Happy Couples Edit

By Erinn Williams, LCPC

If you’ve ever been to a therapist and talked through the stress that your partner is putting you through, a common question your therapist might ask you is, “Have you talked to them about it?”  The question is usually followed up by encouragement to “share how you are feeling” with your partner.  This well-meaning piece of counsel, however, can lead you down the wrong path.

In the west we partner with and/or marry because of love, not because of pragmatism.  And in the name of love we expect a certain level of emotional intimacy in our relationships.  There is a common belief that the more we share and open up to our partners, the closer we become.  Brene Brown has called needed attention to the power of vulnerability and how it promotes connection.

However, so many of us don’t have the proper skillset to actually be vulnerable (it’s not something they teach you in elementary school) and so a common trap can be overdoing it.  We vent to our partners, citing all of the ways they have failed us or have not met our expectations.  John Gottman calls it criticism.  Terry Real calls it unbridled self-expression.  

In Real’s book, The New Rules of Marriage: What You Need to Know to Make Love Work, he gives this humorous example, “Hey let me tell you in exact, lurid detail just how miserable you have made me by your shortcomings.  I need to vent.” as he then describes puking into a bag and handing it to your partner and noting how much better you feel.  Needless to say, nobody likes being puked on.

The interesting note about unedited expression is that it doesn’t actually provide connection in the way that Brown promises because it’s actually not vulnerability.  Brown would agree that it’s not vulnerable to spew all of your feelings about someone.  In fact, unedited expression actually demonstrates a lack of vulnerability - let me get this out of the way by talking at you, not allowing any space for you, and not connecting with how I am actually feeling.  Where is the connection in that?

Believe it or not, you don’t have to say everything that you are feeling about your partner to them, even if your therapist encourages you to share how you’re feeling.  Happy couples edit!

Many of the strategies to help you edit are similar to the strategies that I have been writing about in my recent blog posts about wanting to win arguments and the tendency to control your partner.  The first step is to recognize if you have a tendency to release everything all at once on your partner. If this is you read on.

So what does editing look like?  Take a note from Gottman about the difference between criticism and providing feedback.  Criticism characterizes someone’s faults as general attributes to the person whereas feedback cites specific examples of behavior.  It is the difference between “You’re so lazy, you never help with the housework” versus “Yesterday I was feeling overwhelmed by the amount of housework and I could have used a hand.”

What you need to realize about moments where you don’t edit is that it actually won’t be that effective in getting what you want.  Just because you’ve shared explicitly how disappointed you are about your partner’s behavior, doesn’t actually lead to changes in their behavior.  Instead, be clear with your partner.  Directly ask for what you want and be clear about what you need.  If your partner struggles to provide this for you, help them, because after all, you do love and care for them too!

It is important to find the words to be constructive with how you are feeling.  It’s not enough to identify feelings like disappointment, anger, or frustration, but how might you express them in a way that your partner can actually hear them?  Try to find a time where your partner would be most receptive to hearing you, not just when you need to be heard.  Leave space for your partner to talk about their experience and truly listen to their experience instead of planning your response mid-comment.  Finally, work together to create effective solutions to get needs and wants met in the relationship instead of letting things add up.

The Magic Ratio: What to look out for when fighting with your partner

All couples fight.  It is normal for both happy and unhappy couples and at times it can be a helpful part of a relationship. One may ask, just how much fighting is okay?  The work of Research Psychologist John Gottman, PhD, points to the fact that it’s not about how much fighting there is in a relationship. It’s about the types of interactions people have within those conflicts.

When I first learned about Gottman, I was a tad intimidated.  In reading about him I learned that he is known for being able to predict whether or not a couple will get divorced with 95% accuracy in just one meeting with them.  Yikes!

Dr. Gottman has devoted his career to researching couples and learning about the characteristics that are found in both happy and unhappy relationships.  And while there are many factors that go into what creates happiness and satisfaction for couples, one figure in particular has always stood out to me from Gottman’s work: the 5-to-1 ratio. 

Gottman learned that couples who consistently report being happy and satisfied in their relationship tend to have a ratio of 5 positive interactions to every 1 negative interaction during conflict.  In other words, happy couples have positive interactions five times more often than negative interactions when they fight. 

We may think to ourselves that all conflict is negative, but considering that conflict is inevitable, what Gottman means by “negative” is often what we think of as ineffective communication.  High levels of defensiveness, sneering, sarcasm, eye-rolling, or avoiding the conversation completely are all examples of negative interactions.

“Positive” interactions within conflict don’t necessarily mean agreeing with everything your partner says, or backing down from your position.  Instead, we can think of positive interactions as listening with the intention of understanding, admitting faults and apologizing when needed, laughing or making jokes that both people find humorous, mutually deciding to take a break from the conversation, validating, and ultimately trying to create a way to solve the problem.

Take inventory of how your next conflict goes.  If you’re seeing that the negative interactions far outweigh the positives, it could be helpful to examine this further.  Reading is a great place to start and I often recommend that my clients read Dr. Gottman’s 7 Principles for Making a Marriage Work.  Individual and/or couples therapy can also be an effective way to manage the conflict.  

The most interesting thing I learned from the 5-to-1 ratio is that it is not necessarily how often a couple fights that is important, but rather how they interact within the conflict.  I think this is helpful to remember, and it is something that all couples can benefit from recognizing.