Affairs: A Process for Healing Both Partners – Part II
I do not rescue couples. I teach them not to be afraid. “Even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” I teach the them not to fear pain, not to fear the emotions and to just let things run their course. I teach the couple to have patience and take it slow.
This fearful woman is her husband’s partner of eighteen years. She has the powers inside her, and if she finds them, she will become strong and whole within herself. This process is healing them both. Not just the one … the one and the other.
I trust deeply, and I let them find their own way. Then … and only then, do I help the wife make the shift, and I tell her, “Say to your husband that you are angry. And beneath that anger, you are sad.” I coach her to “Make room … to make space inside of yourself … for him.” But she is unable to do it, unable to act, frozen by the movie that’s been playing in her mind. “All she sees, until she opens, is what she is already listening to, on the inside.” But I know that reality is ultimately more creative than our own movie. Reality is rich and multifaceted. I strongly encourage her. I say, “Listen to the history. Please, just listen. Open your heart and listen to his story.”
I’m holding back my tears because I identify with the strong man who is deeply wounded from the inside. People see that I am strong from the outside and the pain is inside. I ask the wife who now has to assuage me, and her husband who is also crying and wrung-out by the agony. So I model what I am trying to teach, I listen to him just like he would like his wife to listen to him. I listen with a lot of compassion. Even though right now he has very little faith in his wife, and he is angry with me for giving him the impression that he will be heard.
First I SENSE it … then I KNOW that there is a place where the pain can be put to rest. But right now his wife is crushed by huge emotion. Of course, being his IMAGO-match, she was always so good at taking his departures, taking his non-communicativeness, and now he is facing the tsunami of his pain.
It’s clear to me that the husband is ready to open up and to let go. He is ready to come to terms and live his pain. I also realize that the difficulty is with the wife, so I turn to her and teach her to be generous; to love her man … to have compassion.
I am simply teaching her to grow. Unconsciously, she chose him. She chose him so that she would never have to do this, and before today, he had never intimidated her with his untamed, undisciplined, bewildering ways. And even now, as he threatens her, he simultaneously needs her. Like most of us, we are never more intimidating than when our need is quickening and sudden.
I teach her to breathe, to reflect, to do nothing except say the words. I teach her to get out of her own way, and let the words come and go. I teach her not to react. As she reflects, I tell her to “Make space for him within yourself.” She is struggling.
Then she reflects his words. As she does so, I quietly whisper … “so very, very brave.” She sees her man. He can sense the shift. The sudden appearance of a SAFE place brings out the very core of his agony, the tender underbelly and fear to share the most excruciating memories. I am with her. I am teaching her to take it in, to make space inside for the information. To roll with the punches and go with the flow. I am teaching her to listen and stand firm for her man. She is learning.
What has her husband gone through? When partners are recalling something horrific, I encourage them to maintain eye contact. I say, “feel your feelings but keep looking.” Keep looking so they realize that this time they have control over it, rather than it having control over them. Once the event can be put into words, it can be integrated and re-authored in their present history.
I sit back in my chair and bear witness and allow this man and woman to grow new hearts. Through her tears, she tells him, “I wasn’t there for you. I knew something was off and I didn’t say anything because I was angry and trying to stay in control … but I am here now.”
“Relationships become the healing balm for our loneliness, for our fear and our longing.”
The hard, external identities are melting and the process brings gifts. He’s lost this immobilized, frozen wife and his posturing Manly-man-self. She gets to reclaim the atrophied frozen part of herself that was dying to the movie in her mind. And I know this couple from within and love this couple!I say, “YES to the couple …YES!” I am with them and they are with me. I am laughing. We are laughing. We laugh until our bellies ache. We are laughing our sorrows and pain away. We laugh our way into insight.
Wishing you love and light,
Paula M. Smith M.Div., MFT
Certified Imago Therapist
Relationship Coach
401-782-7899
imagopaula@gmail.com
The hard, external identities are melting and the process brings gifts. He’s lost this immobilized, frozen wife and his posturing Manly-man-self. She gets to reclaim the atrophied frozen part of herself that was dying to the movie in her mind. And I know this couple from within and love this couple!
