What most clinicians don't think about is that when he walks in the door and sees that mess, he first manages to get to the state where he's angry and frustrated, and then he tries to stop himself from getting angry and frustrated. The other thing they forget is what he's frying to accomplish by stopping himself from yelling at her in the first place: he's trying to get things to be pleasant. Well, why not go for it directly? Why not have the front door send him off into such pleasant thoughts about what he can do with his wife that he goes through the living room too fast to care about noticing anything else!

Whenever I say, "How about doing something before you feel so bad?" the client always looks stunned. It doesn't occur to him to back up. He always thinks that the only way he can make himself happy is to do what he wants exactly at the moment that he wants it. Is that the only way? It must be. The universe doesn't go backwards. Time won't go backwards. Light won't go backwards. But your mind can go backwards.

Typically clients will either not understand what I said at all, or will say, "I can't just do that!" It sounds too easy. So I found out I had to make them do it. They couldn't back up themselves, because they couldn't stop going where they were going. So I learned to ask them questions that would force them to go backwards, Often they fight me tooth and nail. They'll try to answer one question, and I insist that they answer another one to back them up another step.

When I get to the right point with a client, I ask a question that moves sideways and forward, and he goes forward again in the new direction. After that he can't stop going in the new direction. He's as stuck that way as the other, but he doesn't care because he likes being stuck that way. It works just like a spring: you compress it, and when you pull the lever over and release it, it flicks forward again.

As soon as someone finds one of those places, he says, "Oh, I've changed. Let's go on now." It's so nonchalant. "How do you know you've changed?" "I don't know. It doesn't matter. It's different now." But Jo is still propelling forward on the new path. I've been testing her repeatedly. And she can't get back there to the other one now because it's too late.

I do this simply by presupposing that what is getting in her way is worth having, and all I need to do is find out where to use it. So, I take the behavior Jo is uncomfortable about — confronting — and take that back to before she even thinks about confronting. The same forces that used to drive her to confront and be uncomfortable about it will now compel her into another behavior.

What we have explored here with Jo is a common pattern in marriage. You want something from him, but he doesn't give it to you. So you feel bad. Then you tell him how bad you feel, hoping he'll be concerned enough to give it to you.

There are times when you don't get what you want from someone else. But when you don't get what you want, feeling bad is extra! Did you ever think of that? First you don't get what you want, and then you have to feel bad for a long time because you didn't get it. And then you have to feel bad to try to get it again. If you feel good, then you can just go back to that person and say, "Hey, you. Do you want to do this for me?" If you do that with a cheerful tone of voice, you're much more likely to get it, and without any future repercussions.

The greatest error of all is in thinking that the only way for you to feel good in certain situations is for someone else to behave in a certain way. "You must behave the way I want you to, so I can feel good, or I'm going to feel bad and stand around and make you feel bad too." When he is not there to behave in that way, then there's nobody to make you feel good. So you feel bad. When he comes back, you say, "You were not here to have these behaviors to make me feel good, so I want you to feel bad now. I want you to be here all the time. No more bowling; don't go away for the weekend and go fishing; don't go to college; don't go to seminars; be here all the time. I can go away because I have a good time when I do, but when I come home you have to be here to make me feel good. If you love me you will do what I want, because when you don't do it, I feel bad, because I love you." Bizarre, huh? But that's how it works. And in a way, it's true. You sit there by yourself and you do feel bad. "If that person were here doing this, I'd feel good. What the hell's the matter with him?" Of course, if he's there and he's not willing to do it, that's even worse! People seldom stop and say, "Hey, what's going to be important to someone else?" It's even rarer that someone asks himself, "What could I do that would make her want to do this for me?"

If you feel inside you that when you don't get a certain amount of time from him, at the specified moment, then it's time to feel bad . . . and if you measure that bad feeling and you visualize him and connect that bad feeling with his face, then when he comes back and you see his face, you get to feel bad when he is there! That is amazing! Not only do you get to feel bad when he is not there; you also get to feel bad when he comes back! That doesn't sound like fun, does it? It's not fair to you to live that way.

And if he feels guilty about being gone, and he pictures what it will be like to come back to you, he will connect the feeling of guilt to the sight of your face. Then when he comes back and sees you, he will feel guilty again, and he won't want to be there either. These are the meta–patterns of obligation. They are both based on one tremendous error: the idea that marriage is a personal debt.

If you ask people what they want, they usually talk about wanting what they don't have, rather than what they already do have. They tend to ignore and take for granted what they already have and enjoy, and only notice what is missing.

Married people don't usually feel lucky, the way they did when they first met. Imagine what it would be like if every time you see him you feel lucky. And if he isn't there at a time when you want him — because he is doing something you wish he wouldn't do, because you don't want to do it with him — you still feel lucky that your special person is there for you much of the time. And when he's doing something else, you feel lucky that's the only price you have to pay. That isn't a heavy cost, is it? If you can't have that, then personally, I don't think it's worth it.

One thing that has always amazed me is that people are seldom nasty to strangers. You really have to know and love someone before you can treat her like dirt and really make her feel bad about small things. Few people will yell at a stranger about important things like crumbs on the breakfast table, but if you love her, it's OK.

One family came in to see me and the husband was really nasty. He pointed to his wife and snarled, "She thinks a 14–year–old girl should stay out until 9:30 at night!"

I looked him straight in the eye and said, "And you think that a 14–year–old girl should learn that men yell and scream at their wives, and make them feel bad!"

It's an awful thing to get lost.

Often a family will bring in a teenage daughter because there is something wrong with her; she enjoys sex and they can't get her to stop doing it. Talk about an idealistic, overwhelming, outrageous task: to get somebody to go back to being a virgin! The parents want you to convince their daughter that sex is not really pleasant, and that it is dangerous, and that if she enjoys it, it's going to influence her in a way that will make her feel bad for the rest of her life! Some therapists actually attempt that task, . . . and some even succeed.

One father literally dragged his daughter in to me with her arm twisted up behind her back, shoved her into a chair, and growled "Siddown!"