25. Making Moves in your Marriage with Jackie Aston

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Jackie Aston:  https://jackieaston.com 

James Christensen:  https://jamesmchristensen.com

Jackie Aston is a licensed psychotherapist with over a decade of experience working with individuals and couples in Washington, DC, and Maryland, as well as coaching clients nationwide and abroad. She is the founder of Clarity and Growth Therapy, where she supports clients navigating stress and anxiety, parenting challenges, relationship dynamics, and the demands of career and family life.

Jackie earned her Master of Social Work from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Her clinical background includes several years at an eating disorder treatment center, where she worked in both partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient programs, treating clients with complex eating disorders, mood disorders, and anxiety, as well as supporting their families. She later joined a group practice before launching her own private practice.

Jackie’s therapeutic approach is rooted in differentiation theory—an integrated method particularly effective for individuals and couples facing anxiety, relational conflict, and sexual issues. She is also trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and mindfulness-based practices.

Outside the therapy room, Jackie enjoys spending time with her husband and two daughters, being outdoors, and traveling.

Transcript:

James: So my guest today is Jackie Aston. She's a licensed therapist based in Maryland, and she works with clients all over the world, both individuals and couples. And Jackie, you were just telling me about a woman who really wanted a shelf built in her closet, and she developed a strategy to get her husband to build it. Can you tell me that again?

Jackie: Yeah, she wanted this shelf fixed and done on her terms, so she wanted him to get it done right away. Now he's been really busy at work, didn't have much energy, and he says to her, I can get it done on Saturday. I think this is like Monday night. She says, I can get it done on Saturday. And she doesn't like that. It's not done. And in fact, her room's pretty cluttered now 'cause they had to get all the stuff out of the closet and she says, well, I think I want it. Let's, you can do it by, let's do it by Thursday. And that way we'll have time over the weekend and we won't have to, you won't have to do it then. And it will be done sooner. And he then snaps back at her, is frustrated. You're not hearing me. I'm not gonna do it. You don't see how busy I am, and she's thinking, well, come on. We can have a compromise. I'm wanting it done today. You're wanting it done Saturday, so let's do Thursday. And compromise doesn't really work here. First off, he's pretty tired. But the other reason is if she wants to live in New York and he wants to live in California, a compromise would put them in the middle of the country and then nobody's happy. So she wasn't really willing to consider her husband and what was gonna work for him. And he was being, he was being honest. He didn't have the energy for it, but he was gonna do it soon. So anyway, her whole strategy was, how can I get this on my terms and my way, or at least a compromise. Versus like really considering her husband and what he was willing and able to do. And then he didn't handle that well when she didn't, and now he's sort of making moves on her in terms of being a perpetrator and, frustrated with her and not handling the conflict well either.

James: So you said the word perpetrator, which comes from this idea about the victim or the trauma triangle. Can you tell me more about the trauma triangle?

Jackie: And we can all be perpetrators, victims and rescuers that's in the trauma triangle. And in this instance, he's a perpetrator when he's yelling back at her and trying to make her feel badly for what she wants. Instead of doing it collaboratively and she's playing the victim of like, I can't, no one does things my way and you don't listen to me. That's kind of a victim position. The rescuer position can play out differently. A rescuer could be as if the wife goes to her friend or sister and says, my husband's so terrible. He's not putting the shelf together. This is so hard. My room's so cluttered. And then the, the friend says, well, why don't you stand up to your husband? Or, she tries to smooth things over and sort of make thing or, or make things better, I guess I should say. Sometimes the husband and wife switch into rescuer position and some switch into victim position in the same conflict.

James: But it's a useful idea to think about because it's a common way that people make moves is by stepping into a victim position or stepping into a perpetrator position and so it gives me a framework to think about, wait, am I taking one of these positions in my marriage? Neither of which is going to lead to me having a better marriage.

Jackie: Yes, it really is. I think it's a good way to think about it as a position. It's like, how can I get someone to see me in a certain way? How can I get things my way? How can I not do what my partner wants me to do, and they're just positions. So if I play the victim, then someone can feel sorry for me. And maybe if I feel like I'm saying, oh, I'm a terrible mother because you told me I shouldn't be yelling at you, and I'm playing the victim and I'm, oh, I'm just so terrible. Now, the rescuer, which could be the child or the husband or partner. Could come and say, oh no, you're not terrible and I really needed to do this. And trying to make it all better. But we can take a position versus really collaborating or confronting ourselves over, wait, maybe that wasn't really good of me, what I just did.

James: so if I take a victim position, I'm nudging my other family members into the perpetrator or rescuer positions, encouraging them to take those positions.

Jackie: Well, I think you're more hoping you're getting your way. It's sort of controlling from the bottom. Like, I can get control in this way, or I can get them to back off in this way. If I take this position, I can get them to feel guilty and then maybe they'll do it my way or, I can give other examples of it, but I think it's really the goal is to get your way and I think you hope that the other person does it your way?

James: The way I think about this is somewhat different. I think about three primary ways that we maneuver or manipulate other people. And the first one is using intense emotions. So if you don't do what I want, then you have to deal with my intense emotions. And the second one is emotional withdrawal. So if you don't do what I want, then I'm going to withdraw my love and affection from you. And then third is twisting reality. Where in order to get you to do what I want, I'm going to make it seem like my way makes a lot more sense than your way, even though it doesn't really, which I think the story you told. It seems like she was kind of going for option three, where she was kind of twisting reality, making it seem like his approach was unreasonable when realistically, the way you were presenting, it sounded like his approach actually was quite reasonable. And he was going for option A where he was using intense emotions to try to get her to back off. you think?

Jackie: Yeah. I mean, I think he became the perpetrator when he started yelling at her and snapping back. I think there was something else you just said about what was the second.

James: The second one is withdrawing, so when you don't do what I want, I withdraw.

Jackie: I think that's a victim. Yeah. I think that's a victim position. Of withdrawing. So I think those are all, I think that's, there's different ways to look at it, and I think I like what you're saying. But I do think that that is sort of a victim position to withdraw and you could sulk, you could go away from the conflict and not handle it well.

James: Yeah. What would this couple need to do to have a better marriage? What do they have to change?

Jackie: Well, if we're just talking about collaboration as the starting point, I don't think it's a hanging offense to be most of the time the things that we do when we're in the perpetrator, victim or rescuer position. I just think we can do that for different reasons, but I think the self-awareness piece is really important. I think we can sometimes deceive ourselves that we're not doing what we're doing. But if we can be aware of that, and sometimes it's our partner helps us to be aware of that, then we can do things differently. I think we can also set boundaries. So if the husband is not able to do the shelf on Thursday, and his wife is throwing a fit. He doesn't have to give into it. He can say, I'm not able to do it on Thursday. I am gonna come back to it on Saturday, and he can set a boundary with her in that interaction as well. I also think that there's that accountability piece of, oh wait, like I see what I'm doing here too, and this is unfair that I am yelling right now or pushing for my way. And I think we can acknowledge that in the moment. I think we can acknowledge it to ourselves then it allows, we could be willing to not do that, to not yell.

James: When I work with couples on this kind of scenario, I often try to get them to focus on what energy or what kind of energetic response am I inviting from my partner. And so if I approach you with a certain energy, I'm inviting you to do something that corresponds to that energy. And so, in this case. The husband is rebelling a little bit against his wife's pressure and the way she was behaving was kind of inviting him or nudging him towards that response. And so, to use your language, she was taking a victim position, which nudges him into the perpetrator position, and he's still responsible for doing what he did. Like he treated her unkindly and that's his responsibility. she made it easier for him to step in. She enabled that transition into that perpetrator energy where he started to be mean to her, if that makes sense.

Jackie: Yeah, it's sort of like they triggered each other. Is that kind of what you're saying? That sort of the way she set it up made it harder for him and so he went the perpetrator route.

James: So a dynamic I see a lot is where one partner is highly critical and the other one is highly irresponsible. And so, sometimes say if the wife is being highly critical, she might be taking kind of a scolding mother position, and she's critical and she's looking down and she's judging and she's complaining. And the husband in that situation will often start behaving in a very childish way. So low responsibility, a lot of sarcasm and attitude and just refusing to be an adult in the relationship, which is obviously he shouldn't be doing any of those things.

Jackie: Yeah. Yeah.

James: to the other partner. The childish position is easier to see and easier to understand because obviously this grown man should not be acting like a child. The scolding mother position is harder because on the surface it looks like she's being really responsible. She's doing all the work, she's paying all the bills, blah, blah, blah. She's taking care of all the responsibilities, but she's also accompanying that with a lot of this scolding, judgmental energy. and that's kind of what I need to point out is saying, what you're doing is making it harder for your husband to step up and be an adult. It's so delicate because he's still responsible for what he's doing, that both people are responsible for what they're doing and the energetic influence they're having on each other, and he's having the same influence on her by being irresponsible and makes it harder for her to step down from the scolding mother position.

Jackie: Yes. Yeah, I think that's a good example. I was thinking how she's positioning herself as sort of better and one up. Which most of us don't like when someone does that. So, he doesn't like it and his reaction is immature, but I can understand he doesn't like it. But her even taking that position of sort of like, I'm doing everything. And my question would be like, how did they get there in the first place where she is doing everything and now there's all this resentment, but she's sort of making it as if she is superior because she's taking on all these responsibilities.

James: I see that happen a lot. Sometimes I called it a parental energy where I'm an adult and I have an adult relationship, but I'm taking a parental role, I'm treating my partner as if they were a child and my partner often will be behaving as if they were a child. But it's a two player game and it's just as important for me to step out of my parental role as it is for my partner to step outta the child role.

Jackie: Yeah. It makes me think, I wonder if it's just easier because that kind of role is familiar already from the upbringing. So if your parent is telling you what to do, or if the parent is talking down to the child, they're used to handling it in a certain way. So it's easy to play that out in the relationship.

James: And a lot of the people who take this parental role were thrust into a parental position in their teen years. And so I've seen a lot of people who had to be parents when they were teenagers, they had to take care of younger siblings usually, and their parents were advocating responsibility, enforcing these young children, sometimes even younger than teens to be parental. And when that pattern got kind of locked into their brains and they're used to treating. So when I'm a kid, my siblings should be peers, not my responsibility. That's not ideal. But if I get used to treating my peers as my responsibility and someone who's inferior to me. Then when I get into marriage, it's natural for me to take that with my partner and I can step into that parental energy.

Jackie: I think that's helpful when a couple is doing couples therapy, that they often learn that about their partner, that that's sort of why the partner is behaving in that parental way. It makes it more understandable and usually the other partner can have more compassion for them. And I think also the partner who's in this parental role, because they're used to it, I think they start to recognize it as not functioning well for them now in their adult relationship. Maybe it worked for them earlier and I think they learned to track it and also have compassion for themselves for it. So, of course they have to decide if they're gonna face it and do something about it, but I think sometimes it's even hard for them to recognize it in the moment, what they're doing, that they're in this kind of dynamic with their partner.

James: Do you talk to your clients about parental blindness, about being blind to the worst parts of your parents and how that reflects on your blindness towards yourself? Is that something that you work with?

Jackie: Maybe what I say is I help them see how they're blind to themselves and that they went blind to some of the things that their parents were doing.

James: Yeah, that's exactly it. I call it parental blindness, but that's a term I made up.

Jackie: Oh, okay. Well, that's helpful. Yes. It has to do with the parents who are nurturing them or not nurturing them, but raising them.

James: Yeah, it's interesting because it works both ways. 'cause I'm blind to my parents, but if I have children, I'm also blind to the way that I'm doing similar things that my parents did. So it's really hard for me to see myself clearly until I see my parents clearly. And that's what my experience with clients has been, that that's one of the things that holds people back from personal growth is if they don't see themselves clearly they can't change and usually the thing that is most contributing to that blindness is one of my parents. I'm seeing one or both of my parents in an unrealistically positive light. And so especially their intentions, what were their intentions in treating me this way? What did they know about what they were doing? And so I'm perceiving them as a lot more innocent than they really were. and that leads to me perceiving myself as a lot more innocent than I really am.

Jackie: That's a good point. I feel like when I do talk about it, many clients don't wanna see it. They'd almost rather it be their fault. I think. I think the idea of a caretaker not behaving well or deliberately doing something that would be harmful to them or inconsiderate of them. And I think that's just hard for us to see. But I don't think it serves them well 'cause then they tend to perpetuate similar dynamics in their relationship. And they have the blindness too. But do you feel like that too? Like clients don't wanna see it.

James: Yeah, I think that's the way brains work. So I think that a child's brain is actually designed to see parents in a soft light. It makes sense for a child to see their parents in a soft light. I think most parents reinforce that because they want their children to see them as innocent. They're all the time deceiving their children into thinking that they're less guilty than they really are.

Jackie: Yes. Yes. Yeah. That really is confusing to the child.

James: And it's so hard. I have kids and it's really hard for me to myself fully to my children because like everybody else, I would like my children to see me as better than I really am. I really would. And it is one of the most powerful things I have done is when I have revealed to my children. So when I've come to see myself differently and then I've gone and talked to my children, they're older now, but I talked to them as adults and say, Hey, I wanna talk to you about this thing that happened between us a few years ago. And you had this view of it and I had this view of it. And looking back now, you were much more right about this than I was. And that's a hard thing for me to do, but I've seen that have a really positive impact on my children.

Jackie: Yes, absolutely. And I think that's like a more solid thing to do. But I agree with you. I have young kids. It would be nice to always be seen in a certain light. But I also realize that there's a lot of suffering that happens when we try to push for an image that we are better than we actually are being and behaving. And I think seeing my clients suffer from it, my own experiences suffering from it, I think it's pretty motivating to handle my kids differently or to go back if I didn't handle them well. Because I don't want them to suffer from it because I needed to be seen a certain way.

James: Yeah, I didn't really grow into this kind of understanding until my kids were older, and so, especially my older children didn't benefit as much from it as say your children would from your growth just because your kids are younger.

Jackie: They are younger. Yeah, I think that's, it's kind of hard to look at it. Yeah.

James: and I can offer them a certain amount of revisiting the past and saying, Hey, this is how I see myself now. That's not nearly, it is powerful. It's not as powerful as if I had figured this stuff out 15 years earlier.

Jackie: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And I see that I'm gonna, unfortunately, mess up my kids in my own way. We just are not, none of us are gonna be perfect parents, but I do think that you're right. I feel fortunate that my kids are young and as I deal with my own self, they benefit.

James: Mm-hmm.

Jackie: Which is I think why people, couples come together and come to therapy. It's not just between them. I think they sometimes see they're really hurting their kids. They might think their partner's the one hurting their kids, but the relationship is hurting them.

James: That is something that goes over well with most of the couples I work with, where they can see the impact of the tension between them is having on their children. And so that's often very motivating to a couple who otherwise would be hesitant to because the difficulty level's pretty high. So if I want to drastically improve the quality of my marriage. For me, that's the hardest thing I've ever done and continues to be the hardest thing I'm doing now. And so when I encourage a couple to take this step, I often talk to them about the benefits. This will pass on to your children and grandchildren. I compare it to financial wealth. If I become wealthy in my lifetime, I can pass that wealth onto my children and grandchildren. And if I become relationally wealthy in my lifetime, I can also pass that relational wealth. And so if I improve my marriage, my children will have better marriages and my grandchildren will have better marriages. And that's, to me, much more valuable than passing on millions of dollars.

Jackie: Yes, I think that's a really good point. I also like to relate it to, we spend a lot of money on education.

James: That's a good way to look at it. Yeah.

Jackie: it's like spending money on therapy because you're helping your kids emotionally. You become more educated, help your kids become more educated. You handle things differently. It's such a good investment for your future. For your kids' future.

James: Yeah, I mean, couples therapy is the thing that saved me, individually. I hired my therapist to work with me individually and after a couple weeks she said, James, I'd like your wife to come work with us.

Jackie: Yeah.

James: She needed to see how I treated my wife in real time. She needed to see it with her own eyes and she needed to see how we treat each other and what was really happening in the marriage. And things kind of took off from that point. It's been this remarkable transformation for me where my marriage is so much better than it used to be.

Jackie: Mm-hmm.

James: And I am so much more content. Like my anxiety level has dropped by 90% and I'm able to be present with people and just things that have always been hard for me have gotten less hard. And I enjoy my life a lot more. And my relationship with my adult children has improved and it all started in couples therapy.

Jackie: Yeah, it's like the impact of that work is huge, even on ourselves of sort of feeling like we respect ourselves more for the work we do to overcome our struggles, and just feeling more at peace with that, more settled about it, that feels good too.

James: So tell me more about do you help people see the moves they're making? How do you approach that?

Jackie: Yeah. I've really liked our trainings with Natalia because she really slows things down. So a couple comes in with a situation, and this happened and this happened. Well, I'm trying to figure out what each person is doing to get a really clear picture. And to see if they agree with the picture that the partner is describing. So I'm slowing it down, trying to understand, and then I'm kind of looking at what moves are they making on each other, if any? Well, one is maybe taking a superior position or maybe one is taking a victim position, and helping that person see that that actually is part of the relationship dysfunction. If you are feeling sorry for yourself or you're feeling, and again, things can be really hard, so not to say that it shouldn't feel hard, but sort of like I'm powerless to do anything about it. That idea, you can't control your partner, but I'm trying to have each person see themselves so that they show up differently in the relationship. And if one person shifts, the relationship shifts.

James: Mm.

Jackie: I don't know that the other person always changes, but I think a lot of people come to couples therapy hoping that they can figure things out. And so I think I'm trying to have each person get clear on how they're playing into the dynamic and maybe why they're doing it so they don't have to think, well, I'm this terrible monster, but actually maybe it makes sense why I am being manipulative. Maybe I've been manipulated my whole life, or maybe this is how I get control or power. And in my household, I didn't have much growing up. So I think making sense of that for each person, getting clear on that, and then figuring out how to shift their dynamics so that they're actually being more collaborative. And then there's a possibility for deeper connection.

James: I think about it as I can create a new, I spent the first 20 years of my marriage trying to directly influence my wife to get her to do what I wanted, which didn't work. And the way I think about that now is that my wife was very determined to maintain her own freedom and sovereignty as an individual. And when I would pressure her, she would respond by making sure that I was not able to control her. What does have a positive impact on her is when I change the way I show up in the relationship. Now she's living in a new environment and the easiest thing for her to do is to respond in a positive way to positive changes in the environment, just as the easiest thing for her to do before was to respond in a negative way to negative changes in the environment. So when I put in a kind of judgemental controlling energy into the relationship, the easiest way for her to respond is by withdrawing, rebelling or protesting or pushing me away in some way that's the easiest option. It's not that she couldn't have done better, she could have, but it's not the easiest thing. And so. When I put in a certain kind of energy in the relationship, it does invite the same kind of energy from her.

Jackie: Yeah. I think you make it easier for her, but I like that you didn't wait for her to shift the energy. Like someone's gotta do it. And we'd always like it to be our partner first. And you made it more, I think made it more possible for her or more, she'd be more willing. But you don't actually need your partner to do it, as you've talked about, for you to do it first, someone's got to, yes.

James: Do you ever find, in certain scenarios, like when you work with a couple, do you ever find that it's going to be a lot easier for one partner to go first than the other one? Does that ever seem likely to you? Like do you ever find yourself thinking, well, I basically need to talk to partner A because if I try to get partner B to go first, it's gonna be a lot more difficult to make it work that way.

Jackie: Yeah, I'm trying to think. Is there an example for when.

James: An example would be the scolding mother thing. I often find like if I'm working with a parental partner, so if partner A is being parental and partner B is being irresponsible, I will often try to get the parental partner to change first. Because it invites a different kind of behavior from the other person. Now, the other person could go first. But I find it to work more quickly if the parental partner can deal with their parental energy just right off the bat. Because. I guess I don't even know why. It just seems to work better, but I think it could go either way. It's just more difficult. And then the other one would be like if one partner is really good at twisting reality, it's a very difficult thing to work with from the other side. So I can help the other partner get better at seeing clearly what's happening. But if they've been having their mind twisted by this person for 10 years and then their mind was twisted by their parents for 20 years before that. It is so hard to deal with that, and it's better if I can get the person who's twisting reality to just stop doing that first and settle things down so that the other person can get better at holding onto what's real.

Jackie: I don't know that I have a particular approach. I think I kind of see maybe who's more activated in the moment.

James: Hmm.

Jackie: sometimes that's letting that person calm down and then work with the other partner.

James: Yeah.

Jackie: And then sometimes it's moving in on that person and sort of trying to understand what's going on for them that they're getting so escalated.

James: Mm-hmm.

Jackie: but you're gonna make me think about it. Yeah.

James: We all do things differently.