ABSTRACT
I had been working with an unmarried couple I will call Jessica and Karl for over a year, so I was familiar with the scene in front of me. Jessica was in tears, frustrated and confused by Karl’s persistence in laying the blame for the couple’s conflicts on her. Karl, in contrast, appeared calm, caring, and encouraging, but he was also effectively disengaged from Jessica’s struggles and from the therapeutic process. The couple had been talking about Jessica’s decision in the prior week to have lunch with her ex-husband—a decision that had followed an argument she’d had with Karl about his distant relationship with his daughter. Karl had begun today’s session by reporting that the “same old stuff” had happened again: instead of talking to him directly about her anger, Jessica had acted it out and had “threatened our relationship.” Jessica had responded by claiming that her decision to see her ex-husband was not done in anger. Besides, she said, she had told Karl her opinions about his interactions with his daughter, so as far as she was concerned that was where the argument had ended. She added that if anyone was “threatening our relationship” it was Karl because he was so critical of her. As I listened to them, I felt a familiar bind: each partner wanted me to believe the other was the chief source of their problems, and did not want me to focus on their own contributions. Knowing I would encounter resistance from both, I began to explore the emotional foundations of the impasse they had once again constructed, both between themselves and within the treatment.
