Teleclass Transcript Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha
07/14/10
MP: All right. Welcome to the Teleclass. Cloe, can you hear me?
CM: Hi, everybody. Yes.
MP: Great. Everyone’s muted already. So, let’s get started. Today, we are going to be talking about one of our favorite interventions which is the Paul and Jen intervention. And also we will be going over the life stages concept which is a very important part of strategic intervention. The different points of life that you go on, basically, we are always growing, we are always moving forward and there are transition points and so these are what we call the life stages. For instance, one of the transition points is of being a child, of being a teenager and then being an adolescent and then being a young adult where you leave home and that’s a very dramatic life stage. And when you switch life stage you often have to scrap everything that you’ve been doing in terms of being dependent on people or living in a family and then you move on to a completely different situation so you know the transition from being a teenager at home to then living on your own is pretty huge.
And in the last module, the Tahnee’s case, the direction she needed to take was in the next stage which was to have a committed partner and committing to a mode of life in which she is fully moving forward and putting all of her energy into what she really wanted out of life and she had trouble with that. She was at that point where it was time to leap to next stage of life and she had a crisis of confidence or you know where maybe it was an internal conflict that prevented her from having the faith and the clarity and the momentum that she needed. So when you get stuck jumping to the next life stage, people tend to regress and develop a safe problem that takes up more of their energy and attention and it tends to take up other people’s attention as well. And so many people’s biggest problems from which people unfortunately in our culture tend to just medicate or get divorce or do something that kind of takes more track, many of these problems are actually just a crisis of jumping to the next life stage but as strategic interventionists, we know that you can clarify three or four big priorities for that life stage for anyone. And those three of four big things that will take growth and effort but if you accomplish them, if the person you are working would accomplish them they are going to be succeeding. So, this week we’d like to talk about the life stage of being a young couple with children and so this is a very unique time of life. Many people feel more love during this time of life than in any other and obviously because having children is completely amazing. It’s also incredibly challenging, and it’s a vulnerable time in the life a couple because in order to keep this being alive and healthy 24/7, they have to reorganize everything in the relationship.
CM: Yes. And this is a crucial stage in family development because now we know research shows that the birth of the first child and how it affects the marriage, how the couple manages to get along after the birth of the first child is the best predictor of divorce later on. That is when the young couple does not adjust well to the birth of their first child. Then there is a great chance that ultimately some years later, divorce will happen. And by not adjusting well, I’m talking about beginning to develop resentments of each other. Go ahead, Mark. You were saying something.
MP: Yeah. It’s an amazing time of life and it’s an important stage of life to tackle and so what we’ll be doing today is talk about four of the main priorities, the kind of the four things that if a young couple can accomplish these four things and accomplish 80 percent of that job in that life stage and they will be able to – they will be clear and free to move on to the next life stage. This also pertains to the Paul and Jen film. And then later in this Teleclass we’ll give you some basic templates on some steps for working with a couple to overcome their problems. And then we’d love to open up for some live question and answers. So, Cloe, shall we dive into these four priorities?
CM: Go ahead. Yes. Yes, please.
MP: Okay.
CM: So all right. So the first priority that a couple has – you know when a couple has children, basically life changes overnight. It starts when the pregnancy is announced and there is a biological stage of going through pregnancy and physiological and psychological stages, and then the baby comes and it’s a whole another ball game that you know the leisurely life of when you’re basically setting your own schedule, that gets reversed and suddenly you have two people who are sharing the 24/7, 24 hours a day responsibility of making sure the baby is safe.
So, this can create stress for both members of the couple and so one of the first priorities for this life stage is for the couple to learn how to work together as a team. So, out of the four mega-priorities, this is one of them. It’s very important that when a couple is sharing this duty that they think of themselves seriously like a team, literally like an athletic team where you are coordinating together the best you can.
Here are some basic ground rules for this teamwork: One is that, if your team mate drops the ball, pick it up and help them out. So, if you have a couple and the husband screws up and then the baby is crying, the wife needs to be able to say, “Hey, you know what, I’ll take this up and I’ll help you out.” This is not the time to blame or finding bad intentions with each other, or criticize each other. Just like if you were in a sports team and you’re playing a game and your team mate misses a ball, you don’t stop the game and start yelling at each other. It’s important that the couple fire up their team spirit and that they coordinate with each and build higher levels of trust with each other because trust is essential to team work.
CM: Yes and what is essential there also is to attribute good intentions.
MP: Yes. Absolutely.
CM: You know there is a tendency as a couple becomes a triad, which is a crucial change in the relationship. They are no longer two. Now, they are three. They are a triad which can become a triangle. There is a tendency of course for the mother to feel that the father doesn’t quite understand. He’s not caring enough or he’s too clumsy. And she knows best and probably, she does know best and there is a tendency for the father to feel jealous either because the baby connects to the mother better or because the mother now has shifted her attention away from her husband and towards her number one priority at this point, which is the baby, so there is a lot of conflicting emotions to overcome at this point.
MP: Absolutely. And so there is a major shift in the dynamic between the couple and you know now that they are trading off on a kind of never-ending responsibilities so whereas before there was this free time that even well at work, the guy can do his thing, the lady can do her thing and they come together in the evening and there isn’t any conflict about it, about the time that’s been spent away. But now unless you have child care, every bit of free time that is enjoyed by one partner is actually being covered by the other partner. And so this changes the way the couple handles and negotiates the time. It is more like a sport or someone has the ball at any given time and so it is crucial that the couple really invest in each other and their relationship and they make sure that the essential bond that is going to, it is the bond between them that is going to raise the child. It is not one of the two individuals and it’s important for both couples, both members of the couple to overcome any feeling that they are trying to compete with the other member for the couple you know or they are trying to say you know, “I’m the one who really knows how to take care of this child or I’m the one who is really connected to this child.” It’s the couple, the partnership, the team that needs to do that.
CM: Yes, let me add something here.
MP: Sure.
CM: As a general rule, it’s better if the man gives in to the woman’s superior knowledge of this stage because the woman has a biological connection to the baby that the man doesn’t have and because of this biological connection, the emotions can be so intense for the woman that they can override everything else. So there are situations where it’s wrong to want to be equal. It’s better for the woman to take the leadership and for the man to just follow her leadership instead of trying to compete with her which unfortunately is what happens with so many couples.
MP: Yeah. So, basically, our take is out there, you know it is healthy to have a division of labor and really speak of it in management terms is a good idea at this point, so often the woman will want to be the primary care giver for the child and it’s important that the man does not get in the way of that and compete and in fact, he thinks about how to support her in this. And the reason is that the woman has given birth, the woman has gone through pregnancy, she has also the biological signals, she is having many more biological transformations to accommodate the child and it’s important to respect that. So basically, you avoid any escalation or competition and you think it is the union or the partnership that’s going to. It’s not a one person kind of presiding over or competing with the other.
So the second major priority for this life stage is to keep that flame of romance and passion going. Basically what this means is, you know before the baby is born and before pregnancy, the couple often – their romantic life, their sex life, their emotional life is focused on the relationship. And as soon as the baby is born because there are so many shifts, very often the baby becomes a source and becomes the kind of meaning for everything – ‘the reason we’re doing all these.’ This is quite wonderful because the child is an amazing magnet for love and caring and you have adults rising to the occasion sometimes for the first time of really taking responsibility for another human being. So that’s an important part of the family, it is also important that the members don’t make it all – don’t make all of their love all of the time about the baby only. So just because the child is brand new and completely vulnerable and needy doesn’t mean that you can shut off your partner who also is vulnerable and also has needs. So you know some couples are kind of strapped down to say, “Okay, now, it’s all about the baby and I’m just going to commit.” And of course, it is reinforced by biology so it is something that you need to be conscious of. Obviously, you are going to be busier than before so it is easier to run out of energy before you are able to meet your partner’s needs during the day.
So it’s essential to create rituals for meeting each others’ needs and understand each other’s six human needs so that you can hit the bull’s eye with your partner more often because you’ve got less leisure time to figure things out. You need to be more targeted about what really meets your partner’s needs. So, you know if you know that your wife loves you to make her a cup of tea every morning, first thing every morning, just pay attention to that. That’s an important ritual. Those are rituals where you can understand how to meet your partner’s needs and let them know that you understand their needs and their needs are precious. You should take good care of them. Does that make sense?
CM: Yeah.
MP: Great.
CM: Absolutely. So, let me add a concept here and this is a very classic idea in family work that a family is composed of subsystems. So in a family, there’s the nuclear family itself, let’s say parents and children but within this nuclear family, there has to be subsystems. There should be a boundary around the couple. When one has little children, it’s very important to protect the relationship between the parents, so the parents have something of which the children are not a part. It’s a remarkable how in our child-centered culture how many families there are where the parents never go out together on a date without the children, where the children are part of every single activity of the parents, where they don’t even have a lock to the bedroom door.
So, it’s very important to establish early on in the family life that there is a relationship between the parents of which the children are not a part of. Similarly, there should be a relationship among the children, between the children that the parents are not a part of. So the parents don’t need to constantly monitor their relationship between siblings and you need to let them build their own relationship the same thing with grandparents and other relatives. Every generation constitutes a subsystem in the family and should have a boundary around it that protects it to a certain extent from intrusions from other generations. So it’s very important for the children to see this boundary to understand that there is a relationship between the parents that cannot go through them. You want to add something to that Mark?
MP: Yeah, that’s a good point. And so I guess my question is, I think that each of these four priorities that we’re talking about if you’re talking to a couple and they are having marital problems and you realize that they don’t spend any time doing nice thing for themselves or by themselves. As a coach, you can help them increase their time for themselves as a couple and that might involve helping them organize so that they have child care one night a week or two nights a week or bring the grandmother or a family member and to watch the children, or set up rituals while the children are in school and are being taken care of in another way so that the couple can see each other. It’s important to help them organize so that they have some time to keep up their individual relationship with each other.
CM: Let me interject a couple of things here that are interesting. I was watching television the other night and apparently there is a study about parents who love their children but hate parenting. And the study shows that because the parents really love the children but hate the work of being a parent, they are taking care of the children although they are driving around and all that stuff. How it is so very dangerous for the marriage the possibilities of divorce increase and so on so the commentator on television was saying, “You know a baby sitter is much less expensive than a couple’s therapist. Get your baby sitter and get a life. Couple’s therapy is going to cost thousands and thousands. Okay and the other thing I wanted to comment is that rituals are very important for a couple and the rituals can be very simple and can take up just a few seconds. The other day somebody was telling me about a couple that has a wonderful ritual. The husband and wife, no matter where they are at 9 pm at night, every single night, will kiss passionately for just a few a seconds, reconnect in that way and then go back to whatever they were doing. I think that’s a wonderful ritual.
MP: Yeah. That’s great. I mean the thing is with human needs and understanding needs is that it’s not really an effort thing. It’s not a time thing. When you really understand what your partner’s hot buttons are, I mean the positive hot buttons, then you know thirty seconds of doing the right thing is like worth doing three hours of the wrong things or it is much better, it’s important you know that part of the importance of understanding your partner, understanding the rules for meeting their needs and what they enjoy and how you can give them what they need and even just reminding them that you do understand them is incredibly valuable.
So the third priority for the stage of life is to manage your loyalties. So again, this is another part of the couple reinforcing themselves as a couple and if you are going to have a couple that’s been t...
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