James Cordova

Like, I'm feeling uncomfortable.

I'm feeling some distress.

And you're the problem.

And if you would change, I would feel better.

And so, yeah, of course, that's the way couples come in.

That's what they're asking for.

And warm-hearted, beneficent therapists tried to meet them right there in the thing that they were asking for.

It's true.

I was originally trained in what was called behavioral marital therapy, which was very much a change-oriented approach to doing couple therapy.

And the changes that we would work on with couples is increasing the frequency with which they were doing nice things for each other.

We called that behavior exchange.

Teaching them how to communicate more effectively, teaching them how to problem-solve more effectively.

But as it turned out, even though it is a therapy that has demonstrable effectiveness, none of those skills would follow couples home.

So there is some change happening, but it's difficult for couples to sustain it.

When we first get together, we're adjusting to each other and the things that are easy to adjust to, we adjust to so quickly that we almost don't even notice that we've done it.

Like which side of the bed are you gonna sleep on?

Which side of the bed am I gonna sleep on?

Not usually an issue.

And then just above that are what I think of as like mezzanine level problems that we might have to struggle with a little bit.

Sometimes they take weeks, months or years, but we do eventually solve them and then we're good.