change processes

Emotional Intelligence, Self-Development, Therapy General, Uncategorized

Sometimes the shortest distance between two points is NOT a straight line but rather, the least intuitive option possible.

To whit: sous vide cold brew coffee. 

(There is a method to my mad metaphor, I promise; bear with me.)

Coffee is hot, and cold brew is, well, cold, right? 

If you’ve ever had cold brew, and certainly if you’ve ever made it, you know it’s made by steeping coffee in cold water over long periods of time (typically 12-24 hours).

What if I told you that you could get a superior cold brew in a fraction of the time by adding… Heat? Seems completely irrational, doesn’t it? If you want hot coffee, drink hot coffee. But hot coffee left to go cold only tastes gross, it certainly doesn’t get you to good cold brew. I, too, was sceptical when I stumbled upon this science experiment gone terribly right last year. But I cannot deny that the result is simply the smoothest, tastiest form of coffee with which I have ever serenaded and seduced my gullet. It shouldn’t work; it doesn’t make sense. And yet, the results are undeniable. 

Sometimes we have a tried and true process that we never think about improving; why would we? “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” right? And sometimes we’re legitimately stuck with a process that DOESN’T work for us, but we can’t see our way out of the stuckness. I find it’s harder to change something that IS working, especially replacing it with something that looks like a complete “OMGWHATAREYOUTHINKING” kind of thing, than it is to try something novel to unstick something that is frustratingly stuck. Failures might be the key to innovation more often than not, but unrelenting sameness often leads to stagnation.

In both cases, change often has to take the form of something unexpected. Sometimes novelty is exciting; sometimes it provokes deep suspicion. I initially scoffed at the notion of using a sous vide to make a cold beverage… But I owned a sous vide that was gathering dust, and I will never not have coffee beans in my house, so in the end, what was I afraid of? Science? Wasting a few easily-replaced beans? Creating a grotesque taste experience?

Obviously the stakes when experimenting with coffee are different from experimenting in relationship. There are whole other people involved who may think you are completely off your rocker when you suggest making cold brew the hot way, or who give you a hairy side-eye when you suggest trying something unique or outrageous in terms of relational tactics (my own partner is probably more open to me doing relational experiments than screwing around with his coffee, come to think of it). 

–There’s a reason why partners, frustrated with feeling stuck in any particular aspect of their relationship, might finally resort to trying something that seems counterintuitive to the standing “rules” of their relationships to gain traction for engagement, or momentum for change… or even just a new perspective on themselves or the people around them. Being vulnerable after years of believing we need to be locked up tight for safety; taking new directions in the bedroom; deploying card decks of conversational topics to (re)learn about partners or family who don’t normally talk much; implementing wildcard date night ideas–all of these are examples of making that 180 degree turn to try something that runs in the opposite direction from how things have been up to the point of change.

As with all change, especially ones that seem to point in directions that make no sense, it requires at least a willingness to experiment, an openness to the idea that “this might not work” (in the case of sous vide cold brew, “this might be the grossest thing I have ever put in my mouth”). It’s its own kind of bravery to go boldly where you might not have gone before, or, as we say in theatre, “the willing suspension of disbelief” that this might actually all work out for the best. At the very least, we will have learned something we did not know prior to making the counterintuitive leap.

I’m not saying sous vide cold brew is the shortest distance to good COFFEE, because coffee and cold brew, while related, are two different things. But it is the shortest distance (that I’ve found yet) to delicious COLD BREW. It’s all about the intention you have for the counterintuitive leap. One of my clients recently discovered that finally taking the leap of spending LESS time with her partner made her appreciate the time spent WITH them even more, after years of presuming (to the discomfort of the partner and the overall detriment of their relationship) that smothering togetherness was the hallmark of committed love and partnership. The intention behind the leap was to restore appreciation, and in doing so, make space for intimacy to occur naturally rather than choking it under legacy beliefs and assumptions. If we had intended our work to be “increasing intimacy,” we might have inadvertently played into MORE smothering, not less. This client was open to the idea of trying something wildly different, since “nothing else has worked up to this point”. Not every client will be willing to step so far outside their own comfort zone; experiments for science (or art, or therapy) don’t always return guaranteed results and not everyone is willing to pay a therapist’s hourly rate for something that might not work when all is said and done. That’s okay, too. The leap is just one tool we can bring to the table when we’re working with stuckness.

It just happens to be one that occasionally returns some wildly, even deliciously, unexpected results when we try it.

(Today’s rare posting owes thanks to friend and colleague Wendy Kenrick, for luring me out on a workdate with the promise of excellent company and decent cold brew, both of which have been amply delivered.)

Emotional Intelligence, Self-Development

(The problem with not blogging regularly anymore is that I will get several ideas for topics a month and forget to write them down; when I finally DO sit down at the keyboard to write, can I remember any of them?? Nary a one. But the Universe sent me a sign last week in the form of some delightful, unexpected fan mail for the blog [waves to Leo!] so I am going to see how I feel about getting back into Tuesday writings. From home for now, given that I haven’t haunted coffee shops since The Before Times and I’m not entirely sure where my regular go-to even IS these days. Also, at home I can write with no pants on. Try THAT at your local coffee shop and see how that goes, I dare you.)

Longtime followers of this blog, and certainly a large number of my client base, will be familiar with my entrenched belief that psychotherapy and software development (specifically, Agile methodologies) have an awful lot in common. A big part of any change process, be it a functional change to a piece of software, or some aspect of individual or relational human behaviour involves looking at two distinct vantage points of the project: where are we starting from, and where are we trying to get to? The way I frame these to my clients: what are the challenges that are bringing you into therapy, and What Does “Better” Look Like. Once the client articulates the gist of the struggles they’re facing and gives some idea of what they want their life to look like under better or ideal outcomes, we look at the part in between those two vantage points, the gap between Here and There.

This is the Gap Analysis.

The Gap Analysis is primarily a way of assessing the resources one has available, and the resources one likely needs to achieve the desired outcome. As part of the analysis, the stakeholders in the process (in this case, the client[s] and their therapist):

  • look at the factors contributing to the gap and any implications or dependencies we might see around changing them
  • assess the effort and risk of making changes to shrink or close the gap
  • identify both the strengths and resources currently available to the client, and where possible, those resources the client will need to acquire or develop along the change path
  • create a roadmap for the changes, applying SMART factors to both the larger and interim goals in progress
  • start making the changes, with a lot of self-monitoring and tweaking the process as necessary; in Agile methodologies, this is a “constant iteration” process that promotes a LOT of flexibility in the implementation phase, because we all know Shit (just) Happens and sometimes we have to adjust expectations and plans on the fly.

I like to use this terminology because it starts with an examination of the client’s available strengths and resources, something they may have forgotten or come adrift from in the process of moving into their current stress or chaos. I don’t practice a lot of pure Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (for reasons I’ve probably documented elsewhere in my disorganized archives), but there are some good tools buried in the approach, including the strengths review. This gets the client started from a hopeful base, rooted in reminders of their empowerment.

From there we analyze what’s in the gap. From the client’s perspective, this is usually an assessment of obstacles: resources that are lacking or outright missing, fears or anxieties that obscure the goals, internal or external narratives that undermine them. Like good Project Managers we list out all the perceived obstacles; this may be a part of the process that overwhelms the client, so as a collaborative support, the therapist’s job is to steer the work towards identifying what needs to happen to manage or remove as many of those obstacles as possible, as part of the roadmap. We are the persistent reminders of the client’s strengths and resources through this part of the change process.

Encountering and dealing with those obstacles is the change process. The end result, according to the client’s original goal definition, is intended to be an improvement in some aspect of their life. Often along the roadmap, what clients learn about themselves and their skillsets enables them to deliberately push out the goalposts, and keep redefining “Better” as a constant improvement process over a lifespan. Sometimes, they reach the previously-defined goals but DON’T feel better; many a Project Manager knows the feeling of presenting a finished piece of software, only to have the client or some other stakeholder say, “We’ve changed our mind, that’s not what we wanted after all,” or, “That doesn’t look/work at all like we thought it would.” And then everyone has to go back to the drawing board, frustrated and disheartened, sometimes hurt and angry. This, too, is part of the iterative change process; just like evolution itself sometimes has to take a side-step or sometimes hits dead ends, so does a behavioural change process.

Doing a Gap Analysis and planning for the risks and pitfalls (including deliberately asking the question up front, “What happens if we get to the end of this particular process and it doesn’t do what I thought it would?”) helps ease those risks by planning for them, but as noted above, sometimes Shit (still) Happens. Gap Analysis puts as much information up front in the decision processes as we can muster, and actually allows for more fluid pivoting on those decisions when things don’t go as planned, or when new, maybe even better options present themselves.

Change is hard, but we can make it a little easier on ourselves if we take a hint from Londoners:

(I swear, I did NOT write this entire post just to be a setup for that pun. Honest! Mostly…)

Emotional Intelligence, Life Transitions, Relationships, Self-Development

“I Ate’nt Dead” – Granny Weatherwax (Terry Pratchett)

Hello! Not dead, not retired, and still generally not finding enough time in the week to write blog posts, though it’s not for lack of ideas and themes crossing my plate and prodding thoughts of, “Oooo, I should write up something about that!” (I should write about the rising tide of transphobia, homophobia, and hate in general but that’s too vast and raw a topic to corral into 1500 words or less while also not working myself into a fit of rage at the state of the world these days, so…)

It’s a typical part of my process that blog motivation arises from seeing a particular theme appearing repeatedly in a relatively short period of time in conversations with clients and others. Unsurprisingly, people are constantly changing, and people who engage in change as active, conscious, deliberate choice often follow similar processes–and make similar mistakes. Some conversations therefore come up time and time again, and it’s not that blogging will make them come up any less often, but maybe the ideas and discussions can reach a few extra people before they need a therapist, or at least give them some plausibly-useful structure to apply TO their therapy.

One of the many valuable tools I brought out of years of working in corporate IT that has a crucial place in my therapeutic Change Management Toolbox is the concept of SMART Goals. A very long time ago, I wrote about creating roadmaps to move towards getting your needs met, and I have written about identifying when a plan is or is not a Plan; the missing piece of the puzzle when putting roadmaps into Plans for Change, however, is identifying the success criteria or metrics that define the actual goals for change.

This is a variation on a recurring conversation I have with a lot of clients:

Client: “I want to make this change!”
Therapist: “Wonderful! What is the goal you’re trying to reach?”
Client: “Making this change!”
Therapist: “OK, great! How will you know when you succeed?”
Client: “I… uh, will have made this change!”
(see also: Client: “I’ll know it when I feel better!”
Therapist: But won’t you also feel better if this storm just passes you by like it always does, and things go back to normal like they always do?”
Client: “I… guess?”
Therapist: “Even though nothing will have actually changed…?”
Client: “…”
Therapist: “So ‘feeling better’ is, at least by itself, maybe not a solid metric for success?”
Client: “Damn.”)

Change happens in a lot of different ways and for a lot of different reasons. Most of the time it happens because something isn’t working, and the resulting situation is anywhere from frustrating to painful to dangerous. All organic lifeforms constantly move towards getting their needs met, be it light, air, water, food, or comfort; we just don’t always know when things are changing until we’ve gotten far enough along to notice things are different. At that point we might find ourselves suddenly in a better place–and just as suddenly, we might find ourselves in a worse place.

Managing change effectively, from a project management perspective, requires knowing several things in advance:
A. What do we have to work with (resourcing)?
B. What are we trying to get to (outcomes)?
C. What do we lack/need to move us from A to B (gap analysis)?
(Some Project Managers will add a separate D here: What’s it going to cost? I generally factor cost into the resourcing details as part of establishing a baseline process.)

Once we have answers to these questions, we can generally start assembling the roadmap, and along the way, we want to look at both major goals (endpoints) and minor goals (milestones) that we set for ourselves to help see where we’re making progress and where we’re struggling or need some extra help. Both major and minor goals need to be clearly defined, however, and this is where Change Management as a personal or relational development process often falls apart for people because this kind of goal setting outside a corporate structure seems pretty alien in the hand-wavy, airy-flairy feelies of our relationships. But if we don’t have clearly defined goals and explicit metrics for success, how will we know when we’ve achieved them? How will we even measure progress towards them? How will we communicate them to others around us we may need to be involved in the change process? How will we hold ourselves (or those others who consent to participate) accountable?

We set SMART Goals.

SMART stands for:
Specific: has a clear target in a precise area for improvement (also sometimes Sustainable: a pervasive improvement)
Measurable: has clear indicators (metrics) for improvement
Assignable: has a clear owner consenting to take responsibility for the goal (also sometimes Achievable, but I find that gets covered by the next letter)
Realistic: improvement target that can be reached with the current resources or with resources discovered via the gap analysis
Time-boxed: has a specific timeframe for achieving the milestone or end goal

Admittedly, none of this is likely to spark the sense of feel-good flexibility of some primo handwavy, airy promises for change that lack concrete details. We all love the romanticism of open-ended promises that will magically be fulfilled exactly to our unspoken expectations, don’t we? Isn’t that the entire myth of how “Love Conquers All” in a nutshell??

It aten’t romantic, but I can guarantee it IS effective. The term was apparently first published in 1981, meaning it was in use in some circles well before being codified for public consumption, and it has been a standard approach of project management for more than four decades for many reasons:

  • It’s much easier to communicate expectations
  • Everyone tends to feel much more comfortable when they know not just WHAT to expect, but WHEN
  • It’s much easier to invite participation where we need it (and to communicate expectations explicitly for other participants to provide informed buy-in or consent)
  • It’s much easier to hold ourselves and other consenting participants accountable
  • It’s much easier to measure progress toward SMART goals and milestones, which also means…
  • It’s much easier to adjust course* when we stray from the roadmap and stop meeting milestones and end goals

Change isn’t always easy, but we also don’t need to make it any harder than it has to be. How we set specific goals that are SMART takes some clear idea of what we’re trying to change or move towards and why, as well as some understanding of what we already have as resources and support for those changes, and what we’re going to need to get there from here. That’s the part where some external perspective and wisdom–an experienced friend or family member, a mentor, a therapist–comes in handy, especially when it comes to keeping goals and milestones realistic, and helping with navigating the expectation-setting communications around them.

(*–Someday I swear I need to write something about adapting Agile methodologies to psychotherapy, but that day is definitely NOT TODAY SATAN.)

Life Transitions, Relationships, Uncategorized

A liminal space is the time between the ?what was? and the ?next.? It is a place of transition, waiting, and not knowing.

Over the summer, I’ve begun to develop a working relationship with Colette Fortin of Fairway Divorce Solutions, wanting to better educate myself in alternatives to traditional separation and divorce litigation for couples ending their legal or common-law marriages. Her team provides mediation services as an alternative to both traditional litigation, and collaborative divorce services. Given that, before talking with her, I hadn’t realized there was a difference between little what I knew about the collaborative approach and mediation, I’m glad we’ve opened this educational channel. I feel a lot better having a clue, now, when I talk with clients in dissolving relationships about what their options look like, and depending on HOW the dissolution is occurring, being able to aim them at a process that seems a more tailored fit for their particular situations.

This post isn’t about Colette (but do check out the Fairway Mediation blog; it is a TREASURE TROVE of information about mediated separation and divorce), and it’s not even about divorce. It’s about the scenario of separations, even “relationship breaks”, in which intimate partners suddenly find themselves in a weirdly-disconnected limbo state, a liminal space between the relationship that WAS, and the uncertainty of what’s to come.

The end of a marriage is a difficult time, even under amiable circumstances; nebulous “breaks” from a relationship aren’t much better. Expectations and rules of engagement change, often dramatically and with little warning. Outcomes are uncertain, and often we don’t even have a shared understanding of the respective desired outcomes for each partner. Is this an ending? Is this a slow exit in lieu of a fast, clean break? What are we supposed to be doing within the parameters of this break? If I wasn’t the one who initiated it, why should I be doing anything in the first place??

When these breaks and separations happen, they raise a LOT of questions for the person receiving the news (we assume the person initiating the break has already been thinking about this change for a while). First question is, naturally, “WHY??” Then typically come a lot of panicked inquiries about who-did-what-wrong-and-how-can-we-fix-this. Once the dust settles, however, we get to the meat of the matter:

1. What is this break or separation FOR?
2. Is it permanent, or is reconciliation on the table?
3. What will each of us be doing during this break (or separation if reconciliation is in any way an option)?

That third question is, I find, the most problematic for relationships on hiatus. Unsurprisingly, relationship that are failing in any part because of poor communications anywhere in the system, will also fail at communicating intentions around these kinds of disengagements. What is the intention for this break? Are you:

  • just needing time out of the stress arena to relax and decompress?
  • planning to spend the time working on your own personal issues in order to work towards a specific goal of reconciliation or exit?
  • planning to take a step back until someone ELSE (namely, your partner) does something specific to fix something in themselves that is obstructing healthy relational engagement? And if so, have you communicated the expected for of work or expected outcome of that work, required for you to step back IN at some point? Have you clarified the expected window for this work, or is this ambiguous and indefinite?

It’s far less common that I get a consistent-to-all-parties answer when I pose the question, “What’s the purpose of this break?” Even in the case of separation, if one partner is keen on reconciliation and the other is keen on exit, we’re not generally going to be on the same page. Partners are disconnected about the essential whys, about the intent, about responsibility for either the problems or the (potential) solutions, and about the purpose of the disengagement.

So, how best to navigate this liminal space? Especially if doing so under the duress of having this sprung on you by your partner?

Step one: Breathe.
Seriously, take a breath. Heck, take several. The emotional chaos is going to be big enough and upsetting enough without trying to at least mitigate the instantaneous and default patterns of reactivity. Take a beat, then think about what can or needs to happen next. (Go have a cry if you need to.)

Step two: Seek clarity.
You may not be able to effectively address the “Why??” or “What went wrong?” questions at this stage of the game, tensions and fears will be running too high for reflection to be immediately to hand as tools. If you CAN get there, great; just don’t be surprised if the tide needs to recede a fair bit past the damage-control points before those conversations can even happen, let alone make sense. Instead, focus on determining what needs to happen next. Is this a permanent break, or a temporary one? What are the ground rules and expectations in either case? Contact, no contact, limited (in which case, what are the boundaries defining those limits)? If there are kids in the picture, what will you tell them, and when, and together or separately? If this is temporary, what is the intent or expectation each of you has for the separation period? What has to occur before reconnection or reconciliation topics are allowed on the table?

Step three: See step one.
No, really. Keep breathing. This probably came as a hell of a shock.

Step four: Figure out your own next steps.
You have a few options here. One is to wait passively for your partner to figure everything out so that you can react to it, rather than organize your own response to the situation (this is that pesky internal versus external locus of control issue again). Another is to shake of the fear paralysis, leverage your resources, and figure out what your options look like, both in terms of legally preparing for a lengthy separation or potential divorce, or financial preparation if someone has to move to different living arrangements and thus shared financial responsibilities must be divided. You can put your own needs and wants into the equation, and gauge whether or not you believe the partner is willing to work with you or not, whatever plan you both choose, by how they respond to those needs and wants. You could hound the partner for the answers to the questions that will be themselves chasing you all over the place, though the odds of that working you both towards closeness and intimacy if one of you is trying desperately to get away, seem pretty low.

Step five: Hold your partner accountable. Hold YOURSELF accountable.
If you make any kind of agreement about what is expected to happen in this liminal space, be it discussing a separation agreement for real, or working on changing personal understandings and behaviours through therapy or medication or something else, the DO THE WORK. If a partner says they will undertake something specific within the context if this break, HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE (clarity in understanding what that undertaking will look like, comes in very handy with this part.) If you need to change the agreements because you cannot in good faith deliver as stated, then SAY SO. Renegotiate if necessary, even if it is hard (pro tip: it will be).

Step six: Recognize that, in most cases, passively waiting for someone else to solve all the problems will only make you bitter.
You may not have initiated or desired the break, but here we are. Abjuring responsibility for looking after yourself and your own future, even when it becomes a different future than you had envisioned up until the moment of the break, isn’t going to solve the problems either. It’s typically only going to disempower you and feel like you’ve lost all your agency, and that way leads to resentment, despair, and bitterness aimed at your partner… and probably no little bit at yourself. At the very least, figure out your short-term survival needs while the chaos is raging. Give yourself enough time for the shock to settle, then work out a longer-term plan for yourself. Have options that include the partner should they return, but make sure you have something to fall back on, planwise, if they do not.

Step seven: REMEMBER TO BREATHE.
Seriously. Because you will likely have forgotten by now.

The liminal spaces are hardest simply because they are the worst of the unknown, that are-we-or-aren’t-we kind of uncertainty that is so upsetting to many of us. Fear, uncertainty, doubt–about ourselves, our partners, the relationship overall, our future as we thought we’d planned it–can rob us of our focus and direction like few other things can. They steal our agency and leave us feeling like we’re at the mercy of someone else’s choices and actions; to some extent, we are. But we don’t have to stay that way. We may not be able to affect the outcome of a separation or break if our partners are set on getting out when we don’t want that choice of ending, but we can choose how to face these uncertain times, and how to hold ourselves open to multiple options, with at least some degree of plan we can enact in the appropriate direct when we choose to execute said plan. Sometimes, Life is what happens to us when we least expect it. We can let it steamroll us, or we can learn how to roll as best we can with it, fears notwithstanding. We choose how to face what’s happening to us, even when we can’t CHANGE what’s happening to us.

And seriously: remember to breathe.

Relationships, Uncategorized

Once again, a common theme is arising from conversations I’ve had several times with clients in recent weeks, in the vein of, “My partner is finally giving me everything I’ve been asking for, so why am I still not happy?”

Well, as it happens, I have a theory about that.

Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness is a great book that presents in very accessible language a significant body of research into the experience of happiness (Knopf 2009). Read in conjunction with Martin Seligman’s work on Authentic Happiness and flourishing, theswe resources chart (among other things) the idea of how we as both individuals and broader societies establish the expectation of a “baseline” happiness against which we measure our subjective experiences.

Gilbert’s stance is rooted in the idea that each of us has a unique baseline of happiness that is reasonably fixed; this explains why some people just seem perpetually joyous, and others seem fixedly dour.

“One of the most striking findings from the booming new field of happiness research has been that people have fairly sticky baselines. With only a few exceptions, people tend to return to the same level of happiness over time, regardless of what happens to them ? even extremely good events like winning the lottery, or extremely bad events like becoming a paraplegic, only seem to bump people?s reported happiness up or down for a limited time, before they start to drift back to their baseline.”– Julia Galef, April 15 2011

In relational therapy I run with the idea of baseline, not so much as rigidly fixed points but as (in gaming lingo) a restore point to which we will naturally settle or return to after upheavals. Our baseline happiness in relationship will therefore be as much a product of our natural individual happiness baseline, as it is the general management of the overarching health and effective connectedness of the relationship. John Gottman refers to the “love bank”, Gary (Love Languages) Chapman refers to the “love tank”; both of these terms refer to what I think of as a healthy metric for “status quo” in intimate relationships.

Generally speaking, the give and take process of intimacy should keep all partners’ banks reasonably full most of the time. Being humans in sometimes surprising or unexpected situations will strain and drain those reservoirs on occasion; it just happens. Healthy relationships have established patterns for restoring and sustaining us while those tanks refill. Sometimes, however, relational DYSfunction will add to the ongoing erosion of the tanks and overall lowering of the baseline.

For example, we’ve previously explored the slow erosion of intimacy from other angles, and how we inadvertently create a slow continental drift apart from partners as we get busy and forget to practice vulnerability, or as a low-grade, persistent frustration or disappointment becomes an intractable fixture in our relational landscape. Over time, these just-below-the-point-of-confrontation issues will, in fact, decrease our overall happiness levels and relational contentment.

If the partners then one day come to realize, “We need to work on our relationship!”, they show up in the therapist’s office, hopefully willing to make some changes and do some work to get themselves back into fighting trim.

The problem I have been observing time and time again over the years, however, is this:

  • Partners engage in the change process.
  • One partner in particular may be making more effort than the other, doing everything that is asked of them, possibly trying to ear a way out of the doghouse and back into good graces after a bigger relationship issue
  • The other partner, being handed everything they say they want or have asked for continues to experience dissatisfaction or reluctance in the engagement, and eventually comes to wonder, “If I’m getting everything I want, WHY AM I NOT HAPPY???”

Part of the issue is the cagey wariness of mistrusting change efforts, but I also theorize that the baseline happiness for each relational partner is now established at VERY different levels.

In the New Relationship Energy state when everything is glowing and golden and delightful in the nascent relationship, we establish a fairly high baseline of happiness for both partners. On an completely-arbitrary happiness scale of 0 (I hate you, you asshole, and I want you to die) to 10 (I love you, you are my golden god/dess, and I never want these halcyon days to ever end), NRE baselines can often be 8 or 9, spiking to 10 or sometimes off the charts. As the relationship develops some structure and routine over time, that baseline will generally settle to something more like a steady 7, maybe a 6. Distractions like work or kids can drop the baseline to more like a 5–neither golden glory but not deepest hell, but level with the usual kinds of things pulling us up or down.

As those distractions become festering hurts or challenges or repeating disconnection and disengagement, however, one partner’s baseline may continue to erode, even while the other partner may remain blissfully unaware there’s even a problem. Ergo, by the time the partners make it to my office, they may both agree they need and want to work on the relationship, and they may both come in with equal willingness to embrace a change process… BUT THEY MAY EACH BE STARTING FROM VERY DIFFERENT BASELINES.

In these cases, the one partner who is “doing everything you asked of me” is just as baffled as the partner making the requests, as to why it feels like nothing has improved. The partner with the lower baseline may, in fact, have increased their general level of engagement and contentment in the relationship, but it does’t in any way guarantee that they have returned to previous “normal” baselines, never mind the glory days of the NRE baselines. The partner with the higher level may have likewise increased their overall baseline happiness in the relationship, and be wondering why they seem to be alone on that plateau: it’s because they are.

If Partner A is starting from a baseline of 5 and increases their relational happiness to a 7, that’s great. Partner B may also manage a 2-point increase, but if their starting baseline was a 2 or a 3, then they are barely even getting to where Partner A *started*, never mind to where Partner A has moved up.

It can become very apparent very quickly if there are discrepancies in these baseline states. “Letting a partner out of the doghouse” is a big red flag that someone may be *unwilling* to shift their baseline, or there may be complicating issues like anxiety or depression, or historic attachment injuries, to take into account. Sometimes one partner has a greater leap of faith to make that “this time something will be different.” Regardless of the confounding variables in the room, it behooves us as the therapists in the process to draw some attention to these imbalanced starting points. Couples often make the mistake of assuming that being in agreement on the need to make changes, and equally committed to doing whatever work they identify as necessary, must ALSO mean that (a) their individual ability *to change* is equal, and that (b) they begin from the same place in the happiness scale.

One of my takeaways from coming to this realization is the need I have for a single, simple assessment tool for establishing a relative (and highly subjective, since it’s self-reporting) individual baseline relationship contentment and satisfaction. There probably is such a thing either in Gottman’s or Seligman’s toolkit (or even Chapman’s), I just haven’t had time to wade into the research material to look for it yet. But having such a thing to SHOW clients some kind of simple representation of their unequal starting points seems like it would be a very good thing. I did liken it recently to the differences in starting pole or grid positions in auto racing. It’s one thing to start out in the pole position, entirely another to be starting from the back of the pack; the latter has to work considerably harder to catch up to where the former starts.

Being able to illustrate that difference is key to setting realistic expectations, and for discussing milestones and goals within the change process that are perhaps defined individually, rather than embedded in the “WE”-ness of coupledom. But it’s also going to be a piece of critical understanding ABOUT each other, something needful for developing compassion about the unique experience we each have of the other. One partner may want to keep forging ahead with changes while the other feels like the are struggling to catch up, and that can continue to build on existing frustrations and disappointments, rather than supporting the changes they came to therapy to make. Stay conscious of the differences, apply the brakes or gentle encouragements as needed, and check baselines on the INDIVIDUAL level, not the RELATIONAL level.