The term “emotional gridlock” was first put into the therapy literature by Dr. David Schnarch in 1991 with publication of Constructing the Sexual Crucible. Emotional gridlock is a pervasive but rarely understood phenomena in relationships. It applies to other relationships as well as marriage. Emotional gridlock is one of the people-growing processes in relationships that stems from differentiation. On the surface emotional gridlock is a stalemate or impasse in your relationship, a complete lack of movement or inability to move forward.
When you're gridlocked, your relationship looks like it's at a standstill although it's bubbling beneath the surface. Emotional gridlock is a powerful dynamic process. It is important to understand what we mean by emotional gridlock, because there are lots of different ways you can envision what’s happening. Other people have subsequently used this term in different ways, so we need to clarify what we mean here. Common misunderstandings
Emotional gridlock is not a “Mexican standoff.” This is a cliché for a tense confrontation between adversaries, guns drawn and ready to shoot, in a fight that neither can win. Both are willing to kill the other, neither wants to start a shoot out they die in, and neither side will relinquish their weapons for fear of being shot by the other. How you see marital problems greatly shapes how you deal with them, and seeing emotional gridlock as a Mexican standoff guarantees you won’t deal with it well.
Emotional gridlock is not simply a conflict of non-negotiable values. If this were the case, gridlock would be easier to deal with. Marriage teaches you that many things you thought were non-negotiable become negotiable when the stakes become high enough. Many issues in marriage are forced-choice, and you don’t have the luxury of taking a stand on an issue in a vacuum. (See the thought “Two-Choice Dilemmas” for more on this pattern of differentiation.)
Emotional gridlock is not simply a battle of wills. It's true that partners often take rigid adversarial positions with each other. This is particularly true when they depend on a reflected sense of self. But once you get your willfulness under control, emotional gridlock doesn’t go away because there’s a lot more going on. At times gridlock can be caused by willfulness and value conflicts, but these are one-dimensional views. Emotional gridlock is multi-dimensional and dynamic. Gridlock involves many aspects of a relationship and both partners’ makeup. Gridlock is very much tied to your 4 Points of Balance (level of differentiation). Gridlock can spill over from one relationship issue to another. Gridlock involves the process of elimination which happens over time. To make sense of all this, let's start by explaining emotional gridlock. An accurate picture of emotional gridlock
Think of a traffic jam in downtown New York. Nothing moves, but the system is dynamic, not static. One driver's attempts to move are blocked by another' driver's car, which is also similarly blocked. It’s not simply stubbornness. One couldn’t back up and accommodate the other even if he or she wanted to. There is something (another car) that prevents them from backing up and getting out of each other’s way. All key intersections are blocked. No one can move forward, backwards or sideways. It’s not reducible to a battle of wills, road rage, or an urge to kill each other. Drivers can’t get out of each other’s way even if they want to. Relationships are often like that too.
Emotional gridlock occurs when one partner's preferences or preferred position is blocked by what the other person prefers to do (or not do). Or one partner’s preferred way of doing things is incompatible with how the other wants to handle things. Partners often don’t start out with an adversarial stance or set their wills against each other. Gridlock easily develops by partners going out of their way to accommodate each other, and validate each other. This is why it’s not a Mexican standoff or a battle of wills or reducible to incompatible values.
In emotional gridlock, both partners are stuck. At the outset of a relationship partners are eager to accommodate. You accommodate when you can and have no desire to block each other. But eventually you and your partner can't accommodate each other without
* violating your sense of self, or * giving up something you hold dear, or * tolerating more anxiety and discomfort.
When you reach this point, you and your partner won't accommodate each other any longer. At this point the two of you are gridlocked. Antagonism, hostility, willful defiance, and passive-aggressiveness start to rise. This may not have been the source of gridlock, but it is often the result. Gridlock commonly arises from depending on your partner for a positive reflected sense of self, expecting him or her to accommodate you to keep your anxiety down and your feelings in check.
If you think you can avoid gridlock by compromising and negotiating, guess again. Couples who compromise and negotiate everything end up gridlocked too. Eventually you end up with no way to compromise and keep your integrity intact. It turns out emotional gridlock can also be caused by the sheer process of elimination.
me: 42 | STBXH: 41 | T: 18 | M: 10 | separation: Jan 3, 2010 | they deserve better: S7 & D4 current thread: http://tinyurl.com/3y8sxcp .: first breathe, then heal, then start LIVING :.
