After a hard year dealing with a health issue, a woman and her partner, both in their late 40s, arrived at The Couples Center to address what she described as his “distance and disconnection” from her.

TCC Saved our Marriage

I was curious about the difference in their stories. As I worked with them, I observed their communication pattern—the woman was very talkative, while the man was mostly quiet. Physically, her body was usually turned toward his, while he sat facing me, eyes downcast. I decided to check that out with them. I pointed out the pattern, then invited them to experiment with it: I advised the woman to continue talking as usual and then, giving the man a cue, had him look directly at her for a few seconds. The woman stopped immediately, in the middle of her sentence. She looked at me in surprise and said, “Now he’s listening. I always wanted him to be present with me and to feel heard, and it never happened until now.” The man also looked surprised, realizing that the reason why she’d repeat herself so much to him was that she never felt heard. He asked me, “Is it possible that such a small thing is so significant in our relationship?” The answer is yes. Our deep connection to and dependence on our partner makes us very sensitive to their body language. And this is no “small thing”—its messages are many times stronger than our words. But because the process is fast, automatic, and mostly unconscious, we can easily misinterpret it. In this case, she saw his lack of eye contact as a sign of his disinterest. But that wasn’t really the case…