The knots in which troubled couples find themselves, from hurt feelings to entrenched defensiveness, blaming, and stonewalling, are often bewildering, disorienting, and painful, both to the couples themselves and to those who attempt to help them. These knots defy the depth of caring and importance intimate partners feel for one another and are resistant to traditional methods of helping couples such as techniques for better communication and negotiation. The Secret Language of Intimacy explores the hidden elements in couple dynamics which drive the formation of these knots. Ironically, these usually unseen, unappreciated elements often derive from the same positive qualities that draw couple members together.
In the first third of the book, Robert G. Lee presents his workshop for couples and those interested in couple dynamics (“The Secret Language of Intimacy”), which has been offered around the world. This workshop, which is based on Lee’s research on couple systems and on a relational Gestalt perspective of people and the humanity they carry, has enabled couples to understand the hidden field-regulating processes of shame and belonging active in their interactions, unlocking the potential of what they mean to each other. Couple members learn to read their own secret language of intimacy – including how every instance of shame is an attempt to protect. They experience how heart-wrenching episodes of disconnection offer a transforming opportunity for greater connection and intimacy.
In the second portion of the book, a group of distinguished couple theorists and practitioners review their own sense of the hidden elements in couple interactions, which are infused with the issues and wisdom of the cultures in which they reside. Margherita Spagnuolo-Lobb, from Italy, writes sensitively and eloquently of the delicate process of meeting another, which is at the heart of every relationship. Marina Ayo Balandrazo & Enrique Mercadillo give a compelling account of how couples in Mexico can be caught between traditional, intergenerational values with strong intergenerational ties on one hand and a new global economic presence in Mexico that promises economic, professional, and social development with an individual focus, on the other. Barbara & Edward Lynch, from the US, focus on family of origin contributions to the hidden taboos and knots in couple relationships. From Australia, Jenny & Brian O’Neill present their conceptualization of a couple as a “oneness,” which allows a deeper appreciation of couples’ experience and development. And Frank Staemmler, from Germany, focuses on the process of clarification of partner responsibilities, how partners operate from their own independent systems of constructions, and the elaboration and discovery of joint meaning.
Robert G. Lee, Ph.D., a psychologist in private practice in Newton, Massachusetts, USA, has written extensively and presented widely on shame and belonging as regulator processes of the relational field. Robert’s books include The Voice of Shame (1996), The Values of Connection (2004), The Secret Language of Intimacy (2008), and Relational Child, Relational Brain (2011). He is an editor at GestaltPress, a faculty member for the Advanced Child and Adolescent Program at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland and an international trainer and visiting faculty member of a number of Gestalt training programs in Australia, Canada, Europe, Mexico, and the USA.
