The Troubled American Couple

As a psychotherapist and coach, I, of course, often apprehend the world in psychological terms. After reading up on Covid in my newsfeed for the tenth time the other day, I had an epiphany about the state of affairs in our government.

It is thought, in many corners of the world of couple’s therapy, that the success of a couple is largely predicated upon each person’s ability to tolerate their partner’s anxiety – and the coping mechanisms that they developed to manage it. Like every other living creature, we all possess survival anxiety; it is wired in, as are the ways in which our various brains are designed to cope with it. In addition to this built-in wiring, there is also the modelling we get from our families, which is indelibly baked in as early learnings, and remains largely unchanged unless there is s crisis arising from our way of being and we make a long and concerted effort to change.

It occurred to me, as I read about the latest antipathy between the two political Parties, that Republicans were the classic denier/optimists – preferring to hope for the best and not to know the worst. Democrats, conversely, demonstrated classic hypervigilant/pessimistic behavior, wanting to know and prepare for the worst, wanting to know the hard truths in order to do so – both hopelessly unable to tolerate one another’s ways.

I asked myself how I would work this gridlock in therapy, if divorce were not an option/preference. Always, to my mind, the first step toward any mindful resolution of conflict, and hoped-for shift, is awareness of the reasons for the rift, (as described above): that there are two colliding styles – neither one being right or wrong. That the preference for these styles is coherent with learnings from personal history, and seem urgently necessary to maintain. This step would entail a close life-review to reveal the histories, (I’m a narratologist), and to discern how and why these styles were adopted, and what is felt to be at risk if they were to be let go of. In the process of this forensic discovery work, the logic of the two predilections is revealed to both parties, and de-pathologized.

And, often, this first step is the only step needed toward easement of tension, as neither party has to take the antithetical position of the other personally, nor hold shame about their own. But, typically, the next step is to discern whether either party is actually feeling imprisoned in their own behavior, and would wish for some shift. This is often the case, as being polarized by a strong counter-force tends to keep us dug into an uncomfortable hole. The self-assessment is easier to bear, now that the shame has been lowered, and often some meeting in the middle then can be achieved. But this does not have to be the case for relations to improve; both can continue to incline – initially – the way they always did, but now with less reactivity and aggression. The assumption that they will be deemed as ‘wrong’ has been ameliorated, and the optimist can hold hope for the pessimist, while the pessimist can build Plan B. This is not to imply that opposites must attract in order to create this healthy whole – we all must aspire to see with clarity and hold our own hope in the face of despair. But as long as we couple, we need two-party solutions that will allow a tolerance for both.