Intimate strangers
What a shame
I’ve been working with more couples recently than I ever have before in my career, some of them married for decades, some of them newlyweds, and others just entering their commitment to one another. Working with couples is super interesting and really challenging. It’s a pretty sacred privilege to help people navigate their lives together, from the most mundane tasks to their most intimate moments.
Inevitably of course, in any relationship a degree of conflict and disagreement, some of it deep and vehement, rises to the surface. This is important and expected. I think in building lives together, it’s through our differences and navigating them that we grow.
Like relationship expert John Gottman once said, “If you agree on everything and experience no conflict, one of you is unnecessary.”
But yeah, conflict resolution is way, way easier said than done.
Case in point
Not long ago, I worked with a couple who had been together for more than a decade. Their arguments felt typical and frustrating, nitpicky sitcom fare. He would stay out too late at work or with friends. Lots of talk about dirty dishes, scheduling pickups for the kids, and disagreeable in-laws. An uneven distribution of household tasks. They were also not transparent with each other about money. They felt they were in a financial crisis way too often for people making well into the six figures.
Couples spend a lifetime in this nitty gritty, day-to-day space. Slowly, over time, the friction can erode relationships. If we’re going to set out to create, develop, sustain and maintain healthy relationships, we need to dig deeper than the obvious little day-to-day arguments.
Sure, sometimes a messy kitchen is just about a messy kitchen. Usually though, with a couple of deep breaths, a little time, and some real discussion, you can uncover together what’s really going on well below the surface.
I cannot tell you how often I heard her ask him, “What are you not telling me?”
One day, to my surprise, he broke. He told her he had cheated on her. When she asked when, he said, “I think it was about 15 years ago, a few months after we started going out.”
“Oh, that! Everyone knew about that. Ancient history. Who cares? Is that what this has been all about all of these years?”
Turns out, the answer was yes. He couldn’t believe how readily she shrugged this off. He was certain she would leave him when she found out. He had not only been living with the shame of his actions, but that shame had colored his behavior toward her for nearly the entirety of their relationship.
Meanwhile, she already knew names, dates, and actually thought they had talked it out before. He thought it was a dark shame he carried in solitude.
They wasted a lot of time in this space.
He explained in a later session that, as a result of that shame, he found himself sabotaging the relationship. He would gamble in the middle of a workday. He would spend money he knew they didn’t have. He would gaslight her about the budget. He would deliberately let the garbage pile up. He was often unceremoniously, inexplicably mean to her, an odd extension of that shame.
He couldn’t explain why, but he insisted that all of this maladaptive, sabotaging behavior was intended to alleviate his shame.
Instead, of course, it only dug the shame spiral deeper. And weakened their connection.
How good relationships fall apart
I actually loved working with this couple. They were fun and funny and generally had a great rapport with one another. Sometimes, I find myself sitting across from a couple knowing full well they don’t belong together. Not these two. They felt like lifers in this thing.
So, we played a long game (a couple of years) and worked through that disconnection, that shame. We found that she carried some shame of her own.
I think we can all agree that shame is among the worst feelings we can experience. I am not a fan. And the stakes around shame become so much higher when they involve the person we are most drawn to. Our reactions to shame are, as a rule, maladaptive. Not only are we untruthful, straight-out lying a lot of the time, but we tend to hold back in our communication. Out of fear, we hide. We share less about our realities: our pasts, our day-to-day lives, our feelings, our hopes, fears, and joys.
We under-communicate with one another about what matters, about how we feel. And this is how good relationships fall apart.
Far too many couples are haunted by ghosts of a past that has little or nothing to do with their time together.
The fallout
It’s a crazy thing. We seek out intimate relationships to be known, and we create circumstances in which we are wholly unknown. That’s why so many people in long-standing relationships tell me they feel lonely. They’re not sharing their whole selves, leaving out the parts that feel shameful.
We’re standing on hollow platforms.
So yeah, effectively because of early shame, we under-communicate. On some level, we think the more we’re known, the more all those qualities that we’ve carried shame about will become known. And that person that we love will inevitably leave us. Fundamentally, I think that’s the fear in an awful lot of intimate relationships.
As a result, I’ve worked with people who have been together for years, raised children, slept in the same bed, spent every holiday together, created lifelong memories, and remain nearly complete strangers to one another.
You see, when we hide shame initially, it gradually becomes habitual, invisible. That cloak and dagger secrecy can drive the narrative of an entire relationship. The result is often disconnection and dissent that feels as if it makes no sense. Because so often, it doesn’t. The context around what we’re saying, doing and arguing about remains unspoken. Shame is relational erosion.
Without any intervention, shame becomes the relationship epitaph.
I assure you, I am not describing an anomaly here. This phenomenon takes place all the time. Undisclosed shame drives the narrative of so many relationships. And oddly, I’ve seen a lot of relationships persist and endure despite undisclosed shame. But these relationships tend to be painful, isolative and disconnecting.
The fix
This may seem elementary and overly simplistic, but if a couple can find the courage to share their shame with one another, the right things will happen. That doesn’t necessarily mean they will stay together forever. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they are right for one another, or they will be happy together. It just means the right answers will arise. There’s a big difference between enduring a relationship for a lifetime, and thriving in a rich, connected, emotional meaningful union.
It’s a massive difference. It’s everything.
And the sharing of that shame does not need to take a lifetime. In my experience, it can be managed in an hour or two, literally. The keys are possessing the insight to recognize it exists and drives your behavior toward your partner in the first place, and then sharing your shame, saying the words, giving it oxygen.
Take those two courageous steps, and healing can start in your relationship, healing based in truth. And if your relationship mirrors so many I’ve worked with, you’ll likely be surprised in the best way at the results.
The story I’m a little ashamed to share
Julie and I have been married for more than 30 years. Way back then, she married an apparently well-raised, emotionally-healthy, thriving, up-and-coming CPA with the brightest of futures.
In the first few years of our time together, it became increasingly clear to me that I’d been largely living a façade. Shame overtook me and chose anxiety as it’s vehicle. Over time, and with Julie’s wisdom and encouragement, I shared with her that I was not entirely well emotionally, that I had no interest whatsoever in my current career, and I wasn’t really at all sure where my life was headed. I was pretty deeply ashamed, feeling as if the panic attacks I’d been experiencing were a sign of singular, enormous weakness.
I didn’t say so, but I was afraid I was gonna lose her right then.
And of course, I was wrong. I fell in love with a good person who loved me back. The minute I shared my truth with her, she lifted me up and quickly encouraged me toward action. I write this from my therapy office in downtown Chicago, just steps away from the accounting firm she gave me permission to walk out of so many years ago. My life became immeasurably better by sharing what I thought was shame with her. I learned really quickly that the best of life comes on the flipside of shame, in the wake of sharing it and reframing it.
Oh, and no small thing, it turns out, it wasn’t really shame I was suffering at all. It was just my body sending signals to my mind to make some changes. Upon examination, our shame is rarely shame. We twist our early experiences to make them feel like shame, but they’re just parts of us that helped get us where we are and can guide our futures if we allow ourselves to speak them out.
I’m not saying our relationship is perfect, far from it. Dig into the archives of our podcast, and we tell you all about it. To this day, we get into our bullshit, nitpicky, dumb arguments about literally nothing. But I like to think that when it’s important, we dig deep down, consider what’s really going on, and talk to one another about it, work it through.
And in those times, I don’t feel the least bit alone. I feel like I have a partner in the thing, whatever the thing is. Even if it’s the thing that worries me most, the thing that I’m most ashamed about.
When it comes down to it, most of us are pretty understanding. We love each other, and fall in love with one another, for reasons. Those things we’re ashamed about, those are hardly ever deal-breakers. Left to morph alone in our neurotically-wired minds, they take on a shape and gravity well beyond reality. But sometimes, when brought out of the shadows to the light of day, they can transform from the darkest parts of our lives to our greatest strengths and joys.
You can make this kind of adjustment anytime, and the right answers for your relationship will emerge.
All it takes is a little courage, man.