SOCIOPOLITICAL CONTEXT AND DISCOURSE

To the narrative therapist, context is everything. Therapeutic inquiry seeks

to deconstruct discourses and the institutions that promote them. These

discourses create social realities that often keep problematic relational patterns

alive (White, 1991).

Terry and Shawn enter therapy with a very thin description of their relationship

(Geertz, 1973; White, 1991). Terry is “too emotional” and Shawn is

“distanced and shut down.” This relationship-restraining story has the couple

caught in a repetitive cycle of blaming each other for what’s wrong in

their relationship. By eliciting the messages that Shawn received in his training

as a young adult, he identifies the following discourse: “If a woman cries,

it ’s my fault.” Instead of locating the problem within Shawn, we turn an evaluative

eye on this discourse and how it shapes Shawn’s understanding of

gender relationships. In so doing, space is opened for Shawn to evaluate the

real effects of this discourse on his life, and he’s invited to choose whether or

not these beliefs serve his own preferences for his relationship. At the same

time, Terry is invited to consider renegotiating other discourses that may be

constraining to the couple, and she identifies this one: “Emotion equals weakness.”

Through this process of expanding the couple’s options, Terry and

Shawn begin exploring alternative descriptions of themselves as a couple

and find themselves on the path to relationship-promoting practices.

The First Years of Marital Commitment

MARITAL COMMITMENT AND the treatment of couples who are in their

first marriage are the focus of this chapter. In American society,

this refers mainly to couples who are in their twenties, or in some

instances, in their early thirties, who have not been married previously.

Couples in later stages of marriage and gay or lesbian couples are the subject

matter of subsequent chapters.

What do we need to know to work therapeutically with couples in their

early years of committed relationships? We need to understand, in the

broadest terms, the nature of marriage, cohabitation, and commitment in

such relationships.

The next section delineates the nature of marriage, cohabitation, and

commitment. Following that is a brief review of family development and

the concepts of individual and marital life cycles—with some reference to

family life cycles and the central tasks of those cycles as they pertain to first

marriage—and the commitment process; and integrative marital therapy,

involving object relations, system theory, and cognitive behavioral constructs.

Clinical illustrations of how interventions are made with couples

and individuals requesting marital therapy are then presented. Because not

all couples have difficulties with all parts of early marital adjustment, illustrations

are taken from a variety of cases. Next, reference is made to

some issues typically found in therapy with mainstream White American

couples and couples from other ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds.

The majority of extant research literature deals with differences between

White Americans and African American or Hispanic couples. A brief summary

is provided in the final section.

SUMMARY

PAIRS premarital counseling and training offers premarital couples rich

resources that will enhance not only their intimate relationship but also enrich

and emotionally deepen their personal and family lives. Research documents

that the PAIRS experience results in achieving far higher levels of

self-worth, emotional literacy, emotional maturity, and relationship satisfaction.

Love and community are well documented to be potent healing

powers that create longer, healthier, more joyful lives (Ornish, 1990). This

chapter presented premarital assessment, counseling, training sequences,

and preventive support from the PAIRS perspective, as applications of a

powerful technology for healing, building, strengthening, and sustaining

healthy marital and family relationships.

The PAIRS technology is available to train counselors and through them

their clients in how to build lasting, satisfying, healthy, successful relationships.

With successful lifelong marriages, there will be healthier children

and reduced suffering in successive generations. It is the profound hope of

the PAIRS network of leaders and trained professionals that PAIRS, as an

educational and counseling resource, will become an essential part of the

training for all those who provide therapy, counsel, assist, and train couples,

particularly premarital couples. This knowledge base needs to be culturally

incorporated as a universally expected foundation for every new

couple considering a permanent commitment to building a lasting, stable

marriage and healthy family life together.

PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE PROGRAMS

At the close of the semester program, participants often wish to continue

their group learning and practice in a preventive maintenance format.

They often request monthly meetings with the support of their PAIRS instructor

or the PTP. Requests from class groups often include a desire for

periodic weekend workshops, usually once or twice a year. Repeating the

Bonding Weekend Workshop is most often requested because it helps to

maintain access to the core emotional openness needed for bonding and

intimacy.

A PAIRS Three-Year Preventive Maintenance Program is under development

for graduates to sustain their strong foundation for loving, healthy

marriage and family relationships. This program provides opportunities

for those who have had PAIRS experiences (including premarital assessment

and OFFICE PAIRS) to refresh and practice a wide range of skills,

such as the Fair Fight for Change with Peer Coaches, PARTS Parties, Dialogue

Guides, Daily Temperature Readings, and Genograms. Options in

this program include continuing monthly three-hour classes, periodic sixmonth

one-session check-ups, and twice-yearly day-long seminars. Fees for

this program vary by the options chosen by each couple. Based on years of

experience conducting PAIRS programs, relationships clearly benefit from

a psychoeducational program in knowledge and skills in building and sustaining

intimacy in relationships and this benefit can be sustained with

regular preventive support.

CONTRACTING—CLARIFYING EXPECTATIONS

Based on Clifford Sager’s work (1976), the PAIRS curriculum culminates in

an integration and application of all the tools and concepts learned in the

proceeding months toward a revised relationship contract. To prepare for the

Contracting Weekend, the Powergram (Stuart, 1980) is examined as a model

for understanding how power is shared and decisions are made in each relationship.

Using this model, couples address where and how to change the

division of power and responsibilities so that both are satisfied with their

degree of input, influence, and responsibility, and areas of autonomy in decision

making. Couples use the Museum Tour of Past Decisions, to review and

learn from past decisions about which there may remain a residue of resentment

or hurt.

Participants extensively journal to clarify expectations and needs in their

relationship. They examine all areas of life—work and career, leisure time,

money, housework, children, in-laws, religious observances, sexuality—and

rank areas of importance or dissatisfaction in order of urgency. Couples

also identify their core expectations or Walking Issues—the ones that are

nonnegotiable. Couples work together to make a priority list of those issues

they agree need adjustment through negotiation. They are coached in Contracting

Sessions by other couples using the Fair Fight for Change as the basic

structure for contracting. They also use any of the other tools they have

learned in PAIRS.

Through contracting, couples discover that seemingly impossible differences

can be bridged with goodwill, hard work, and support. They now possess

the self-awareness and necessary skills to continue this recontracting

work after the course on an on-going basis at home using the full range of

skills in their PAIRS Tool Kit. Issues that have not yet been resolved are identified

and prioritized for homework, and couples have a network of peer

coaches on whom they can draw if they need assistance. Lifetime friendships

are commonly forged in the group, and there is a profound sense of trust and

community that group members enjoy. It is typical for class groups to continue

to meet on a regular basis and continue to provide a network of support

to one another. They form a caring community. Some groups have met for

many years following the Relationship Mastery Course.

In contrast to individual growth activities, such as individual counseling

or therapy, PAIRS highlights the importance of the couple as a crucible from

which healing, personal growth, and the development of higher capacities

can emerge. Thus, sustained intimacy and pleasure are assured and the relationship

becomes a lasting source of authentic love, mutual respect, and

trust between two growing and evolving partners. Premarital couples in

PAIRS courses find enormous support from veteran couples. They acquire

mentors, role models, support figures, and (for the younger premarital couples)

new surrogate mothers and fathers to support them and reparent

them toward successful marriage. Couples considering a second marriage

find opportunities to explore what went wrong for each earlier and take responsibility

for their part so that the old maladaptive patterns do not

reemerge in their new relationship. Many divorced individuals who take

PAIRS as singles have vowed never to reenter another relationship until

they understand what happened and acquire the skills to assure a different

outcome the next time around. PAIRS training provides the strongest opportunity

for the newly committing couple to acquire the skills, concepts,

understandings, self-knowledge, and strategies for building deep intimacy

and assuring a lasting, healthy marriage.

PLEASURE—SENSUALITY AND SEXUALITY

Couples explore how they can expand the range of pleasure that they share

together. PAIRS recognizes three special biological needs (sources of pleasure)

that require physical touch met by the married couple: Sensuality, Sexuality,

and Bonding. The Pleasure Weekend Workshop is devoted to removing

barriers to pleasure and enhancing skills and understandings that enable

couples greater pleasure, joy, and fun through stimulation of the senses,

touch, and physical closeness. Same gender groups explore: (1) early experiences

and messages that have impacted one’s development as a sensual and

sexual being; (2) playful exploration of gender differences in romantic turn

ons and turn offs; and (3) sexual saboteurs and stereotypes, myths, and fallacies

about sex. Cross-gender conversations and guided visualizations

about early experiences with sex development help generate more empathic understanding between partners and more acceptance for their biologically

based differences.

Sprinkled throughout the weekend are exercises designed to open the five

senses, as well as guided massages where couples practice giving and receiving

pleasuring touch with feedback. The Guided Face Caress and Foot Massage

are among the most enjoyable moments of the entire PAIRS program.

Along with these sensual exercises, an explicit film on lovemaking is

shown that re-focuses the couple on intimacy and pleasure, and helps to relieve

performance anxieties. Participants fill out detailed and explicit inventories

to help identify romantic, sensual, and sexual preferences,

dissatisfactions, and wishes for change. Couples are guided through a safe

process in which they share their pleasure inventories with each other and

discuss their reactions and feedback. Often, a lack of communication or a

buildup of resentment or fear of hurting or embarrassing one another has

blocked giving and receiving pleasure freely. Sensual and sexual pleasure

dates (McCarthy & McCarthy, 1990), which are assigned for homework,

give couples permission to experiment in new and creative ways with both

giving and receiving pleasure. Couples usually leave the weekend with a

renewed sense of hope and excitement about their sex life, and frequently

describe breakthroughs in the following weeks from having been able to

enjoy each other based on leveling about their physical and sexual needs

and preferences.

The roots of jealousy—the downside of natural sexual possessivness—are

examined. Participants are shown how the Web of Jealousy, comprised of

fear, shame, pain, guilt, and rage, negatively affects self-esteem and trust.

Jealous reactive behaviors to stem the pain and control outcomes often

make matters worse, creating a Jealousy Infinity Loop. Through a Jealousy

Journaling Exercise with guided discussions with partner, couples come to

understand one another’s jealous reactions and vulnerabilities to jealous

reactions. Betrayal and love triangles are discussed. The essential steps to

prevent jealousy are presented using guidelines developed by Shirley Glass

(2003).

EMOTIONAL REEDUCATION, EMOTIONAL LITERACY, AND BONDING

PAIRS dives even more deeply into emotion via the PAIRS Bonding Weekend

Workshop. PAIRS adapted the New Identity Process (Casriel, 1972) to

the couple orientation of PAIRS, calling it Bonding Work. Casriel, a

renowned specialist in the treatment of drug and alcohol addiction in

therapeutic communities, originally developed this expressive process to

treat character disorders. Paul MacLean’s (1973) A Triune Concept of the Brain and Behavior is presented as a model to understand emotional memory

that, when activated, does not know time and place and is experienced

as reoccurring now. Participants learn several different positions for holding

their partner while he or she is expressing intense emotions. Participants

learn how to progress from less intense emotions to more intense

expression, to the reexperiencing of emotions in full measure. In this intense

emotionally open state, emotional reeducation can occur. Once individuals

have emptied old pain, they become open to receive positive,

comforting, and affirming messages about themselves from their partners

and the group. When ready, they are assisted in construction affirmations

of their own value, rights, and entitlements. They replace old or toxic

choices with new, healthy attitudes and decisions.

During this process, couples develop deep empathy and compassion for

one another. They discover that, not only can they handle their partners’ intense

emotions, but they can also offer their partner comfort through holding

and touch when they are in pain. Over the course of this weekend,

participants commonly lose their fear of both their own and their partners’

emotional intensity. They experience directly and observe in others how an

intimate relationship generates intense emotions about bonding, belonging,

needing one another, never leaving, and being loved for oneself. They learn

that the expression of these powerfully intense emotions cements their

bond at the deepest of levels and can restore passion to their relationship.

The culmination of this workshop is the Death and Loss experience in

which participants enact saying goodbye to their deceased loved one. They

are led to speak what would need to be expressed to say goodbye. Music

and the use of carefully chosen sentence stems make this an emotionally

charged and deeply meaningful exercise for partners. They experience the

depth of their bond in the “experience” of losing one another through

death. This exercise also allows communication about the meaning of their

lives together. Rest-of-life wish-baskets are shared between partners.