By Daniel Benor, MD

I learned many ways to help families deal with stressful situations when I participated in the Family Therapy Externship program at the Philadelphia Guidance Clinic, 35 years ago. One of the most important concepts was to always view individuals as parts of the larger family wholeness.

It may seem on the surface obvious that each person belongs to a family, but the relationships and their influence upon each family member are actually incredibly complex and often quite subtle.

If you’ve been in a serious relationship, you will probably have found that making decisions about important issues often requires discussions, clarifications and agreement between both partners. Initially, such decisions may sometimes lead to arguments. Each partner has to get used to conceding some of his or her autonomy, and to acknowledging the rights of the other partner to input opinions, preferences and choices on the issues being decided.

Over time, the partners in successful relationships learn each other’s views, likes and dislikes, and such negotiations become easier. This builds into meta-awarenesses and meta-agreements (e.g. rules about how to make decisions and rules) about the generally accepted rules for maintaining harmony in the relationship. These mutual understandings are usually not spelled out directly, but are simply the ways the partners come to work together for a mutually satisfying and harmonious relationship.

Almost always, partnered people discover that each has come from a family that had rules for relating to family members that are different from their own family rules. Each family develops rules according to the personalities, preferences, choices, ancestral rules, cultural rules, and other models and authorities on relationships.

So that’s the good news. The bad news is that couples often get into arguments about whose way of doing something is right or better or best. Each person feels their way should prevail and such differences may become points of serious contention, even leading to ending the relationship.

Better ways to deal with couples’ differences

People who argue over their differences often get angry. Anger is a feeling that is often handled poorly. Things are said that are spiteful or hurtful. Angers may build resentments over time that worsen the arguments. Angers and resentments that are unresolved leave residues of negative feelings. People often stash these away in their inner filing cabinets, where they fester like dirt in a wound. Such buried angers may come out again during future arguments.

The intensity of many such feelings can be released with TWR . The process is simple to learn and easy to use, involving focusing statements and affirmations plus tapping on the left and right sides of the body. Once the resentments and angers are reduced to a lower intensity, it becomes possible to discuss issues with greater openness and readiness to compromise.

Case example:

Juan and Sally (assumed names) met in a university English class and dated for close to a year, finding themselves very compatible in their tastes for music, literature, films and spending time in nature. They were surprised, upon moving in to live together, that their relationship rapidly became very tense, punctuated by frequent bitter arguments over numerous minor and major issues.

Juan felt Sally was being unreasonably bossy when she insisted that he shouldn’t to keep papers and books spread out on his desk, nearby chairs and the floor; that he shouldn’t be eating snacks whenever he felt like it; that they should pool their financial resources; and that he shouldn’t take care to leave the toilet seat down.

Sally felt blamed, unheard and misunderstood when she asked Juan politely to be considerate in these ways and he not only refused to discuss these issues that she considered important, but became sullen, angry and argumentative. She was also upset that Juan refused to carry his fair share of the household tasks of shopping, dishwashing and cleaning up – even though both of them had jobs, in addition to their studies.

When they came for help in sorting out these issues, it quickly became apparent that there were significant differences in their family rules and meta-rules.

– Sally’s family had been living in the US for many generations and were very egalitarian in distributing in-home responsibilities between men and women. She expected to share decision making and chores equally between Juan and herself.

– Juan’s family had come to the US from Mexico shortly after his parents were married. In their family culture, women were in charge of the home and men were not expected to participate in attending to household duties. Men were more autocratic and expected to be in charge of many decisions within the marriage.

While knowledgeable outsiders (such as a therapist) would not be at all surprised to see such culturally colored challenges in this sort of relationship, Juan and Sally were disappointed, frustrated and angry with each other. Each was inclined to blame the other for the problems they were experiencing.

Simply pointing out the cultural roots of many of their differences was very helpful in relieving some of their tensions. Resourcing them with TWR then gave them tools to strengthen their awarenesses of the positive feelings they had for each other on the one hand, and on the other hand, to lessen the intensity of many of their negative feelings. This enabled them to negotiate solutions to their differences, establishing understandings and agreements around the issues that had brought them to seek outside help.

They both found TWR extremely helpful in the further unfolding of their relationship. Both were able to reduce the intensity of their negative responses when they encountered the inevitable further cultural, family and personal differences that parts of are the normal process of developing a new, long-term relationship.

See also TWR article on: TWR and Family Constellation Therapy of Bert Hellinger http://www.wholistichealingresearch.com/WHEE_and_Family_Constellation_Therapy.html

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2014 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM   All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.