There is a familiar story told in the world of family therapy.

A couple comes in for help.

The wife speaks first: “I walk as fast as I can, but he always walks faster.”

The husband shakes his head: “No matter how slow I go, she insists on dawdling even more.”

Each experiences the other as the problem. Each feels themselves to be the one making the reasonable adjustment.

What neither sees—at least not at first—is that they are participating in a single system.

The more one moves forward, the more the other pulls back. The more one slows down, the more urgency the other feels.

What we call “pursuit” or “distance” is often less an objective fact than a matter of vantage point.

This insight sits at the heart of the work of Murray Bowen, whose contribution was not simply to describe patterns like “pursuer” and “distancer,” but to shift the frame entirely.

The problem is not located in one person. It lives in the relationship between them.

This is the enduring value of systems thinking.

It invites a different kind of attention: • away from blame • away from diagnosis of the other • toward the patterns we co-create

In this view, behavior is not isolated. It is reciprocal. Each move is both a response and a stimulus.

And with that shift comes a possibility.

If the pattern is co-created, it can be........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)