Oh, the Irony: Accepting Mate’s Flaws Can Help Get Rid of Them

Anyone who has tolerated a beloved’s irritating behavior will be at once perturbed and pleased at this paradox: People are not likely to change, but accepting a partner--annoying quirks and all--can inspire voluntary change.

If this seems like common sense handed down from grandma, in the world of marital therapy it’s new thinking on an old problem. Traditional couples therapy--which attempts to teach partners how to communicate and how to make positive changes to enhance satisfaction--succeeds only about half the time. Other couples relapse.

“A direct approach to change is not always efficacious,” said Andrew Christensen, a UCLA professor of psychology, who along with the late Neil S. Jacobson, a psychology professor at the University of Washington, examined decades of research on the efficacy of traditional couples therapy (including their own methods).

“When couples come [to therapy], the story they tell about the problem starts as really blame-focused and the two stories are competing. . . . The story becomes part of the problem. Trying to induce change, even with a positive approach, can exacerbate the problem.”

Traditional therapy sometimes polarizes couples further, leaving the partner with the offensive behavior feeling a bit like a cornered dog, defensive and resistant.

Enter “acceptance therapy” an alternative that turns traditional marital therapy upon its head. This new approach comes from Christensen and Jacobson, two of the nation’s most influential psychologists, who hoped to help couples who fall through the therapeutic cracks. Acceptance therapy aims to help partners learn to accept each other’s differences, which, paradoxically, can lead to voluntary change.

“What leads to acceptance involves . . . coming to a new understanding of the central problem in the relationship by developing a new story about it,” rather than a he-said, she-said version of the problem, said Christensen, co-author with Jacobson of “Reconcilable Differences” (Guilford Press, 2000), a book that describes in detail acceptance therapy.

“It involves people developing empathy for each other’s vulnerabilities . . . and it involves examining the problem from a distance.” To do the latter, Christensen said, a couple is taught to see a conflict as an “it” rather than as something a “partner does to you.” This enables the couple to see the problem in less personal terms and with less assigned blame.

The process can lead to acceptance and greater intimacy, theorizes Christensen, as partners expose more of their underbelly and learn more about what makes their mate do that irritating thing they do. Take the case of an over-controlling husband, said Christensen. After going through acceptance therapy with his wife, who was fed up with his master-of-the-universe ways, he started talking about the anxious feelings he experienced when the impulse to orchestrate all things overcame him. When partners feel accepted and understood, said Christensen, they are more likely to change willingly. Even if no change occurs, acceptance paves the way for intensified intimacy.

A word of warning: Acceptance therapy is not applicable for relationships where there is physical or psychological abuse. Further, Christensen considers infidelities a violation of a relationship that needs to be “forgiven, not accepted.”

But does the therapy work? Early indications are that it is effective. A pilot study of acceptance therapy had an 80% success rate compared with 64% for traditional couples therapy. A five-year study comparing the effectiveness of the two therapies upon 140 couples in distress--funded by the National Institute of Mental Health--is now underway.

Since conflict is a relationship staple, couples can take heart in one of the primary keys to acceptance therapy: “Conflict is a window on the vulnerabilities and sensitivities of warring partners; it offers the promise of greater connection as well as the threat of alienation,” write Christensen and Jacobson. By understanding conflicts and emotionally accepting each other’s positions in the conflict, they write, “a couple can achieve genuine intimacy.”

Quarreling has never looked so good.

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For more help: Couples who would like to pursue integrative couples therapy with a professional who has received training in this approach can consult the following Web site: https://depts.washington.edu/ccrstaff/ictlist.html.