Relationships and Couples Counseling

Last year, I attended a training with Dr. Carmen Knudson-Martin on Socio-Emotional Relationship Therapy (SERT). It changed how I view couple work. SERT views social and cultural structures, like gender as having an inordinate amount influence on relationships and a significant cause of relationship distress. Many women are exhausted and frustrated by a lack of relationship equality which manifests as imbalances in domestic labor, cognitive labor, and emotional labor. There is a great deal of information about domestic and cognitive labor already available. However, SERT focuses on the “circle of care” which is the care and tending of the relationship and insists this needs to be mutual for a relationship to be healthy. The circle of care includes mutual attunement, perspective-taking, validation, accommodation, openness or vulnerability, willingness to be influenced by one another, as well as accountability to the relationship.

 

In traditional relationships, there is a dominant partner. This partner controls power in the relationship by two means—passive or aggressive control. Most people know that aggressive behavior can control another person, however, passive control is more common. It involves being dismissive of requests or emotional distress, refusing to discuss topics important to one’s partner, opting out of family work without agreement, and a refusal to value a partner’s perspective as equally valid. Here is my video on passive control:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbRC8ypHXlU

 

Going forward, I am asking couples interested in therapy to complete the exercises in The Socio-Emotional Relationship Workbook for Couples Closing the Gap Between the Relationship You Want and the Relationship You Have by Carmen Knudson-Martin first. After doing this you may not even need couple therapy but if you do, reach out afterwards.

 

Here are some other good resources to help you with your relationship with yourself and others:

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The Journal of Best Practices: A Memoir of Marriage, Asperger Syndrome, and One Man’s Quest to Be a Better Husband by David Finch

Fair Play by Eve Rodsky

Wired for Love by Stan Tatkin

We Do by Stan Tatkin

The Apology by Eve Ensler

Equal Partners by Kate Mangino

Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships by Tristan Taormino

The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love by Bell Hooks

The Case for Rage: Why Anger Is Essential to Anti-Racist Struggle by Myisha Cherry

Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger by Soraya Chemaly

Your Turn for Care: Surviving the Aging and Death of the Adults Who Harmed You by Laura S. Brown

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski

Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice by Judith L. Herman

Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit

Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne

Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women by Kate Manne

Kristen Neff: https://self-compassion.org/

Lou Ann Smith’s Early Relationship Workshops: https://www.earlymarriageworkshops.org/