Who's back do you have?

Predators on the Deserted Island

Marlon Familton - Marriage Counselor, Predator and Prey

Here is an idea I share with couples I see. I try to paint an image around the idea of working together as a partnership. Imagine being stranded on a deserted island, just you and your partner. You have to build shelter, hunt and gather food, and somehow try to have an enjoyable life at the same time trying to survive. Your chances of surviving are far better together than alone. Thank heavens you're not alone!

It would be critical to your survival and that of your partners to have rules and trust. Rules will help keep everyone safe. Trust will maintain the relationship and security. Think about this for a moment. If you believed that your partner might become a predator and see you as prey, you wouldn't trust them. It would be hard to relax and enjoy life. Instead, all you would want to do is get away from them to feel safe. Certainly it wouldn't motivate you to be intimate!

Even the best relationships include disagreements and arguments. If you're not fighting now and then, worry because you're probably not really talking. So there you are together on the island; then someone does something irritating to the other. Maybe worse, you disagree. Perhaps the smallest stupidest issue spirals into a full blown fight! What do you do?

Common Strategies in Relationships

Two things can happen in these moments in relationships. Which, depends on how we strategized our management of difficult emotions when growing up. If we feel disconnected, many of us get upset and angry; we become the predator. We go on the verbal attack in an effort to get our need for connection or importance met. Unfortunately this is often self defeating. Our partner does not notice our need for connection because all they see is us coming with a club! Instead of connection, all we do is push our partner away.

Those of us who shut down when our partners get "big" typically because we don't know what to do; we don't know how to help; or we don't understand what they need from us. So, we withdraw sometimes believing that we are protecting the relationship from escalation. This could be emotionally or physically or both. Unfortunately this is just like moving to the other side of the island and abandoning our partner, leaving them to fend for them self. Which is their worst nightmare! In response they get "bigger" to try and engage us (yes it is true) and of course in response move further away.

Rules of Engagement

So there we are on the island with our partner and suddenly we're mad at each other. Okay, so you're mad. Be mad, it's a normal emotion. And yet, this is your partner. This is the person we choose to be with, maybe for better or for worse, right? Can you be mad and your partner and not go on the attack to wound them? Being mad is about protesting something that feels unfair; we need a boundary to be set. Yelling, name calling, slamming doors, tossing dishes, these are coping reactions not emotions. Often times when we're home fighting in private, we say cruel things to each other. We say and do things we would NEVER do to a stranger. Yet, there we are with the person we love treating them horribly. That's sad.

So I ask: How do you care for and nurture the person you love most in the world? When life is hard and you're battling for survival, who's back do you have? Who has your back? Can you agree to rules of engagement for future battles so that on that island, you can be partners and increase your chance of survival? Or, are you predators on the hunt? Ask yourself: how does my partner see me?

Relationships & Marriage Counseling

Predators on the Deserted Island