Couples Therapy

Self-Destructive Behavior

Relationship issues are a normal and necessary part of any healthy relationship. These issues are inevitable since a relationship involves the melding of two individual persons with sometimes differing needs and expectations. Good relationships involve people who are aware of their partner’s individual needs seek out accommodations when there are conflicts between each others’ goals or desires. Some relationships are challenged in that partners are unable to empathize with each other’s needs and therefore have little incentive to compromise or accommodate. In such relationships the partner is not seen as a unique person in their own right but come to represents family members. This unconscious equating one’s partner with family members or other significant others creates an environment of animosity and conflict that wreak havoc on relationships by producing the feeling that one is always misunderstood. In this dynamic, it is usually the part of the family member that is most hated that gets projected onto the other person. Without insight into which family member, or at a deeper level, which part of ones self, is being projected onto one’s partner, intractable relational stalemates will occur.

Couples Therapy: 310-271-7702