? How good are you at being relational?

We urge you to jump ahead and complete the Mindful Choices for Couples Self-Assessment found in chapters 5 and 6. You will almost certainly discover things you can improve upon, things that will make you more relational and therefore more successful at being a better relationship partner.

Please note, if you take the assessment and don’t find things you need to improve upon and persist in thinking that only your partner needs to change, you may lack self-awareness, something we call the blind spot bias. Struggling couples are often couples where each is sure he or she is right and their partner is wrong. Fighting over who is right and who is wrong is a losing strategy that will never help your relationship.

You probably notice that many of the patterns, barriers, and habits you discover in the Mindful Choices for Couples Self-Assessment and in this and the following chapters apply to you. Don’t get distressed and don’t get upset with your partner. It only means that you’re both human, as virtually all of us experience these things.

Don’t conclude that you are in any way defective or incompetent. You’re just another fallible, imperfect human being like all the rest of us. It’s the human condition. The good news is that becoming familiar with these problems and the habits that go along with them gives you an opportunity to make meaningful changes. That puts you ahead of all the people (probably most people) who are rather mindless about why things seem to keep going wrong in their relationship. Forewarned is forearmed—and mindful awareness of negative forces and patterns gives you something to work with.

Because you are human, you will never be perfect at being in a relationship, but this book will guide you toward being your best relationship self—and steadily getting better!

Consistent relationship success is fleeting and demanding for almost all of us. Consider a line from Shakespeare:

What a piece of work is a man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a God! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2, 303–312

Hamlet seems to say that although humans may appear to think and act nobly, we are still all too human. Hamlet is expressing his depression to old friends over the difference between the best that we aspire to be and how we all too often behave. In our relationships, we humans often fall short, yet we never stop yearning for so much more.

Nowhere is the difference between the real and the ideal more apparent than in human relationships. We need relationships for our well-being—in fact, for our very survival. It’s like oxygen. It’s biologically hardwired. It’s in our DNA. It’s a need that defines our species. It’s who we are. Yet, we are often not very good at it, at least in the Western world.

It’s the relationship paradox—attachment is a fundamental human need, but conflict, competition, and our need to protect and defend ourselves often push us apart. As previously stated, in an evolutionary sense, we may be just as wired for war as we are for love.

When we are emotionally triggered by the anxiety of disconnection or fear of disconnection, we often behave by moving deeper into disconnection, paradoxically. What we need most is a connection, but when we defend, avoid, or fight, we are moving away from what we need the most. That’s the paradox! We can only explain it through evolutionary biology and brain science.

In short, we are often terrible at getting what we need the most!

Lasting couple intimacy is tricky. Finding the right formula is often slippery and baffling. We are driven toward couple relationships, while often programmed to fail. Why do we sometimes see our partner as the enemy and dangerous? Why are we often so bad at getting and keeping what we want the most?

Our evolutionary programming to be safe and avoid pain often works counter to our need to have a safe, secure, stable emotional connection to another human being. A more primitive part of our brain often seizes control. More on the neurobiology of connection and disconnection in chapter 7.

Love and vulnerability go together. Vulnerability to the likelihood of being hurt is both a result of our brains being constructed to protect us and our experience conditioning us. Healthy relationships require us to choose to be vulnerable, but that’s often a very difficult and frightening choice. We are sometimes more likely to turn away from the relationship, or even against it, despite a virtually universal need to connect.

How about you? Has defensiveness, fear, and anger sometimes taken control? Do you consciously or unconsciously act in ways that run counter to having a satisfying relationship? Are you ever hurtful to someone you care deeply about?

Nature has programmed us to connect with each other. However, we are also programmed to protect ourselves, and sometimes our need to avoid or lessen emotional pain leads us to defensively hurt the one we care about the most.

We are often asked, Why is it I wind up hurting the people I love? Why does it keep happening? And just as common: How can someone who loves me sometimes seem so indifferent to my feelings or even be cruel?

Vulnerability is a part of choosing to have someone in your life who is extremely important to your sense of well-being. You deeply desire this connection, yet it’s risky and comes with the possibility of immense pain. You are opening yourself up to them, trusting that they will be there for you. Your greatest relationship fears are exposed. You risk being abandoned or controlled. You are hyperaware of everything they do or say that might have meaning in terms of you being loved or being lovable. Their disapproval or anger may be interpreted as you being unlovable, incompetent, or a bad person.

Opening up and being vulnerable, so essential to a loving relationship, may be perceived as an enormous risk, perceived by some as too big a risk.

This hypervigilance often leads to being hyperdefensive, self-protecting, dismissive, or avoidant. Even when your partner has no hurtful intention, his or her actions can sometimes be interpreted as threatening and hurtful. Well-intentioned, constructive feedback may be perceived as harsh criticism and rejection. The person who is the source of your greatest happiness also has the power to be the same person who may bring you your deepest hurt and sadness.

A love relationship carries with it huge risks, unlike your other relationships. Because the other has become so important to your well-being, there is so much more to lose. Therefore, while you may be cool, calm, and collected in other relationships, in a love relationship you may find yourself being easily frustrated, disappointed, and even deeply threatened. You may find yourself being anxious and insecure, and it’s understandable. If you open yourself to love, you simultaneously make yourself vulnerable to pain.

Perhaps the biggest pain of all is the pain that comes with your partner seeming to be indifferent, experienced by you as the pain of abandonment. All of us human beings have two basic fears when it comes to relationships; we fear being controlled, engulfed, losing our identity or autonomy, and we also fear abandonment. On the one hand, we quite naturally resist control and struggle to preserve our individuality and independence. Abandonment issues and insecurities on the other hand flare up when we sense our partner is not emotionally connected to us, and that’s an even deeper pain than being on the receiving end of anger and controlling behavior.

"The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference; for at a minimum, to love or hate someone is to have intense emotions toward them." (Elie Wiesel)

It’s natural to defend yourself against pain. Feeling attacked or ignored by a partner often brings emotional pain and anxiety. You’re having a difficult time when you find yourself perceiving emotional disconnection while your greatest need is for a safe, secure, and satisfying connection.

Defense can take different forms. It can take the form of aggressive or attacking behavior, or the defense is withdrawal or avoidance. Since the two of you are an emotional system, your reactions often result in two emotionally dysregulated people further compounding their problem by defensiveness or avoidance.

We don’t want you to feel guilty or defective. We’re all human. Yes, even therapists. None of us will ever be relationally perfect. The relationship paradox is universal and predictable. Even with the best of intentions, you may sometimes be hurtful, and sometimes you may not be there when your partner needs you. This chapter is simply about being more aware of negative patterns and tendencies and learning how to expertly head off destructive behaviors before they happen or responding skillfully and constructively to repair problems that have already occurred.

This book is about taking charge of how you show up in your relationship. Relationship satisfaction doesn’t have to decline over time. Sexual passion and romantic attraction may not be as exhilarating, but a great friendship can get better and better. You can be a rewarding partner who is responsive to your partner in providing help, endorsing your partner’s goals, celebrating your partner’s accomplishments, paying attention, listening attentively and empathically, expressing appreciation, and noticing your partner’s responsiveness.

It’s all the little things and the friendship that make for a great long-term relationship.

You will never be perfect, but you can be better, despite millions of years of evolution.

Further Reading

Bohm, D. (2004). On Dialogue. Abingdon-on-Thames, UK: Routledge.

Covey, S. (2013). The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons and Personal Change. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

Crum, T. 2009. Three Deep Breaths. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc.

Dyer, W. (2005). The Power of Intention. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.

Goleman, D. (2005). Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. New York, NY: Bantam Books.

Oettingen, G. (2015). Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. Penguin Publishing Group. New York, NY: Penguin Publishing Group.

Gable, S., G. Gonzaga, and A. Strachman. (2006). Will You Be There for Me When Things Go Right? Supportive Responses to Positive Event Disclosures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 91(5), Nov 2006, 904-917.

Gottman, J. (2002). The Relationship Cure: A Five Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships. New York, NY: Harmony.

Gottman, J. (2015). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. New York, NY: Harmony.

Hendrix, H. (2007). Getting the Love You Want. New York, New York: Henry Holt and Company.

Rogers, R. (1985). On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy.New York, NY: Mariner Books.

Ryff, C. and B. Singer. (2001). Emotion, Social Relationships, and Health. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 2

Hurt People Hurt People

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At first glance, the title of this chapter might not make much sense. If it had a comma in the middle, it would read like a sociopathic call to arms, something you might hear from someone trying to incite violence in a mob. However, there is no comma, so it’s really a complete sentence meant to convey the message that hurting people are hurtful to people, even hurtful to the people they love.

Consider the lyrics from the song You Always Hurt the One You Love recorded by the Mills Brothers on June 22, 1944, a recording that spent twenty weeks on the Billboard bestseller chart, peaking at number 1. It must’ve resonated with many