Couples

The Magic Formula for Authentic Communication

I think it’s safe to say we’ve all had the experience of attempting to express how we feel to someone, like a spouse, teacher, or friend, and feeling like the words we say are misunderstood.  We think we’re communicating clearly, but the person to whom we’re talking gets an entirely different message than what we intended.  This is especially common in arguments, where our messages can get mixed up in strong emotions and come out as accusations or criticism of those we love.

John Gottman researched this pattern in couples in conflict, which can be accompanied by criticism or contempt.  He describes this type of communication as “harsh start-up”, characterized by statements that begin with the word “you,” such as “you didn’t listen to me,” or “you always yell at me and storm off,” or “you started all of this.”  By starting a conversation this way, you’re already setting your partner up to be on the defensive.

So how we can communicate more clearly and honestly?  Gottman suggests using “gentle start-up,” as demonstrated in the simple formula we’ll walk through below.  This formula can be used in marriage, but also in everyday conversations with friends or assertive communication with a coworker or manager.  With each step below, I’ll also mention how you can begin to practice this skill on your own before using it in conversation.

Step 1: “I feel…”

Notice how this statement begins with the word “I” instead of “you.”  This instantly puts less pressure on your partner to become defensive, as you are talking only about your own emotion.  By naming an emotion, you are identifying how the situation or your partner’s behavior is affecting you.  This also can be a vulnerable step, as sharing emotion with others invites them to empathize with you and experience greater intimacy with you as a result.

To practice: To name how a situation makes you feel, you first need to be aware of how you experience emotions in your body, as well as how to distinguish between different emotions.  Spend some time checking in with your emotions daily or when you notice strong emotion arise.  You can use a chart like the one here to put a word to the emotion.  Pay attention to where you feel the emotion in your body: for example, anxiety can feel like knots in the stomach, sadness can feel like a slump of the shoulders, or anger can feel like a sensation of heat.  If you’d like to go deeper, ask yourself: when was the first time I remember feeling this emotion?  Connecting the feeling to a story from childhood can increase your awareness of why you feel that emotion.

Step 2: “because/about…”

Here, you name the situation or experience you had that contributed to the emotional response.  You can name your perspective on the situation or how you interpreted events using words such as “when I saw…” or “when I heard you say…”  One warning though: this step is one of the easiest to use to flip back into harsh start-up.  If your sentence looks something like, “I feel angry because you’re a terrible person,” that will (obviously) cause your partner to become defensive.

To practice: As you begin to become more aware of your emotions, you’ll notice a variety of situations that trigger different emotions in you.  If you’re paying attention to times in your childhood when you previously felt these emotions, you can often begin to trace patterns to your present day life where you respond in similar ways.  Maybe you notice that when you felt ashamed as a child, you would retreat to your room, which is reflected today in your tendency to withdraw from your spouse when you’re feeling shame in the midst of conflict.  Look at these triggers with a critical eye and practice describing your personal experience or point-of-view.

Step 3: “and what I need/want is…”

This is one of the most important and helpful pieces of the formula, as it is the first step to change.  However, it can also be one of the most challenging steps to take.  We often aren’t used to telling those around us what we need.  Our romance-glorifying culture tells us that our spouses should know what we need without us asking.  We can be hesitant to speak about our needs or desires in relationships because they put us in a vulnerable place in risk of being hurt.  But this step is crucial for being able to begin to see growth in intimacy in our relationships.

When expressing this need, be sure to share it in a positive way: instead of telling your partner what you don’t want them to do, instead share what you do want.  For example, instead of telling your spouse to stop pointing out your flaws, you might ask him or her to compliment you more often.

To practice: When you feel strong emotions about situations around you, slow down and ask yourself this question, “What would help me to feel better, more emotionally at peace, or more secure in this situation?”  As you reflect on that question, your needs may begin to become more clear.  Practice saying these needs aloud in a way that feels comfortable to you, so that you can more easily do so in conversation.

Ultimately, the goal of communicating authentically using this formula is to increase intimacy in relationships and to build solid connections with those around you.

The first few times you use this formula can feel scary or awkward.  But as you practice and speak more openly about your emotions and experiences, you’ll notice this formula integrating itself into your daily conversations, and I believe you’ll find yourself connecting more authentically and intimately by offering your true self to others.

I Love You AND I Like You: Cultivate Fondness and Admiration in Your Marriage

Eric and Kristen have never argued over the course of their marriage.  They don’t have any major complaints against each other, and they seem to get along just fine.  But neither of them are really satisfied.  They can’t put a finger on it, but it often feels like they’re just roommates, or living parallel lives.  They can’t remember the last time their spouse paid them a compliment or showed them affection.

Their neighbors Ashley and Ray, on the other hand, feel like every conversation they have ends in an argument, even if it starts on a neutral playing field.  Each of them feels disrespected and invalidated by the other, and they feel worn down by the constant criticism present in their relationship.

While these couples might seem like either end of an extreme, one thing they both lack is what John Gottman calls a “fondness and admiration system.”  Gottman speaks about the importance of fondness and admiration as a foundational building block of a couple’s friendship in the Sound Relationship House.  He came to this conclusion based on research he did noticing what he calls his “magic ratio”: for every 1 negative or critical comment made, 5 positive or affirming comments must be made to make up for it.

Practicing gratitude and appreciation in your marriage not only fights against this 1:5 ratio, it also is linked to higher quality marriages and a reduced chance of divorce, according to a University of Georgia study.  One reason for this correlation may be linked to Gottman’s claim that fondness and admiration is the antidote to contempt, the single greatest indicator of impending divorce.  Contempt is characterized by harsh criticism coming from a place of superiority, and includes such things as sarcasm, eye-rolling, and name-calling.  To avoid this pitfall, Gottman encourages building the fondness and admiration system by shifting from an attitude of searching for flaws in your partner, to instead embody an attitude of looking for the good in them.

Here are some ideas on how to give attention to this area of your marriage:

First, assess yourself.

If you connect with the stories of either couple above, take the assessment here to find out if you might need to grow in this area of fondness and admiration.  If you get a high score, then great!  Continue doing what you’re doing and maybe sprinkle in one or two of the following ideas.  If you get a low score, there is still hope!  Use the ideas below to give attention to these areas and turn your marriage around.

Make a list of character qualities about your partner you admire.

In Gottman’s book Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, he encourages couples who struggle to feel appreciated and respected by their partner to complete an exercise to grow their fondness and admiration system.  This exercise includes looking at a list of positive character traits, identifying which of those qualities you see in your partner, and sharing a specific story to illustrate that characteristic.  This exercise can be done as a one-time event, or it can be done daily as a check-in to increase this skill. 

Notice daily tasks you’ve taken for granted and express appreciation.

Early in your marriage, tasks like making a home-cooked meal for the family or shoveling the sidewalks on a cold and snowy day were likely met with praise and gratitude.  Over time, however, those simple tasks become so routine that they are often taken for granted.  This week, pay attention to an activity that your spouse does often to which you’ve become accustomed, and make a point to share gratitude with them for completing that task.

Share something that impresses you about your spouse.

We typically are attracted to our love interests in the early days of relationships because of some unique characteristic or strength they have that we admire.  Perhaps he runs marathons, or she is able to remember details and manage priorities well, or he has a knack for coming up with creative dates.   Take stock of some of these gifts and skills that impress you about your spouse, and compliment them about how you see that specific trait in them.

Prioritize a date night where you reminisce about your early relationship.

Especially once you have children together as a couple, time alone together becomes low on the priority list.  However, this is the time where it is most important to be building and fostering that relationship between the two of you.  Find a babysitter or call grandma to watch the kids for an evening and go out on a date night where you spend time reminiscing about the early days of your relationship.  Reminding yourselves about the past can help you reflect positively on present day experiences and the future of your relationship.

Do a “random act of kindness” for your spouse.

I’ve heard talk about random acts of kindness in the context of strangers – but what makes strangers any more deserving than the people we interact with on a daily basis?  Find a way to serve and love your spouse through one of these random acts of kindness.  Do you know she has a big project coming up at work?  Picking up dinner on the way home and putting the kids to bed early might ease her mind.  Is he feeling overwhelmed by maintenance projects he’s been meaning to do in the house and backyard?  Try asking him which of those projects you could do on your own, or volunteering to help on the weekend. 

Keep a marriage gratitude journal.

We’ve talked on this blog before about how gratitude journaling is a great self-care practice.  But what about taking that concept and extending it to your marriage?  There are plenty of different ways to do a marriage gratitude journal, but here’s one possibility: write down one thing each day you are grateful for about your spouse, and then share them with each other at the end of the week.  You can keep them in a separate journal or the same journal, but it can be helpful to keep them written down so you can look back on them later.

Which of these practices would you like to test out this week?

One Change You Can Make to Revolutionize Communication in Your Relationships

“You don’t understand me.”

“Why aren’t you listening?”

“You ask me to help, and then you get mad at me when I try.”

I wonder if you hear words like these when you’re having a conversation with your spouse, partner, or friend.  Do you ever feel like you’re not getting anywhere when you talk to them?  You try to be supportive, but somehow it always ends in an argument or the cold shoulder.  Maybe you try to give some advice, or point out the clear source of the problem, but that only digs you further into relational turmoil.

Or maybe you’re on the other side, where all you want is to be heard and understood but you can’t seem to get your point across.  You leave conversations feeling like whatever you talked about is your fault, and if you were smart, you would’ve come up with a response by now.  You may even walk away more stressed than you felt before you talked about it, and wonder why you even brought it up.

Check out the video below to see an example of this common relational pattern.  Can you relate?

Which side do you tend to see yourself on in this conversation?  Are you the husband, who tries to point out the obvious solution of the nail in her head?  Or are you more like the wife, where you just want to have someone listen to you and hear the pain you’re in?  Or maybe you’re both, depending on the conversation?

In Gottman’s Stress-Reducing Conversation activity in couples therapy, he acknowledges a husband’s tendency to try to fix things, as well as a wife’s tendency to over-identify with her husband’s emotions.  While this gender stereotype may be true in some areas, the opposite can also happen in relationships, where the wife can try to fix things and the husband can take on the wife’s emotions.  Regardless of which role you’re playing at any given time, this pattern can lead to conflict when each member of the pair isn’t willing to see from the other’s perspective.

If you find yourself more often in the husband’s chair, it can be difficult to hold back your desire to provide a solution in order to prevent your partner or friend from feeling pain.  While your desire to support or be helpful is good, jumping to advice-giving can communicate that you don’t care about your partner’s feelings or viewpoint.  What you partner or friend may need is just someone to sit with them, be a witness to what they’re feeling, and hear their story without trying to provide an answer.

If you’re more likely to see from the wife’s point-of-view, it can be easy to become defensive or angry when you hear unsolicited advice or counsel.  In fact, you may feel yourself start to shut down and become angry.  Notice these tendencies in yourself, and if you want to continue to engage in this conversation, you can take a risk and express your needs clearly, saying something like, “I hear that you’re trying to help make this situation better, and I appreciate that, but what I need right now is space to vent and talk about it without hearing how to make it better.”

My challenge for you this week is to take some time to sit with your partner or a friend and take turns sharing and listen to what is stressing you out.  Do they have major pressure at work?  Is parenting feeling exhausting and hopeless?  Do they have a strained relationship with a close friend or family member?

Rather than pointing out ways they could fix the problem, or potential solutions, sit together and listen to what they have to say about the pain they are experiencing.  After they feel heard and understood, then you can ask if they want to receive feedback or support, and they will likely be more responsive.  If you’re sharing and you sense some advice coming your way, identify that feeling to your partner and express your need to be heard and understood.

What's On Your Map? 20 Questions for Your Spouse

It’s that time of year again, where Hallmark cards and cheesy stuffed bears come out in full force, and you reminisce to the simpler childhood days when February 14th was on par with Halloween for how much candy you collected in one day.  As we get older, Valentine’s Day often carries different meaning.  Whether you’re married or not, Valentine’s Day can be synonymous with loneliness and unmet expectations. In marriage, the loneliness can feel particularly strong, as you may be reminded of your early dating years, but that special spark is missing in daily life now.

As time passes over the years in a marriage, satisfaction can tend to decrease.  This is a normal occurrence in every relationship: research on marital happiness in early years of marriage shows that it tends to decrease over time.  The birth of children play a factor in this as well, as John Gottman reports in his research that couples are less satisfied in their relationships after children enter the picture (for somewhat obvious reasons).

So what can we do to stop this dissatisfaction right in its tracks?

John Gottman’s extensive studies on marriage has led him to create a model called the Sound Relationship House to describe the various aspects that make up healthy, thriving marriages.  The foundation of the house consists of three levels, fondly known as “the friendship quadrant.” This suggests that the strongest marriages are built upon a basis of mutual appreciation, respect, and knowledge of one another’s world.

The first level is “Build Love Maps” – essentially, creating a map of your spouse’s world.  The foundation for this step, as defined by Gottman, is asking open-ended questions.  This come pretty natural in the early dating years – you may have fond memories of getting to know your spouse during hours-long conversations, asking questions and learning more about their day-to-day life.  But as time goes on, daily responsibilities of sharing a home and family make that connection time feel less important.  While you might assume you already know everything there is to know about your partners world, that picture often needs to be updated over time as we change and grow.

Here’s my challenge to you: this Valentine’s Day, take some intentional time with your partner to ask each other 5 of the questions below.  You can make it a game, share answers over dinner, try to guess your partner’s answer…whatever fits for you.

With each question you answer, you’re building one more street on that Love Map, and you’re building connections to your partner’s world.

Here’s some ideas for questions to ask:

  1. If you could be any animal in the world, which would you be? Why?

  2. What one or two fictional characters do you believe you are most like? Why?

  3. Who is your best friend? What are the qualities about that person that makes you admire them?

  4. What is one place you’d like to travel that you haven’t been to? What would you want to do there?

  5. What’s your fondest memory of childhood?

  6. If you could have a superpower, what would it be and why?

  7. What was your favorite subject in school? Least favorite subject?

  8. If you could work in any career that’s different from your current position, what would you do? Why?

  9. What was your favorite childhood vacation spot? Why?

  10. What is one of your favorite smells? What does that smell remind you of?

  11. If you could build a dream house anywhere, where would it be? What would it look like? What would you fill it with?

  12. What was the best meal you’ve ever had in your life? Tell me the story behind it.

  13. What is your biggest worry right now? If that worry didn’t exist, how might your life be different?

  14. What was the last movie/book/TV show that affected you emotionally? Why?

  15. Who is the person you admire most in the world? What are the qualities you admire in them?

  16. What are the hobbies you would pursue if you had more time?

  17. What are some of your dreams for retirement/later in life?

  18. When you look back on your life, what do you want people to say about you?

  19. What is something you’re truly grateful for in your life right now?

  20. What was your favorite game to play as a child? What is it now?

If you’ve read through this list and enjoyed asking one another these questions, find ways to keep incorporating this into your date nights!  You can use Gottman’s Love Maps or Open-Ended Questions apps to generate ideas,  or do a Google search or Pinterest search for different questions to ask your spouse.  The possibilities are endless!

Each step you take builds one more brick on that foundation of your relationship that will help increase your marital friendship and build toward a long-lasting, satisfying marriage.  Why not start this Valentine's season?