I Have Been Helping Couples Change for Years. Most of Them Were Missing One Equation.

Co-authored by Galit Romanelli

A lot of the people we work with are stuck. Stuck in their relationships, stuck in a role, stuck in a story about who they are. They are in pain, and still they don’t move. For a long time we assumed the problem was that they didn’t want something else badly enough. That was wrong. People want to change. They stay stuck because a part of the math hasn’t lined up yet.

We have been helping couples and partners change for a long time. As a systemic therapist, I have written before about how long-lasting change actually works. Together, we built on it with the relational hero’s journey. Now we are learning to extrapolate it and simplify it into what we call relational math. We ve previously published the relational math of sex. This time, we take it further to the relational math of change.

We are all complex, different creatures. But human change has a general blueprint. Joseph Campbell called it the monomyth, the hero with a thousand faces. Underneath every story we tell about how a person transforms, there is an archetype or pattern that can be usually found. This is our humble addition to it, the simple relational math of deep systemic change.

Change has three equations, not one. People stay stuck because they are missing one of the three, and one is never enough. You need all three working at the same time to make a deep personal and systemic change, what is called in systems theory a second-order change.

The first equation: curiosity > certainty

Most couples never come to therapy. They assume this is simply how it is going to be. Perhaps they witnessed their parents in a bad marriage, and now they are in one. Certainty says it has been like this for years and nothing is ever going to change. That certainty is homeostasis. It is the exclamation mark at the end of the experience.

Then one day something might crack that certainty. Wait. Does it have to be this way? Is there another way to do this? You put a question mark where there used to be an exclamation mark. What softens the exclamation mark into a question mark is play. Play is the lubricant of relationships. It keeps you from getting stuck, it makes room for mistakes, and it lets you get curious about a life you had stopped imagining. When the question mark grows bigger than the exclamation mark, you set off on the hero’s journey. You start hearing the call that your relationship (or your life) can be different.

The second equation: pain > familiarity

Curiosity opens the door to the call but it does not move your feet past the threshold. Plenty of people wonder whether it could be different and stay exactly where they are. They stay because their pain is not yet greater than the familiar. In systemic terms, their secondary losses are not yet greater than their secondary gains.

Notice that the thing holding them back is not pleasure. There is little pleasure in a bad relationship, and in an abusive one there is no comfort at all. What holds them is familiarity. It is what they know. Sometimes it is the only dynamic they ever saw. When the pain finally grows greater than the familiar, when the minus outweighs the plus, you cross the threshold. You have that tough discussion with your partner. You go to therapy. You read the book. You try the thing you have never tried. You read a piece about change.

The third equation: love > fear

Crossing the threshold is not the finish line. The road is long. The system will pull you back to your old role. There is no applause for this kind of change. Your partner will not applaud. The people around you may resist. That is the initiation phase, full of tests, allies, and enemies.

What keeps you walking when the fear comes back, and it always comes back, is love. Not the greeting-card kind. But deep internal, confident love.

Love for yourself. Love for the parts of you that you have kept hidden. Love for your own shadow. You can take in only as much love as you are able to give yourself, so the more you love your own parts, the more fuel you carry for the road. When your love is greater than your fear, you stay on the path long enough for the deep change to happen. It is more than new behavior. It is a new way of seeing yourself, your partner, and your marriage. That is a second-order change.

Put the three together and you have the relational math of change.

Curiosity > certainty

Pain > familiarity

Love > fear

Stack them one on top of the other, and something larger comes out as the sum. When all three are true at once, you get more than change. You feel free together. That is the synergistic result of the three equations, and it is the whole point.

Now find yourself in the math.

Is your curiosity greater than your certainty?

Is your pain greater than the familiar?

Is your love greater than your fear?

If needed, you can put a number from 1 to 10 to each feeling and look at the equations. Share your results with your partner (or trusted friend). Reflect where you are stuck in the relational math. Wherever you’re stuck, that is your work. Put a question mark where you have been living with an exclamation mark, and do the math.

Galit Romanelli is a relationship coach, Ph.D.-candidate, and co-creator of The Remarriage Roadmap.

References

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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Photo credit: Marija Zaric On Unsplash