Go back and put the flames out rather than chase the person who lit the fire in the first place.

If you chase that person, your house will burn down and your relationship will be in ruins.

STEPS TO FOLLOW

1. Contain your anger: do not argue with the person you are angry with. And do not argue with yourself.  This only fuels the fire.
2. Do one of the Eight Creative Breathing Techniques http://www.hypnosisworks.com.au/hypnotherapyblog/eight-creative-breathing-techniques/
3. Embrace your anger: look deeply into the nature of your perceptions and into the perceptions of others to realize that both of you are suffering
4. Look for the causes: anger is a royal teaching to let you know something is not right here. It will usually be a need that is not being met.
5. Distance: go for a walk, leave it a few days before you address the issues.

BE CREATIVE 

1. Look in the mirror when you are angry and notice its effects. You will notice you do not look very presentable.   The hundreds of muscles in your face become tense and it can be frightening.
2. Know that you can do something to change that. Smiling will help loosen the muscles.
3. Embrace yourself with tenderness. Anger is not the enemy.  It is more like a child that requires attention.   You can take care of it and transform it into positive energy.
4. Search for the true nature rather than believing someone else has created your misery.

CYCLIC EMOTIONAL PATTERNS

Recognizing the anger is there for a good reason helps.  The next step is to practice how to manage it.  This takes some management skills:

High management required:

The anger is so intense it burns everything in its path.  It has been there for a while and does not leave.   Find the  time and space to settle down.  Say “no” to an event, conversation at that period of time and follow up with “when I have settled down, I would like to talk  it through.”   A lot of tenderness and protection is required for the part of you that is so angry.  It is like caring for someone who is ill.  Be kind, soft and responsive to that  part.  Give it some breathing space.  Do not put any more pressure or demands on it and it will settle down.   Go for a walk, take a shower, do dome gardening.

Medium management required:

It can be soothed.   Talk in a calm voice and use a soft start up.

Low management required:

You can talk about it with someone else without going back into it.  With couples you can learn to talk about a fight without going back into the details.

The Four Horsemen

The Four Horseman gives you some management tools.     John and Julie Gottman https://www.gottman.com/ created these to teach couples how to diffuse conflict.  Here is a summary:

• Use gentle start up AVOID        

Criticism: stating your complaints as a defect in your partner’s personality, giving them a negative trait attribution

Example: you always talk about yourself; you are so selfish.”

Better: I’m feeling left out by our talk tonight.  Would you please ask me about my day?

• Take responsibility AVOID    

Defensiveness:  self-protection in the form of righteous indignation or innocent victimhood.  Defensiveness wards off perceived attack where the other person is placed as “the enemy.”  There will be a good reason for this pattern and a need that is not being met holding it in place.

Example: It’s not my fault that we are always late, it’s your fault

Better: Well part of this is my problem I need to think more about my time

• Describe your own feelings AVOID

Contempt:  build a culture of appreciation, and respect.  Describe your thoughts, feelings and needs NOT your partner‘s.

Example: You’re an idiot.

Better: I felt hurt about not being included in the arrangements.  I need to be given an opportunity to express my views.

Do physiological self-soothing  AVOID

 Stonewalling:  self soothe in order to stay emotionally connected to each other

 Example: Emotional withdrawal from interaction, you shut off from the other person.

Better:  I’m struggling to speak/listen at the moment.  Breathe in (for the count of 7) as you exhale think “smile, relax and breathe again. Repeat until you are free to engage.

The post COOL THE ANGER FLAMES appeared first on Linda Taylor.

Love calls for courage, strength and commitment.

It needs a soft heart that is vulnerable to pain and grief.  Love builds a bridge between you and everything.

It allows you to take risks.  It involves high risk with high stakes and high gains.

How does Couples Therapy help?

Linda Taylor shows couples what is needed for a lasting bond.

She will show you how to tune in to and share your deepest needs and longings.

Linda will take you through some common insights gathered from exploring couples’ therapy.

Common Insights

• give clear signals to help your partner to know how to respond
•  be open and responsive both emotionally and physically
• provide a haven for emotional engagement
• pay attention to each other
• rewards of love are balance, calm, and joy
• neglect kills love
• feeling emotionally rejected or abandoned in not safety
• emotion tells us exactly what we need listen to it
• forgiveness is essential
• lasting passion is possible
• respond to each other in an emotional way
• holding each other is deeply calming and satisfying
• remember the good feelings of holding a baby
• stay open and want to do things for each other
• be more sensitive to each other’s needs f
• have each other’s back
• it is not all bout practical things, like, “I mow the lawn”, “I prepare meals”

ACTIVITY and PRACTICE: do these actions every day

Together, come up with 5 actions that creates a positive loop of closeness, responsiveness, caring, and desire.

Do at least one of these each day.

Revise these action every three months to see what works.  If it works keep doing it.  If it doesn’t work do different actions

Make an appointment

Call Linda now to schedule an appointment 0411355052, or

email: [email protected]

Visit

Dr Susan Johnson provides some excellent insight into loving couples

Listen

Esta Perel podcast how to make love last

The post When is it Love? appeared first on Linda Taylor.

Often in long term relationships encouraging caring behaviours can erode.

Over time couples settle into the routines of daily living in such a way that they focus less on caring behaviours.

The initial joy of the relationship can become a job.  Regardless of whether the relationship is new or long term a sense of security and a sense of intimacy needs to be there.

Partners can create a positive loop of closeness and responsiveness when caring behaviours are practiced and sustained.

This then allows you to understand more about your own needs and that of your partner’s.

Effective communication is crucial in a relationship.    Couples counselling can show you how to focus on desired caring behaviours that can often foster the experience of a romantic bond.

A well-known fact is a common enemy brings people together and it is important to see your partner as your friend not the enemy.

With couples counselling you can see your negative patterns of interaction are the enemy, not each other.

Sharing with genuine dialogue increases trust and responsiveness and longer-term satisfaction.

REMEMBER that neglect will kill love

CLICHES about love “when you are loved you are freer” are all true

There is NO PERFECT PERFORMANCE in love

BONDING happens with key moments when one person reaches for the other and the other persons responds with care.

A PRACTICE TO DO TOGETHER

Build a positive relationship bank account by focusing on making daily deposits.

If the bank account is ahead, when you do make a withdrawal the bank account does not go into deficit.

1. On your own make a list of all the things your partner does that makes you feel cared about
2. Make time to share with each other, one or two items on your list, choose one or all these openers
3. Do this activity every day

I feel loved when you…..

I feel special when you…..

I feel really cared about when you…..

Linda Taylor

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A Personal Essay from our Family Matters Department 

After his third or fourth date with her, my son said to me during a phone conversation, “I don’t know, I just like this girl.” He sounded perplexed—as if this realization were a large rock he’d tried to get around but couldn’t, and was surprised that he didn’t really want to.

I snapped to attention, remembering the same mixture of bewilderment and delight in my own voice many years ago when I began dating the man who’d become my husband. Compared to the stormy relationship I’d just left, this new one unfolded effortlessly, as if I were sinking into the world’s most comfortable armchair—a feeling I found hard to trust. “I mean, I love him,” I remember telling my closest friend, “but I’m not sure I’m in love.”

“Oh you’re in love,” she said. And she was right. We soon got engaged during a walk in Riverside Park. No ring, no photos; we just decided. We were 23.

Now our son was 30, the new girlfriend just a few years younger. Ticktock. They continued to date. They invited us to meet them for dinner. She was funny and smart, loved food (a prerequisite), and seemed completely comfortable in her own skin (a quality I greatly admired). They moved in together. They bought a couch. He turned 32, then 33. They vacationed in Costa Rica. One day, driving him to the train station after a brief visit home, he said, “I’m saving up for a down payment on an apartment.”

“Good,” I said. “This apartment, are you planning on buying it alone?”

“No,” he said, “not alone,” as if my question were odd.

Another pause. Timing is everything. “Well,” I began, not sure at all whether I should proceed, “here’s the order I recommend: marriage, real estate, children.”

Pause. Would he snap at me? Sigh? Roll his eyes? Tell me to butt out? Instead, he broke into a slow smile, one I loved.

“Any news?” my mother-in-law asked. Since her stroke, she’d been much less voluble as she struggled to regain her speech, but this question was always on her lips—and in truth, on mine. Decades had passed since the last family wedding. Everyone was aging and dying, with no one being born. Sometimes I felt as if I longed for grandchildren more than I’d ever wanted children.

“Not yet,” I said. Always a party girl, she’d love to attend her first grandchild’s wedding, this firecracker of a woman who’d told me with a half-smile when I married her son, “Now he’s your problem.”

That comment stuck with me for nearly four decades because it seemed to me to imply that marriage was, at least in part, a handoff, as in a relay race. She was responsible for her son until the point that I was. But my husband and I wanted to be each other’s responsibility. Otherwise, what’s the point of being married?

“Is there some kind of family ring?” my son finally asked during another phone call.

In fact, I had a ring from my maternal grandmother that I’d been keeping for just such a moment. It turned out to be much more valuable than I assumed. The jeweler who appraised it for me remarked on the unusual quality of its small diamond, flanked by two small baguette sapphires, hand-crafted in Russia in the mid-1800s. I had it shined up and waited for my son to ask for it—which he did, a few weeks later, on a visit home. Don’t lose it, I said to myself, as he put the box in his backpack.

Soon after, my mother-in-law took a turn for the worse. She wouldn’t get out of bed in the rehab center, though she could, and she’d lie instead curled up like a fetus. When we’d call, all she’d want to talk about were her things: her dishes and cups, jewelry, and the gifts and mementos she’d accrued over her lifetime. “Every single one of them has a story,” she’d say.

During these conversations, I’d think of my favorite Emily Dickinson poem, the one that begins, I heard a fly buzz when I died. My favorite lines come a bit later: I willed my Keepsakes—Signed away / What portion of me be / Assignable.

I tried assuring her that I’d take good care of her assignables. Because she’d repeated the stories of how each was acquired so many times over the nearly 40 years we’d known each other, I knew them by heart. In a sense, I already possessed her possessions; her stories had transferred them to me.

But then I thought of the photo albums full of snapshots of people I didn’t know. I’d assumed one day we’d sit together and label each person, perhaps compose a rough family tree. We had to hurry up, though—the images were fading faster than her memory.

“I want to go home one more time,” she cried one day. “I want to know what’s going to happen to my things.” We set a date.

A few days before her scheduled trip home, my mother-in-law died. Her funeral took place on a sunny early day in March. “Dress warm,” the rabbi warned. “It’s always colder in a cemetery.” I dismissed his prediction as myth, but it turned out to be true. Unimpeded by trees, the wind whipped us as if it’d emanated from the Russian steppes, fiercely cold and biting. On the brim of the grave, we huddled together, our only shelter. The plain pine box containing her remains was already in the ground. After my husband and I gave our brief eulogies, we tossed a ceremonial shovel of dirt onto the coffin. It felt like shooting a squirt gun into the ocean. We went home to eat and drink and warm up as the cemetery workers filled in the grave.

A month later, I was working at my desk when my son called. “Hey, guess what?” he said. “We got engaged.”

I felt the blood rush to my face. Engaged? He actually did it? He asked her to marry him? “That’s wonderful!” I gushed. The generational wheel, which I’d envisioned as a giant Ferris wheel that had gotten stuck at the top, was finally turning. There’d be a wedding, a ceremony, a dress, flowers, music, speeches. What would I say for my speech? I wondered. But wait, maybe I won’t be asked to speak. Come to think of it, I’d never been at a wedding at which the groom’s mother spoke. What was I thinking?

My son came home for a visit soon after the announcement, and I gave him what I called his first maternal hug as an affianced person. “What was it like asking her?” I asked.

“It was easy,” he said. “The weird part was asking her father, even though it was just a formality.”

“How did that go?” I asked. “What did he say?”

“He shook my hand really hard and said, ‘Take good care of her.’” Now she’s your problem.

We started talking about wedding plans almost right away, and at night I found myself dreaming of my mother-in-law. Alive, she’d never been an easy person; in fact, she was often impossibly narcissistic and demanding, increasingly so as she grew older. But I remembered her from an earlier time, when my husband and I’d become engaged and were planning our marriage, when she’d welcomed me into the family—into her inner orbit—with an openness and eagerness that frankly overwhelmed me. My own parents were much more cautious accepting my husband. In their eyes, he wasn’t blood.

Was her approach the best? Should I open my arms so completely to my prospective daughter-in-law, who seemed to want to move a bit more slowly, the way I’d been inclined? And what about my mother-in-law’s things, all her mementos I assured her I’d take care of? They were still entombed in her locked Florida apartment. Should I be dispensing them, assigning them?

One night, I awoke from a horrible nightmare. I was walking with my son by the bank of a river, a cityscape. I said to him, “I’m so happy for you. You make me so happy.” He turned to look at me, and then he lay down like a corpse on the bank of the river, and rolled in. I watched him vanish into the dark, murky, cold water.

“It’s a dream about death,” I told my friend a week later.

“It isn’t,” she said. “It’s about your son getting married. He’s gone. He belongs to someone else. Get used to it.” She had two married sons with children of their own. I thought she was right, but when I told my husband, he disagreed. “You never think you can get what you want, what makes you happy,” he said. “Getting what you want is dangerous.”

What do I want? I want my mother-in-law’s keepsakes to turn to dust so I can simply sweep them away and not think about them. I want the same for my own. As for the unassignable portion, my son was right: I want grandchildren while I’m still young enough to get down on the floor with them. I want to read them the books that shaped their father’s childhood. I want my son and his wife to feel, after 40 years together, that they can read each other’s minds, and tell each other’s jokes. But mostly I want to find a way to navigate the crosscurrents between life and death, and death and life, that are only growing stronger.

Roberta Israeloff • 10/17/2016, PSYCHOTHERAPY NETWORKER

The post What Really Gets Handed Down in a Family? appeared first on Linda Taylor.

Refine your thoughts to enhance your marriage

Your mind is a blueprint for creation, reprogram it to create what you want.    You move through a range altered states 24/7.   These are mental and emotional states, some of which are highly resourceful and some not so resourceful.

By being in the present moment you can shift your state to create what you want.  This is a gift of being human, your capacity to enjoy the moment and wake up to your mental and emotional potential.   The more present or awake you are for the moments you live the more joy you will experience.  When you appreciate the moment you can create the conditions you want, let go and allow it to happen.  Lack of awareness, living in the past or future and negativity will block you moving forward towards your goals.

An aware state is being fully present to what is going on around you, using all your senses.   Being open to the moment is a natural condition that exists whether you are alone or with others and in this state you control your responses to the world.  It takes practise being in a resourceful state and allowing good things to come to you.

How to create a resourceful state in marriage    

1. Get some distance from your symptoms the moment of learning is in the present moment, it gives you a newness of possibilities in everything

Activity Slow down and watch your breath.  As you breathe in count to 7 and as you breathe out count for 7, work to balance you’re in and out breathe.  Do this as many times for you to feel centred, like a slight shift down in gears or an expanded awareness

2. Create self-belief your mind is the blueprint for creation. Everything is the ultimate projection of your mind, control your mind and your world can be conquered.  Find what gives you meaning in life and takes steps toward it.

Activity 1) list the opportunities you have with your partner 2) what you love about him/her? 3) What are your partners strengths?

3. Take responsibility for your attitude your attitude at any point in time is yours, no one else’s. You can take a stand to whatever conditions present and how you react is entirely up to you.  You may not be able to change the situation but you can change your attitude to it.

Activity be proud of what your partner, who they are and what you give meaning to their actions – no matter how small or big.

Reframe your thoughts to enhance your marriage, it takes effort and you will notice the changes. Use these to guide you and add your own:

I add new dimensions and experiences to my marriage

I give my best to maintain a vital, vibrant marriage

I am understanding, kind, and considerate of my partner always

Every day my love for my partner grows stronger

I make sure my partner feels loved by me

I stay young in mind and body

We build a life together and I have a sense of identity

We are an awesome team, together we grow, play, love, work, talk

I have my partner’s back, even when he/she seems to be against me, but I am not against him/she

I keep my marriage vital and meaningful

I look for the good in my partner

I am perfect just the way I am and in a process of improvement even when my partner criticises me

I love myself just as much as I love my partner

Take responsibility for my attitude towards my partner

Linda Taylor: 13^th June 2018

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People are wanting to connect on some level with romance and eventually an intimate, happy and long-lasting marriage.

The average couple take 6 years before seeking help for marital problems and almost 50% of marriages end in the first 7 years.

Many social and cultural forces shape intimate relationships of today.     In the current millennium courtship can be viewed as superficial but according to couple’s experts, John and Julie Gottman, it can influence a long-term commitment relationship.

Esther Perel, another relationship expert, explains  marriage in three ways: 1) traditional family centered marriage, 2)  the couples centered marriage,  and 3) the child centered marriage.

Each type of marriage can bring struggle but what keeps a marriage satisfying?

COMMUNICATION

Gottman discover with his first study in the ‘Gottman Lab’ experiments that he could predict the changes in marital status.   Another study looked at the links between marital interaction, parenting, and children’s social development.

He developed the concept of ‘meta-communication’.  How people feel about feelings, particularly anger, emotional understanding and expression and mismatches between people in the marriage.

ACCURATE PREDICTIONS

Amazingly marriages that stay together or divorce can be predicted with 90% accuracy.  Here are some interesting findings from Gottman’s research:

• with 80% accuracy he could predict divorce with meta-emotional mismatches between couples
• couple’s interactions became stable over 3 years
• most relationship problems never get solved and 69% are ‘perpetual’ problems
• perpetual problems are based on personality differences between partners

RELATIONSHIP SKILLS

People in marriages can learn skills to stay together in a mutually satisfying relationship by:

• remaining friends
• admiring each other with fondness
• turning towards each other’s attempts for connection
• scanning each other for positive aspects of their personality
• managing conflict
• help each other to make dreams a reality
• share each others’ meaning in life

Couples can build a solid relationship house with each of the above as levels that are supported  up with commitment and trust.

Linda Taylor May 2018

The post Satisfied Marriages are Predictable appeared first on Linda Taylor.

Science Says Lasting Relationships Come Down To 2 Basic Traits

EMILY ESFAHANI SMITH, The AtlanticNov. 9, 2014, 3:20 PM

Science says lasting relationships come down to—you guessed it—kindness and generosity.

Every day in June, the most popular wedding month of the year, about 13,000 American couples will say “I do,” committing to a lifelong relationship that will be full of friendship, joy, and love that will carry them forward to their final days on this earth.

Except, of course, it doesn’t work out that way for most people.

The majority of marriages fail, either ending in divorce and separation or devolving into bitterness and dysfunction.

Of all the people who get married, only three in ten remain in healthy, happy marriages, as psychologist Ty Tashiro points out in his book “The Science of Happily Ever After,” which was published earlier this year.

Social scientists first started studying marriages by observing them in action in the 1970s in response to a crisis: Married couples were divorcing at unprecedented rates. Worried about the impact these divorces would have on the children of the broken marriages, psychologists decided to cast their scientific net on couples, bringing them into the lab to observe them and determine what the ingredients of a healthy, lasting relationship were.

Was each unhappy family unhappy in its own way, as Tolstoy claimed, or did the miserable marriages all share something toxic in common?

Psychologist John Gottman was one of those researchers. For the past four decades, he has studied thousands of couples in a quest to figure out what makes relationships work. I recently had the chance to interview Gottman and his wife Julie, also a psychologist, in New York City. Together, the renowned experts on marital stability run The Gottman Institute, which is devoted to helping couples build and maintain loving, healthy relationships based on scientific studies.

John Gottman began gathering his most critical findings in 1986, when he set up “The Love Lab” with his colleague Robert Levenson at the University of Washington. Gottman and Levenson brought newlyweds into the lab and watched them interact with each other.

With a team of researchers, they hooked the couples up to electrodes and asked the couples to speak about their relationship, like how they met, a major conflict they were facing together, and a positive memory they had. As they spoke, the electrodes measured the subjects’ blood flow, heart rates, and how much they sweat they produced. Then the researchers sent the couples home and followed up with them six years later to see if they were still together.

From the data they gathered, Gottman separated the couples into two major groups: the masters and the disasters. The masters were still happily together after six years. The disasters had either broken up or were chronically unhappy in their marriages.

When the researchers analyzed the data they gathered on the couples, they saw clear differences between the masters and disasters. The disasters looked calm during the interviews, but their physiology, measured by the electrodes, told a different story. Their heart rates were quick, their sweat glands were active, and their blood flow was fast. Following thousands of couples longitudinally, Gottman found that the more physiologically active the couples were in the lab, the quicker their relationships deteriorated over time.

But what does physiology have to do with anything? The problem was that the disasters showed all the signs of arousal — of being in fight-or-flight mode — in their relationships. Having a conversation sitting next to their spouse was, to their bodies, like facing off with a saber-toothed tiger.

Even when they were talking about pleasant or mundane facets of their relationships, they were prepared to attack and be attacked. This sent their heart rates soaring and made them more aggressive toward each other. For example, each member of a couple could be talking about how their days had gone, and a highly aroused husband might say to his wife, “Why don’t you start talking about your day. It won’t take you very long.”

Flickr/Marg

The masters, by contrast, showed low physiological arousal. They felt calm and connected together, which translated into warm and affectionate behavior, even when they fought. It’s not that the masters had, by default, a better physiological make-up than the disasters; it’s that masters had created a climate of trust and intimacy that made both of them more emotionally and thus physically comfortable.

Gottman wanted to know more about how the masters created that culture of love and intimacy, and how the disasters squashed it. In a follow-up study in 1990, he designed a lab on the University of Washington campus to look like a beautiful bed and breakfast retreat.

He invited 130 newlywed couples to spend the day at this retreat and watched them as they did what couples normally do on vacation: cook, clean, listen to music, eat, chat, and hang out. And Gottman made a critical discovery in this study — one that gets at the heart of why some relationships thrive while others languish.

Throughout the day, partners would make requests for connection, what Gottman calls “bids.” For example, say that the husband is a bird enthusiast and notices a goldfinch fly across the yard. He might say to his wife, “Look at that beautiful bird outside!” He’s not just commenting on the bird here: he’s requesting a response from his wife — a sign of interest or support — hoping they’ll connect, however momentarily, over the bird.

The wife now has a choice. She can respond by either “turning toward” or “turning away” from her husband, as Gottman puts it. Though the bird-bid might seem minor and silly, it can actually reveal a lot about the health of the relationship. The husband thought the bird was important enough to bring it up in conversation and the question is whether his wife recognizes and respects that.

People who turned toward their partners in the study responded by engaging the bidder, showing interest and support in the bid. Those who didn’t — those who turned away — would not respond or respond minimally and continue doing whatever they were doing, like watching TV or reading the paper. Sometimes they would respond with overt hostility, saying something like, “Stop interrupting me, I’m reading.”

These bidding interactions had profound effects on marital well-being. Couples who had divorced after a six-year follow up had “turn-toward bids” 33 percent of the time. Only three in ten of their bids for emotional connection were met with intimacy. The couples who were still together after six years had “turn-toward bids” 87 percent of the time. Nine times out of ten, they were meeting their partner’s emotional needs.

Flickr/Scarleth Marie

By observing these types of interactions, Gottman can predict with up to 94 percent certainty whether couples — straight or gay, rich or poor, childless or not — will be broken up, together and unhappy, or together and happy several years later. Much of it comes down to the spirit couples bring to the relationship. Do they bring kindness and generosity; or contempt, criticism, and hostility?

“There’s a habit of mind that the masters have,” Gottman explained in an interview, “which is this: they are scanning social environment for things they can appreciate and say thank you for. They are building this culture of respect and appreciation very purposefully. Disasters are scanning the social environment for partners’ mistakes.”

“It’s not just scanning environment,” chimed in Julie Gottman. “It’s scanning the  partner  for what the  partner  is doing right or scanning him for what he’s doing wrong and criticizing versus respecting him and expressing appreciation.”

Contempt, they have found, is the number one factor that tears couples apart. People who are focused on criticizing their partners miss a whopping 50 percent of positive things their partners are doing and they see negativity when it’s not there.

People who give their partner the cold shoulder — deliberately ignoring the partner or responding minimally — damage the relationship by making their partner feel worthless and invisible, as if they’re not there, not valued. And people who treat their partners with contempt and criticize them not only kill the love in the relationship, but they also kill their partner’s ability  to fight off viruses and cancers. Being mean is the death knell of relationships.

Kindness, on the other hand, glues couples together. Research independent from theirs has shown that kindness (along with emotional stability) is the most important predictor of satisfaction and stability in a marriage. Kindness makes each partner feel cared for, understood, and validated—feel loved. “My bounty is as boundless as the sea,” says Shakespeare’s Juliet. “My love as deep; the more I give to thee, / The more I have, for both are infinite.” That’s how kindness works too: there’s a great deal of evidence showing the more someone receives or witnesses kindness, the more they will be kind themselves, which leads to upward spirals of love and generosity in a relationship.

There are two ways to think about kindness. You can think about it as a fixed trait: either you have it or you don’t. Or you could think of kindness as a muscle. In some people, that muscle is naturally stronger than in others, but it can grow stronger in everyone with exercise. Masters tend to think about kindness as a muscle. They know that they have to exercise it to keep it in shape. They know, in other words, that a good relationship requires sustained hard work.

“If your partner expresses a need,” explained Julie Gottman, “and you are tired, stressed, or distracted, then the generous spirit comes in when a partner makes a bid, and you still turn toward your partner.”

In that moment, the easy response may be to turn away from your partner and focus on your iPad or your book or the television, to mumble “Uh huh” and move on with your life, but neglecting small moments of emotional connection will slowly wear away at your relationship. Neglect creates distance between partners and breeds resentment in the one who is being ignored.

The hardest time to practice kindness is, of course, during a fight—but this is also the most important time to be kind. Letting contempt and aggression spiral out of control during a conflict can inflict irrevocable damage on a relationship.

“Kindness doesn’t mean that we don’t express our anger,” Julie Gottman explained, “but the kindness informs how we choose to express the anger. You can throw spears at your partner. Or you can explain why you’re hurt and angry, and that’s the kinder path.”

John Gottman elaborated on those spears: “Disasters will say things differently in a fight. Disasters will say ‘You’re late. What’s wrong with you? You’re just like your mom.’ Masters will say ‘I feel bad for picking on you about your lateness, and I know it’s not your fault, but it’s really annoying that you’re late again.’”

For the hundreds of thousands of couples getting married each June — and for the millions of couples currently together, married or not — the lesson from the research is clear: If you want to have a stable, healthy relationship, exercise kindness early and often.

When people think about practicing kindness, they often think about small acts of generosity, like buying each other little gifts or giving one another back rubs every now and then. While those are great examples of generosity, kindness can also be built into the very backbone of a relationship through the way partners interact with each other on a day-to-day basis, whether or not there are back rubs and chocolates involved.

One way to practice kindness is by being generous about your partner’s intentions. From the research of the Gottmans, we know that disasters see negativity in their relationship even when it is not there. An angry wife may assume, for example, that when her husband left the toilet seat up, he was deliberately trying to annoy her. But he may have just absent-mindedly forgotten to put the seat down.

Or say a wife is running late to dinner (again), and the husband assumes that she doesn’t value him enough to show up to their date on time after he took the trouble to make a reservation and leave work early so that they could spend a romantic evening together. But it turns out that the wife was running late because she stopped by a store to pick him up a gift for their special night out.

Imagine her joining him for dinner, excited to deliver her gift, only to realize that he’s in a sour mood because he misinterpreted what was motivating her behavior. The ability to interpret your partner’s actions and intentions charitably can soften the sharp edge of conflict.

“Even in relationships where people are frustrated, it’s almost always the case that there are positive things going on and people trying to do the right thing,” psychologist Ty Tashiro  told me. “A lot of times, a partner is trying to do the right thing even if it’s executed poorly. So appreciate the intent.”

Another powerful kindness strategy revolves around shared joy. One of the telltale signs of the disaster couples Gottman studied was their inability to connect over each other’s good news. When one person in the relationship shared the good news of, say, a promotion at work with excitement, the other would respond with wooden disinterest by checking his watch or shutting the conversation down with a comment like, “That’s nice.”

We’ve all heard that partners should be there for each other when the going gets rough. But research shows that being there for each other when things go right is actually more important for relationship quality. How someone responds to a partner’s good news can have dramatic consequences for the relationship.

In one study from 2006, psychological researcher Shelly Gable and her colleagues brought young adult couples into the lab to discuss recent positive events from their lives. They psychologists wanted to know how partners would respond to each other’s good news. They found that, in general, couples responded to each other’s good news in four different ways that they called: passive destructive, active destructive, passive constructive, and active constructive.

Let’s say that one partner had recently received the excellent news that she got into medical school. She would say something like “I got into my top choice med school!”

If her partner responded in a passive destructive manner, he would ignore the event. For example, he might say something like: “You wouldn’t believe the great news I got yesterday! I won a free t-shirt!”

If her partner responded in a  passive constructive  way, he would acknowledge the good news, but in a half-hearted, understated way. A typical passive constructive response is saying “That’s great, babe” as he texts his buddy on his phone.

In the third kind of response, active destructive, the partner would diminish the good news his partner just got: “Are you sure you can handle all the studying? And what about the cost? Med school is so expensive!”

Finally, there’s active constructive responding. If her partner responded in this way, he stopped what he was doing and engaged wholeheartedly with her: “That’s great! Congratulations! When did you find out? Did they call you? What classes will you take first semester?”

Among the four response styles, active constructive responding is the kindest. While the other response styles are joy-killers, active constructive responding allows the partner to savor her joy and gives the couple an opportunity to bond over the good news. In the parlance of the Gottmans, active constructive responding is a way of “turning toward” your partners bid (sharing the good news) rather than “turning away” from it.

Active constructive responding is critical for healthy relationships. In the 2006 study, Gable and her colleagues followed up with the couples two months later to see if they were still together. The psychologists found that the only difference between the couples who were together and those who broke up was active constructive responding. Those who showed genuine interest in their partner’s joys were more likely to be together. In an earlier study, Gable found that active constructive responding was also associated with higher relationship quality and more intimacy between partners.

There are many reasons why relationships fail, but if you look at what drives the deterioration of many relationships, it’s often a breakdown of kindness. As the normal stresses of a life together pile up—with children, career, friend, in-laws, and other distractions crowding out the time for romance and intimacy—couples may put less effort into their relationship and let the petty grievances they hold against one another tear them apart.

In most marriages, levels of satisfaction drop dramatically within the first few years together. But among couples who not only endure, but live happily together for years and years, the spirit of kindness and generosity guides them forward.

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5 POINTS THAT SHOW YOU ARE POSITIVELY ENGAGED IN YOUR PARTNER

The following 5 points that show you are positively engaged in your partner.  

Answering ‘Yes’ to the 5 points shows you have remained positively engaged in each other

1. You are comfortable close and trust your partner
2. It is easy to confide in your partner
3. You feel connected with your partner even when apart
4. You can take emotional risks with your partner
5. Your partner cares about your emotions

SECURE ATTACHMENT

Dr Susan Johnson, http://drsuejohnson.com, states in her book, Hold me Tight (2008, pages 49 and 50)) that a secure attachment is necessary for a happy and lasting relationship.  She discusses three crucial conversations that are aimed at “encouraging a special kind of emotional responsiveness that is the key to lasting love for couples.”

She embraces the 5 points that show you are positively engaged in your partner as well as:

Accessibility which means stating open to your partner even when you have doubts and feel insecure.  It also means the willingness to struggle to make sense of your emotions so that these are not so overwhelming.

Responsiveness means tuning into your partner and showing that his or her emotions have an impact on you.  Sensitive responsiveness touches us emotionally and calms us on a physical level.    It means being aware of your partner’s emotional signals and that these are communicating a need for comfort and care.

CALM MIND LOVING RELATIONSHIP

Being in control of one’s thoughts, emotions and physical responses helps to restructure the mind so that you can enjoy a positive spontaneous mindset.    Each time you get angry, you make withdrawals from your individual bank account.  Criticism, contempt and blaming are also withdrawals that bankrupt your relationship bank account.

You can build a positive bank account for yourself by watching your thoughts as they become you feelings.  Then being aware of your feelings as they influence your actions.   being in control of your actions as these become your character and the character of your relationship. 

Hypnotherapy gives you the tools to focus on what you want and shift into a more positive perspective, learn more about what happens with hypnotherapy http://hypnosisworks.com.au

HOW DOES RELATIONSHIP THERAPY HELP?

Understanding the connection between you and your partner, and sharing how you see it, is the first step to being able to reconnect and rebuild the connection you both want and need.

Relationship therapy can help create a safe place for you both to reflect and talk about these 5 points that show you are positively engaged in your partner

Linda Taylor

http://lindataylor.com.au

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Research has been able to define master or disaster couple science.   Master couples live in a  sound relationship house.  What they do in relationship is very different to what disaster couples do.

QUALITES OF MASTER RELATIONSHIPS 

Are you a high functioning COUPLE?                                                                                                             

There is more positivity than negativity, 5:1 ratio

You turn towards each other, you are emotionally engaged and talk

You both use humour, affection, amusement, active coping techniques and communicate acceptance when in conflict.

You stay present with each other.

You accept and follow the influence and guidance of your partner.

Practise active listening, you want to understand your partner’s perspective, even if you do not agree with it.

You both use a “soft start up”, when there is conflict it is tempered.

You are both building a positive relationship bank account.

There are effective mending attempts to build positivity.

You both deescalate negativity, anger is not dangerous.

You create a safe space to get to know your partner’s thoughts, feelings and needs.

You have ways to identify conflict early and stop conflict in the first place.

You have a strong friendship

You are affectionate and intimate with each other.

QUALITES OF DISASTER RELATIONSHIPS

Are you a Low Functioning Couple?

You turn away from each other, most of the time

Negativity escalates. **

There is more negativity than positivity. **

You minimise your own errors and maximise your partner’s errors.

There is an enemy in the house, you view your partner as the enemy

Continued emotional disengagement. **

There is emotional and physical withdrawal

There is failure to accept  guidance and influence.

When you are ” triggered” you want to either attack, withdraw, criticise or be defensive, all the time.

There is little dialogue, you or your partner do not express thoughts, feelings and needs.

Chronic physiological arousal, flooded with anger and emotion.

You hold onto fights.

Not able to share who you are and your vulnerabilities.

Miscommunication often happens.

There is a lack of connection and communication.

There is neglect and continued suffering

** indicators for separation and divorce

Written by Linda Taylor www.lindataylor.com.au

Adapted from Dr’s John and Julie Gottman www.gottman.com

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Well known relationship experts, Dr’s John and Julie Gottman, say that anger in conflict is not dangerous it is the escalation of anger that causes most damage, “only 31% of couples’ major areas of continuing disagreement was about a resolvable issue.  69% of the time it was about and unresolvable perpetual problem.” (http:gottman.com)

Build friendship to create safe relationship space means there is no enemies in the house.    It is critical for couples to continue to build friendship, trust and intimacy.

When couples first meet there is a period of getting to know one another’s world through dating.  It is a fun time of the relationship.  As the relationship lengthens and deepens change happens; you get married, work longer hours, have children, experience health concerns.  What used to happen spontaneously when you first fell in love disappears.    You need to pay attention and nurture the relationship so that it remains exciting and fun to be in.

Dr Sue Johnson, author of “Hold Me Tight, says “When we feel safely linked to our partners, we more easily roll with the hurts they inevitably inflict, and we are less likely to be aggressively hostile when we get mad at them.” (http:drsuejohnson.com)

The are some fundamental processes to build friendship to create safe relationship space, most of the time:

KNOWING YOUR PARTNER’S INNER WORLD

When there is continued negativity the fundamental process of knowing about your partner’s inner world slows down and may stop.  One way to prevent this from happening is asking open ended questions and periodically updating this knowledge about one another.  In this way you are building friendship.

FONDNESS AND ADMIRATION

Couples who deescalate anger quickly are more likely to build friendship to create safe relationship space and continue to share fondness and admiration of each other.    Often couples get caught in the habit pattern of scanning the environment for the mistakes their partner makes.   To build a culture of appreciation, fondness, affection and respect couples need to scan for what their partner does right.

MAKING REPAIRS

Being responsive to your partner’s unique ways for asking for connection and expressing their emotional needs  is called “turning towards versus turning away “(http:gottman.com).  Master couples do this  even when in conflict.  There is the presence of positivity in problem solving and conflict resolution and they constantly build a positive bank account.

Dr Robert Karen, an expert on attachment bonds says an insecure attachment from childhood creates negative affect with intimacy in relationships (http:psychology.sunnysb.edu/attachment). 

INSECURE ATTACHMENT

An insecure attachment with Tom and Lisa looks something like this:

The closeness Tom and Lisa had when they got married has disappeared.   Lisa craves for more closeness and Tom has a tendency to withdraw from confrontations.  Tom feels the sexual connection with Lisa in the bedroom is enough however Lisa says sexual relations are not enough.    She needs more friendship to safe relationship space to express her thoughts and feelings.

Lisa says: “These days he is always busy, I am not sure I matter to him.  When he’s at home he’s watching TV or on his computer.  It’s like he doesn’t see me and the only way I know to get his attention is to push him.    I attack him and be over critical.   Any attention is better than no attention, right?”

Tom says: “I can never get it right with her, I get that I am somehow flawed and that I am a failure as a husband, somehow that paralyses me so I shut down and wait for her to calm down – I’m do not want to rock the boat so I go into my shell where it’s safe, no yelling, no name calling   I shut the door on her angry rants, it is like I am a prisoner and she is warden.”

CONNECTION LOOKS LIKE THIS

Both are wanting to connect yet there is a sense of hopelessness, disconnection and inadequacy.   They are dancing a familiar dance with each other. What helped both of them to not spiral and get caught up in the negative dance  was to be aware of the dance.  Then they began to stand together, slow down the music and they learnt how to create enough safety to talk about their thoughts, feelings and needs.

The attacks and withdrawal stopped, the new dance goes like this:

Tom: “I realised Lisa was not the enemy and that she was fighting for the relationship, a connection, not trying to do me in.”

Lisa: “When I start to get into that thing, the spiral, we talk about and I don’t get so sucked into it .   I say “I am feeling left out here we don’t have to do it this way.”

TRUST

A couple who searches for common ground will prioritise each others’ needs as important.  This couple has a culture of supporting each other in reaching their goals.  Trust is apparent in the relationship when one acts and thinks in ways to maximise their partners interests and benefits rather than just their own.  You and your partner go back to back no matter what happens in the relationship.  It becomes easier to build friendship to create safe relationship space.

COMMITMENT

Commitment is easy to experience when you and your partner know that this relationship is a life long journey, remember those words “for better or for worse.”  Master couples cherish their partner’s qualities, nurture gratitude toward each other, and compare them favourably with others.  Disaster couples get in the habit of trashing their partner in front others.

MAJOR CAUSE OF DIVORCE

A study by Gigy and Kelly in the Californian Divorce Mediation Project (http:mediate.com/ccv/docs/divorce) discovered that 80% of the time divorce happens when people become emotionally distant and drift apart.  This means there is a failure to build friendship and intimacy in the relationship.

Drs Julie and John Gottman’s research also shows that affairs are not usually about sex, but connecting with someone who offers friendship and affection (http:gottman.com)

BUILD FRIENDSHIP TO CREATE SAFE RELATIONSHIP SPACE

When couples are unhappy, they often see only 50% of their partners positive interactions.  I have found that couples minimise their own errors and think of these in terms of fleeting circumstances rather than lasting character flaws or negative personality traits.  Whereas they see their partner as the problem, “fix my partner and the relationship will be fine.”   One goal in Gottman Couples Therapy is to strengthen the friendship.   It then becomes easier to see the person they decided to marry in a more positive light (http:lindataylor.com.au)

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