Hi, this is Linda Nusbaum. It's been amazing being able to help everyone for so long, but it's time for me to retire. The site is up for archival purposes, but I've closed my practice.
Thank you.
I’m often asked things like, “Help! My husband stops talking to me when we fight. What do I do?” or “My wife stops talking to me when I’ve done something wrong. How can I get her to open back up?”
When couples fight or argue or have a disagreement it’s not uncommon for one person in the relationship to stop talking. This happens among many couples so if you are experiencing this in your relationship know that you are not alone.
I am in the business of helping people understand each other. As a couples counselor I listen to people tell me about their struggles with their partners, the person they love.
I know that every time I hear a story I know that person is telling me his or her truth. We as humans feel very strongly about what we think and believe. These thoughts and feelings are what make us who we are, and feeling like we matter depends on letting others know what we are about.
And I know that people just want to let their partners know what they think and feel. Most people in relationships feel they must get the other person to understand them or they will feel invisible and undervalued. It is very important for people in relationships to get their partners to understand what matters to them.
So, what do we do?
Almost everyone asks, “Do I matter?”
It’s a universal need for all of us to matter. We have a deep longing to know that we are important. This craving beats the loudest in our relationships with other people.
People come to me saying, “My husband blames me for everything,” or “My wife blames me for everything.” Here’s a look at why people look to blame another when they feel hurt.
Many of us automatically look for someone to blame when we get mad. This is very common; humans often look for someone to take responsibility when something bad happens. So what’s wrong with blaming another person when we get upset? If a lot of people do this why even talk about it?
Well, people get defensive, they get mad, and they fight. They don’t have to. Learn how to break the pattern.
People find it pretty easy to fall in love and feel close to another person, but when one or both of you get your feelings hurt, or feel misunderstood or unloved, it might take a long time to feel close again.
People always start out strong, loving deeply their “right” person. Think back to the beginning of your relationship and remember how much you felt and fell for yours. It was pretty wonderful, right?
So why after being together for a while do you sometimes feel so hurt that you can’t even talk to your beloved, maybe for hours at a time? Maybe you feel so misunderstood that you stay hurt for days. Now that can be really painful.
No two people in a relationship are the same. We find connections with our partner and yet we are wildly different from them. We are attracted to their difference and their similarities in the beginning of a relationship, but down the road we might find that the way they do things, different than we do them, might just bug us a bit.
One of the biggest frustrations couples face is trying to get their partner to change. I hear this difficulty over and over in the couples I treat. It sounds like this, “If he would only do…..,” “If she would just…..” It’s what many distressed couples say to me. What they really want is for their mate to be different.
I was sitting with my husband the other night. We were at a restaurant and I started thinking whether he considered us friends. We have been in each others lives for the last 17 years and yet I didn’t know what he thought.
“Are we friends?” I asked him. He turned his head toward me with a confused look on his face and then he asked me where this question came from. I told him that sometimes when I work with couples they tell me they love each other, but they are not very friendly with each other…
As a couples counselor I am never surprised to hear people express their love for their better half. In fact I have worked with couples who have had disasters between them and yet each will profess true love for the other despite horrific behaviors that would suggest the opposite.
Couple after couple will tell me how much they love the other person. And yet there are problems upon problems by the time they come in to the therapy office.
I used to bristle when I would hear the word hater. It felt so sharp, and yet so accurate. I have even used it once or twice to disparage a group in opposition to a particular position. But I didn’t really feel good using that word or lining up against any person or group when I did use it.
As a therapist, I am always trying to understand feelings. In my work with people who have difficulty I try and understand motivations and feelings that might give me insight to how the person might be experiencing events in their life. So when I think about “haters” I consider these elements to help me understand why people hate and why hating has become so commonplace.