Dear Dick
articles about wide ranging psychological issues
from "The Local Bulletin" (Brisbane Australia)
by Dick Rigby
©all articles are copyright 2006

September 2002
Such a tragedy when I see a couple for relationship counselling and it’s too late. The spark has gone out of the relationship and they have fallen out of love. Sometimes one partner has wanted to get professional help to sort out the problems. They may have been asking for this for months or even years.  The other partner hasn’t wanted to. They have been too busy or they don’t see the need. By the time the couple do get professional help, it’s too late to undo the damage.
All people in a relationship need to communicate. Nearly all couples need to improve their communication. We all know that, but sometimes things get put aside because of pressure of work.  Often when conflicts are not resolved and issues are swept under the carpet, resentments build up.  Most of us can think of someone we know who has been holding on to resentment for years and  years.
If these niggling resentments are not dealt with, they may accumulate into a deep “well of bitterness”.  Getting help to resolve these problems can sometimes avoid the pain of a relationship split up.
I have been talking about couples who find themselves in crisis.  But there is another situation that we don’t often hear about. That is when a relationship is going reasonably well, but things have been getting stale.  Counselling can help put the zing back into the relationship. This is called “Relationship Enrichment”.
Here are some suggestions for things to work on:
Spending quality time together.  Planning to have a weekend away; this time without the children.
Finding new and interesting ways to make love.
Doing something different at least once a month.  For example, going for a ride on a City Cat, going for a walk in the park on a Sunday.  The list goes on. 
The only criterion is that the activity is enjoyable and different.
It is so easy to get lost in our day to day activities.  We forget to “smell the roses”. I find that my unanswered emails build up.  My list of jobs seems to increase rather than decrease.  This is true for most of us.  But if we don’t pay attention to the quality of life issues, then time just races by.
Sometimes counselling can help to clear some of the cobwebs away and give a relationship a new lease of life.  Small investment for a big return.
 

Loneliness

February 2003
So many things to do, so many people to meet.  Why should I feel lonely?  Well, lots of people do. Loneliness is a state of mind where you don’t get enough of the right sort of social contact.
Let me give you two cases.  Alan is a TAFE student.  He is 19 years old and he lives with his parents.  He gets on ok with his parents and has some friends from college.  He looks happy enough.  But he’s not. 
At night he feels isolated and inadequate.  He would like to ring up one of his friends, but doesn’t want to bother them.  He longs to have a girl friend, but that doesn’t seem to be happening.  He feels intensely lonely, and doesn’t feel that he can share it with anyone. 
He tried to share his feelings with his father once.  His father just gave him advice.  He said “you’ve got to get out more and meet people.”  “Just get out, get a life and all will be fine”.  The topic was never raised again.
Alan was shy.  Seriously shy.  The first thing that he wanted was someone who would listen and understand.  The second thing that he wanted was some strategies for boosting his self confidence.
Fortunately for Alan, he saw a counsellor at TAFE and got the help that he needed.  After a couple of months he started a steady relationship with a girl.  Nowadays, he only feels lonely on occasions.  I love happy endings.
Maria is married with three young children.  Everyone thinks she’s happy.  She is always bright and cheerful and optimistic.  Maria has a secret.  She feels lonely and empty.  She has no one who she can share this with.  She is so busy helping other people that she forgets to help herself.
The more lonely she feels, the more she fills her life with busy things.  Maria doesn’t seek any professional help because she is too scared to admit to herself that she needs help.  I hope that one day Maria will realize that she has a strong need to feel really close to people.  She is in denial about this need at the moment.
If Maria recognizes this need, and gets some help, her life will change for the better.
Loneliness is probably more common than most of us realize.  Loneliness is not only felt by the old lady who lives on her own, but also by people in families like Maria and Alan.

Husband who doesn’t communicate

June 1998
My husband and I have been married for 25 years.  Most of the time has been happy, but things have not been so good recently.  Our children are all adults now and have left home.  When I try to talk to my husband, I feel that he doesn’t really listen to me.  When I tell him that he doesn’t listen, he can repeat what I have just said, but I know that he doesn’t really take it in.  When I say to him that we have problems, he says that we don’t and that everything’s fine.  I have pleaded with him and got angry with him, but it doesn’t make any difference.
He doesn’t seem to want to spend time with me.  When we are alone, the TV is always on.  He is a sports fanatic.  We never talk with the TV off.  I have been feeling lonely lately.  I am not happy and I can’t seem to be able to get that through to him.  If I try to talk to him about these things, he just says that I worry too much.  What should I do?
Mrs A
Dear Mrs A.
When I read your letter, the situation reminded me of the book by John Gray, “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus”.  It seems to me that you husband has “retreated into his cave”.  It is very hard to communicate with a person who does not want to talk about problems and doesn’t even admit that there are any.  It is likely that he is thinking to himself about you, something like:-  “She makes mountains out of molehills.”  “She’ll get over it.” “She is going through menopause and that’s why she is so moody”.
Somehow you have to get him to take you seriously.  Just pleading with him or getting angry with him doesn’t seem to work with men in this situation.  He just retreats further into his cave and thinks that you are putting unreasonable pressure on him.
I suggest that you change the way that you talk to him.  I suggest that you try some sort of shock tactics.  The tactics will depend on the man and the situation.
One way is to say to him “we do have problems and I am very upset about it.  If we don’t get some professional  help, then I am going to sleep in another room and stop cooking you meals.”  It sounds drastic, but sometimes it takes drastic methods to get through to a person in denial.  It important that when you deliver this sort of ultimatum,  then you must be prepared to carry it through, otherwise he will take you even less seriously.
There is always some risk attached to “upping the anti” like this, and there is not always a good outcome, but usually it is worth the risk to save a marriage that is dying of boredom.
If this doesn’t work to get him to joint counselling, then you can go to a therapist yourself to get more help about how to set boundaries.  Also get support form friends to have the courage to see it through.
 

How to negotiate

May 2003
Old habits die hard.  Rod looked back with some regret on his failed marriage from a couple of years ago.  He and Julie had been arguing for about 2 years before they broke up.  Rod reflected that the arguments always seemed to be the same – going around in circles and never getting anywhere.
They did go to see a marriage guidance counsellor.  The counsellor said that they were not listening to each other.  They didn’t go back to counselling after that.  Neither were ready to make any significant changes at that stage.
Rod and Julie did love each other when they first got married. Their problem was in their style of communication.  They didn’t know how to negotiate. 
There are three tricks to negotiation:
State clearly and simply what you want.  Be sure to have worked it out for yourself first.
Listen carefully and patiently to what the other person wants.  You may need to ask for clarification if you are not sure.
Be prepared to compromise and meet halfway.
Both Rod and Julie each took on the role of the “injured victim”. Both felt indignant that the other did not seem to want to understand their point of view.  Both took the moral high ground and therefore did not want to compromise. Neither stated clearly what they wanted from the marriage. 
If you have grown up in a family who do not practice these three principles, then you will have had no effective model for resolving conflict.  However, even if this is the case, you can still learn these skills as an adult.
I think that nearly everyone has times in their life when they feel hurt and indignant by what their partner has done. When this happens, it is very important for us to stand back from the situation and look at what we are doing.
My own experience is that most of these occasions are due to a misunderstanding.  “Life is a sitcom”.  When my partner and I follow the three principles above, things are sorted out quickly.
Rod has learned a lot in the last two years.  He now follows the three principles in his new relationship.  Old habits occasionally rise from the grave, but most of the time he gets it right.  I have lost touch with Julie.  I hope that she has also learned the same lessons.
It’s worth the effort.  And of course, it provides a good role model for our children when they witness effective negotiation.
 

Serial monogamy

November 1999
I watched ABC TV’s “Late Line” the other night.  The subject of the program was “Serial Monogamy”.  An interesting program on how we deal with relationship break up and forming new relationships.  40% of Australian marriages will break up.  Most of these people involved will go on to form new relationships. 
When people get married, every one expects it to last for life.  Nearly always it is a big shock when a marriage doesn’t work out.  Most of the people that I have counselled coming out of a broken relationship feel disappointed and betrayed that the person they originally married isn’t the same person that they separated from.
Some people feel bitter and disillusioned and resolve not to get involved in another relationship.  I don’t see it like that.  Everything changes.  Unless couples in a relationship learn how to change together, then they will probably drift apart.  When people change in different directions, their belief systems move further and further apart.
When this happens, you can wake up one morning and look at your partner and they seem like a total stranger to you.
The challenge for most of us coming out of a broken relationship, is to learn as much as possible.  If we learn our lessons well, we are less likely to make the same mistakes in the future. 
If you find yourself just blaming the other person, you never learn about your own patterns.  If you just blame yourself, the chances are that you are getting a distorted view of the causes of what went wrong.  A dysfunction relationship has two sides.  Look at what you have to change in yourself.
You may feel too hurt and angry to want to get involved in another relationship.  But the chances are that you will form another relationship at some time in the future.  It is worth knowing this fact so that you can prepare the ground to help you not get involved with the same sort of person again.  History has a habit of repeating itself when it comes to matters of the heart.
One of my clients asked me the other day, “Do you know of any functional relationships?”  Yes, I do.  I know of several.  In every case, the couple grow together and works to resolve their differences.  Matters are not swept under the carpet.  This doesn’t mean that every problem is discussed endlessly, but it does mean that important matters are not swept under the carpet.

This is a time of great change.  I believe that we can enjoy functional relationships if we learn to change together

Early intervention

February 2008
Jack and Lucy left it too late.  I am always saddened when a couple comes to see me after things have been going wrong for a long period of time.  In the case of Jack and Lucy they had been fighting for years and they were sick of fighting and sick of each other.
It was all so unnecessary.  They didn’t have to fight.  They had each learned to fight when they were young and they had never learned an alternative.  Jack and Lucy met eight years ago.  They fell in love with great passion.  They were so made for each other and so much in love.
That was part of the problem.  Because they were so much in love, their expectations of the other person were very high.  As we all know, being in love makes the other person appear more wonderful than they really are.  However, all good honeymoons come to an end.  So it was with Jack and Lucy.  They started to notice each other’s faults.  In fact, after a while some habits became extremely irritating.
That was the time for early intervention.  If they had seen a skilled counselor, things would have turned out very differently.  Now I don’t advocate that couples seek counselling every time something goes wrong.  I advocate they seek counselling if things KEEP going wrong.
Let me illustrate with an example.  Lucy said “I hate it the way you cut your nails in the living room – you’re such a grot”.  Jack responded with “that’s what you always do – find fault with everything I do”. Lucy retorted; “You never listen to me – you are so ignorant”.  Jack stormed off shouting “I’m just sick of being nagged all the time – it’s like I can’t do anything right in your eyes”.
Oh so familiar and oh so unnecessary.  There was an alternative.  With some guidance, things could have gone very differently.  Lucy could have said “It upsets me when you cut your nails in the living room”.  Jack could have chosen not to see this as a personal attack.  He could have understood that it was something that genuinely irritated Lucy.  He could have responded with understanding and said “I know it irritates you, but the living room is the best lighting in the house”.
They could have both worked on a solution to the issue.  If someone had taught them the skills of no defensive communication, empathy and negotiation, Jack and Lucy would still be together today.