By Grace Chatting
When I engage in Relationship Coaching with couples, who are experiencing marital breakdown, or who are heading for divorce, the main focus of the coaching is on the future and how they wish the relationship to be, as opposed to delving too much into the history and placing blame and fault. The couple will usually have done plenty of that already, and there is no benefit in coming to pay me to listen to it all over again.
Nevertheless I need some idea of what their difficulties are, so during the initial assessment session, I invite them to tell me what it is that they want in the relationship. Then I observe how they speak about and to (sometimes at) each other. This lets me know “What” the issues are, and also “How” they go about addressing them. Often the “How” has become the biggest problem.
STOP Signs
In particular there are four fairly common but deadly patterns of communication which I look out for; these are called the STOP Signs, 
made known by Harry Benson.
S = Scoring points
T = Thinking the worst
O = Opting out
P = Putting down
Sally and Harry
I saw Sally and Harry recently. They have been married for seven years and have three young children, and both have full time jobs. They separated three months ago because they were each becoming increasingly unhappy and were unable to resolve their differences.
Scoring Points
As I watched and listened to them, Sally complained about Harry’s need to drink so much on Friday evenings which meant that he wasn’t quite with it on Saturdays when Sally wanted them to go out together as a family. Harry began to score points, saying “ well, you drink too” and then they both
got into a wrangle of point scoring about the amount and frequency of each others drinking and the degree of impact this had or didn’t have.
This kind of point scoring is a waste of time and does nothing to move matters forward as it is based on arguing to prove each other wrong. It needs to be recognised as an unhelpful habit which blocks them being able to arrive at an understanding of each other’s feelings and position.
Thinking The Worst
As the argument gradually became heated, Harry almost imperceptibly turned away from Sally, crossing his arms over his chest and crossing one leg over the other away from Sally. This unconscious non verbal communication indicated that he had become defensive (and perhaps felt he, or his position, was threatened in some way).
Sally, also unconsciously picked up on the shift in his body posture, but thinking the worst, she interpreted it as, “I can see you’ve just given up now”, to which he responded, “No I haven’t”, and they were off again with Sally saying, “I know you”, chucking in a bit of mind reading for good measure.
The tendency to mind read, make assumptions and think the worst only exacerbates defensiveness and escalates conflict. Honing the skill of resolving conflict and differences is greatly enhanced by eliminating the tendency to think the worst of your partner and to always know better. It is more helpful to take a benevolent view and to also allow for the fact that you can’t absolutely know what is going on for someone else.
Opting Out
One of Sally’s complaints was that when she needed to talk to Harry about what was troubling her, he would opt out by refusing to engage in the discussion, and would even go out of the room and close himself away in another room. Indeed what Sally had interpreted from his body language as him giving up, was in fact a bad habit he had of opting out of processes or situations in which he felt uncomfortable or sometimes overwhelmed, which is not the same thing.
It became apparent by what they carried on to say, that Sally too had her own version of opting out. When she became very frustrated by Harry’s behaviour, she upped the ante, and would routinely ask Harry to leave, something which left him in a constant state of uncertainty. At times then he would actually leave in anticipation of her asking him to go, and then she would feel abandoned by him. (See Karpman Triangle)
Put Downs
Harry and Sally are not so bad as some couples in terms of overtly putting each other down. Many couples will actually say things like, “you are just talking rubbish” or “what would you know about that?” or “you haven’t a clue”, even, “you are so stupid”.
One of the best known relationship researchers, John Gottman, has found from longitudinal studies which he and his wife carried out with thousands of couples, is that a spouse treating their partner with contempt, is a primary indicator that the marriage will end in divorce.
Sally and Harry did not have these overt behaviours but covertly they were contemptuous of each other, which of course made them feel not valued and insignificant to the other.
Communication
You can see how these habits really contaminated and sabotaged all Harry and Sally’s efforts to resolve their differences and kept them stuck in their separate corners, feeling hopeless and impotent..
The way forward for them is set out in a ten step process in my my book Breakthrough to Love.
Watch out for my next blog post which will describe the process of Intentional Dialogue, as espoused by Harville Hendrix, sometimes also known as the Listen and Check exercise. This framework for communication provides couples like Sally and Harry with a framework to begin to develop heartfelt understanding of each other.and also a much deeper level of intimacy.
Grace Chatting, located in Plymouth, UK, is a Transformation and Relationship coach, writer, and workshop facilitator. She is also a Family Mediator and Psychotherapist. Her passion is empowerment arising from personal growth, integrity and authenticity.
Grace can be found on her blog www.gracechatting.com; http://twitter.com@GraceChatting/ http://www.linkedin.com/in/GraceChatting http://facebook.com/GraceChatting
Email grace@gracechatting.com
Grace can be reached on (44) 07816491165 if you wish to arrange a consultation
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