Love Lessons

Miller began seeing couples conjointly in 1964, well before there was such a thing as family therapy. Quickly he discovered they were relying on the therapist to be the problem-solver. "I saw myself actually creating a dependency," he says. "I wanted to teach couples how to be their own best problem-solvers."

For Miller, effective conflict resolution starts with the self—self-awareness, self-caring, self-honesty, knowing what one wants and valuing it enough to speak up for it clearly. "Lots of pathology grows out of not knowing yourself," he says. "Caring is listening to yourself, and owning what you've done and haven't done." Then listen to your partner do the same.

The signature component of Miller's approach is "The Awareness Wheel," a floor-mat map that prompts partners to systematically review the different "zones" of inner information—thoughts, feelings, wants, actions, sensory data—that influence the problems they may have to confront. By physically moving to each zone on the mat, and addressing each other with information appropriate to that zone, couples learn the fundamentals of talking effectively. Especially by getting their wants and feelings out in the open, Miller believes, partners can solve their problems.

"It's simple but powerful," says Miller, who drew on 25 years of research and every school and movement of psychology to create the mat. "In one month, couples can make dramatic changes in the way they relate. The learning isn't just intellectual; it's kinesthetic." And if there's one thing mates need to do, it's learn these techniques through every portal to the brain, so they can access them during times of stress when the natural impulse may be to attack or run away.

"The map also helps couples create a common operating system," Miller says. Most of all, he says it helps a person manage him- or herself—and, pointedly, not the other. "They allow individuals to stay engaged in a situation—connected with themselves and their insides, and their spouse and their spouse's insides," Miller says.

Relationship Enhancement

Around the same time Miller was putting together his ideas, Bernard Guerney, Ph.D., then a young professor of psychology at Penn State, now professor emeritus, and ever a maverick thinker, was coming to the conclusion that all psychotherapy is really psychoeducation. "Therapy is simply education after a problem develops," he says. Having concluded that it was more efficient for couples to help each other resolve their own difficulties, he created a course called Relationship Enhancement (RE). Its starting point is empathy, or compassion training—learning to see things from a partner's perspective. Empathy, Guerney insists, is what people are really seeking in marriage, and this expectation represents a major break with the past: "People are looking for someone to be emotionally supportive, a friend, a helpmate, a soulmate."

First and foremost in RE is empathic listening, then comes empathic responding. Partners learn how to express themselves in an honest way that helps their mate preserve their self-image without invoking defensiveness. "You need to present your pain—pain your partner has caused—in the context of your love for him or her, so he or she will be willing to make changes," says Guerney. "To convey one's feelings to one's partner is transformative to both."

Guerney, who now runs the National Institute of Relationship Enhancement in Bethesda, Maryland, has come to see that marriage partners typically don't express their needs. Over time, many learn not to ask for what they want—while they secretly wish their partners understood these wants. "Their frustration builds," says Guerney, "so then they ask for what they want—but in an attacking way. And that guarantees they won't get it. Hostilities worsen and partners withdraw." Guerney says people have to learn to ask for what they want in a nonthreatening way that's likely to lead to cooperation. "It creates a positive cycle that keeps love alive and growing," he says.

Using the X-ray as a guiding metaphor, Guerney encourages couples to look for feelings and motives their partners haven't expressed. "It's only then they can begin discussing what they can do to help themselves and each other," he says. Guerney describes this as a process of identification, of not emphasizing the differences between people. "We teach people to imagine themselves as the other person."

To help couples get it right, trained coaches work closely and privately with each couple, showing them what to do. "Most people react reflexively," Guerney says. "We help them realize they always have choices in interactions. We slow down the process of responding so that they can see their choices and take control of their relationship."