Here’s a little exercise for you and your spouse to help you get on the same page.

Instructions

The objective is to narrow the list down to the top 5 characteristics you want to shoot for or see happen in your relationship now.

1. Print out 2 copies of the chart.

2. Each person scan through the 74 characteristics a couple times or more. Get a sense of how they differ. Note which ones tend to grab you or hold your attention. Remember, these characteristics describe an ideal relationship.

3. Each person go back over the list and place a check mark by each on the scale of 1-10. The #10 means that characteristic stands out or grabs you as someting vitally important and you want to shoot for that beginning now.

4. One person shares with the other the top 5. The person may make comments. However, make sure you NEVER refer to your partner or spouse as someone who must do that something for you to make something happen. Do not place any responsibility on the other. You are merely declaring what is vitally important for you now. The other person may ask questions, but they are for clarification only. The other is to listen and listen well with an underlying curiosity.

5. The other person shares the top 5 characteristics with the same rules and concerns applying.

6. If you begin to swirl, hit the wall or the communication breaks down, stop the process.

7. If the exercise generates positive give and take marked by a high degree of acceptance and curiosity, keep it going.

Do you ever feel like there is a chasm between you and your spouse? There is a distance and it seems as if you live with a stranger.

There is tension. You feel it. It stabs you or it’s like an annoying background noise that won’t go away. You think through, measure and rehearse what you want to say and decide to say it – carefully – or withhold and it simmers. You are polite, but it drips with the taste of vinegar.

Or, the two of you attempt to raise the “issues” but hit a brick wall. Ka-thud! It goes nowhere. Defenses, explanations, vagueness, attacks subtle and not so subtle, rolling eyes or whatever send both crashing into the immoveable impasse.

Or, conversation sets off the swirl. The conversation and feelings slide down the slippery slope of predictable and familiar frustration and pain. Each knows what the other will say before it is said. The script, drama or melodrama is played out – again! Been there – done that!

Please understand that this happens in all relationships to one degree or another. None is immune. For those of you attempting to rebuild after infidelity, I need you to understand that where there is a relationship of mutual, intense emotional investment, the wall will emerge, tension prevail and the swirl will occur. You are not alone.

Let’s take a look at why this happens. Perhaps this will reinforce the fact that you are “normal” and give you the impetus to stick with it.

1. We lack adequate models for effective communication in a relationship of high emotional investment. Being in such a relationship is the most difficult task we are asked to accomplish in our life time. No one does it perfectly or close to that. (Some may appear to have a perfect, if not good, marriage, but be wary of perfection. It doesn’t exist.)

2. We are exposed to toxic relationships as a child. The pain, tension, confusion and fear is locked into our body and is difficult to heal and eradicate. We tend to replicate such relationships. (Maybe we are continually offered an opportunity to “get it right.”)

3. We talk and express ourselves tentatively and in generalities. Generalities leave room for mind reading on the part of your spouse and that can be extremely dangerous. Your spouse will filter your generalities to fit his/her preconceived ideas of who you are or who you should be for him/her.

4. We don’t take a stand. Instead we attempt to elicit from the other what he or she is thinking, feeling, wanting, needing etc. We go “fishing” for assurance, affirmation or information to make meet our needs or preconceived ideas. The spouse often resents the “intrusion” and at one level wonders, “What is he/she after?” As well, the fishing is often interpreted as a disguised form of criticism (I’m obviously not enough or doing enough for him/her.)

I’m working on the expectations we might have for a love relationship. More on that topic is coming…