Procrastinating Men and Mature Woman

 

In recent years, there has been a dramatic change in the nature of couples seeking therapy. While the vast majority of couples coming to treatment were once couples in crisis situations as a result of betrayal, routine, a desire for divorce, or traumas, we are now seeing more and more couples entering therapy before getting married or settling down.

Quite a few of those couples meet the definition in the article’s title– ‘procrastinating men and mature women’. It’s an appropriate definition for men of 35+, who for various reasons are in no hurry to settle down and bring up children, and women of 30+ who feel sufficiently mature to settle down and become mothers.

As a couples therapist using biodynamic body therapy (which addresses the physical, energetic and respiratory dynamics and works in conjunction with Verbal Spousal Therapy, and also helps with body-mind and guided imagery exercises), I’d like to present the following a case-study of a couple who represent this issue and ways of dealing with it,

Daniel, 36, is the VP of a high-tech company; Sigal, 34, is a lawyer and Daniel’s partner for the past year and a half. They met through friends, fell in love, and after several months, they moved in together.

They came to therapy after some months of continual arguments, stress and tension. Once they felt at home in the therapy room, they slowly started communicating from a place of attentiveness. A picture took shape, that is seen in many cases. Despite his age, Daniel still didn’t feel mature enough, didn’t want to propose marriage and become a father. In contrast, Sigal is already tearing her hair out because she’s so mature and ready to become a wife and mother.

The initial stage in therapy is to create a sense of security and trust with each of the pair, and with their partnership. After the first session, a good chemistry was created, allowing each one to talk about him/herself, about the homes they had been raised in, to relate their life-story in a short version, how each one sees their relationship, to list the qualities of the other partner, and what each one really wants from life, and their shared life.

What do we do when each partner has different wishes and needs? Frequently we can find a middle path. On many issues, Daniel and Sigal had found that middle path. They moved to a shared flat, located midway between their workplaces; Daniel doesn’t smoke at home because it bothers Sigal; and on many other important topics related to their opposite characters. She is full of life and communicative, with many friends of both sexes, Daniel is more introverted and gets by with one just one good friend. On all these subjects they get along, as well as in aspects of communication, finances, and sex. 

And yet …

Daniel is in no hurry to change things, and simply doesn't want to give up his freedom, even though he loves Sigal very much. She, on the other hand, is already eager to get married and have children and really wants it to be with Daniel.

After several sessions, when the conflict between their wants and needs constantly came up, and the verbal space been exhausted - including imago exercises in which the couple sit facing each other and practised listening and mirroring what they hear from their partner - we moved on to a different exercise. Now they stood facing each other, looking deeply into the partner’s eyes, feeling the partner’s needs and wishes, and internalising them through the intimacy created.

During these exercises and ones that followed, I found that my role as therapist is to be the third wheel, visible but not felt, and to let the couple be in open and intimate relationship with each other, as if I’m not there, yet at the same time to be a guide and observer, who mirrors them and helps in the process.

 After five or six meetings, Daniel and Sigal felt they could connect and feel in depth the other’s needs and wishes simultaneously with their own. The next stage was to add several deep exercises from the world of biodynamic psychotherapy: one of them is guided imagery which creates a profound connection to the narrative of the partner.

At the seventh session I asked them to sit across from each other, close their eyes, and imagine the parents of their partner standing behind them. I asked Sigal to imagine – that behind her, on the right, David, Daniel’s father, was standing, and on her left side - Ruth, Daniel’s mother, and to feel as if they are her parents. (Daniel’s parents divorced when Daniel was 13, a civilised divorce but still traumatic for Daniel). I asked Daniel to imagine that Sigal’s parents were standing behind him, as if they were his parents (her parents were married 41 years - happily for most of the time). I left them like this for ten minutes, and asked them to relate to the physical emotions aroused in them, during the exercise of imagining the partner’s parents as their own parents.

 

Sigal felt great difficulty in physical and breathing terms, even anxiety that presented together with a rapid heartbeat and feeling of distress. She could connect to the ‘abandonment anxiety’ which Daniel felt so powerfully, his great fear of commitment, and the possibility that he might be harmed by commitment. For his part, Daniel felt a pleasant warmth and love all through his body.

Sigal shared and reflected, through her tears, what she experienced and said excitedly to Daniel that she really understood his fear of commitment (this is an internalisation of the other partner’s experience, not rational understanding). Daniel shared that he could understand her longing for a family and children, out of the physically pleasant and safe experience which he had. 

In this session, intimacy and understanding of the other were created in a very profound and moving way. Thrilled by observing the process, I could reflect on that encounter between the different life-stories and the different thought and behaviour patterns. Something beyond words happened in that session.

In subsequent sessions we continued with other mind-body exercises that brought Sigal and Daniel closer and led them to more open and intimate communication, in which each one profoundly understood the other and internalised their couple relationship.

Happy end! (I'm a romantic, and adore happy endings, even thought it doesn’t always happen in couples therapy, like in life). Two months later, Sigal and Daniel came for therapy – and she was wearing a beautiful, sparkling engagement ring. Daniel had managed to change from a procrastinating man to a man who had overcome his abandonment anxiety and was ready to start a family, while Sigal was about to fulfil her maturity as a wife and mother.

 

Names and details have been changed, and this study is based on my work with several couples who went through a similar process.

Gabriel Shiraz