“As a therapist, one of the biggest things that I’ve noticed when couples come into my office is that it isn’t a lack of love for one another, genuinely, they’re stuck in these pattern that they learned his children. These adaptations [were] created to keep themselves safe or to make sure that they don’t feel like someone else is [getting] one up. And so couples get stuck in these back-and-forth [patterns]; [when] one get sarcastic, the other one pulls away. [When] one pursues, the other one shuts down. [When] one has a wall up, the other one’s trying to penetrate that wall just so that they can experience connection.
Part of the therapeutic process is when someone comes to sit in our office, we’re able to look at that those defenses and those adaptation and we’re able to re-organize the cycle so that they can experience the connection that they’re both desiring.”
~ Charles Hutchison, Graduate Intern