O'Grady Psychology Associates

Psychotherapy, Marriage Counseling, Neuropsychological Assessment

By Leave a Comment

Turning Toward in Relationships: Express Affection and Admiration

 

Turning Toward with Affection
Love at Any Age

When my mother turned 92 a couple of years ago, she fell in love for the fourth time, with a younger man—he was 90. Watching these lovebirds together was admittedly annoying at times, but mostly inspiring and touching. They would coo and kiss and very publicly say how much they loved each other. Then last fall, after they’d dated for two years, he died suddenly (if not unexpectedly) at the age of 92. At the memorial, after all his grown kids and grandkids introduced themselves and described their memories, my mother gingerly went up to the podium and said quite distinctly, “And I am his girlfriend.”

At 94, my mother lost her fourth great love. Although she was widowed twice and this romance lasted only two years, it taught her much about love. The note she read at his memorial summed it up: “Some people come into your life for a season, some people come into your life for a reason.” She learned a lot from this love —even at her advanced age—and what she tells me she learned is this:  be physically affectionate,  express your love frequently, and play. It seems simple, but we often let life’s demands pull our attention away from our partner in preference for work, routine daily tasks, and a myriad of other distractions, leading your partner to feel taken for granted. The need to feel loved –to be treated with respect and care– if unmet, will lead to slow erosion of love, landing the neglected partner in an affair, or in a divorce attorney’s office.

 The Magic Five and One-half Hours a Hours a Week

This advice is a large component of the couples counseling I do. Using a Gottman intervention called “The Magic Five and One-half Hours a Hours a Week,” I explain to couples the importance of making time in busy schedules to turn toward each other every day. https://ogradywellbeing.com/?p=634

Life is often so complicated with work, kids, financial worries, dentist appointments, teacher conferences, and even pet care, that we overlook the simplest ways of nurturing our relationships.

The NY Times recently profiled the marriage of an older couple who took a chance at love in their later years.

 

By Leave a Comment

Sleep and Romantic Relationships: How a Good Night’s Sleep Keeps Relationships Romantic

 

Research conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, showed that poor sleep hurts relationships. “Poor sleep may make us more selfish as we prioritize our own needs over our partner’s,” according to Amie Gordon. Gordon concluded that when partners feel unappreciated, the hidden culprit is sometimes poor sleep.

Sleep is a Cornerstone of Mental Health

Sleep is the cornerstone of mental health. One of the most common symptoms of emotional distress is sleep disturbance. People with depression complain of early-morning awakening, fragmented sleep, and inability to get back to sleep once awakened. Anxious people frequently report difficulty getting to sleep due to worry, rumination, and replaying or anticipating the day. Having children is another culprit in poor sleep. Nightly feedings, diaper changing, and generalized worry keep new parents awake well into toddler-hood. Getting a good night’s sleep is important—anyone who has been through periods of insomnia can attest to that. But what was interesting about this study is that it demonstrates that a partner who is sleep deprived is less likely to express fondness and gratitude. As Gordon notes, “You may have slept like a baby, but if your partner didn’t, you’ll probably both end up grouchy.”

How Sleep can Affect Romance

When Jack and Anne came to my office recently, Jack had been through a particularly stressful experience with his father. His emotional distress increased tension in his neck and back, intensifying his chronic pain. The combination of physical and emotional tension cascaded over several days, resulting in a sleepless night. The next morning, when his partner made a gentle bid for contact by pointing out an interesting article in the newspaper, he snapped at her. Or as they more vividly described it, “It was somewhere between a growl and a scream.” The walls went up, and both partners retreated in silence.

When bids for contact are not acknowledged, or your partner turns against rather than turning toward your bid, it leads to accumulated tension, often turning to resentment. Over time, this resentment leads to distress-maintaining thoughts about your partner (such as “my husband is such a jerk”) become toxic to the relationship. We know from research on marriage that expressing fondness and admiration is important for the health of the relationship. Once Jack was able to identify that his grouchiness was due to his poor sleep, he could make a repair to Anne by saying, “I’ve been preoccupied lately with my father, and that made me lose sleep. I’m sorry I overreacted this morning.”

Poor sleep can lead to the chronic use of sleep aids. From over-the-counter Benadryl to prescription sleeping pills, these medications can help for short-term insomnia, but when someone is depressed or anxious for an extended period of time, nightly use of these medications changes sleep architecture, making deeper, restorative sleep scarce. If disturbed sleep lasts for months—or years, as it often does—the missed opportunities to express loving tender thoughts to your mate accrue, leaving both partners feeling deprived of affection.

Because sleep problems are a symptom of something else, such as depression, anxiety, sleep apnea, or chronic pain, it is important to understand the reasons behind poor sleep and address those directly. As sleep improves, grouchiness diminishes, making room for hugs and kisses.

 

By 2 Comments

Turning Toward Each Other to Maintain Your Relationship

Couples who show affection in simple ways like holding hands have more positive perspective on their relationships.
Love and Friendship

The Magic Five and One-half Hours a Week: 

How to strengthen your relationship by turning toward each other every day

Couples who make time for each other on a regular basis strengthen their relationship.  We often underestimate how important the seemingly small things are to the health of a marriage.  Small positive things done often make a big difference in how loved each partner feels.  Expressing fondness and appreciation every day for five minutes a day adds up to thirty-five minutes a week.  How silly this sounds when you actually add up the minutes!  But I can tell you that it works.

When a couple concludes couple’s counseling, a sure way to prevent relapse into old patterns is to keep in mind the following ‘magic’ behaviors.

 

Things You Can Do to Keep Your Relationship Healthy and Close

1. Affection:  Kiss, hold, touch each other.  Play is good.  Make sure to kiss each other before going to sleep, and when you leave in the mornings.  Kissing when you come home at the end of the day is a ritual that many couples do, without much emotion attached to it.  It is still a good behavior but see if some of the time you can kiss and look each other in the eyes.  Linger a bit, but know that the rule applies that showing physical affection doesn’t mean sex.

2. Admiration and Appreciation: Find some way every day to genuinely communicate affection and appreciation for your partner.  A minimum would be five minutes a day each and every day.  Appreciations can be small acknowledgments such as, “Thanks for emptying the dishwasher” or “It feels really good to have you make me my favorite pasta tonight”.   Expressing admiration can be for big or little things, such as “I admire the way to handled the kids just now, you didn’t blow up the way I think I might have”, or “you look great today!”   Of course, don’t start pulling out the timer on your smartphone and timing these things.  The idea behind setting times is to help you understand that these small things add up—don’t short change your relationship by being stingy with affection, or expressions of fondness.

“It doesn’t count if it doesn’t come out of your mouth”.  Often we think things about our partners but don’t express it.  For reasons both complex and simple, people hold back their expressions of love, whether verbal or physical.  Couples get into habits of aloofness and distance.

3. Love Maps and Dates:  Date night is important because it lets you update love maps.  Every relationship needs at least two hours every week to be alone together.  Time to talk, to catch up on each other’s week, and to reconnect without the distraction of kids, or even other couples.  It is great to entertain together and solidify your community with friends, but don’t let this eat into your time together.  Couples often come to counseling confessing that they never have time alone with each other.  They are with their extended families, or the kids are around, or they have friends over to watch TV and have pizza. These activities are important and enriching, but should not be at the expense of time just the two of you.  Date night doesn’t have to be at night either.  You can schedule a lunch date once a week, or a morning walk.  Sometimes people say that they can’t afford to go out.  Paying for a babysitter, a movie, and dinner will add up fast.  Don’t let money be your excuse.  There are lots of free things to do – put time into thinking about ways to spend your time that doesn’t involve money.  A picnic or a trip to a museum on Free Day – but make time to brainstorm together.  If you don’t have family who can watch your kids, then ask other families to trade watching each other’s kids.  The kids enjoy play-date trades, and they may not consciously understand it, but seeing their parents take time away from them is good.  The world does not center on them.

When couples tell me they feel guilty leaving the kids, it is usually not the kids, but they who have trouble separating.

These are just a few of the things you can do to keep your relationship alive, and healthy.

By 2 Comments

Preventing infidelity: Open the sliding door to love

 Dr. John Gottman recently sent me a complimentary copy of his latest book, What Makes Love Last? I read it with great interest. Couples often come to my office struggling with trust and betrayal. While infidelity is a common reason couples seek counseling, it does not have to portend the end of the marriage. Before an affair strikes, women and men adamantly proclaim that they would divorce their partner if they caught them cheating. The discovery of an affair has been described as ”waking up to one’s worst nightmare.“ There is no doubt that this fundamental betrayal produces cataclysmic changes in the relationship. But what comes as a surprise, after the initial shock, is that couples often fight for their marriage, not so quick to divorce as they assumed.

How to Prevent Affairs

In What Makes Love Last?: How to Build Trust and Avoid Betrayal by John Gottman and Nan Silver (Simon & Schuster, 2012), Dr. Gottman makes the case that trust is a powerful protective antidote in keeping marriages healthy and affair-resistant. This seems obvious. But there are clear ways to encourage trust within a marriage. How does trust develop? What keeps it alive? And how do you rebuild it once it has been damaged? In this blog post and the next, I’ll address these questions.

Developing Trust is Central

Central in developing trust is how individuals in a relationship react to what Dr. Gottman refers to as “sliding-door moments.” where “one partner expresses a need for connection [and] the other’s response is either to slide open a door and walk through or keep it shut and turn away” (32). These expressions, or “bids for contact” in Gottman’s phrase, happen all the time as partners ask each other in words and deeds for support and understanding. A small bid would be something like, “Hey, isn’t that a lovely flower?” or as intimate as “I need you” after a difficult day. Each one offers a chance to step through the door.

All committed relationships have an abundance of sliding-door moments, and of course, partners will not always be able or want to step through. They could be busy, preoccupied, angry, or just not paying attention. What puts a relationship in trouble is when most of these moments end poorly. If over time, bids are ignored without the benefit of discussion, one or both partners may begin to wonder if they matter in the marriage. Compounded, these lost opportunities for connection will lead to feeling unloved and unappreciated.

Feeling that way creates fertile ground for an affair. For example, a co-worker shows interest and understanding during a time when a partner is absorbed in their own life stressors. What starts as an innocent work friendship can lead to betraying the marriage as the unmanaged conflict between a couple chisels away mutual trust and struggles become set in stone.

Negative Sentiment Override

Research shows that we are more likely to remember things that are unfinished—such as an argument that never gets resolved or discussions that end poorly with misunderstanding and hurt. The memory of the event leads to an increase in negative attitudes about the marriage. This is referred to as negative sentiment override (NSO). The friendship couples once felt is diminished and they see each other in an increasingly negative light. This NSO leads to one partner feeling threatened—perhaps her partner is involved with someone else?

When Joe and Lisa came to therapy for the first session, she was convinced he was having an affair. While his outside relationship had not become sexual, the risk was high that it could do so if they didn’t attend to their relationship. Many years of poorly managed communication about the division of labor conflicts led to feelings of being unappreciated and unloved by both Lisa and Joe. The more Lisa complained the more Joe pulled back—which served to make Lisa more insecure. During one session they described a recent tussle. After a particularly exhausting week, Lisa spent all Saturday cleaning and grocery shopping. She prepared Joe’s favorite dinner. But Joe was frustrated with Lisa because earlier in the day, when he needed her help getting their daughter ready for swim lessons, Lisa continued to Skype with her sister, ignoring him. By the time they sat down to eat, Joe was steaming, Joe has trouble expressing his feelings when he feels them. In this case, he stewed for most of the day. By the time they sat down to dinner, Joe was boiling mad. He didn’t realize that Lisa was trying to create a sliding door moment for them to connect at dinner. She didn’t know that Joe felt ignored.

Loss of Emotional Intimacy

This dynamic is not uncommon when couples start therapy. The loss of emotional intimacy is usually preceded by years of a subtle weakening of the friendship system in the marriage. Couples stop sharing their intimate feelings. Criticisms, gripes, and defensiveness erode fondness and admiration. Rather than thinking loving thoughts about each other, their thoughts are dominated by what therapists call “distress-maintaining thinking” In other words, the more you see your partner and your marriage in a negative light, the more distress you feel. In turn, the negative thinking gains traction, leaving little space for thoughts and behaviors that would increase expression of fondness and appreciation. If Lisa doesn’t express appreciation to Joe for the time he spends with their daughter, and Joe can’t express what he feels, both the loving and difficult feelings, they will grow apart. The door will shut tight. When sliding door moments are repeatedly missed, negative thoughts about the marriage will slip in, squeezing out affection and love.

The good news is that you can take definite steps to build back trust and protect your marriage from betrayal. Couples therapy is often the first step toward building back the foundation of your relationship. Stay tuned for the next post to see how you can protect your relationship.