I moved to Philadelphia in 1978 to continue my graduate studies. Philadelphia was the hotbed of a new and exciting offshoot of psychiatry and psychology—family therapy. In fact there were only three programs in the country offering a graduate degree in the new specialty. I studied under Dr. Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, who originated contextual theory as well as his gifted colleagues, Dr. Barbara Krasner and Dr. Margaret Cotroneo, Ph.D., who were my professors, and became my mentors and friends. My indebtedness to them is lifelong. Following the completion of my doctoral work, I had the privilege of serving on the faculty with Dr. Nagy for close to 15 years. Contextual theory uniquely focuses on the ethics of family relationships—what you owe and what you deserve, and how the expectations for give-and-take are passed on from parent to child, from generation to generation.

I remember with great clarity my first class with Dr. Nagy. You wouldn’t have guessed from his quiet demeanor that Dr. Nagy was a well-renowned theoretician. In that first class he spoke about entitlement and indebtedness-what happens to family members who have given too much or taken too much? What happens to marriages, to parents and to children when things aren’t fair? He challenged me to think about what was fair, on whose terms was fairness decided, and why? I learned to understand justice within the context of the family sweep of generations and in the here and now.

Most people don’t realize that very few psychotherapists are required to engage their parents and other primary relationships in their own therapy. But in contextual therapy, you have to practice what you preach. I first had to explore my own assumptions about love and fairness with my family members before I could practice as an ethical contextual therapist.

Most of us have unevaluated, yet governing assumptions about fairness that we learn in our families growing up. Then we automatically import these “truths” into all of our relationships, often without recognizing it.  Loyalty to our families gives our beliefs about fairness an extra moral punch, which makes negotiating what we owe and deserve from a partner, even more challenging. Partners, after all, bring their own familial script about fairness. In that context, fairness is often reduced to competing perceptions and individual differences. Instead of imposing their certainty about “What’s right, and what’s fair,” partners must learn a new way of being fair, a new process they create between them. Similarly, parents and children, growing and grown, sometimes struggle to find a healthy balance between give-and-take.

In my clinical practice I find that most problems in relationships can be solved if people feel fairly treated. It is the experience of reworking unfairness and mistrust within your primary relationships, beyond understanding your feelings, that allows for healing injuries, restoring fairness and rebuilding trust.  Addressing problems in close relationships takes courage, patience and the commitment to learn to become fairer. My conviction and promise to you is that the rewards can be great.