Trying to facilitate change in an individual, group, or organization without considering how they will resist your efforts, and without developing a strategy to manage the resistance, will almost always become an exercise in futility. Trust me. I became quite familiar with this phenomenon over the decades I practiced and taught couple therapy,
It often went like this: One spouse — generally the woman in those days — wanted more from the relationship: more conversation; more intimacy; more equality. The other, a man (these were primarily heterosexual relationships) — resisted her efforts to gain his full attention. Over time, the more she asked or, later on, insisted, the more he resisted. And the more he resisted through anger and distancing, the harder she tried. The harder she tried, the greater his alienation. She would find him withholding; he would find her controlling. This painful loop often, proceeded, endlessly, until they had settle into a dull and unfulfilling stasis, or had found their way to divorce. The process was predictable; I knew I needed a different approach.
The Case of the Resistant Husband
When they met, Karen and Harold feasted on each other’s company. She believed that he was a different kind of man. He loved to talk and cuddle and share his most intimate secrets. He believed that she was a different kind of women, who accepted him with all his flaws and seemed to really like him for who he was. Harold, she told friends, was different than the other men she had known. Harold didn’t talk much about Karen with his friends.
But one day, several months into their relationship, when Harold was feeling down and a little vulnerable, he pushed away when Karen wanted to talk. She was taken aback and a little hurt but didn’t make too much of it because their relationship felt so solid. He was relieved—other women hadn’t accepted his need for distance and privacy—and the next time Karen wanted to talk, he gladly joined.
Over time, and in spite of Karen’s best efforts to be understanding, Harold’s need for privacy seemed to grow. As he put it, he “didn’t want to just talk and talk,” and he pushed away a little harder than before. Karen was shocked and hurt. “But this is how we’ve worked things out and how we stay close,” she responded.
Harold now disagreed. “Why don’t we just make love a little more. That’s my way of getting close.”
“I can only make love when I feel close.”
“I feel close after we make love,” said Harold.
And so it went until their efforts to get close felt so choreographed that they hardly needed to speak their lines. Arguments that originally took hours now started and ended within minutes.
In her anguish, Karen talked with friends, who mostly identified with her and reinforced her resentment. Harold didn’t have extended conversations with his friends. Instead, they’d share snide comments about their wives: “All they want to do is talk, talk, talk. Or, better yet, if I could get myself to cry once in a while, she’d be thrilled.”
Feeling futile, even desperate, Karen decided they needed to enter therapy. Harold said no, more than once, eventually digging in his heels until Karen said that she would leave him unless he joined her. Harold hadn’t realized things had gotten so bad and, with a flamboyant reluctance, he agreed: “If you’re going to threaten me, I’ll come.” He knew it simply meant more talk. But his fear of losing Karen won out over his distaste for ‘intimate conversation.’
Since they had entered couple therapy based on Karen’s initiative and Harold’s reluctance, she got to frame the problem: “He won’t talk with me. I don’t know if he doesn’t like me, if he’s afraid. Something’s wrong with him—or with me—but he won’t say what it is.” At first, Harold simply argued. He asserted that there was nothing wrong with him—or with Karen. Then conceded. “If Karen were gentler and patient, if she gave me some room to breathe, maybe I’d be more responsive.”
And, of course, Karen had an answer to that: “But I was very kind and loving, at least at first,” she responded. And, in the therapist’s presence, they enacted their choreographed fight.
Here is where many therapists get into trouble, by essentially accepting Karen’s original framing. Psychotherapy is a talking activity, after all, and here, Harold won’t talk. As a result, therapists tend to enter as the agent of the talking spouse, trying to help Harold to respond to her. “She means well,” they say. “She’s just disappointed.” “She’s angry now but wouldn’t be if you could respond.” “She loves you. Do you see?” In effect, the therapist and Karen serve together as Harold’s helpers: “Let’s see what’s holding you back,” they ask?”
When nothing changes, if Harold eventually resists the therapist almost as much as he does Karen, the therapist often changes tactics by trying to get Karen to talk in a gentler, more loving way, to share the unhappiness beneath her anger. She tries. Of course, she tries. With the therapist’s coaching, her tone and attitude improve, though it’s clear she is straining and Harold sees her as insincere. But there’s an unintended and destructive consequence of the therapist’s alliance with Karen: It seems superior to Harold’s relationship with Karen, and that alienates him further.
With time, the therapist is often able to create an effective dialogue with each of them individually, but is generally unable to transfer this success to the couple. When Karen and Harold try, they quickly return to their hopeless round of mutual mistrust and accusations.
In my experience, the fundamental problem is the rigid form of dialogue, itself, with Karen initiating and Harold generally opposing her invitations, accusations, and sundry approaches. In other words, it’s the rigid form of the dialogue, not the words or sentiments that holds the couple in place. Imagine, if you can, a concrete form, with its set boundaries. It’s as though the couple has to operate within those confines.
My challenge is in these situations is to help couples escape that form in order to reshape their communications.
There are various ways to accomplish this goal. For example, I can simply block every utterance that follows the old script: “There it goes again; try something new.” Or, I can ask them to listen carefully as bystanders to discussions I have with them individually. If I can carry out these alternative dialogues long enough, they might see each other in a different light. Or, as I decided with Harold and Karen, I could fall in, fully, behind one of their competing views, hoping to disorient them, to through their rigid interactive “system” into a state of disequilibrium. Systems in disequilibrium, we know, are vulnerable to change.
I chose to side with Karen. I strongly endorsed her view that Harold was the problem, the reluctant husband. I admitted that I had been wrong to disagree with her, to be more even-handed in assigning responsibility for their impasse. And I announced that Harold’s reserve and oppositional approach was not simply a reaction to Karen; it was embedded in his character. It represented a chronic, inescapable condition.
In other words, Harold’s resistance was not something to be cured, not like an acute illness that would yield to some psychological version of antibiotics or surgery. Rather, it was an enduring, chronic illness, like diabetes, asthma, or high blood pressure, that would have to be managed over the years with diligent attention to diet, exercise, and medication.
Both Karen and Harold were, at first, confused, then flabbergasted. What did I mean? they asked in unison — and, by the way, this was the first time they acted in unison since I had met them. I explained again. Karen grew quiet, wondering if I was right and, if so, what to do with her anger and disappointment. If Harold couldn’t help himself, she couldn’t heap blame on him. For his part, Harold was hurt. What did I mean that he had a chronic illness, that he couldn’t be cured, that he couldn’t be a good husband to Karen—or, maybe, to other women?
I sympathized with them. Encouraged them to express their disappointment in each other and in the therapy — in me, as a matter of fact. Again their disappointment brought them together. I was now the problem. In a way, I had betrayed them. And that was how they felt as they left our session.
When they returned the following week, having thought deeply about my formulation and having talked compatibly with each other, they put aside their resentment towards me and asked (together): “What can we do?” I asked them what they would do if Harold’s problem was diabetes. At first, they looked blankly at me and at searchingly at each other. Eventually Harold, who was more familiar with medical matters, said: “We’d find out the best regimen and follow it as closely as possible.” Then having taken the initiative, Karen’s normal position, he looked to her for confirmation. And she gave it. As she did, they seemed pleased with one another, almost happy.
Then, as you might already imagine, I asked: “What can you do about Harold’s chronic resistance to intimate conversation?” This led to a long pause until Karen asked Harold for his advice. He said he didn’t know. Karen began to offer a suggestion but I stopped her and asked her to wait. Eventually, Harold said that they should have brief, time-limited, conversations, and that he would both begin them and signal when they would end. At first, Karen objected. I sadly noted that their problems would likely return. Harold agreed vehemently, vigorously, in emotional tones that had not been part of their previous conversations, which featured withdrawal, instead.
I supported him in two ways: First, I reminded them that Harold’s was a deep and chronic problem and would not yield to her insistence that he change. Second, I encouraged Harold to continue to set the parameters of their conversations. And over time, the more he did that, the more conversations lengthened and deepened. A few weeks later, he confided that he now felt he was in charge and he loved it. He loved talking with Karen within that framework. With some reluctance, Karen said she liked it well enough. It made her feel close to Harold.
After simply sitting back for a few more weeks, I wondered if they were ready to be on their own. Harold said yes, which could have signaled his desire to withdraw into his old ways. But before he could explain, Karen agreed. It was time. She was perfectly happy acceding to the limitations that Harold’s chronic illness imposed. She has joined him in “managing” his condition, his resistance. They now both felt in charge.
Barry Dym 