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Leon F Seltzer PhD
Evolution of the Self

RELATIONSHIPS

Why Discord, Paradoxically, Is

Vital in Close Relationships
“Fierce intimacy” may be the safest route to emotional
vulnerability.
Posted November 2, 2022 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

KEY POINTS

Disharmony between two individuals, especially those in committed

relationships, is both inevitable and, in most instances, repairable.
To transcend disharmony, partners must discover the right balance between
personal autonomy and interpersonal connection.
All lasting relationships, if they’re to reach their full potential for intimacy,
regularly require repair work.

In long-lasting relationships, a “you

and me” consciousness doesn’t jibe
with a much healthier “we”
consciousness. Relationships Essential
Reads
Ordinarily, couples, particularly men,
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strive to avoid conflict. Certainly,
most people wouldn’t think that
3 Big Relationship
meeting conflict head-on—and actually welcoming it—would advance their Mistakes on "Love Is Blind"
relationship. And frankly, for the majority of us, it won’t.

Quagmire: The Joy and

But Terrence Real, the prolific author of the eloquently conceptualized work Us: Heartache of Relationships
Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship (2022), sees the
matter differently. Very differently. For he views disharmony between two Are You High in Moral
individuals—especially those in committed relationships—as inevitable, Development? Do You
Love?
necessary, and, in most instances, repairable. Consider, too, that you really can’t
fix anything until you “come clean” and admit it’s broken.
Couples and the Body
Language of Love
This post, the first of two parts, will attempt to explicate some of Real’s main
ideas in the hope that reflecting upon them will serve you in whatever union you
currently find yourself (or maybe one you regret how you handled in the past). 2 Essentials for a Secure
and Stable Relationship

Real calls the harmonious (or romantic) stage of a relationship love without
knowledge and the disharmonious (or disillusioned) stage knowledge without ADVERTISEMENT

love. The latter stage he regards as demonstrating “you and me” consciousness,
which is incompatible with true intimacy.

Feeling impelled to transcend this second, unavoidable relational phase, which

impedes the togetherness goals to which all couples implicitly aspire, is seen,
paradoxically, as “the painfully hard-won gift of disharmony.”

But to successfully get beyond this problematic phase, couples must, as a team,
be able to find the right balance between personal autonomy and interpersonal
connection. Detailing the repair work required to accomplish this feat will
constitute the focus of part 2. Here I’ll be concentrating on the concepts that are
vital to understand—and adopt—in order to develop the right mindset for
undertaking this edgy but exciting restorative work.

And, to employ Real’s terminology to zero in on the crux of his thesis, the wise
adult is realizable only when one’s adaptive child—with all of its outdated and
exaggerated defenses—is overruled by one’s more mature and circumspect (i.e.,
“wise”) self.

The Felt Safety of the Familiar, and Why It Becomes More and
More Precarious

In earlier posts, I discussed the fact that the word familiar might also be read as
“family-er.” That is, frequently what feels familiar or more comfortable does so
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because it became your MO while growing up.
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You chose this or that behavior because it helped you feel more secure in your from Psychology Today.
relationship with your parents than anything else you tried to gain their
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(unfortunately) conditional acceptance.

Yet these survivalist or conformist strategies—mostly unconscious—typically

don’t work very well in the context of an intimate adult relationship. Plus,
whoever you end up with will probably also be governed by their adaptive child.
And sadly, that’s an inescapable double whammy to any relationship.

To Real and many other therapists, our culture repeatedly gives us the unrealistic
message that good relationships are—and should always be—harmonious.

Good luck with that. Because the complicated world we live in (not to mention
how complicated human nature is, with all its recalcitrant defense mechanisms)
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is much too “messy,” or changeable, for relational harmony to evolve effortlessly.
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THE BASICS
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Why Relationships Matter
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That’s why Real calls his model “Relational Life Therapy” and emphasizes that all
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close relationships, if they’re to reach their full potential, regularly demand repair
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work.
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Plus, attempts to verbalize frustrations and disappointments or disrupting failures
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in attunement require perseverance. And here, repetition isn’t redundant but
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rather—in diplomatically elaborating, modifying, or expanding on one’s
grievances—actually assists in restoring relational harmony. Las Vegas, NV San Francisco, CA
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As in, practice makes perfect.
Memphis, TN Tucson, AZ

And, too, it’s precisely this dogged persistence that enables resilience: the key Miami, FL Washington, DC
prerequisite for couples’ stability. In fact, neurologically speaking, an ever- Milwaukee, WI
unfolding resilience is the most reliable pathway to enduring relational growth.

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But achieving this is no easy task because by the time we get to be adults, there
are so many unresolved issues from childhood that accompany—and sabotage—
us in the present.

That’s why we’re so susceptible to being triggered by our partner (as, regrettably,
they are to us). They can’t help but remind us—in general, subconsciously—of
words, situations, and events our parents used, which back then did a number
on us.

So, subliminally, it may feel that it’s now “payback” time. Which is why it’s so
common for us to emotionally overreact and attack them.

Inasmuch as we experience our present-day relationship as a later-day

replacement for (or reenactment of) what we went through earlier, the things that
negatively sensitized us to our family automatically get reactivated when our
partner fails to meet our too-idealistic expectations.

As Real vividly puts it: “New wounds evoke old ones. Present conflicts are
encrusted with scar tissue from injuries long past.”

Predictably, this recurrence undermines our trust in our partner. Whether or not
our parents intended to, they could be shaming in how they disciplined us. So,
however accidentally, our partner can “rejuvenate” this unrepaired shame—just
as we unintentionally revive their own.

Additionally, this rupture in partner harmony can lead us to cultivate a certain

detachment from them, which compromises our much earlier intimate
relationship as well. And this deduction assumes that when we felt intruded
upon, or abandoned by, our parents, these relational breaks were rarely, if ever,
mended.

Moreover, what (accurately or not) we learned from our parents is routinely

projected onto our later adult relationships. That which we became accustomed
to expecting from our parents, we now expect from our partner.

Unfortunately, that prompts us to create boundaries, resistances, or walls, which

we employ to prevent our partner from gaining entrance to and further
undermining our deeper, more authentic self.

It’s all to safeguard the most fragile parts of our ego and in ways all too similar to
how, primitively, we tried to limit our vulnerability in growing up. Back then, we
simply lacked sufficient emotional and cognitive resources to more productively
protect our integrity from all that felt threatening to it.

In the present, such “securely” established defenses make true partner intimacy
impossible. Unless our “wise adult” can override these defenses, our ability and
willingness to courageously address and then resolve our conflicts with our
partner are virtually nil.

Again citing Real, coming from your old (instinctual) brain versus your new (wiser,
more mature) brain, this is how, almost involuntarily, you’ll deal with your partner
in situations of disharmony:

1. Wrap yourself in righteousness.

2. Attempt to control your partner.
3. Give vent to every emotion and infraction [i.e., to defeat your
partner, “kitchen-sink” every complaint or injustice you can regurgitate
from way back when].
4. Retaliate.
5. Shut down—or some combination of all five of these losing
strategies.

Given Real’s Relational Life Therapy perspective—based on the undeniable

reality of human imperfection—he’s obliged to point out that these childish,
failing tactics to fix what’s not working for you in the relationship don’t usually
indicate you’re in a bad marriage. No. To Real, “This is marriage.”

© 2022 Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved.

About the Author

Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D., is the author of Paradoxical Strategies in

Psychotherapy and The Vision of Melville and Conrad. He holds
doctorates in English and Psychology. His posts have received
over 49 million views.

Online: Evolution of the Self, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter

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