The husband’s shift from “controlling” to “overwhelmed” is the whole essay in one move, and it raises the question I keep circling in my own work: why is curiosity so hard to reach exactly when we need it most? I think the answer is that certainty is soothing and curiosity is expensive. Deciding you know why someone behaves as they do settles the nervous system; staying open means tolerating not-knowing while upset, which costs real regulatory capacity. Your client could be curious in your office because your office made it safe to not know. At home, flooded, the old certainty was cheaper. Which suggests curiosity is less a skill we deploy than a capacity we have to protect the conditions for. Over two decades of sitting with couples has convinced me the sequence matters: settle the body first, and the better questions become reachable.
The husband’s shift from “controlling” to “overwhelmed” is the whole essay in one move, and it raises the question I keep circling in my own work: why is curiosity so hard to reach exactly when we need it most? I think the answer is that certainty is soothing and curiosity is expensive. Deciding you know why someone behaves as they do settles the nervous system; staying open means tolerating not-knowing while upset, which costs real regulatory capacity. Your client could be curious in your office because your office made it safe to not know. At home, flooded, the old certainty was cheaper. Which suggests curiosity is less a skill we deploy than a capacity we have to protect the conditions for. Over two decades of sitting with couples has convinced me the sequence matters: settle the body first, and the better questions become reachable.
Thanks for sharing!