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Key points
- Many partners don't know how to change their relationship, which leaves them hopeless.
- Hope is restored when you have a choice, which first requires you to recognize your contribution to a problem.
- Once you become aware and take responsibility, you can choose differently.
- Having a choice is what gives partners relational hope for a better future.
You must first be aware, then take responsibility, before you choose.Source: Janay Peters/UnsplashIt's toward the close of a six and a half hour masterclass on couples therapy I'm leading for 30 therapists. One of them asks, “But what about hope? You didn’t speak about giving your clients hope.”
The question surprised me. I had never really thought about hope as a separate concept. It’s not a word that I often use in the clinic.
“One second," I answered. "I want to let your question land.” I began pacing on the stage, letting my mind wonder. And then it hit me, and I found myself saying: “I give hope by offering choice. Choice is hope. Choice helps my clients know that they’re not stuck and can change their lives.”
Most couples I encouner in the clinic are stuck in a bad relational dynamic, or what we call a “dance.” My job as a couples therapist is to “respect the client, not their business card,” which means to challenge my clients to see and act beyond their current perception of themselves and their relationship. To unbalance their homeostasis toward a new dance. This is a complex task that I've unpacked here.
So how then do you change a rigid relational dance?
Three Stages of Relational Change
There are three distinct stages that are required for creating long-lasting relational change: Awareness, Ownership, and Choice.
Awareness
In order to change your relationship, you must be aware of your part in the problematic dynamic; after all, it really does take two to tango. Choosing to see your relational problems systemically means that you are not 100% innocent but have at least 50% responsibility for the state of your relationship. You can’t choose differently if you are not even aware of your contribution to the problem.
You become aware through self-confrontation or brave and honest feedback from partner, friend, or counselor. You become aware by lowering your defensiveness and opening up to others' views on your behavior. I described here how to be open to feedback from others in order to grow.
Ownership
Once you are aware, you must completely take responsibility for the behavior of yours that contributed to the homeostasis. It means letting go of a victim, passive, martyr-like narrative, and really owning your actions without blaming your partner. This ownership, will help you focus more on yourself— the only person you can change in your relationship instead of wasting time by ineffectively blaming your partner (I’m sure you’ve tried it before only to discover it doesn’t work).
Deep ownership means connecting to your shadow—your blind spots, defense mechanisms, and secondary gains from the current relational behavior. This is not an easy process but well worth the effort. I wrote in depth how to own your shadow here.
Ownership is crucial because, if you are only aware of your actions but unable or unwilling to take responsibility for them, you might still hold on to a narrative that it is more your partner’s fault than your own.
For example, “It’s true that I stonewall but I only do it because my partner is so aggressive.” A partner who makes such a statement of blame, demonstrating awareness but without owning their contribution to the stalemate, is unable to recognize that they have real choices—other than leaving. As a result, they are likely to feel hopeless. They are stuck, locked in a (golden) cage—waiting for their partner to change or their therapist to “fix” their partner.
Choice
Only after taking complete ownership of your actions can you choose differently. Choice means a conscious, proactive decision to think, talk, or behave differently. Choice is a daily practice, not a light-bulb moment. Choice is demonstrated every time you speak, act, and interact with your partner. It is an action, not an insight.
My job is to always show my clients that there is a choice. They can always choose differently (even if it is a decision to leave). Partners are not locked in a cage without agency.
Choice as Hope
Choice is an active relational belief that you have agency to change your life. Having choices means that you are not a victim, a wounded child, or helplessly ill. Choice means that you are a functioning adult with options. Choice means that you don’t have to wait for your partner to change, that you can do it today. That your today doesn’t have to be your tomorrow. That life is always changing, and so are you.
I can’t promise that your choices will always lead to better places. I do know that by becoming aware, taking ownership, and then having and making choices, you will feel like an active agent writing your own story. Like the hero of your life. And that the end of your story is still unknown.
That knowledge, that agency, that movement, in my eyes, is hope. It’s a relational hope for a new reality.
