Every interpersonal encounter with your spouse or partner is an opportunity to be present, open, non-judgmental, and vulnerable or not. Ask yourself how frequently during these encounters you are dissociated, ruminating about something, focusing on yourself, recalling the past or rehearsing a reply. When you do any of those things you block the flow of energy between you and your spouse/partner that carries meaningful emotional messages. When members of a couple ask each other in earnest things like, “how could you possibly have thought/felt/said/done that?” they are betraying a problematic gap in their knowledge and understanding of each other. Clients of mine have engaged in or had their spouse/partner engage in acts of drinking, drugging, gambling, stock speculation, porn watching, flirting or cheating which they successfully hide or lie about for months or years until it becomes undeniably obvious. Sometimes one spouse/partner stops loving, wanting or caring about the other and this is allowed to go on for years before a crisis erupts seemingly without advance warning. I am a huge advocate of daily meditation with my clients because it is the most effective tool I know to help them stay present, open, vulnerable, and able to sense what is really going on around them and inside them.
