The Art of Car Maintenance and Couples Therapy

When I was in my early 20’s, I inherited my Aunt’s forest green, Volkswagen Beetle, Gertie.  She was a beauty and Gertie had quite the personality – she was slick, classy and created joy wherever she travelled.  She just had this thing about her that made other people look her way and smile. I adored her.  Gertie whistled a healthy tune wherever we went and it was contagious. My neighbours would tell me that they knew when I was close to home as they would hear Gertie whistling down the hill to deliver me safely home. 

Like any relationship, it wasn’t all smooth sailing between Gertie and I. 

 The first time we broke down, we were cruising home from work, both having the time of our lives (or so I thought) until I saw smoke billowing up in front of me (unusual, given the engine was in the back of the car), making it a little challenging to see the road ahead… Not wanting to push the friendship (or become a scene out of a movie or a photo on the front page of the local newspaper…) I pulled over, opened the front end and there…a nest of wires I knew nothing about smouldering away.  So, I did what any normal person would do… I tried to make sense of this mess and using my hands, pulled on a few wires to see if I could fix it…myself…! (for the record, I knew nothing about cars other than “One must always check the oil, unless One wants to blow up Ones engine” thanks Dad).  I was pretty proud of my efforts to be honest, until I massive spark yelped out at me – “crikey” (I was working part-time at Australia Zoo at the time) “Maybe I should call Dad”.  Dad: “whatever you do, don’t touch the wires, the fuel tank is right under them, I’m on my way”.  Me: “uh huh, yeah no, I won’t…”.

Dad arrived and quickly concluded it was a right mess and beyond his expertise.  I phoned around for a mechanic who would be willing to look Gertie over and give her some care and loving attention.  Turns out, not every mechanic likes working on VWs – but after many phone calls, I found a mechanic who specialised in VWs and he was happy to take her on. 

Gertie and I broke down an unusual number of times… Not always due to mechanical issues – sometimes it was due to human error…like one time when I accidently dropped a bottle of lead fuel replacement fluid into the fuel tank – the whole bottle just dropped out of my hand…straight into her fuel tank – never to be seen again. Gulp.  That was until I was cruising down the highway on my way to the Brisbane airport and I broke down – turns out the fuel filter was full of gunk…. that would have been plastic gunk from the bottle I dropped into the tank…

I developed quite a good relationship with the VW mechanic over the years, and together, with his expertise and my willingness (and ahh…money), Gertie became more and more reliable and we spent many more years travelling together with her whistling engine.

As humans however, we tend to be less inclined to reach out for external support when things aren’t great and especially when our relationships aren’t great.  But I figure…if we can do it for our cars, we can do it for our relationships.

In my opinion, couples therapy is like car maintenance (although maybe as humans we are more like the original VWs; individual, peculiar, accumulated some previous mechanical works that may…or may not serve us, do better with loving kindness etc…). 

Let’s think about the basics, if I want to keep driving my car, I need to put fuel in. if there’s no fuel, we’re stuck.

Few would choose to take our car for granted and neglect this critical input.

We need to keep the oil topped up which requires us to check the oil regularly – because without oil, we will blow up our motor – a costly and painful exercise.  Not wanting to blow up our motors, many of us choose to check our oil – regularly.

Are you picking up, what I’m putting down yet?

What about if there’s a noise coming from the back end when you’re driving…? Do you wind the window up and turn on the radio and hope the noise isn’t there the next time you drive, but you have some low-level anxiety as you faintly hear the noise above the radio…so you turn up the volume.

Do you stop the car and see if you can figure it out – maybe it’s something simple that can be rectified relatively quickly – a rock in the tyre or a flat???

What if you can’t work it out but the noise is still there…? Do you ring a friend who’s more knowledgeable in the art of car maintenance? Maybe you test out a few more things but the noise gets worse…

At what point do you take your car to a mechanic?

Being in relationship with another, and even being in relationship with ourselves, takes care, attention, understanding, compassion, boundaries, esteem, knowledge and skills. 

Some of us, (many of us) were never taught how to do relationships well. And/or we have learnt patterns of behaviour that are out of our awareness and getting in the way of having the relationship we want.  And just like it helps to take your car to the mechanic when you can’t identify that noise, it really helps, to get support from outside of the relationship.  Not from friends or family – sometimes they’re helpful but often they’re not (sorry friends and family – its not personal) because they generally have the same lens as you or similar knowledge and skills to you – and if you want something different, we have to do something different.

You do not have to be on the metaphorical side of the road trying to separate wires to stop the smoke from billowing across your windscreen on your own.

You CAN get support that can turn your relationship around.

How can couples therapy support a relationship?

·      Help you to understand the relational pattern that is on repeat and keeping you from the relationship you desire,

·      Help you to understand what YOU can be doing differently to support you to get closer to the relationship you want,

·      Support you to develop warm regard for yourself and your partner,

·      Better understand what is happening for your partner when they’re not their best selves,

·      Recover quicker from relational ruptures,

·      Deepen connection and intimacy,

·      Teach you the skills to be more relational,

·      Create relational joy in your relationship,

·      Better understand your beautiful self,

·      Create healthy boundaries and self-esteem,

·      Be the example of good, healthy relationships for your children and

·      So much more!

I am on a mission to make couples therapy trendier than oat milk lattes! Why? Because I believe that good, healthy relationships can create a butterfly effect that can transform our world into a kinder, more tolerant, loving place.

If you feel like support could be helpful for your relationship, do your research and find someone who feels right for you.  Feel free to reach out to me via email hello@biannkabrannigan.com to see if I’m the right fit for you.