January 19, 2004 Health

	photo essay
	Animal Attraction There's more than one way to make hay, as birds, bees and bonobos know
	graphic
	Where Our Sex Drive Comes From Mapping the origins of sex drive on the human body
	remedies
	Love Potions A guide to some of the medical treatments available for what ails our libidos
	self-test
	The Passionate Love Scale Determine just how you feel about that special (or ex-special) someone

At first the Crucible was a bit searing for Margee. "He forces you to see things in yourself that you haven't wanted to see. I used to think Ken's job was to take care of me by knowing how I felt. That's an idea embedded in the culture." Now, Margee says, she has learned to take care of herself. "I'm not dumping anything on him; I have worked my side of the issue. There is less unresolved tension. As a result, I feel love and want to move toward him."

The benefits of the weekend (cost: $925) inspired Margee to want to follow up with the Schnarch nine-day retreat ($2,400). Ken, less enthusiastic, offered a counterproposal. "I cut a deal with her. I said I would go with her to the retreat if I could go on a two-week bike trip in the French Alps." Sounds like Schnarchian self-differentiation in action.

MAKE AN EFT TURN ON RED

Listen to enough marriage plaints, and you may conclude that Tolstoy was wrong: unhappy families really are all alike. They argue over sex, money, the kids, the lack of free time. After five years of marriage, Tom, 39, and Suzanne, 35, sparred with increasing frequency and rancor over the usual "spending" issues. He thought she was spending too much money; she thought he wasn't spending enough time with her and their two children. The counseling they tried didn't help. "It just made the situation artificial," says Suzanne. She's the verbal one; Tom, from a military family, is the strong, silent type. "So when we would argue, he gets sort of blasted out of the water by me, and he shuts down and shuts me out. It escalated to the point where he was, like, 'I'm out of here.'"

Hoping to break the pattern, they went last May to see Douglas Tilley, a Maryland clinical social worker who uses EFT—Emotionally Focused Therapy—a procedure that, in direct opposition to Schnarch's Crucible, focuses on the emotional need for connection and closeness with your spouse. EFT was devised about 20 years ago by Sue Johnson, a professor of psychology at Ottawa University, and Les Greenberg, now a professor at York University in Canada. "In our culture, we have this funny thing where we see maturity as being independent, not needing other people," says Johnson. "But when the Twin Towers came down in New York, what did people around the world do? They held on to the people they were with, they phoned the person they depend upon the most."

Modern life has overloaded marriage, says Johnson. "Our sister no longer lives next door, our mother phones us once a month, we're too busy at work to create lasting bonds there. So we're even more dependent on our spouses than ever before." In a distressed relationship, that bond is fraying. Typically, one person criticizes and complains, while the other falls into a pattern of defending and withdrawing. "The amazingly sad thing," says Johnson, speaking of the typical pattern in couples, "is they love each other. The man loves his wife so desperately that he has put up this huge wall because he's so terrified he's going to hear that she's disappointed in him. Unless they can find a way into a more secure bond, they'll split."

To re-create a sense of connection between the couple, the EFT therapist creates an environment in which both spouses feel safe talking about their feelings, needs and fears. Like Suzanne and Tom, most couples are pleasantly surprised to hear that the feelings behind apparently hostile behavior are not rejection but a need to connect with their partner. Without that emotional security, Johnson says, all the communication skills in the world won't rebuild a relationship. "You can teach people communication skills up the wazoo," she says, "but if they're afraid of losing the person they depend on, they don't use them."

EFT is one of three approaches that the Society of Clinical Psychology, a division of the American Psychological Association, has found to be backed up by empirical research. Yet it hasn't become a mass therapy in the U.S. One reason may be that no one has yet written a best seller about EFT. And Johnson says EFT is not for abusive marriages. She once turned away a couple in which the husband was so verbally abusive that Johnson decided she shouldn't force the wife to reveal her deepest emotions. "I'm not going to encourage one person to do that when the other is standing there with a machine gun in hand," she says.

EFT seems to have disarmed Suzanne and Tom. Suzanne knows little about its theoretical bases—she calls it "EFT, EMF, whatever"—but she likes the results. "Since we have been going to therapy, Tom says a huge burden has been lifted off him. He's never talked about this kind of stuff before in his life." He now spends much more time with Suzanne and the children and less time with his buddies at the sports bar. Twice a month the couple put the children to bed and have a date—either at home, over a delicious dinner, or out at a restaurant. "We're at the point where if we're having hard times," Suzanne says, "it brings us together rather than apart."

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