When You Grow, Your Marriage Grows.

Part of healing a marriage in distress is self-work. By shifting your focus inward rather than at your spouse a couple will instantly notice some descalation. A focus on your spouse is actually a focus on your pain, only this tactic of dealing with the pain typically causes more pain. Here’s why, you don’t know why it hurts, you just know it hurts. Your brain is telling you that if you want to survive the person doing the hurting needs to be stopped. To make it even worse the person doing the hurting is your spouse and is coded in your brain as someone who is supposed to be safe. It’s a recipe for panic.

Let’s unpack this a little more. Shifting the focus to self-work is not avoiding the truth that the actions your spouse has may have been hurtful. In my experience though what starts a negative interaction between a couple is usually an innocent misunderstanding or at the least actions that were intended for protecting oneself and less about hurting the other person. During self-work, you are creating an understanding for yourself of those moments in your marriage that feel threatening, painful, and lonely. When you have this understanding you know what you need in the relationship and from yourself, and your brain is less triggered and reactive because everything makes sense. 

It would be similar to being in pain from a broken leg, but your body does not have the ability to localize the pain. Something hurts. Bad. But where or why? You don’t know? As a result, you nor anyone else knows what to do to help or at least not make it worse. 

When I help clients through self-work we try to identify a few things:

Attachment Fears of Longings

Protection of the Fears and Longings

Relational History that Contributed 

What Happens in Your Body when they are Triggered

Of that list, attachment fears and longings are the big one. If you have a dry-erase board or a piece of paper. I would have you write that in the center and then draw lines out from the circle for each of the other factors. But first, we need to identify what that attachment fear and longing is. I like to lead the way in vulnerability and share mine first. 

My attachment fear is… that if I mess up and don’t get everything right then I will be rejected, unwanted, or unloveable. My longing is to know that I will be loved even if I am a burden. It took evaluation of interactions with others, time with the Lord, and grace towards myself to be able to identify it. Naming it came pretty quickly for me. Seeing how deep the fear ran and the way it was intruding on healthy relationships took time and courage. 

How do you find your attachment fear?

Breaking down interactions with your spouse and noticing when things went south for you personally, is a good place to start.

What was said or done and when in your body did you start to feel panic? What were you telling yourself when you were trying to make sense of what you were hearing from your spouse?

It might be easier to start with interactions with other people, you will be less panicked with other people than you will be with your spouse.

How do you feel about yourself in the context of a social interaction? Do you try to read into interactions with others and make an assumption that is more than what they said or did? What is the thing it always comes down to for you?

Start looking for patterns. If you have chronic distress in your marriage I promise an attachment fear is behind it. So I am not encouraging you to look for something that isn’t there. I’m asking you to look deeper than the surface at a visible problem.

Absolutely you should pray about it. Ask the Lord to help you identify and name the broken places inside of you that need care. Invite him into those places and watch him lead you to healing one healthy interaction at a time, rewiring the survival system of your brain. 

One last note, knowing these things about yourself is not what will create change in your marriage. Knowledge of these things cannot become a crutch you lean on, to avoid doing the hard work of healing. Nor is it your spouse's job to fix these things for you or walk around on eggshells trying to keep you from being triggered. Things will change in your marriage when you learn to manage and care for your fears and longings. Part of that care is learning to communicate about these fears in a healthy way, before you become activated and panicked more times than not (no one is perfect). And part of the healing will come from the care and support of your spouse holding your hand while you fight through the fear. 

Action Step:

Try the steps to identify your attachment fear and longing.

Create the map I mentioned. With the Fear circled and the middle and lines out from the center to start identifying the other factors.

Start checking in with yourself during interactions with other people when you notice yourself becoming anxious and ask yourself whether the fear ot longing matches.