We go to the doctor when we don't feel well, point to what hurts, and the doctor focuses on how to fix what is wrong.
When people come to counseling, they focus on the things in their life that make them feel bad so that they can move toward more positive.
But, when it comes to assessing the health and well-being of our romantic relationships, focusing on the negatives makes it easy to overlook the positives your partner contributes to your life.
Theres a concept called a "magic ratio" that separates happy versus unhappy couples. This concept is that couples who engaged in five positive interactions for every one negative interaction were more likely to be married 15 years longer.
Negatives are stronger then the positives. Overemphasizing the negative over the positive is a cognitive distortion that, in terms of survival, works in our favor. But...not so much in terms of relationships. Negative emotions possess a greater functional value than positive ones.
➖According to The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman, research determined that 69 percent of problems in a relationship are unsolvable. This is due to differing perspectives about how to handle major martial decisions and conflicting personality traits. When relationships are filled with so many unresolvable problems, there may seem to be more negatives than positives, especially when the fights keep coming back to the same unchangeable issues.
➖Each fight is more than just what is happening in this situation. In each argument, each partner carries along with them an invisible suitcase full of past struggles with parents, previous partners, and previous fights with their current partner. This inflates the intensity and meaning of the current fight and the significance of winning this one argument becomes about previous perceived injustices, childhood disappointments, and deep-rooted insecurities about how you see yourself and how others—especially your partner—see you.
➖Traumatic events impact a person’s memory differently, thanks to that whole fight-or-flight/fear memory thing. When a couple fights, there is the threat of a loss of life—not the loss of literal life, but the fear of a loss of safety, security, and predictability that we thought would be a guarantee once we met "our person" and committed to envisioning a future that ended when death do us part. It makes sense then that at some point in a relationship that has become contentious, every fight is traumatic in the truest sense of the word. Each fight becomes a reminder that the safety and security that you thought came along with your marital vows was an illusion at best, and a lie at worst. Given all of this information...it almost seems surprising that it only takes five positive exchanges to counteract one negative.
When your counselor suggests that you both review the details of what caused your last major fight, and you focus on how much you do for her and how little she does for you, it is easy to forget that she used to leave loving notes for you all over the place.
When you are focused on how unappreciated you feel, you forget that he used to bring you giant Reese’s cups for no reason at all.
When you are irritated that she is running late for the dinner, you don't allow yourself to see that she is late because a part of her believes that if she looked like she did when you first met her, maybe you will love her the way you did back then.
And when both of you are constantly keeping score and tallying all the wrongs that have been inflicted on you, in the end, you both lose.
Unless your goal was to end up alone.
Comments