When couples engage in lots of chitchat, Gottman says you can be pretty sure that they will stay happily married. What’s really happening in these brief exchanges is that the husband and wife are connecting — they are turning toward each other.
In couples who go on to divorce or live together unhappily, such small moments of connection are rare. More often than not, if the husband makes a passing comment about something, the wife doesn’t even look up from what she is doing. If she does look up or briefly responds, her husband doesn’t notice or acknowledge what she says.
Hollywood has dramatically distorted our notions of romance and what makes passion burn. Watching Humphrey Bogart gather teary-eyed Ingrid Bergman into his arms may make your heart pound, but real-life romance is fueled by a far more humdrum approach to staying connected. It is kept alive each time you let your spouse know he or she is valued during the grind of everyday life.
Comical as it may sound, romance actually grows when a couple are in the supermarket and the wife says, “Are we out of bleach?” and the husband says, “I don’t know. Let me go get some just in case,” instead of shrugging apathetically.
It grows when you know your spouse is having a bad day at work and you take sixty seconds out of your own workday to leave words of encouragement on his voice mail. It grows when your wife tells you one morning, “I had the worst nightmare last night,” and you say, “I’m in a big hurry, but tell me about it now so we can talk about it tonight,” instead of “I’ don’t have time.”
In all of these instances husband and wife are making a choice to turn toward each other rather than away.
In marriage people periodically make what Gottman calls “bids” for their partner’s attention, affection, humor, or support. People either turn toward one another after these bids or they turn away. Turning toward each other is the basis of emotional connection, romance, passion, and a good sex life.
Couples who turn toward each other remain emotionally engaged and stay married. Those that don’t eventually lose their way. The reason for the differing outcome of these marriages is what Gottman has come to call the couple’s emotional bank account.
Partners who characteristically turn toward each other rather than away are putting money in the bank. They are building up emotional savings that can serve as a cushion when times get rough, when they’re faced with a major life stress or conflict.
Because they have stored up this goodwill, they are better able to make allowances for each other when a conflict arises. They can maintain a positive sense of each other and their marriage even during hard times.
The biggest payoff from this emotional bank account isn’t the cushion it offers when the couple are stressed. Turning toward your spouse in the little ways is also the key to long-lasting romance.
Many people think that the secret to reconnecting with their partner is a candlelit dinner or a by-the-sea vacation. But the real secret is to turn toward each other in little ways every day. A romantic night out really turns up the heat only when a couple has kept the pilot light burning by staying in touch in the little ways.
Is Your Marriage Primed for Romance? (Questionnaire)
It’s those little moments that you rarely think about — when you’re shopping at the supermarket, folding laundry, or having a quickie catch-up call while you’re both still at work — that make up the heart and soul of marriage.
Having a surplus in your emotional bank account is what makes romance last and gets you through hard times, bad moods, and major life changes.
By learning to turn toward each other more during the minor moments in your day, you will make your marriage not only more stable but more romantic. Every time you make the effort to listen and respond to what your spouse says, to help him or her, you make your marriage a little better.
Couples often ignore each other’s emotional needs out of mindlessness, not malice.
The first step in turning toward each other more is simply to be aware of how crucial these mundane moments are, not only to your marriage’s stability, but to its ongoing sense of romance.
For many couples, just realizing that they shouldn’t take their everyday interactions for granted makes an enormous difference in their relationship. Remind yourself that being helpful to each other will do far more for the strength and passion of your marriage than a two-week Bahamas getaway.
Exercise 1: The Emotional Bank Account
Keeping an account in your head and/or on paper of how much you’re connecting with your spouse emotionally in little ways can greatly benefit your marriage. Give yourself one point each time you’ve turned toward your spouse during the course of the day.
Be careful not to turn this into a competition or a quid pro quo where you track each other’s account “balance” and keep tabs on who has done what for whom. That would defeat the purpose of this exercise.
The goal is to focus on what you can do to improve your marriage — not on what your spouse should be doing but isn’t. That means trying to turn toward your spouse even when you feel he or she is being difficult or hostile.
You can tally your daily or weekly balance by adding up your deposits and subtracting any withdrawals (“Forgot to get film for spouse’s camera,” “Was late getting home”). For this exercise to work it’s important to be ruthlessly honest with yourself when you are negligent and turn away from your spouse. The more in the black your account is, the more likely you are to see your marriage improve.
Don’t be surprised if positive changes don’t occur overnight. If you’ve gotten out of the habit of turning toward each other, it may take some time to see the benefits of this exercise. One of the challenges is to notice when your partner does turn toward you and vice versa.
In one research study in which couples were closely observed in their own homes, happily married couples noticed almost all of the positive things the researchers observed their partners do for them.
Unhappily married couples underestimated their partners’ loving intentions by 50 percent!
You don’t want your ledgers to become the focus of a competition, but it does make sense to get each other’s input about which areas of your lives could benefit most from more emotional connection. That way you can focus your efforts on where they’ll have the greatest impact.
Exercise: Activities to do Together
Look over the long list of activities that some couples do together. Choose the three that you most wish your partner would do with you. Now, share your top three choices with each other so you both know how best to turn toward each other and accrue points.
Remember that this exercise is really a way to flatter each other. What you’re really telling your spouse is “I love: you so much that I want more of you.” So be sure to talk about your requests in that spirit.
Rather than being critical of what your partner has not done in the past, focus on what you would like to have happen now. That means saying “I’d like it if you stayed with me most of the time at parties” instead of “You always abandon me.”
The real benefit of this exercise comes when you both look at the three items your partner chose and follow through by committing to do one of them. This should be a firm agreement — a contract. Because an official agreement conveys respect for your request, you feel relieved and excited that your spouse is willing to give this to you. This intensifies the sense of romance!
Exercise 2: The Stress-Reducing Conversation
Although you can earn points in your emotional bank account during just about any everyday activity listed in the previous exercise, Gottman has found that the first one, “Reunite at the end of the day and talk about how it went,” is the most effective. What this “How was your day, dear?” conversation does (or ought to do) is to help each of you manage the stress in your life that is not caused by your marriage.
Learning to do this is crucial to a marriage’s long-term health. One of the key variables in relapse after marital therapy is whether stress from other areas of your lives spills over into your relationship. Couples who are overrun by this stress see their marriages relapse, while those who can help each other cope with it keep their marriages strong.
Many couples automatically have this sort of calming-down conversation, perhaps at the dinner table or after the kids fall asleep.
But too often this discussion does not have the desired effect — it increases your stress levels because you end up feeling frustrated with your spouse for not listening to you, whether you’re the one venting or the one who’s offering advice. If that’s the case, you need to change your approach to these catchup conversations to make sure they help you calm down.
For starters, think about the timing of the chat. Some people want to unburden themselves when they’re barely through the door. But others need to decompress on their own for a while before they’re ready to interact. So wait until you both want to talk.
On a typical day, spend twenty to thirty minutes on this conversation. The cardinal rule is that you talk about whatever is on your mind outside of your marriage. This is not the time to discuss any conflicts between you. It’s an opportunity to support each other emotionally concerning other areas in your lives.
This exercise takes active listening, that classic technique of standard marital therapy. The goal of active listening is to hear your spouse’s perspective with empathy and without judging him or her.
This listening technique can be extremely beneficial if you use it during discussions where you are not your spouse’s target.
In this context, you’ll feel far freer to be readily supportive and understanding of your spouse and vice versa. This can only heighten the love and trust you feel. Here are detailed instructions for having this discussion:
1. Take turns. Each partner gets to be the complainer for fifteen minutes.
2. Don’t give unsolicited advice. If you quickly suggest a solution to your partner’s dilemma, he or she is likely to feel that you are trivializing or dismissing the problem, which backfires. In effect you’re saying, “That’s not such a big issue. Why don’t you just . . . ?” So the cardinal rule when helping your partner de-stress is that understanding must precede advice. You have to let your partner know that you fully understand and empathize with the dilemma before you suggest a solution. Oftentimes your spouse isn’t asking you to come up with a solution at all — just to be a good listener, or offer a ready shoulder to cry on.
Gottman has found a significant gender difference when it comes to this rule, Women are more sensitive to advice-giving than are men. In other words, when a wife tells her husband her troubles, she usually reacts very negatively if he tries to give her advice right away. Instead she wants to hear that he understands and feels compassion.
Men are far more tolerant of immediate attempts to problem-solve so a wife can probably “getaway” with some gentle words of wisdom. Still, a man who emotes to his wife about his work troubles would probably prefer that she offer him sympathy rather than a solution.
Men especially get caught up in thinking that when their wives are upset, their role is to take care of the problem. A huge burden is lifted once they realize that this is not their responsibility and is usually the opposite of what their wives want. It seems almost too good to be true that you earn points by not trying to solve your partner’s problems, but that is the case.
3. Show genuine interest. Don’t let your mind or eyes wander. Stay focused on your spouse. Ask questions. Make eye contact. Nod, say “uh-huh,” and so on.
4. Communicate your understanding. Let your spouse know that you empathize: “What a bummer! I’d be stressed out, too. I can see why you feel that way”
5. Take your spouse’s side. This means being supportive, even if you think his or her perspective is unreasonable. Don’t side with the opposition — this will make your spouse resentful or dejected.
If your wife’s boss chewed her out for being five minutes late, don’t say, “Oh, well, maybe Bob was just having a bad day” And certainly don’t say, “Well, you shouldn’t have been late.” Instead, say, “That’s so unfair!” The point isn’t to be dishonest. It’s just that timing is everything. When your partner comes to you for emotional support (rather than for advice), your job is not to cast moral judgment or to tell him or her what to do. Your job is to say “poor baby.”
6. Express a “we against others” attitude. If your mate is feeling all alone in facing some difficulty, express solidarity. Let him or her know that the two of you are in this together.
7. Express affection. Hold your mate, put an arm on his or her shoulder, say, “I love you.”
8. Validate emotions. Let your partner know that his or her feelings make sense to you. Phrases that do this include “Yeah, that is really so sad. That would have me worried, too. I can see why you’d be annoyed about that.”
One last note: No one knows you better than your spouse. Sometimes advice may be just what you’re looking for. The best strategy is to talk about what you’d each like from the other when you’re feeling stressed.
If your spouse is ranting about the promotion he didn’t get, you can say something like “You’re obviously really upset about this. How can I help you? Do you need me just to listen, or do you want me to help you brainstorm what to do next?”
If you have this sort of conversation every day, it can’t help but benefit your marriage. You’ll come away with the conviction that your partner is on your side, and that’s one of the foundations of a long-lasting friendship. Once your marriage gets set at a more positive level, it will be harder to knock it off course.
As beneficial as turning toward each other can be, it can feel hurtful and rejecting when your spouse does the opposite. Often couples turn away from each other not out of malice but out of mindlessness. They get distracted and start taking each other for granted.
Realizing the importance of little moments and paying more attention to them is enough to solve the problem in many cases. But sometimes there are deeper reasons why couples keep missing each other.
For example, when one partner rebuffs the other, it could be a sign of hostility over some festering conflict. Gottman suggests that when one spouse regularly feels the other just doesn’t connect enough, often the cause is a disparity between their respective needs for intimacy and independence.
Marriage is something of a dance. There are times when you a feel drawn to your loved one and times when you feel the need to pull back and replenish your sense of autonomy. There’s a wide spectrum of “normal” needs in this area — some people have a greater and more frequent need for connection, others for independence.
A marriage can work even if people fall on opposite ends of this spectrum — as long as they are able to understand the reason for their feelings and respect their differences. If they don’t, however, hurt feelings are likely to develop.
If you feel like your spouse gives you the cold shoulder in little ways throughout the day, or if your spouse’s concept of closeness feels more like suffocation to you, the best thing you can do for your marriage is to talk it out. Looking at these moments together will give you greater insight into each other and help you both learn how to give each other what you need.
Exercise 3: What to Do When Your Spouse Doesn’t Turn toward You
If one of you is feeling rebuffed by the other lately, or overwhelmed by your spouse’s need for closeness, you should both fill out the form included in the book and then share your answers. There is no answer key for these questions, they are merely a point of departure for discussions with your spouse.
The bottom line of this approach is that there isn’t one reality when a couple misses each other in little ways. There are two equally legitimate perspectives. Once you understand and acknowledge this, you’ll find that reconnecting just comes naturally.
It’s natural to make the fundamental error of assuming that distance and loneliness are all your partner’s fault. In truth they’re nobody’s fault. In order to break the pattern, you both need to admit playing some role (however slight at first) in creating the problem.
As you work through the exercises above, you’ll become more adept at turning toward each other regularly, and the bond of camaraderie with your spouse will deepen. This more profound friendship will be a powerful shield against conflict. It may not forestall every argument, but it can prevent your differences of opinion from overwhelming your relationship.
One of the ways friendship does this is by helping to balance the power between husband and wife.
When you honor and respect each other, you’re usually able to appreciate each other’s point of view, even if you don’t agree with it.
When there’s an imbalance of power, there’s almost inevitably a great deal of marital distress.
Gottman, John M., and Nan Silver. (1999). “Principle 3: Turn toward each other instead of away,” in The Seven Principles for Making Marriages Work (Chapter Five, 79-97). New York: Three Rivers Press (Random House, Inc.).
From this chapter, what is the hardest thing for you to hold yourself accountable to?
