(THE BOOK) Chapter 27: Monkeyships

I’m a couples therapist who used to be scared of couples.

There’s just so much going on in a couples session, so many levels and variables to be aware of.   I was constantly asking myself questions like

~ What are these people actually saying?  What are they holding back?

~ Which feelings can they express to each other?  Which ones do they hide?

~ Which of their motives are conscious, and which are unconscious?

~ Are they reacting to their current situation, or experiencing old feelings from past experiences or unhealed wounds?

It was a lot of work.  

And it made Bert anxious as hell.  

Then things changed for me.

I began studying control, and developed what I call the Monkeyship Theory.

The theory has three tenets:

(1) A monkeyship is any relationship that turns dysfunctional because the partners are trying to control each other.

(2) All relationships get monkeyish from time to time.

(3) Most relationship problems are really control struggles in disguise.

This theory helped me feel safer with couples in two ways.

First, focusing on the idea of control helped me to observe and organize what was happening in sessions, sort of like an Etch-a-Sketch magnet rearranges iron filings.  Identifying underlying control issues (You’re rude to my mother./You won’t share control of our money./Hold on, she’s my daughter too) clarified how the couple got into trouble in the first place.

Second, it gave me a way to help them get out of trouble.

I realized my job wasn’t so much to fix them or change anything as to help the partners notice what they were already doing – what they tried to control and how they went about it.

I did this mainly by pointing out what I was seeing and hearing.

Mary, you just interrupted John again.  Were you aware of that?  Does it happen a lot?

John, you look hurt.  What’s coming up for you right now?

When you apologize I get the sense that sorry is not how you really feel.  Am I right?  

For many couples just noticing their patterns and hidden messages helps to defuse tension and redefine conflicts.  Once they see what they’re doing, they have a choice of whether to keep doing it or not.  This alone can feel empowering.

After they learn to spot their own patterns, the next step is to teach them alternatives to control.

There are three, I tell them:

~ Surrender, which is the ability to stop trying to control what you can’t control anyway,

~ Responsibility, which is the ability to shift your attention from externals (people, places, things) to internals (your own thoughts, feelings, behavior) and to base your choices on what you feel and need.

~ Intimacy, or the ability to be fully yourself with another person and permit them to do the same with you.

Once they understand the alternatives, the job is to get them to practice.

This approach works better with some couples than others.  Its success depends mainly on how willing they are to stop playing blame tennis and look hard at themselves.

Those with the courage to do so usually discover that they’ve been trying to change their partner into the partner they want, instead of accepting the partner they have.

And that, without realizing it, they’ve been dancing to the toxic theme song of all monkeyships:

Don’t be who you are.  

Be who I need you to be.