Improving Relationships - Gottman Continued

Given that having a strong marriage is such an important key to staying healthy and happy, it makes sense to direct energy into making your relationship the best that it can be. The investment will truly be worth it. Below are some tips for making your relationship a much healthier one. (These are Gottman's tips as summarized by Poonam Sharma, Ph.D

1. Nurture your friendship. Do you know your spouse’s likes and dislikes Poonam Sharma, Ph.D, dreams, worries, fears and hopes? Do you know in detail what your spouse did all day yesterday? Do you know what types of pressures he or she faces at work? The basis of a good marriage is a solid friendship. If a marriage is not built on a strong friendship, it may be difficult to stay connected over time. Make sure you take some time each day to confide in one another. During these times, make it a priority to listen and learn about your partner’s thoughts, feelings, and ideas.
2. Actively take steps to foster your liking and admiration for your partner. Gottman says this is the antidote to contempt. Remember your partner's good qualities. Why were you attracted to your spouse in the first place? What did you originally love or admire about your partner? By nurturing your fondness for your spouse, you can foster a much more positive attitude toward him or her.
3. Always behave respectfully toward your spouse. In relationships that deteriorate over time, respect becomes increasingly absent. Sadly, sometimes people end up treating their spouses worse than they would ever treat a complete stranger. By tolerating or engaging in disrespectful behavior, you actively contribute to the demise of your relationship. Do you ever call your spouse names? Do you ever berate your partner in front of your friends or family? Do you consider how your spouse will be affected by your cruel comments or actions? Take stock of ways you or your spouse may cross the line of respect. Remember that without respect, love cannot survive.
4. Accept and validate your partner. Recognize how much power you have to build up your spouse up or tear him or her down. You can help make your relationship a safe haven or hell on earth. Remember, everyone needs to feel accepted for who they are as a human being. Instead of attacking your spouse, try to understand his or her point of view. Also, compliment your spouse for ways he or she supports you and your relationship. It’s easy to get so focused on what is wrong in a relationship that you miss what is actually working.
5. Forgive one another. When your partner genuinely reaches out to ask for forgiveness, do not turn away. Hurt feelings and conflict are inevitable at times. When attempts to repair this hurt are repeatedly rejected, the relationship takes a hit. You may need time to let go of a grudge, bitterness, or feelings of hurt, but don’t close the door completely on your partner’s attempts to make things better. Reach deep inside and work on healing together.
6. Calm down. When conflict escalates, people can become “flooded” by strong emotions, leading to physical distress, stonewalling and defensiveness. Take a few deep breaths or call a time out. Most people need about 20 minutes to actually calm their bodies down. Take the time and come back to the issues at hand when you can actually listen to what the other person is saying without being overwhelmed.
7. Let your partner influence you. In general, men are less likely to look for common ground with their wives. Gottman notes "When a man is not willing to share power with his partner, there is an 81% chance that his marriage will self-destruct.” Remember that good marriages involve give and take. You are on the same team and need to work together for the sake of your relationship.
8. Warm up your relationship. Keep your relationship healthy by ensuring that there are at least five positive interactions for every negative one. Gottman’s research has identified that a 5:1 ratio of positive interactions to negative ones is linked to the stability of a marriage, no matter what your typical style of resolving conflict. If there is too much negativity, the relationship suffers.
9. Learn to let some things go. Although your spouse may do things that drive you crazy, remember you can cope. It is not worth it to struggle over every little thing. Solve the problems that are solvable and let the others go. You must learn to pick your battles carefully.
10. Don’t forget to work on yourself. A relationship is just like a dance. You move in unison to create something that is truly unique. What type of partner are you? Do you work with your partner or pull hard in another direction? Do you step on her toes? Do you gaze in his eyes or focus only on your next steps? Remember you control 50% of what happens in your relationship. Be sure you are a good partner.

Making Relationships Work

This week, I read an interview in Harvard Business Review with John Gottman, Professor Emeritus from the University of Washington. Although the aim of the article was to focus on interpersonal relationships at work, he drew greatly upon his area of specialty – marital relationship.

Gottman notes that it is not conflict itself that is the problem, but how we handle it. Venting anger constructively can actually help clear the air and get a relationship back in balance. However, conflict becomes a problem when it is characterized by the presence of what Gottman calls the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:” criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt – the most destructive of which is contempt.

1. Criticism. Criticism involves attacking your partner’s personality or character, rather than focusing on the specific behavior that bothers you. It is healthy to air disagreements, but not to attack your spouse’s personality or character in the process. This is the difference between saying, “I’m upset that you didn’t take out the trash” and saying, “I can’t believe you didn’t take out the trash. You’re just so irresponsible.” In general, women are more likely to pull this horseman into conflict.

2. Defensiveness. Adopting a defensive stance in the middle of conflict may be a natural response, but does not help the relationship. When a person is defensive, he or she often experiences a great deal of tension and has difficulty tuning into what is being said. Denying responsibility, making excuses, or meeting one complaint with another are all examples of defensiveness.

3. Stonewalling. People who stonewall simply refuse to respond. Occasional stonewalling can be healthy, but as a typical way of interacting, stonewalling during conflict can be destructive to the marriage. When you stonewall on a regular basis, you are pulling yourself out of the marriage, rather than working out your problems. Men tend to engage in stonewalling much more often than women do.

4. Contempt. Contempt is involves tearing down or being insulting toward your partner. Contempt is an open sign of disrespect and disgust. And it is very difficult to resolve a conflict with someone when you’re communicating the message that you’re disgusted with him/her. Examples of contempt include: putting down your spouse, rolling your eyes or sneering, or tearing down the other person with so-called “humor.”

Research shows that people in contemptuous relationships are more likely to suffer from infectious illnesses, flu, colds, and so on – than other people. Contempt attaches the immune system; fondness and admiration are the antidotes.

All couples will engage in these types of behaviors at some point in their marriage, but when the four horsemen take permanent residence, the relationship has a high likelihood of failing. In fact, Gottman’s research reveals that the chronic presence of these four factors in a relationship can be used to predict, with over 80% accuracy, which couples will eventually divorce. When attempts to repair the damage done by these horsemen are met with repeated rejection, Gottman says there is over a 90% chance the relationship will end in divorce.

Divorce: What Happens When a Third Party is Involved

Some more notes from Eva-Maria Zurhorst's book, Love Yourself, And It Doesn't Matter Who You Marry. For the sake of easy ready, I will translate into the masculine gender, but the principles apply to both sexes. And yes, sometimes German sentences are really that long.

The Victim (the one cheated on) had already left the relationship
When one partner leaves, usually the remaining partner had already long left the relationship. That is something that we don't like to admit. We prefer to have clear statements of guilt: The one who leaves is evil, the victim is good. But...it is the victim who often betrays himself (or herself). The victim is often someone who denies any responsibility for himself and convictions. He is often someone who persists in maintaining his high, theoretical demands in the relationship. Someone who doesn't really get involved in a deep, connected manner with a real, non-perfect and sometime unreachable partner. The victim usually feels involuntarily dependent on his partner is some fashion, but doesn't dare anything to counter this dependence, become vulnerable, be open to the truth, and trust their own strength.

And the cheater? Often they describe their unfaithfulness and their married situation, "Finally I feel affirmed! Finally i could drop all my defenses and let down my guard. I don't have to live up to any expectations."

Usually we land in someone else's bed only when our feelings toward our marriage have been accumulating too long and needed expression.

In a three-way relationship we give expression to our inner fears of genuine closeness. The third party never simply comes into one's life by coincidence, but rather when our marriages have become stuck in hard silence or entangled in continual power struggles.

When a third-party appears, it is high time to make a decision - not for a person, but for the truth.

In Triangular Relationships - Three People Are Afraid of Intimacy
The dilemma of a triangle is in reality a cry for a courageous and genuine revlation and coming together.

The third party embodies everything that the victim does not. ... Therefore I encourage the victim to have an honest and open encounter/confrontation with the third person. The purpose here is to examine one's own development and discover "the missing thing(s), that the third-party embodies.

The cheater - the one in the middle - it would have been his task to be on the cutting edge, to dare something new in his marital relationship, to give new direction, to throw out old and destructive patterns of behavior, and to lovingly and patiently inspire his partner and family by bringing them to the next level.

Most Divorces are Superfluous

A couple weeks ago I did a sermon on divorce. In a previous blog, I mentioned the excellent historical-exegetical work of David Instone-Brewer. But I didn't mention the work of a German, secular therapist Eva-Maria Zurhorst, Love Yourself, and It Doesn't Matter Who You Marry. Zurhorst is a former journalist and a word smith in the German language. So I'm not quite sure how the English translators mastered the task. Below are some of my notes - based on the German. From a secular perspective, it is one of the best books arguing for couples to resolve their differences.

Most divorces are superfluous
Marriage is not the gift wrapping for a romance. The true meaning of marriage is always to bring the inner conflicts of both partners into balance.

Your spouse is only playing one role in your play
The true meaning of relationships is always in found in bringing the inner conflicts of both partners into balance. Each relationship, exactly they way it is now, is the optimal place that each partner can find.

So be happy that your most intimate partner presses your buttons so precisely that it hurts. Be grateful he/she is the way they are. For they help bring to your attention those areas in your life that need healing.

Triangular relationships are marked by blurred boundaries

• The one in the middle is doing a balancing act. He/she is for the most part incapable of deciding because both partners appear to embody only half of what he/she is looking for in a spouse.
• The secret lover is longing for the sense of security that the cheated partner normally possesses. The secret lover battles with his/her mistrust. How can he/she really trust a person who is deceiving their spouse?
• The "cheated" spouse - That which is happening behind his/her back reflects - to the vehement denial of the cheated spouse - something about his own inner dynamics: The "victim" withdraws from his marital relationship.
• At the moment in time when the "cheater" focuses on an external relationship, the "victim" has already become unavailable in the marriage.
  
• The "victim" is often the first to leave the relationship.
  

Love is not a feeling

Peck notes in The Road Less Traveled that love is not a feeling. Instead it is an activity and an investment. He defines love as, "The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." Love is primarily actions towards nurturing the spiritual growth of another. Love cannot be sustained by mutual dependence, rather, love between two parties is made stronger when they are completely independent of one another.

Peck distinguishes between love and cathexis. Cathexis is what explains attractions to the opposite sex, the instinct for cuddling pets and pinching babies' cheeks. However, cathexis is not love. Ironically, true love does not begin in isolation, and a certain amount of cathexis is necessary to spark true love.

The work of love begins when the cathexis wears off. Love is not a feeling. It consists of what you do for another person. "Love is as love does." It is about giving the other person what they need to grow. It is about truly knowing and understanding them.

Peck is writing predominately about the love between humans. But the same principles are easily applied to one's understanding of and relationship with God. After the newness of our walk with Christ wears off, it is important to realize that God is concerned about our spiritual growth. He gives us what we need (and not what we don't need) so that we can grow -- something we also call discipleship.