Differentiation Based Couples Therapy: Can I Be Truly Loved?
As a couples therapist, I follow the work of Dr David Schnarch, a Differentiation based therapist. Schnarch is critical of love and relationships based on Hollywood-style notions of romantic infatuation, which is time-limited once you truly get to know someone where it becomes more personal. He says that marriage is a people-growing machine and an opportunity to become more capable of loving authentically on life’s terms, creating realistic patterns of marriage instead of romantic notions (Schnarch, 2012).
What Is Differentiation Based Couples Therapy
This points to the concept of healthy differentiation. A well-differentiated person is able to balance autonomy and intimacy: being close and being themself. Schnarch defines differentiation as “People’s ability to balance humankind’s two most fundamental drives: our desire for attachment and connection, on the one hand, and our desire to be an individual and direct the course of our own lives, on the other.
