Teaching Beginning Counselors How to Align Couples’ Relationships

Abstract

Couples’dilemmas revolve around vantage points in their relationships. Besides personal needs and wants, there are personally competing internally and externally defined forces that mire establishment of meaningful relationships. These competing forces are consequences of role-definition, and in the presumption of leadership (or the lack thereof) as expressed in a partner or both. Struggles for roles (or, to lead or not to) embody internal and external factors. Internal factors are derivations of personal life circumstances, events and conditions of a partner introduced or reenacted within the relationship. These factors are often aligned with a personal ideal to be realized in the other, or stem from a partner’s view of self in relation to the other. External factors include prioritization of needs and wants, expectations, roles, and perspectives of couples. Clinical observations of clients indicate that interaction effects of unresolved intrinsic and extrinsic concerns can lead to separation or divorce.

Moving Beyond the Blame Game: Toward a Discursive Approach to Negotiating Conflict Within Couple Relationships

“…This dislocation of individuals and their conflicts from the larger cultural context reflects the humanistic focus on intrapsychic processes occurring within people. From this liberal-humanist perspective, conflict in intimate relationships is most often conceptualized in essentialist terms, as arising from discrepancies in partner's biological needs or underlying interests (Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 2000;Keri, 2002;Winslade & Monk, 2000;Winslade, Monk, & Cotter, 1998). The term essentialism is embedded within liberal-humanist traditions that espouse preexisting realities, knowledges, and practices that invite fixed, innate, objective, and truth-based assessments of life (Burr, 1995).…”

“…In much of the psychological literature, there is the tendency to discuss conflict and ways to solve it in essentialist terms (Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 2000;Keri, 2002;Winslade & Monk, 2000;Winslade et al, 1998). In Tom and Joanna's case, many therapists might suggest that this conflict represents a human communication problem with the couple.…”