What Barrier Behavior Patterns Exist in Marital Relationships?
Study the following descriptions of negative behavior patterns.
_____1. Mistrust: Believing that-your spouse dislikes you and does not accept you for who you are. Always on guard, you are looking to be taken advantage of in the relationship.
_____2. Fear of rejection: Believing that your spouse couldn't possibly accept you or your ideas. Knowing you will be rejected sooner or later, you are always watching for the slightest sign of it.
_____3. Need for approval: Needing ongoing approval from your spouse to validate yourself and your feelings. You are always cautious in the way you act, believe, feel, or speak so as not to offend or lose this approval.
_____4. Insecurity: Believing that you cannot rely on yourself or your spouse to always take care of you. You are anxious about how your personal needs will be met under every circumstance.
_____5. Inflexibility: Your way is the only or the best way to relate, act, interact, communicate, and solve problems. It is holding to a rigid, structured, absolutist belief about the way things must be in your relationship.
_____6. Lack of Autonomy: Your spouse must act, believe, think, feel, behave, and relate like you do and spend all free time with you. It is not allowing each of you to behave as independent, functioning human beings.
_____7. Lack of honest, open, or effective communication: Communication that lacks active listening, effective, helpful responding, and open problem solving. Communication is either closed, one way, or parallel (talking side-by-side with no one listening).
_____8. Avoidance of conflict: A belief that if you and your spouse never argue, fight, or disagree you have a better chance of a lasting relationship. Afraid of confrontation, you always give in to the other's ideas.
_____9. Lack of respect for the rights of the other: A conscious or unconscious belief that your rights are the only ones that count. Thus, your spouse's rights are ignored, negated, discounted, or offended. Your rights remain supreme.
_____10. Fear of intimacy: A belief that if your spouse gets too close, all your most secret feelings and fear will be revealed. Having this knowledge would give your spouse power over you; you would be completely vulnerable.
_____11. Need for control: You can only enjoy this relationship if you are in complete control. Otherwise you will be smothered, taken advantage of, or ignored. Your spouse would have power over you; again, you would be completely venerable
_____12. Need for power: You feel you must exert the most power or strength of will in the relationship. Otherwise you will be consumed, ignored, powerless therefore ineffectual.
_____13. Irresponsibility: You take no responsibility for the relationship or for your spouse. You do nothing to nurture the relationship or to help your spouse cope with life. (“Hey, it’s not my fault.'')
_____14. Over-responsible: You alone are responsible for the welfare and wellbeing of both the relationship and of your spouse. You constantly do things to make the relationship better and to cover for your spouse's lack of responsibility. (''This has to be done and there is no one to do it but me.”)
_____15. Low self-worth/low self-esteem: A belief that you are worthless, of no value, and that you have nothing to offer your spouse in a relationship. You do not take the initiative in the relationship; you feel or act inferior, defensive, tentative, or resistant.
_____16. Fantasy or idealized relationship: Believing how a relationship should be and how people should interact in marriage. These standards idealistic and unrealistic, are often unobtainable. Their lack of attainment leads to depression and dissatisfaction with your marriage, your spouse and/or yourself.
_____17. Lack of healthy role models: Living in a highstress family of origin, you may lack appropriate examples or role models of a healthy marital relationship. Do you know what ''normal'' is? Trying to build a marital team with no frame of reference would be like taking a 747 jet out for a ride without prior flight training or knowledge.
_____18. Chronic hostility: Due to your high-stress background, you harbor resentment and hostility toward yourself and others. You cannot bide this hostility, and your spouse often misreads the negativity and hostility, taking it personally. Hurt feelings and misunderstanding are the results.
_____19. Hiding feelings: A belief that you should not let your spouse know how you are feeling, especially if the feelings are negative or self-deprecating. The result of not revealing your feelings, be they positive or negative, is that your spouse is left in the dark and must resort to guessing or mind reading.
_____20. Lack of positive reinforcement: A belief that no reinforcement is needed for your spouse's good behavior. As a result, your spouse gets no verbal or physical support regarding appreciation, being wanted, and needed. This leads to a sense of apathy, lethargy, and a lack of desire to please on the part of your spouse.
_____21. Overdependence: A belief that without your spouse you are nothing, incompetent, meaningless. It is clinging to your partner in such a way that you never act independently, requiring and expecting full support for the majority of your thinking, believing, and problem solving.
_____22. Too independent: A belief that you cannot afford to risk depending on anyone except yourself for fear that you will become too vulnerable to being hurt, let down, rejected or disappointed. Without a full and complete response to any request for assistance, support, or help. your feel separate, unconnected, alone. But you can't let anyone think you depend on them; that would be too scary.
_____23. Chronic depression: A state of melancholy and low feelings about yourself that pervades your marriage and your life. Your behavior and emotional state often give the impression that your spouse is at fault. There is no appreciation of the marital relationship, or the blessings in your life, just negative thinking.
_____24. Avoidance of risk taking: A fear of failure that results in dishonest feelings and communication. In order for a marital relationship to come into being or to grow, active risk-taking by the spouses is essential. In the absence of healthy risk taking, marital relationships stagnate.
_____25. Absence of fun: A belief that having fun is frivolous, unnecessary to nurture the marital relationship. Such a belief leads to spouses taking themselves and their relationship too seriously, becoming ''problem focused'' in their mutual marital interactions. All spontaneity is soon gone.
