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Dealing With Stress in Marriage

Denie & Dee Stemmle

(Excepted from Winter 1995 Volume 9, Issue 4 Matrimony magazine)

Do you ever wish you could become a hermit? Settle down on a deserted island. Kick some hibernating bear out of his cave and claim it for yourself. Do the words stress, tension, pressure, pooped or burnt-out sound like good candidates for your middle name? Welcome to the nineties!

When we first got married we knew that our lives were not always going to be a bed of roses. For better or worse, right? We knew we would have to deal with many stresses-- some healthy, and some unhealthy. But we assumed that we’d have some "betters" mixed in there -- breaks of calm, order, maybe even happy-go-lucky life between the times of stress. Our assumption was fairly accurate until our first child was born... after which we purchased first house and learned what our parents meant by "robbing Peter to pay Paul".

Stress has been our companion ever since. And if we don't keep a very careful watch on ourselves, we can end up living in a quiet and persistent pattern of emotional alienation from one another because of the ways we try to handle stress.

We don’t deliberately create this distance from one another. We just get preoccupied and cross as the stresses in our lives start to pile up.

Stresses in Marriage
The fact is, stress is a normal part of life. The first step in learning how to deal with it is to find where the stress originates. We are tempted to point our fingers at the things that are happening to us now as the cause for our stress: the deadlines, demands, the pile of stuff I need to do that only gets bigger. Or sometimes it’s the people in my life that seem to cause all this stress; a less than affirming boss, kids that Norman Rockwell would never have considered painting, or my cranky in-laws who never seem to realize the effect they have on me. Some of us have extraordinary life circumstances that add to our stress level: having infirm parents living with us, losing a job, special children, health problems, severe financial woes, etc.

In every stressful situation, there are at least two elements that determine how much stress I actually experience. The first is the situation that we can so easily identify as the cause of the stress. The second is who I am and how I react to the stressful situation.

We recognized that stress from extraordinary circumstances was not something we could do much about. But the internal stress level from the ordinary elements of our lives was something we wanted to reduce. One of the things that determines how we respond to stressful situations is simply the way we interpret them. As Steven Covey says, "I see the world not as it is...but as I am!"

Sources of Stress
One of the most powerful dialogue series we've ever had helped us to discover the real sources of our stress. We set out to discover what were the things inside us (programming, parent tapes, values, distortions, principles, and attitudes) that caused us to react to "ordinary" situations in our lives, with stressful feelings.

We discovered that sometimes a stressful reaction to the things that happen to us every day can be traced back to excess baggage or painful situations we carry around inside us from childhood. The excess baggage can also come from previous relationships. These experiences often result in self protectiveness. Much of the time we don't recognize this protectiveness as a pattern in our lives. We simply presume that the other people or circumstances are causing our feelings. We fail to recognize that our self-protectiveness can be a reflex reaction, or that it can amplify the very stresses that we seek to minimize.

We discovered that a second possible source of stress is the myth that our marriage all by itself will bring happiness. We started out hoping that love would conquer all. If we could just create "perfect love", we would never again experience hurt or rejection and the stress that comes from that pain. We thought that if we could only get our relationship "right", we would be happy and totally content with our lives.

We failed to realize that happiness comes from inside of us, from our ability to be at peace with ourselves, not from the actions of others. When I expect my partner to make me happy, and he or she doesn't, then I seem to react to everything else with more stressful feelings too.

The third leading source of stress in our marriage is the belief that we can change each other. If only my partner would be more patient, act sexier, or watch the money more carefully, I would feel better and my life would be happier. I keep forgetting that the only person I can ever really change is me.

The fourth cause of stress is the reality that people do change. We aren't the same people we were when we first met. Sometimes my partner changes in ways that trouble me, and that can be a source of stress if I don't accept this new person as fully as the one I first loved. At fifteen, Dee had nothing more pressing to deal with than spending all her free time listening to me. Sometimes I just don't consider that she is now many years wiser, working her tail off, and also trying to satisfy the needs of four kids and a house.

Avoidance
But, having new insights into the sources of stress doesn't stop us from experiencing it. Sometimes, the way I let my stressful feelings leak out in my behavior towards my partner can make the situation even worse. And when my stresses remain unexamined, I can easily slide into "avoidance".

Avoidance can be described as distractions or coping mechanisms which we assume will help us to deal with the sources of stress in our lives. Most often, though, they become ingrained patterns, and often become sources of stress in themselves.

Avoidance is detrimental to our relationship because I stop communicating my feelings and needs. I don't confide in my partner very well on any level. But what's worse, I am rarely aware that I am living out avoidance patterns unless I stop to think about it.

When we tried to discover our avoidance patterns, I sure didn't like what we found, or the way we were affecting each other. One of my avoidance patterns is to size up a situation between us, anticipate stress, and start acting self-protectively even before things have gone wrong. This happens when Denie starts to go through a demanding time at work, and I know he will be preoccupied for a while. I start to see myself as being on my own, even though Denie is still trying to be present to me. I brace myself for loneliness or disappointment before things happen.

This pessimistic behavior drives Denie crazy. Not only won't I talk about what I'm sure is going to happen, nothing that Denie does makes me question my assumptions.

Sometimes I avoid Dee without even thinking about it. For example, one of the days we were working on this article, I would have preferred to have made love or taken a walk with Dee. But the clock was ticking in my head, so I worked on the article instead. Actually, even if I didn't have the article to do, I would have been tackling the other things on my to-do list: sanding the rust off the car, putting up storm windows, and patching the driveway -- rather than taking a walk or making love with Dee. I talk about Dee being the center of my life, but my values are best seen in my behavior.

So when taking walks and making love end up on the bottom of the list behind the article, the rust, the storm windows and the driveway, I have to admit that my to-do list has become an avoidance pattern.

Sometimes my avoidance patterns include taking a few minutes to play computer games, or taking an extra half hour in the bathtub to read a magazine, or reading a chapter in a book before I fall asleep instead of snuggling up with Dee, or getting lost in a movie we rented -- even if we are sitting right next to each other at the time.

I am not consciously choosing to avoid Dee at these times. But I rarely stop to ask myself why I am not consciously choosing to tune into her and be more present to her. These coping mechanisms keep me living inside my head, and oblivious to Dee.

The way I approach our dialogue can sometimes be an avoidance pattern. When I am feeling most pressured, I sometimes treat our dialogue as another item on my to-do list. It's an avoidance pattern whenever I decide to do just one more thing before I leave work, and then not have time to write Dee a love letter before I get home, like I promised I would. So, I end up doing it after supper, sometimes rushing through my love letter just to get it done.

That's the worst kind of avoidance pattern -- one that looks like something else. I tell myself that I am using this time for dialogue in an attempt to insure that my priorities at least look like they are in order. But when I don't set everything else aside and really concentrate on Dee, it can become an empty ritual.

When I just toss off token feelings that spring to mind when Dee asks how I feel, I am avoiding being real to her. When I listen distractedly, thinking instead of all the other stuff we have to do that evening, or all the stuff I left undone at work, I am simply going through the motions in our dialogue.

I don't decide to avoid Dee deliberately. I just fail to decide to move toward her whenever I wait for her to bring up a problem. I may be aware that she is remote and probably troubled by something, but when I don't act on that awareness, or just assume she’ll get over it, or assume it's that time of the month again -- it's part of an avoidance pattern.

Avoidance patterns are systematic ways of putting each other on hold. It's like that line from the Harry Chapin song..."come around, Babe, I don't know when...but we’ll be together then. You know we'll have a good time...then." Sometimes our overcrowded life-style and the coping mechanisms that become our avoidance patterns make it difficult for us to find each other. We end up feeling more exhausted than sensuous, more preoccupied than attentive, and more inclined to take each other for granted, than see and respond to each other's needs. Avoidance can even look like a good alternative in some situations. But in most marriages, avoidance soon leads to collusion. And collusion can eventually kill us.

Collusion
Collusion happens when we mutually agree to accommodate each other in ways that leaves us each in our own space. It's most often an unspoken agreement. It's a way of saying to each other "it's OK to opt out right now." I will allow you to use your avoidance tactics so long as you let me use mine without challenging or even bothering me.

For instance, we are colluding when we agree that certain topics in our dialogue or even in normal conversations are out of bounds. Each of us sort of hopes the other doesn't bring them up, and both feel relieved that the other isn't making demands. Since both of us go along with this, we assume it must be OK. When we are in collusion, our highest values are "nice" and "peaceful". We justify it as a way to avoid stress.

In our dialogue series on this topic, we discovered that even our Marriage Encounter activities can become our excuses for collusion. There are lots of talks to write and meetings to go to, so we can easily give each other permission to focus on all the busyness and use it as our excuse for not confiding in each other. We can put our dialogue on hold, or just decide to use fluffball questions in our dialogue for a while so we won't have to work at it very hard.

Denie and I are particularly prone to colluding when we are in the middle of a big problem. For instance, we've just come through a six month period where Denie's job was at risk. Both of us were scared, but many times it seemed better to just bury ourselves in "projects" in the evenings, rather than have in-depth discussions about all of our feelings and the "what-ifs". We silently justified our actions by telling ourselves "The most loving thing I can do for you is keep my mouth shut. You are just too burdened right now."

Collusion also happens when we each quietly assume that we can not trust the other to be as concerned about my needs and welfare as I am. Instead of checking out the validity of our assumptions, we move to take care of ourselves without each other's help. But most often, collusion doesn't really help us, it just makes things worse.

What makes it collusion is not the action, but rather the attitude behind the action. For example, sometimes I encourage Dee to go spend an hour soaking in the tub. This can be a decision to love, or it can be collusion. It's a decision to love when I do it because I am genuinely concerned and want her to have some time to relax.

But it becomes collusion when Dee starts dropping hints that she wants to escape, and I send her to the tub because I want to escape myself by spending the hour playing computer games or finishing up some work. It is especially true when I just want to avoid Dee because I see her as being cranky and out of sorts. I want the atmosphere to be nice, rather than genuinely responding to her needs.

Collusion is not found in the actions. It's in the reasons behind the action. We can choose to give each other space out of concern and support, or we can secretly feel relieved and use the other's feelings as the reason to not be connected or involved with one another.

Here are some other patterns of collusion in a marriage:
- Agreeing that you should focus on your career, because it frees me to focus on mine.
- Living with a sexual relationship that we know is not the form of communication it ought to be -- because we don't know how to talk about it without blaming one another.
- Not bringing up any topic we argued about in the past because we don't want to run the risk of experiencing more rejection or pain.
- Encouraging you to pursue your hobbies or church work so I can pursue mine.
- Thinking we haven't paid enough attention to the kids, and routinely putting our intimacy on hold in order to respond to whatever the kids want.
- Encouraging you to act on your "guilty" feelings and respond to the demands or needs of our extended families since it frees me to spend the time on my priorities.
- Maintaining our economic life-style regardless of the emotional prices we pay with each other because we want to fit in and be seen as successful.

Why Collusion?
There are a lot of reasons why we choose to live in collusion with each other. A peaceful atmosphere is a lot nicer than a tense or confrontational one. We all have enough to cope with in our lives - and accommodating each other appears to reduce the number of stresses. But when collusion becomes a habit, or a life-style, the inevitable result is isolation. We end up feeling taken for granted, or just tolerated. After a while, we conclude that "I'm not all that important to you." Then resentments start to creep in.

Things may continue to appear nice on the surface, but beneath the surface is turmoil and more stress than ever. Eventually it either blows up into a hellacious argument, or we continue along until we can't stand each other any more.

So What Do We Do About It?

Step 1: Discovery
Avoidance and collusion in the long run keep us from truly facing and solving our stress-related problems. They are simply coping mechanisms that don't change anything. We have all the tools we need to address the source of our stress right at our fingertips. We can use our dialogue to discover when we are letting the stress in our lives lead us into avoidance and collusion -- and call ourselves on it. The challenge is to pick questions that will help us see more clearly that we are opting for avoidance and collusion instead of more responsible efforts to love each other proactively.

Here are some of the starter questions we used:

1. Describe my avoidance patterns. How do they affect how I confide in you? How do I feel about my answer?

2. What are some specific ways that we are we living in collusion with each other? What effect does this have on our relationship? How do I feel telling you this?"

Step 2: Be Proactive
We have been trying to deal with the stresses in our lives by deliberately moving toward each other, even when it is not our instinct to do so. One way we try to do this is by cranking up our determination to listen passionately in and out of our dialogue, rather than give into our instinct for token listening. Listening with empathy is magic when we can pull it off in the middle of stressful circumstances.

And above all, we try our best to avoid blaming one another for the stressful circumstances. Instead, we try to substitute one of the toughest questions to address: "Exactly how have I tried to cherish you in the middle of all this stress?" Just asking that question once a day has a lot of value.

It usually helps us to see stressful situations with a different set of eyes. Often we find that the real reason situations seemed so stressful in the first place was that we had lost sight of each other and gotten our priorities screwed up again.

Alternatively, we could fantasize about becoming hermits together. Settling down on a desert island. Kicking the bear out of the cave and moving right in. Pretending that it isn't the nineties. But that usually doesn't work.

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