It’s a situation that many couples find themselves in over time. Perhaps one member of the couple suddenly finds herself overwhelmed at work, clocking long hours in order to meet deadlines and look good in front of the boss. Or maybe one person becomes more involved in graduate school studies, marathon training, or football season, leaving minimal time leftover to share with the other person involved in the relationship. Whatever the situation might be, it’s pretty common that one member of a couple start feeling neglected at some point or another over the course of a long-term relationship. The question then becomes “What should we do about it?”
According to Elliott Connie, a licensed professional counselor who believes in Solution Focused Therapy, this type of situation can easily be remedied with the proper attitude and approach. Unfortunately, in most conflict situations, couples tend to focus too much on the problem instead of the solution. Elliott Connie suggests that instead of focusing on what the ignored party in question doesn’t want, he should focus on what he does want.
Let’s take a woman who feels neglected because her graduate student husband has recently been focusing on his dissertation. This woman’s natural inclination is likely to result in a conversation beginning with the words “This isn’t working for me; I’m so tired of being ignored.” The problem with this approach is that the woman in question has only highlighted the aspects of the relationship that aren’t currently working for her. By solely emphasizing what she doesn’t want, she is likely to fail in conveying the message of what she does want, which is a bit more attention from the person she loves. A better way to get this notion across is to make active suggestions as to what the other person can do to ameliorate the situation. For example, the statement “It would be great if you could take a nightly dinner break so that we can spend some time together” is bound to send a much more positive message than “All you do is work on your dissertation lately, and that stinks for me.”
In order to have a successful conversation, it is important to remember that the person you are speaking to is the person with whom you have chosen to spend your life. When a person is telling another person how neglected he feels, he is really, in a sense, trying to say, “You’re the person I love, and I want to spend more time with you.” When a person takes the negative route and says, “I hate feeling ignored,” it does not offer any helpful suggestions as to what the other member of the couple might do to change the situation. On the other hand, if a person is able to offer concrete suggestions as to how her partner might be able to offer her more attention, then the guilty party is given an opportunity to carry out those requests. Going back to the busy graduate student example, requests such as “Please set aside five minutes every hour to come upstairs and give me a quick hug” offer the dissertation-focused husband a concrete goal that he can try to achieve in order to make his wife feel better. At the same time, the husband is likely to react positively to his wife’s request because it is not a complaint or an attack, but rather, a suggestion rooted in her desire to share a brief moment of intimacy with the person she loves more than anyone else.
Of course, when a person is so caught up in feeling hurt and neglected, it’s not always easy to take such a positive approach. To help a person reach the point at which she’s ready to have a productive conversation, Elliott Connie suggests that the insulted party think back to a time when she didn’t feel ignored. In the case of the spousal grad school blues, the woman in question obviously, at one point, felt like she was truly the center of her partner’s world. Now all she has to do is remember that since her husband once knew how to accomplish the task of not ignoring her, he’ll be likely to use those methods again in order to achieve the same goal. Granted, he might need his memory jogged a bit. But with the proper conversational approach, he’ll have no reason not to try to make the situation better.
In any conflict, the people involved have two choices: They can either focus on the negative or focus on the positive. Sure, the latter might take a bit more effort, but the reward will be far greater.
