Read the Article on The Pain Body

Read the Preface to The Heart of Relationship

Read the Preface to Why A Good Marriage Is The Best Thing For Happiness

Changing Your Partner Without Saying A Word
by Jonathan Goodman-Herrick, LCSW

The wisdom distilled here emerges out of Jonathan’s wide clinical experience and deep personal reflection. Jan Chozen Bays, M.D.,  American Zen Teacher,  To Heal the Human World

We are always so eager to get our partner to change. If only they would be kinder, more independent, more responsible, more fun, more sexual, less sexual, more emotional, less emotional, if only they would be different, our life would definitely improve. After decades of failed attempts to change my wife, and of watching other partners’ unsuccessful attempts to change each other, I have come to the conclusion that the easiest and probably the only way to transform a partner is to change ourself. As we evolve, so does our partner. Though, strangely, this secret formula is among the most difficult of secrets to remember.

A striking example of how this approach to change works occurred with a professional couple I was helping. Norbert, the husband, was so frustrated with the relationship that he was considering separating. Generally a very progressive, openminded fellow, he nevertheless was convinced that all the marital problems were his wife Vanessa’s doing. He was especially angry about her sexual and emotional closedness. Yet he didn’t appreciate the part he played in being critical, pushy and unsupportive with Vanessa. She shut down sexually and emotionally in large part because Norbert was often unsupportive and frequently put her down. His own behavior helped create the very closedness he complained about. Once he discovered this, and shifted focus from blaming his wife to looking at his own contributions, he was able to start the healing process between them. Fairly quickly, as Norbert became less critical and more supportive, and without asking Vanessa to do anything differently, she became much more open and loving towards him.

Couples are in a sense a single circle of energy, like an electric circuit. Wherever you enter the circuit you can change the current. Since the place in the circuit we have most access to is ourself, that is the most effective place to enter.

The Zen of Relationship Transformation

In order to stop pushing our partner to change and instead change ourself, it helps to direct a profound question at ourself: What is my part in the suffering and dissatisfaction I experience with this relationship? Zen adepts ask of themselves seemingly insoluble questions called koans to plumb right through the bottom of their own hearts and minds. They might ponder for years a question such as What is my Face before my parents were born? Likewise, in asking What is my part? we open a window into an unlit room of our psyche. To get a good look, it is well to go beyond self-blame and easy labeling of ourself as dysfunctional, sabotaging, or inadequate. It is worth taking the time to truly study ourself, exploring any possible way we have helped create the situation we are in, then allowing the answer to come from the depths. The resulting awareness allows us to shift, which in turn creates the space for our partner to shift.

Change between partners also occurs in another dimension. At least that is the experience for my wife and I more times than we can count. Each of us will struggle with a related issue, say our tendency to argue. One of us may be traveling hundreds of miles away, but at virtually the same moment we both have epiphanies, resolutions directly related to that same issue, suggesting that even without discussion or proximity our efforts profoundly effect each other. Transformation is synchronous. All the more reason not to try to force our partner to change.

One couple, David and Rebecca, came to me after being married and loving each other very deeply for many years. They were a pair anyone would expect to go off into the sunset, happily forever after. However, they had just lost a child, something I was personally familiar with. The child’s death had brought powerful fault-lines, issues they had never had to fully face, to the surface.

Suddenly both were hurting and needing lots of love. David tended not to share his crying or ask for affection. He was able to cry his heart out on his own, but not with Rebecca. He was convinced that if he turned to her, it would be too much for Rebecca; that she didn’t have the capacity to care for him emotionally. Increasingly, David began to keep that part of his life separate from Rebecca. Resenting her for not nurturing him, he began to look elsewhere.

On the other hand, Rebecca began to yearn and vigorously campaign for another child, a wish David opposed. David wanted more time alone with Rebecca, to be close and to be nurtured by her; Rebecca wanted David to agree to another child. Each wanted the other to change. At a time when they desperately needed to trust and move closer, they increasingly resented each other and grew further apart. After working in therapy for awhile, David began to appreciate something that had never occurred to him: Rebecca’s discomfort with nurturing him was largely a response to his fear of being needy with her. Though Rebecca was a little uncomfortable with his vulnerability, she very much wanted to nurture and support him.

Once David began opening up and showing his need for love and nurturance to Rebecca, she began to tend him in the ways he had always yearned for. When David needed caring, he could let Rebecca know, and she in turn could hold him and listen to whatever he needed to say. At the same time, David realized that his false assumptions about Rebecca were based on his experience with his mother during childhood: it wasn’t so much that Rebecca was uncomfortable with his vulnerability, but that his mother had always been.

Almost simultaneously, Rebecca ceased pushing David to have another child. Instead she suggested they focus on healing the relationship, on devoting a great deal of attention to loving each other. Within a few months David, of his own, agreed to another child, and Rebecca got pregnant. When she changed, he changed. Rather than each trying to force the other to become different, each shifted within themselves, found ways to more deeply respect the other’s needs – and each wound up having more of their own needs fulfilled.

It takes courage, and the willingness to be open to any possibility, even that your own behavior is less than perfect, but if you genuinely want your partner to change, the easiest, most direct route is to change yourself.

Note: This approach is not recommended for dealing with outright abuse.