Couples Focusing Together: A Goldmine - or a Minefield?


When couples Focus together, the empathy and closeness they develop is profound. On the other hand, Focusing with your partner can be painful and bewildering. Let me tell you about my own early experience in couple Focusing.

I had been Focusing for a year or so and found this gentle, respectful approac amazingly powerful. I was quite sure my husband would like the model too. So when a weekend workshop came to our city, we signed up together. As anticipated, Harvey was very enthusiastic about Focusing. The two of us couldn't wait to get home and enrich our relationship through this new skill.

That was the end of any predictability. What followed scared and shocked both of us. Normally, we get along well together and have enjoyed each other's company for close to thirty-five years of marriage. When we sat down to Focus, all hell broke loose! My normally loving husband found me a pushy, controlling facilitator. He was very angry. When I closed my eyes to go inside with him guiding, I was overcome with feelings of abandoment. I was furious that he sounded so bored with my inner process. If I opened my eyes, no doubt I'd catch him reading his damned newspaper.

What was happening? Clearly we had to figure it out or stop Focusing together. We were also left scared by the intensity of anger we felt for each other. We needed some help with this. We both know a lot about people's emotional responses. My husband is a child psychiatrist; I am a social work psychotherapist. We were totally unprepared for what Focusing did to our otherwise satisfactory relationship. In our bewilderment we sought help from Gene Gendlin and Mary McGuire.

In the months that followed, we got to the cause of the difficulty and established some rules to prevent a reoccurrence of hostile feelings for one another. We figured out that Focusing with eyes closed, deep in one's inner process, allowed the present day partner to feel like the angry parents we'd both had years ago. If I did happen to open my eyes, what I saw was the caring concern on the face of my mate, not the resentful, bored hostility I was picking up.

Here are the rules we established: (1)Once either of us becomes aware that we are feeling emotions about the other that are out of all proportion to the present reality, we stop the action, open our eyes, and let the other person know what's happening. (2) We discuss what's happening, reminding ourselves that the exaggerated emotion must be about the past, or some projection of our own making. (3) Then it is time to Focus on that feeling. How does my body carry this? What is the felt sense of all that? (4) Inevitably this takes us back to childhood issues with the parents, the most common cause of marital disharmony.

And the long-term effects on our relationship? Focusing together has led to experiential understanding of how transference issues from childhood cause tensions in our present day perception of each other. I can't imagine any other method which would bring a couple so directly to see one another as they are, rather than as creatures of their own projections.

In writing this piece, it is my hope that our experience and our analysis of the problem will enable more couple to enrich their appreciation of each other through Focusing. I hope, too, that the analysis and the ground rules will enable couples to persist through the early stages, so that they can enjoy the benefits of Focusing together. It is only with your intimate partner that these feelings would be stirred.

What appears to be a minefield turns out to be a goldmine!

"Couples Focusing Together: A Goldmine - or a Minefield?", The Focusing Connection, Vol XII, No.6, November 1995.