The process of finding and making the best possible match is not an easy one. On the contrary, from an emotional perspective finding, making, maintaining, and enriching an intimate partnership is one of the most challenging tasks an adult faces. There must be an attraction or a "spark" for a true match to be made. When a couple comes for counseling, they come with the hope that their relationship can be renewed-that they can capture the heat and the emotion that they once had together. The Couple's Match Book: Lighting, Rekindling, or Extinguishing the Flame explores relationship theory and research. Including self-assessment activities to help determine what actions to take to improve relationships, this guild offers information that focuses on understanding and respecting personality differences, role perceptions, communication, and problem-solving. The balance of the book shares personal stories written by couples detailing their own experiences in an effort to help others in improving their intimate relationships. The Couple's Match Book: Lighting, Rekindling, or Extinguishing the Flame can be used as a supplemental text in marriage and family courses, as well as a primary resource in couples counseling and marriage and family therapy.

The Couple's Match Book

Lighting, Rekindling, or Extinguishing the FlameBy Daniel Eckstein

TRAFFORD PUBLISHING

Copyright © 2012 Daniel Eckstein, PhD
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4269-7198-3

Contents

Dedication..................................................................................vThanks......................................................................................viForeword—Jon Carlson, Pat Love........................................................viiTable of Contents...........................................................................ixPreface and Biography – Daniel Eckstein...............................................xvReflections on Writing "For Couples"........................................................557Closing Comments............................................................................562Biographies.................................................................................565

Chapter One

Relationship Theory and Research

Section 1:

The A's and H's of Healthy and Unhealthy Relationships: Four Activities for Relationship Renewal

Daniel Eckstein

Here are five activities couples can do with each other for the purpose of renewing their relationship. Consider the following analogy involving the letters A contrasted with the letter "H." Tony Reilley, a colleague consulting with the author, described the insights he gained from marital counseling through three significant marital partner relationships like this ...

He described his first two relationships as being the letter A. Consider the three lines comprising the letter—one straight line on the left, a leaning line on right connected at the top and lastly the cross bar between them. In his first marriage his wife leaned heavily against him. The connecting cross bar (their relationship) while strong, bore so much pressure, it eventually collapsed from the shear continuous stress on it. With this weight, the marriage didn't work out. In his second relationship, while he liked rescuing the wounded bird (his hurt partner), there was no possibility for long-term growth together.

Tony described his third relationship as being the letter H. This consists of two strong independent lines but the connecting cross bar line showed that their interdependence was not as strong. Thus, in their personal strength, there was less power between them due to more upright parallel lines.

Please note: All Activities are numbered sequentially throughout the book. and you can look on my website, www.leadershipbyencouragement.com for all of the activity templates.

Now reflect on this model both for current and past relationships.

The "H" metaphor can be restated to mean that each individual in a relationship leading to marriage is to be of equal strength as a foundation of this new family unit. Pillars will not support a building unless they are firmly anchored, placed in parallel positions, and bear equal weight.

The author uses the "Relationship as a Three-legged Sack Race" metaphor as another way of contrasting the following three different attachment styles. Burlap couples' sack race is used to illustrate the various ways of bonding with others attachment styles. "All four legs in the sack" is an example of enmeshment, no differentiation between the couple. "No legs in the sack" indicates disengagement, two or more individuals living parallel lives under the same roof. "One leg in the sack and one out" represents an interdependent relationship while simultaneously valuing and honoring each individual as just that.

The Healthy Couple: A Brief Sketch

Healthy individuals are usually attracted to other optimally functioning people in their interpersonal transactions. Using the concept of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, they are seeking to fulfill Being (B) needs, not Deficiency (D) needs for sharing and for enriching their lives in an intimate relationship. They are not clinging in a desperate way because they are empty nor do they fear they will be unable to survive alone. Rollo May richly contrasted the difference as being "I need you because I love you" with the idea "I love you because I need you."

Maslow depicts healthy individuals as being highly evolved and mature. A solid sense of personal identity provides the capacity for true intimacy. As fully integrated people they are much more likely to choose mates who also have a sure sense of their own being and boundaries. Such individuals have the desire and capacity for a reciprocal, constantly evolving, intimate relationship.

Maslow characterized the self-actualizing healthy person as courageous, spontaneous, innovative, integrated, self-accepting, and expressive. Such individuals frequently gravitate toward healthy partners. These become healthy couples who cope well with the usual transitions and reoccurring challenges in everyone's life.

The healthy couple appears to be a multidimensional, complex, non-summative unit. The ten dimensions the Timberlawn group concretely delineated are:

1. What is the systems orientation with respect to the external world? Healthy couples perceive themselves as a unit in which their relationship to each other is special and precious. Sometimes they choose to be together as a couple, at home or participating in work related social activities, enjoying each other's company.

2. What are the boundaries between individuals and between generations? Healthy couples are cognizant of and comfortable with their adult identities; they do not need their children to parent them nor to become symptomatic to bond together. If they have children, they can leave them free to participate in age-appropriate activities and non-family as well as family relationships. The same is true in relation to their own parents. They are respected and cared about but are not allowed to come between the couple and the commitment to privacy with each other.

3. Boundary issues also involve the recognition that individuals require privacy, and from such quiet inner alone time, couples can then chart new directions.

4. What kind of communication occurs? There are few double-bind communications between the healthy couple. Wishes and expectations are most often clearly conveyed. Each person's verbal and non-verbal message is concordant. The content or message and the intent or metamessage, consistent. Functioning couples creatively seek solutions and communicate in unique and varied ways. They use a broad repertoire of exchanges sent through olfactory, kinesthetic, visual, tactile, and auditory channels of communication. Each person remains an individual; therefore, (s)he does not want to look, act, or sound alike. Paradoxically, the healthy also often like to function in tandem as one unit.

5. What is the distribution of power; who assumes leadership and control? The relationship is likely to be equalitarian and mutually supportive. The parents are often quite equally matched and probably shift in terms of lead-taking on different issues in accordance with who feels most strongly about a given matter. When there are children, power and control are not abdicated to them. Conversation is liberally laced with "I" statements expressing personal ideas and feelings. Children of such a union sense the strong parental alliance and are rarely allowed to divide and conquer. Their core images do not become split into viewing one parent as good and one as bad. Each may assertively express his or her...