Mixed Agenda Couple:
One leaning in, the other leaning out
Latest Research estimates that 30 Percent of Couples
Seeking Marriage Therapy are “Mixed Agenda” and Seeking a Specific Kind Of Help
CLARITY, CONFIDENCE
& A Greater Understanding
The Leaning Out Spouse Emotional Stance
1. LIBERATION. Divorce as liberation. You are thinking of getting out, freedom, getting unshackled from a marriage that has held you back or holding you down. Thinking of having an affair? Thinking of living alone and single? Mid-life crisis? You don’t feel under the pressure to get out, but feel emotionally withdrawn from relationship and imagining a different partner.
2. RELIEF. Divorce as a relief. You feel a kind of a burden, picked on, put down, and emotionally beaten down and want relief from that internal pressure to get out of the situation that is intolerable. Unlike the first one, you feel like you can’t stay where you are and have emotional equilibrium. You feel like you can’t take it anymore. This often has more emotional volitiliy involved. You want something to happen quickly.
3. RELUCTANT . Divorce as reluctant letting go. You are not enamoured about the freedom of the single life. You know there is no lack of stress in the divorce world. There is no intense pressure to do something soon, though thinking about divorce for some time. You just don’t see a pathway to have a better marriage and family. You are reluctantly considering letting go of your marriage.
The Leaning In Spouse Emotional Stance
1.DESPERATE. You are in a panic and want to save the marriage. You are anxious to make it better. Maybe you just realized the dire situation you are in with your partner. Even if you have been thinking of or talking flippantly about divorce, something happens when your partner says they are going to leave you and puts divorce on the table. You feel a panic. Even if you have thought of it yourself, the feeling of loss of control, yields an anxious, desperate emotional stance. Often you make mistakes out of desperation: a. PURSUE. You might suddenly smother your spouse with actions of closeness: touch, affection, attention, and constantly checking in. This makes you appear unattractive to your partner. b. ANGRY. You are judgemental toward your partner. You call your partner out in from to the children and tell them how awful your partner is for trying to split up the family. You mock your partner in social gatherings, or post things on social media about your partner that is negative and blaming.
2. FOCUSED. You have gotten that there is trouble in the marriage and you have contributed to it. You are learning to be empathic to the pain in your spouse. “I see the pain I have caused or am open to see things with clarity.” You are focused on bringing my best self forward. This is a response to a “wake up call.” You are upset, sad and angry, but your FOCUS is on bringing your best self forward in facing these hard things.
3. CONFLICTED. You are on the fence. You go back and forth, from wanting save marriage and wanting out of marriage according to how you are treated by partner. You need to slow down and stop the flipping back and forth due to intense emotional reactions.
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This type of counseling is “emergency room” work. Really good intense work is needed right away but in a different manner than the type of couple therapy where change is the focus. This is a crisis intervention. There needs to be a “readiness” for couple therapy. This is called “Discernment Counseling” to distinguish it from couple therapy because mix-agenda couples need special focus coming to CLARITY and CONFIDENCE for a direction of the relationship based on a better understanding of what happened to the marriage and each person’s contribution to the problem. Not becoming closer and not trying to CHANGE, but ASSESS, step back, and turn inward.
It may turn out that some couples become ready for couple therapy, however, some will not. To find CLARITY is the focus of Discernment Counseling, so that informed big decision can be made for the best of each, where possible.
This gives the Leaning Out Spouse, often seen as the bad guy, the help they need: CLARITY and CONFIDENCE in their decision. It is a process where the pressure of change is off, and the option of honesty and clarity can happen.
The gives the Leaning In Spouse a place to focus and face the reality of the actual situation, instead of desperately pursuing and already ambivilant partner.
Each partner gets a private space, individual sessions and couple sessions to come to terms with how they really feel and what they really want in order to bring your best self forward and make a decision from CLARITY.
At the outcome of this process, the couple decides one of three paths to go forward:
1. PATH ONE: STATUS QUO. This is where the couple choses to stay in the relationship as it has been. A spouse isn’t eager to divorce but doesn’t have the energy and motivation for a full effort in therapy. a. The spouse may have softened a bit seen the relationship with more complexity, and understood their part in things. b. Another situation, is when a spouse is just paralysed and anguished and can’t make a decision. NOTE: Path One is chosen after the discernment work is done, they hope to eventually decide between Path Two and Path Three, and you move on to review what was learned. This is a way NOT TO FORCE A DECISION. There is no pressure to force anything from the therapy, just CLARITY and a DEEPER UNDERSTANDING. The current research shows around 20% of couples chose Path One. This option also can prevent a partner choosing a premature divorce as well as half-hearted and likely to fail couples therapy.
2. PATH TWO: SEPARATION and/or DIVORCE. This is where the couple decides to stop trying to change the relationship to make it better to stay together, but to try and reduce the resentment toward each other to make a transition and tend to the business of separation and divorce and end the marriage.
3. PATH THREE: FOCUSED COUPLES THERAPY. This path is a six-month commitment to couples therapy (and sometimes other resources) with divorce off the table, after which they can make another decision about whether to stay or leave.
If PATH THREE is chosen, each person constructs a WRITTEN PLAN OF NEW BEHAVIOR to practice in the relationship for those six months.
Making short-term decisions can reduce some of the urgency and open more of an emotional and mental space inside each person to come to clarity and a path forward.
