Taking Your Shape: Me Versus We
Photo courtesy Sage Of Shadowdale
EDITOR’S NOTE: This post has a great deal of psychobabble included. I apologize up front.
You walk in the door and are greeted with… “honey, we need to talk about a few things.” If you’re human, your insides immediately tighten and your defenses may prepare for battle. It’s a common occurrence. Your spouse tells you what’s going on in their head and you react.
The status quo is being threatened and while you may have grown tired of the relationship routine as well, your reaction is anything but open to their perspective.
Why is it that when an important person in our life (i.e. spouse) shares something and we disagree, it’s more likely to turn into World War 3 than a honest discussion? Perhaps this is due to some belief that marriage is two people becoming one symbiotic entity. The Bible even alludes to this point…“and the two shall become one.”
While this belief is true, the lens to view marriage needs to be adjusted.
Marriage is a symbiosis. But this relationship is not intended to produce happiness. It’s the mechanism to produce better people.
Marriage is a people growing machine. That’s the way it’s designed. The two becoming one concept in the Bible is more about the sexual union and creation of a family than each spouse giving up their individual identity and only being a married couple.
In order to get the most out of marriage, it’s necessary to have the proper view of what’s going on. The natural conflict that occurs in marriage is part of the growing up process. It’s unrealistic to believe that you and your spouse are going to agree on everything. Finances, parenting, in-laws, the list goes on and on.
Often to avoid conflict in marriage it appears easier to accommodate your spouse or avoid the tense topics altogether. The problem this creates is over time with the inevitable relationship conflicts, there will be less areas for discussion. There’s the old saying about being able to point out the married couple eating dinner in the crowded restaurant: they’re the ones not talking to each other.
The couple isn’t talking because they’ve already said everything there is to say, it’s more likely they don’t want to hear what the other person is thinking.
Deep down married people are trapped in a conundrum. You want to know your spouse on a deeper level, to connect more and share more with them, but you open yourself up to not liking what they think or feel about something. To put it another way, you want a more expressive spouse, but want to control what they express.
In order to get closer to another person, you risk loosing yourself. Every person in marriage faces a continuum of separateness and togetherness. Me versus we. The desire to chart your own course in life and the desire to connect with another person.
The psychobabble term for this is differentiation. It’s the ability to handle these two ends of the continuum without going to either extreme. Now this doesn’t mean you are able to remain balanced in the middle, differentiation means you are able to get close to another person AND keep a clear sense of self.
Differentiation is a term coined by Murray Bowen, who believed there is a theoretical scale of human functioning from low to high. According to Bowen, there is no normal. He’s even quoted as saying “there’s a little schizophrenia in all of us.”
As we begin this series, it will help to define these levels as a framework.
Lower differentiated people-
- Unable to separate feeling from thinking
- Reactive – emotionally driven
- Stuck together with or cut off from family and/or significant others
- Conform (chameleon) or rebel (bully)
- Need to control functioning of Others
- Less flexible, less adaptable, more emotionally dependent
- Easily stressed into dysfunction, difficult to recover from dysfunction
- Inherit a high percentage of all human problems
- Life course determined by what feels right
Higher differentiated people-
- Able to access thinking in high anxiety
- Responsive – thoughtful consideration
- Connected with significant others while maintaining separate Self
- Self-defined, Self-validating
- Focused on control of Self functioning
- More flexible, more adaptable, more emotionally independent
- Cope better with life stresses, recover rapidly from stress induced dysfunction
- Remarkably free of human problems, lives are more orderly and successful
- Life course based on principled beliefs (Bowen, 1978)
Next, we’ll explore more in depth the emotional reactivity found in many important relationships.
Until then, where are you on the differentiation scale? Be honest. No rose colored glasses. And again, this is about you and your level, not your spouse.
If you wish to keep up with this series, be sure to subscribe. It’s FREE!
Corey is the editor of Simple Marriage as well as a licensed marriage & family therapist. While he has a Ph.D. in Family Therapy, he only occasionally likes to be called doctor. If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe so you don't miss any future posts.10 Responses to “Taking Your Shape: Me Versus We”
Comments
Read below or add a comment...
Trackbacks
-
[...] post at the Simple Marriage Project was another good one. I very much related to not wanting to [...]
-
[...] week we discussed differentiation levels in relationship. Since marriage is a people growing machine, your differentiation level will increase as you grow [...]
-
[...] parts one and two of the series if you missed [...]
-
[...] So what can you know, observe and predict will happen when you get serious about the Power of One – about responding to the challenges in your relationships as a clarion call to take your shape, take on yourself, and become the best you that you can be? [...]
Great way to sum up this important information.
Great post. Sounds like we’re going to really be doing a lot of reflecting on ourselves in your upcoming posts Corey. Thanks for this series that can grow us up even more.
Where am I with differentiation? Well, I’m not all duct taped but still sticky from pulling it off. I need to get the sticky off.
You are so right when you said we want to know what’s inside the hub but want to change what it is. I want that. I want the hub to open up more but it is usually very negative. Do you think people are really that negative inside or is it more of a defense mechanism? He wasn’t that way when we dated.
This really resonated with me. I think I am more on the Lower end. I had trouble finding a balance with marriage. A lot had to do with marrying at 18 and trying to grow up (and in the same direction) with someone. I always gave way too much of myself and did not learn how to take care of me. This left me insecure and resentful. Unfortunately, after 14 years of marriage and two kids, I could not do it any longer. Now, five years out of that relationship and 4 years into another, I am working at keeping that balance and we are trying to learn to communicate (and not just have confrontations). Thanks for this information. I plan to pass it along to my fiance.
Very good post. I’m in the middle, my parents are quite low differentation and growing up in that was somewhat difficult. But my DH is a wonderful man who is very patient and willing to learn, so we’ve both been figuring out this marriage thing (newlyweds, dated for almost 4 years before the wedding). One thing I love that you picked out was the purpose of marriage. We married because we believed that we’re better people because the other person is in our life. That does not necessarily mean that we’re always happy, it means a lot of communication, humility and apologies. But it’s completely worth every bit of hard work and bruised pride.
Corey,
This is really good stuff! Thank you!
I’ve learned a lot of this material from the school of hard knocks rather than a school of psychology. It’s good to see it from a new perspective. The concept of differentiation seems very similar to what we call “holding healthy boundaries.”
I am loving this blog more and more. This is a very interesting entry. Makes me feel somewhat ‘normal’ with what we all go through in our relationships. I just stumbled upon this last week and so far everything I read is so spot on. Thank you!!