I think there are two roles a lot of people expect therapists to play. One of them is judge, the other is referee. Sometimes I smile when I think of myself wearing a judge’s robe, or worse, a referee’s striped shirt. Here’s why neither uniform works for me as your therapist:

First, the judge. Your life is filled with judgments. You chose a partner because you judged that person to be a good match for you. You chose a career, or a house. You chose to try to conceive a child. Or you chose not to. And there are thousands of tinier judgments: that person looks drunk, you tell yourself. That bus seat looks dirty. And of course you make a judgment when you come in for counseling: this therapist is the one I think can help me.

I certainly hope that most of your judgments are sound (particularly that last one!). When you come to counseling, we can talk about them. You might know already that you made some pretty bad judgments, or you even know that your general pattern of judgment is flawed–maybe you automatically judge everyone to be untrustworthy, and that prevents you from getting close to anyone. Or you have a hard time with moderation, balance, and self-care. So you come to counseling, and if you’re like a lot of people, you approach the therapist as a judge–and a better judge than you, to boot. You ask me for advice. You check out decisions with me to see what I think. It sounds right. It sounds like what counseling is all about.

But it’s not. Counseling is about you becoming a better judge, not you submitting to my judgments. My cultural background might be different from yours. Or my gender. Or my attitudes, my assumptions, my worldview. If I’m wearing the judge’s robe in our work together, you don’t take command of your own life by focusing on and developing your own good judgment.

And as for referee, well that’s a uniform therapists are often invited to wear when doing couples therapy. The two of you come in, sit down, and start the same fight you have in your living room. And my job is to be your referee, your diplomat, your Voice of Reason. But here we have the same problem: if I’m your referee, then who stands tall in your own living room? And what if I make a bad call? Or what if you don’t like my call, but your partner does? What will become of our therapeutic relationship?

It’s better if I help both of you be your own referee–not necessarily of the fight you’re having, but the referee of your own internal struggles and issues. If you are your own referee, you are making your own calls about your own behavior. Am I being fair? you ask yourself. Am I being honest? Am I blaming my partner for a problem I have?

So…what is my uniform, then? I don’t have a colorful, neat little uniform that signifies what I do, but I will say this: my job is to help you be your own judge, your own referee, and get better and better at it, so that you will have the happiness, satisfaction, and contentment you long for in your life, and in your relationships.

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Back in October I posted about a technique that helps you say what you need to say in your relationships, and ask for what you want and need from your partner, friend, or family member. If you feel like you get locked in old patterns of conflict and frustration, this might be a good way for you to improve your approach. Just take it step by step, and be flexible when you run into trouble!

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Sometimes therapists act like the Wizard of Oz. They’re not supposed to reveal to anyone that they have concerns, worries, even (gasp!) neuroses! But everyone knows this, so it’s a little silly for me to pretend that I am the healthiest human on the planet. Every once in a while, I’ll write in this blog about my human side, and how it actually helps my work.

So here’s one of my hangups: I sometimes worry about how I sound when I’m talking with clients. We’ll finish up a session, schedule the next one, say our goodbyes, and I’ll go back in my office and think, did they notice that I keep hammering on one issue, and one issue only? Are they frustrated that I sound like a broken record? Or is it just me?!

The broken-record topic for me is self-confrontation. When I first began working with couples (and they now make up about half of my practice), my mentor said to me, “You need to find out what your theory is. It’s not that you need to find a theory. You have one already, and whatever it is, you’re using it.” Since then I’ve come to understand that my theory about couples–and individuals–is this (drum roll):

Self-confrontation is the path to ecstasy.

(Huh?)

This is what I mean. When a client begins to complain about their partner, I criticize the quality of their complaint, not the behavior of their partner. I push them not to drop their complaint, but make it better. Make it more effective. Take the poison out of it and get in touch with what you really want from your partner…and get in touch with the fact that this is your want, not your partner’s, and your partner was not put on Earth to meet this want that you have.

So far so good…but then at the next session the person complains about a different behavior their partner is doing (often enough, it’s a fairly bad behavior, to tell the truth!) and I do it again, except from a different angle. Instead of troubleshooting the complaint, I’ll push him to confront his own misbehavior in the relationship, according to his own standards. He wants his partner not to shout or hurl insults? Okay, that sounds reasonable. So…why are you yourself hurling insults at the top of your voice?

Maybe now you can see how this is irritating. I get downright uncooperative when I feel a person is not challenging herself first. But I wouldn’t do this if it didn’t really help. A person who confronts herself gains an enormous amount of emotional strength and relational influence. If you’ve done your personal homework, then your complaint about your partner won’t be half-assed (pardon the industry term), and it might get you what you want. And if you’ve done your personal homework, you can stand much taller than your partner when she’s shouting. Soon enough, she’ll figure out that the shouting is getting her nowhere…at least in her relationship with you.

So until I come up with a better theory (and this is a pretty robust one, if you ask me), I’ll just have to deal with the worries that crop up when my clients leave the session. Most of them come back, after all, and the ones who got past their irritation with me were able to find out how self-confrontation can take them farther than they ever imagined.

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Here’s a great article by David Schnarch, a couples therapist and author I’ve recommended a lot over the years. This article summarizes neatly what he says in his books. A key quotation: “The Sexual Crucible Approach encourages people to make use of the opportunity offered by marriage to become more married and better married, by becoming more grown-up and better at staking out their own selfhood” (emphasis mine).

And just a quick reminder: for me, ‘marriage’ is not what most people think it is. Marriage is any relationship between two people of any gender in which both persons are drawing closer together in a long-term bond of emotional and physical intimacy, in the context of a supportive community.

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A friend of mine recently shared with me what she’s doing right now in her spiritual practice. She’s placing colored lentils on a tile in the shape of the Korean word ‘Han,’ a word and concept that is hard to translate. I’m not qualified to tell you very much about it, but I can say this: it reminded me of the value of ‘genuine forgiveness,’ a process of reconciliation and healing created by Janis Abrahms Spring, who wrote the best book I know about reconciliation.

‘Han’ can be understood (at least partially–I don’t pretend to fully understand it) this way: that the truest healing happens when both the offender and the wounded are reconciled. It’s not enough for one of them to make sense of what happened, work through it, and find acceptance and peace. (Though that’s not nothing!) It’s best if both of them can come together and do the hard work of reconciliation. My friend wrote, “In other words, individual salvation is selfish and narcissistic. If the wounded are not brought into the picture of salvation, that’s not much of a salvation.”

I would only add that this works both ways: if the offender is not brought into the picture of salvation, that’s not much of a salvation, either. If I harmed you, then something must be done to bring justice and peace back into your life. But something must also be done to bring justice and peace back into my life as well. It’s like the ancient notion that a curse goes in two directions: toward the one you’re cursing, and inward at yourself. Both the offender and the wounded are wounded.

Sometimes, of course, this is not possible, or easy. Perhaps the offender died, or the wounded refuses to include the offender in the process of healing. Or perhaps it’s a situation in which it would only lead to further harm of the pair were to come back into contact. That’s why I won’t say that genuine forgiveness is the only way. But it’s worth pondering. If you have harmed someone and truly want to work through what you’ve done and find peace, then the best way would be to invite that person into a healing dialogue about what happened, a dialogue in which you truly hold yourself accountable and challenge yourself to make whatever amends you can.

And if you have been harmed and truly want to work through what happened, you may want to challenge yourself to allow the person who harmed you back into your life for the purpose of this shared process of genuine forgiveness.

Again–and I can’t say this enough–genuine forgiveness of this kind is not the only way. There truly is a way to work through your pain without it. But the Korean people, like so many others around the globe, have known for thousands of years about the power of Han.

*Note: this article was slightly edited for clarification and accuracy.

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I hope I don’t step on your toes by saying this, but I don’t like Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree.” It’s a story about a little boy and a tree, and it is a cautionary tale for anyone who wants to know what an unhealthy relationship looks like! Let’s take a look:

The tree and the boy love each other, and the story follows them as they share their love. The little boy loves to climb the tree, swing from her boughs, and rest in her shade. The tree simply loves to be with the boy, to share her life with him.

So far, so good.

But then the tree and the boy both make some unfortunate choices. When the boy grows older and needs a house, the tree offers her branches for lumber. When the boy wants to go away on an adventure, she gives her trunk for a boat. Finally, when the boy returns from his adventure–now an old man–the tree is nothing but a stump, and she feels sorry that she has nothing left to offer the boy. But he realizes that she can still give him one thing: he sits on her, and rests, and the tree is happy again.

Oh boy! There are some problems in this relationship. For one thing, the tree can’t be a tree in her relationship with the boy. She has to diminish herself to stay connected to him. Each time he comes to her, she feels compelled to give him something, and she gives in to this feeling every time. You could argue that she receives a gift in her giving…she feels useful, she is gratified that she can help him, she is delighted that she can express her love in such clear ways. Well, OK…but the fact remains that the core of their relationship is her giving him things. Now don’t get me wrong: gifts are good, giving is good, and there’s nothing inherently wrong in the tree’s affection for the boy, or her urge to relate to him with a giving spirit. But you can see how she took this good thing too far–so far that she destroyed herself.

And consider the boy, who is called a “little boy” even when he’s an old man. (This is a telling detail.) He doesn’t have an adult relationship with the tree. For instance, when she offers him her branches, it doesn’t occur to the boy how self-destructive this gift is. To accept it is to agree to a transaction that destroys the tree. Doesn’t sound very loving to me. And it only gets worse: to meet his own needs, he allows the tree to be chopped down to a stump. Ouch. It would be harder for him to refuse these gifts, harder not just because he would have to make more of an effort to meet his own needs, but also because it’s always hard to refuse a gift that is motivated by kindness but is nevertheless unhealthy, unwise. Imagine telling your partner, no, I cannot accept your gift. I appreciate your kindness, but I have to meet this need myself. Only full-grown men and women can do that!

My alternate story of the Giving Tree would go something like this: the boy and the tree would love each other, the boy playing in her branches, the tree enjoying the boy’s fun presence. Later, as the boy became a man, he would meet a human companion, also full-grown, and together they would live out their lives in the shade of the tree, relating to one another–and the tree–with reverence, with respect. And now and then, all three of them would meet their own needs. That’s what I would call a “happily ever after” story.

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Here’s a little exercise you can do, something to turn your own head around a few times so that you can think in a new way about your relationship problem: first, think of something about your partner (past or present! it works in both situations), something that really bugs you, or better yet, something that *enrages* you. It could also be something that grieves you, makes you sad, makes you anxious. Your partner was rude to you, or had an affair, or doesn’t listen to you, or is emotionally distant from you, or said something critical about you, or… well, you get the idea. Once you’ve picked a good problem like this, then go to step two, which is to ask yourself this question:

So, what?

Here’s what I mean. Let’s say you’re mad because your partner thinks you are financially irresponsible. You get defensive about it. “She’s wrong!” you tell yourself. The two of you fight about it. It drives you crazy that your partner believes this insulting thing about you. Then ask yourself, “So, what?” If your partner thinks this, does that make it true? And if your partner thinks this, does that mean you’re supposed to do something about it? Maybe you’re upset because deep down you worry about this very thing–that you really do have problems with money. Well, if that’s the case, then all your partner is doing is touching a nerve of your own, which is something you need to wrestle with. “But I have to show him he’s wrong!!” you’re thinking. But why? The value of the “So, what?” question is this: it directs the issue back to yourself, to the fact that you yourself are the one who needs to decide whether you are handling your money well. You yourself are the best judge of your behavior, even your character. “So, what?” pushes you to do one of two things: 1) remind yourself that if your partner is mistaken, then her opinion is just her opinion, and it’s all about her, not you–her beliefs and worries about money, her preferred way to spend and save money, her worldview about finances; and 2) if deep down you know your partner is right, then it’s better to confront yourself about your money habits than waste time and energy demanding that your partner apologize for saying something you agree with. (!)

I’ll post soon with other examples. Meanwhile, when you’re upset with your partner about something, give “So, what?” a try.

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Lots of times I work with clients who think they’re lazy, or think their partner is lazy, or think their son or daughter is lazy. And often enough that seems like a reasonable explanation. Why doesn’t he help with the dishes? Because he’s lazy! Why doesn’t she get up and make it to work on time? Because she’s lazy!

But I have a couple of problems with this. For one thing, if I’m “lazy,” what am I supposed to do about it? It’s either a personality trait, which would make it very hard to change, or it’s a chosen behavior, which means I’m being a little bit of a jerk. Whatever it is, it’s not pretty.

So I propose this: there is no such thing as ‘laziness.’ It’s not a true human condition. No, you are not avoiding work because you’re lazy. And your partner is not ducking out of vacuuming the living room because she’s lazy. And your son is not blowing off his homework because he’s lazy. There are five reasons why you (or someone you love who frustrates you) is not doing something:

1) Exhaustion. Don’t underestimate the power (and prevalence) of exhaustion. Most of us are doing the best we can despite being really tired, really strung out. All the other mammals on earth, after they’ve eaten and found shelter, reward themselves with a long nap. Humans are less fortunate in this regard!

2) You don’t want to do the task. This is obvious I suppose, but your failure to fold the laundry is mostly about the simple fact that you think folding laundry is a drag. And–

3) The cost of your failure to do the task is low. Maybe you know you won’t get punished too severely for not doing something. Or maybe it’s not such an important task after all. Or maybe (and parents, listen up here) the authority figures around you are not setting up a situation that would lead to serious consequences if you fail to do the task. Or–

4) The reward for doing the task is low. There isn’t a nice upside to doing it. For example, you’re not being recognized very much for your efforts, or paid very much, or being thanked. And you know what? Being thanked is important. It’s not selfish or small or petty of you to appreciate (and expect) the gratitude of others. And finally–

5) You are not confident you can do the task well. When your daughter is not doing homework, or your partner is not talking to you about his feelings, or you yourself are procrastinating yet again, it could very well be that you simply don’t feel confident in the task that has been set before you. You’re not lazy. You’re just insecure in this particular situation. Your partner is not lazy. She just thinks you’re better at cooking, or cleaning. Or maybe she’s being passive-aggressive! But she’s not being lazy.

So beware of the concept of ‘laziness.’ It’s a dead-end. It labels someone but doesn’t accomplish much more than that. The five reasons I’ve described above invite you to work on the issue with the goal of changing behavior, improving relationships, and building both competence and confidence. That’s all good, right?!

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Couples often think that what they need to do is stop fighting, calm down, and then figure out how to communicate better. That all sounds good, right? Except it’s not usually helpful. Often enough, the thing you’re upset about is a real thing–an issue that any reasonable person would be upset about. And if you think that your biggest problem is your anger and the need to be calm–or worse, be nice–then you run the risk of letting go of something important to you. Your relationship might look and feel peaceful, but really it’s just more tense, more anxious.

And you still didn’t get what you want!

So, don’t be nice. Don’t fight. Wrestle. This is my new favorite verb in my work with couples. I’m tempted to have bumper stickers made: “The couple that wrestles together stays together.” Let’s open up the metaphor: when two people are wrestling (literally), they aren’t fighting, but they’re not just smiling and holding hands, either. They are engaging one another in a powerful interaction that draws upon their strengths. They are using body, mind, and spirit to grapple with one another. The same is true for good and lasting change in relationships. If you’re “wrestling” with your partner, that means you are drawing upon your strengths, your gifts, your body, mind, and spirit, to be emotionally close to your partner, to engage your partner, and to wrestle with your partner through difficult issues.

If you’re just fighting, then it’s not pretty, and it’s mostly just noise and smoke and frayed nerves. There might be moments in the fight when you feel good, but it’s usually a ‘wicked’ kind of good–the shallow satisfaction of having gotten off a good retort, a stinging zinger. And if you’re just being nice and avoiding the hard issues, well, I don’t need to tell you how unsatisfying that is.

But if you’re wrestling, you’re doing hard work and you’re pushing yourself into your own anxious space, but you’re also doing this from a position of strength. When you’re wrestling, you’re not just pushing your partner to engage with you, you’re pushing yourself to take all of this seriously–your partner, your relationship, and yourself. And when you take it seriously, seriously enough to wrestle with it (or wrestle with yourself!), that’s when you begin taking your relationship to the next level. That’s when you begin finding deep satisfaction and happiness in your life with your beloved.

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I post often about the hard challenges in marriage (and partnership). Just the other day I was writing about the three choices people face when they are in a one-on-one romantic union: painful growth (toward ecstasy, but painful nonetheless!), fruitless suffering, or breakup. Why can’t marriage just be an easy ride?

I confess I know and used to know couples for whom it seems easy. My mother’s parents were sweethearts from the start. They met in Montana, fell in love, and through the years were (if you believe my grandmother) very happy together. No mention of any trouble in paradise, even during the years when my grandfather’s Alzheimer’s advanced and he reached the end of his life. I know others in my current life who seem to do really well…they seem to live up to their annual cheerful holiday letters!

But I also believe that every marriage–every single one–challenges the people involved to grow, and to wrestle with another person who is growing. For long stretches of time–days, weeks, sometimes even years–the marriage can hum along, no problem, just the usual bumps and bruises of everyday life, maybe a quarrel now and then, but no worries. And then it happens: one of you realizes that you miss something, or want something new, or wonder when it was that your feelings for the other person changed.

It’s easy (and normal) to panic when you find yourself feeling this way, and particularly when you find your spouse feeling this way. He’s not into me anymore? She’s not sure she loves me anymore? Panic!! But that’s when you should remember that every relationship goes through these phases. The comfort and safety becomes boring. Or the easy way of life gets harder, messier, dissatisfying. Don’t panic. It’s not necessarily the end. It’s just that you’re heading into a growth/change stage in your relationship.

It happens to every marriage because we humans are the only species on earth that continues to develop–emotionally, sexually, spiritually, intellectually–throughout our lives. (Or at least we think we’re alone in this. As an animal lover, I’m open to the possibility that other species are a lot more interesting than we think they are.) We continue to develop, continue to seek challenges, continue to learn new things. That means that when we’re married, we continue to meet our spouses again for the first time. What worked last year stops working not because we’re “not meant for each other,” or because of some mysterious reason, but simply because we are dynamic creatures. We keep writing new chapters in the stories of our lives.

So if you’re feeling frustrated, scared, confused, or mystified because your relationship is “on the rocks,” or you don’t feel like you love your spouse anymore, or you can tell that your spouse is distancing from you emotionally, don’t panic. I encourage you to look at this time as a new challenge for your old relationship, a new challenge that calls you into the future as a pair of dynamic human beings. It’s not easy. But it’s not boring!

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