What does Couples Therapy have to do with Changing Lanes?  I covered that in my post two weeks ago, and now I want to explore what this means in practice. 

In the earlier post, I wrote about how furious I get when my wife criticises my driving.  She feels I’m a bit over-cautious when I change lanes.  When she offers this bit of constructive criticism, it gets me livid.  How could she criticize my incredibly safe and attentive driving?  I stay obsessed about it for hours.  I find myself turning around thoughts, finding ways to explain to her once and for all, just how safe and amazing I am as a driver.

Sounds like my problem, right?  So how could couples counseling help with something which seems to be mostly about my head going on spin cycle?  Shouldn’t I just get my head shrunk so it stays more firmly rooted to reality?

What’s really going on beneath the surface of  these conversations (aka: arguments)  is that my wife is particularly sensisitive to my driving, because she never felt quite comfortable when her father drove.  What’s worse is that she wasn’t allowed to say anything about it.  Imago couples counseling has helped me discover this story, through the Imago Dialogue.  When I have calmed down, I ask my wife about what was going on for her.  She told me that the family culture required that everyone was vocally admiring of her father’s driving, while she had to silently sit in terror.  What she wants from me is that I might say “I get it that you think I’m a pretty good driver, but you would like me to be open to hearing from you with any suggestions you have.”

There’s a part of me that falls in love with her all over again when I hear that.  I see the sense she makes, and her vulnerability too.  I feel myself wanting to give her all she wants, just because I love her, and see her needs.

But have I changed?  I have in some ways, because I just make it a habit now to be open to her concern’s about my driving, and to be a bit more snappy about lane changing.  Except that the voices don’t stop.  There’s still a part of me that wants her to say “I was completely wrong, I didn’t know enough about what good driving is to understand how incredibly good you are.” 

For me the big change comes when I say to myself “Why am I having conversations in my head in which I would really like hear my wife, or others, say Tim you are right, and I am wrong.”   I found myself having the same conversations with myself while trying to meditate in one of the most beautiful places I know.  “This is silly and has to stop now” I told myself.  

But how do you stop your mind throwing out angry junk all the time?  Would you believe, Imago Couples Therapy can help me with that too!  I didn’t even need to spend a year in a monastery on the peak of a Himalayan mountain!

All I needed to do was to listen to my Imago colleagues Klaus and Evelin Brehm who were visiting from Austria.  Sometimes people from different countries put things in a different way that can make clear things you sort of know already, but hadn’t quite seen that way.

 ”Underneath the conversation is an emotional need, clamoring to be met” they reminded me. 

“What was my need?” I wondered.  “Why was I having these conversations with myself”.  The change for me when I saw at last that my need was simply to be seen to be right, to be seen to be competent, capable, responsible.  Because as the younger and highly passionate child in a bright family,  I gave my family a lot of opportunity to enlighten me on just what a clumsy klutz I was. 

That’s when my internal conversations ended, and I could really change.  I don’t need to be right any more.  I just need to be me.