You're listening to the Allender Center podcast with Dr. Dan Allender.

This week, Dan continues our series about the marriage quadrants by looking at the dynamics in the fourth and final quadrant,

which he describes as the most chaotic and volatile category,

meaning marriages in quadrant four are easy to write off as hopeless.

What does it look like to work with such a chaotic marriage in the hope of restoration?

And don't forget that for a visual aid as you listen to Dan discussing these categories,

look for this episode on our blog at the Allender Center.org.

We come to what many people would fear to be the most difficult of all quadrants, and that's quadrant four.

Again, simply to review. We're talking about the need for affiliation, the need for individuation. And in this quadrant, there does not

appear to be a great need for affiliation. Both partners need high levels of individuation, independence,

and in some ways, what seems crippling about this quadrant is that there is this great need

for conflict. It is as if they thrive on the provocation, the response of defense,

a threat and intensification, then a heightened belittlement, explosions, then withdrawal,

and then a makeup. In other words, it's crazy. It's just a crazy chaos

making quadrant. Now, in the more reasonable realm of having like a tough girl married to an

entrepreneurial boy, or something a little bit lower toward emasculating and more abusive.

Generally, what you find is that both people are highly successful.

One couple that I worked with, he lived on the West Coast in Los Angeles.

She lived in New York City.

Both ran their own businesses, had all sorts of other activities that they were involved in.

They made between the two of them, yearly salary of well over a million dollars, and therefore they can meet.

And they did meet often.

...