Relationship Tune-up

Marriage help: Do what therapists do and build a stronger relationship

Many of us have experienced first-hand the power of therapy in helping us with our troubles. And the most powerful predictor of therapy effectiveness has to do with the emotional bond formed between the therapist and client. When you feel connected to your therapist, you are more likely to overcome what is troubling you. It appears that emotional connection to another (emotional intimacy) has healing qualities.

You can improve your marriage or relationship by doing what therapists do. Let's look at how therapists build a strong connection and how you can do this in your relationship.

Therapists create a powerful connection by:

~ Showing unconditional acceptance.

~ Communicating an understanding of a client's deepest struggles.

When these conditions are present, the relationship becomes therapeutic, and healing can take place. Why is this so important? Because we all need acceptance and understanding from another human being. When these vital ingredients are missing from our lives, we can not reach our full potential. 

Marriage help: Improve communication and build a stronger relationship

Boomerang Effect: what you send to your partner will come back to you.

I think I only threw a boomerang couple of times in my life. With a little practice I was able to get the boomerang to glide through the air, turn around and fly directly back to me. And then, like many fickle kids, once I mastered it I hung up my boomerang and didn't think about it again.

Until…

I thought about that old boomerang during a recent counseling session with a couple struggling with intense conflict. When the husband threw criticism at his wife, criticism came flying back toward the husband. Like a boomerang in action, criticism always brought a return of criticism. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised. After all, I've never seen someone respond to criticism with, "You know, you're absolutely right. I've been a total idiot lately and I need to be more considerate." Criticism makes people defensive and uncomfortable, and people often deal with that defensiveness by finding something they can criticize. Therefore, criticism begets criticism.

Then something remarkable happened. In the midst of the negativity that was boomeranging back and forth, I noticed that whenever one spouse said something that was almost compassionate or kind, the negativity weakened and on a few occasions, kindness was returned. I started to observe this positive boomerang effect with other couples: Compassion and positive sentiments frequently led to exchanges of additional positive sentiments.

When I pointed these patterns out to couples (how sending out positive or negative energy often returns positive or negative energy), most had no idea that this was happening. I'll bet that most couples don't realize the power of the boomerang effect--what you send out into the relationship will, sooner or later, come back to you.

Inoculate Your Relationship

The concept of the boomerang effect is simple but the implications for your marriage or relationship are far-reaching. By making a conscious effort to send out positive energy (in the form of loving statements, support and validation), you are creating an atmosphere that will invite the return of positive energy. This will deepen intimacy and over the long run, inoculate your relationship against the stresses that befall all couples.

Problems arise when couples enter into long-term cycles of negativity. When resentments and hurt feelings accumulate, sending out a few loving sentiments will not immediately bring a positive return. It's a mistake to give up when this occurs, even if you've spent an entire week or month being loving, kind and supportive. The negativity that erodes relationships occurs over months or years and it will take patience to tip the scales back to the positive. But if you're patient and consistent, you'll be surprised to find that sooner or later something good will come back to you.

Obviously, you don't have to wait for problems to arise before you throw the first positive boomerang your partner's way. Regularly sending positive sentiments toward your partner today, when things are going well, can protect your relationship tomorrow.   

Until next time,

Rich Nicastro, Ph.D.
www.StrengthenYourRelationship.com       

Relationship Quote for March 2008

The art of love... is largely the art of persistence. 

~Albert Ellis

The Power of Unspoken Relationship Rules

All relationships have rules, including yours. These rules vary from couple to couple and can be spoken rules (and agreed upon--"You cut the lawn and I'll do the laundry") or unspoken (arrangements between you and your partner that just seem to happen).  Unspoken rules often act as a powerful navigational system, informing you about what is permitted and what is off limits. 

The rules that guide your relationship are not random--they stem from the rules that guided your and your partner's families throughout your childhood.  Which means that you're not consciously aware of them, but they've shaped how you view and exist in relationships all the same. All families (like societies) develop rules that help guide the members in accordance with what the most powerful members of a family find acceptable or unacceptable.

For instance, many families have unspoken rules about emotions--which types of emotional responses are off limits, which emotions are okay to express, and even how to express them. So if you grew up in a family where expression of emotions (sadness, anger, joy, playfulness) was encouraged, then you will bring this rule (expression of all feelings is acceptable) to your marriage or relationship. If your partner grew up in a family that had a similar set of rules about emotions, then the rule that feelings are acceptable will easily become part of your relationship (probably without having to be spoken)--mutual expression of feelings will flow naturally.

Relationship Rules in Action:

But let's pretend for a moment that your partner grew up in a family that seldom expressed emotion. Displays of sadness, anger and even enthusiasm and joy made your partner's parents uncomfortable. Let's get even more specific: In your partner's family, his father was very powerful in dictating what was tolerated in the household. Imagine that your partner's father would become tense and uneasy whenever feelings were openly expressed.

Everyone in your partner's family felt this tension, though no one talked about it. Instead, the tension acted as a strait jacket, restricting the expression of feelings in everyone. This became an unspoken rule of your partner's family, a rule that could easily govern your partner's experience of feelings in his/her adult relationships.

In this example, the rules that governed the experience and expression of feelings for you and your partner as you grew into adulthood were very different. As you and your partner now settle into your relationship, these behind-the-scenes rules will clash--each opposing rule will fight for dominance (you're going to be drawn to an emotionally expressive form of intimacy and your partner's unspoken rules will push him/her to short-circuit that type of intimacy).

Relationship Advice: Change your thinking and your relationship will follow

The Pitfalls of All-or-None Thinking

Everyone has bouts of "all-or-none" thinking from time to time. "My butt always looks fat in these jeans."  "My boss never recognizes my hard work." But when you regularly resort to all-or-none thinking in your relationship, you place your union (and your partner) on an extreme end of the spectrum--usually the negative end. When you fall into the all-or-none trap, you convince yourself that your partner always behaves in problematic ways or that s/he never follows through in positive ways.

Examples of "All-or-None" thinking:

"You never pick up after yourself…"
"I can never win with you…"
"You always say that!"
"I do everything with the children. You never help out."

Couples are particularly vulnerable to all-or-none thinking. Why is this the case? Marriage and intimate relationships stir up intense feelings--both negative and positive. And strong, negative feelings feed all-or-none thinking.

For example, your husband makes you a cup of tea because you're not feeling well. This is a positive experience that might make you feel cared for and loved. Now imagine a different scenario. Your husband leaves a mess in the kitchen and when you talk to him about being neater, he snaps, "Don't treat me like a child!"

Which interaction are you more likely to remember a week or month later? If you said the negative event, you're in the majority. Not because you're a downer and dwell on the bad. It's simply because negative experiences leave an emotional residue that's more pronounced and therefore easier to remember.

Here's the problem: These negative residues accumulate and they can easily overshadow the positive that exists in your relationship or marriage. When this occurs, your attention is being pulled toward the negative--it's like mental binoculars focused on the negative aspects of your relationship.

This causes the positives to get filtered out and before you know it, your thinking becomes biased and it begins to feel like your partner is "always messing up" or "never" doing what s/he is supposed to.