O'Grady Psychology Associates

Psychotherapy, Marriage Counseling, Neuropsychological Assessment

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How Anger Hurts Relationships

Getting angry…is easy and everyone can do it; but doing it . . . in the right amount, at the right time, and for the right end, and in the right way is no longer easy, nor can everyone do it. —Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (II.9, 1109a2

Managing Conflict Rather than Eliminating Conflict

Conflict is inevitable in any long-term relationship. In the Gottman approach to couples counseling, we help clients understand that conflict is normal. Rather than eliminating conflict, we help them learn to manage it. Why can’t all conflicts be resolved? Because backgrounds and personalities don’t match exactly. Couples will always have some areas of disagreement: neat/tidy, disorganized/scheduled, emotionally expressive/keeps feelings inside, to name a few. Even two tidy people may disagree on who does more work around the house or, perhaps, what cleaning routine to follow.

By the time couples come to counseling, they have often been having the same argument in different forms for many years. The issue has become gridlocked—and just as drivers stuck in traffic feel angry and frustrated, partners who can’t move beyond an issue start having negative feelings about each other and the relationship.

Learning to Listen Without Anger

Anger is often the result of feeling misunderstood. When one partner feels like they are not being heard on a particular issue, and they likewise have trouble listening to their partner’s point of view, anger simmers, sometimes for years—finally coming to a roaring boil.

Jim and Joan came to counseling because she felt he stopped participating in the family years ago. Meanwhile, Jim felt disenfranchised. His views and opinions on how they were raising the kids were ignored and he felt he was “just a paycheck.” Joan felt he had checked out and was uninterested in her, the kids, or their home. They were both angry; they both felt the other was wrong. When they tried to discuss this problem it always escalated to screaming and yelling, often within earshot of the kids.

When they started couples counseling, they had had this same fight many, many times. Jim would withdraw; Joan would become more focused on her friends and the women in the neighborhood, whom she confided in and got support from. Joan and Jim were emotionally estranged. Not surprisingly, intimacy, both emotional and physical, had come to a grinding halt.

Gridlocked Problems: Begining to Compromise

When I listened to them discussing a variation of this gridlocked problem, I saw that each became angry quickly, and the result was they stopped listening to the other. Joan would lecture and Jim would face the other way, clamming up. People have many ways of expressing anger: he was seething inside quietly, and she was ranting loudly, but both were angry.

I stopped them when this happened and had them take just a few minutes to calm themselves. To go from anger to calm by learning to self-soothe is an important skill in all relationships, but especially in marriage. It can take just a few minutes to do this. This isn’t about swallowing or denying anger; the trick is to then re-engage in the conflict discussion with a more receptive and less defensive tone.

Staying angry is much easier, but “doing it in the right amount, at the right time, and for the right end, and in the right way” (as Aristotle said) produces quite different results when dealing with a perpetual problem. It is okay to be angry. But understanding why you are angry, and learning to express your feelings in a way that is clear and void of the four horsemen will lead to a very different conversation with a different outcome. Once Joan and Jim learned to talk about their conflicts without getting flooded, they listened to each other with deeper respect for the other’s feelings. This is the first step in learning to compromise.

Practicing self-soothing is something you can do at any age, and at just about any time. Listen to this simple three-minute ”breathing space” to feel the difference in your thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations when you take just a few minutes out of a difficult situation. For it is not just the repeated, unmanaged fights that damage the relationship, but the skewed and distorted perceptions that keep you stuck in gridlock, stewing, for years—over the same issue.

Try this brief relaxation exercise:  Three Minute Mindfulness

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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.

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The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Shortcutting Criticism

In the biblical Book of Revelations, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse signal the end of the world through conquest, war, famine, and death. The Four Horsemen that Dr. John Gottman’s research has identified as signaling the end of a relationship are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling—communication styles that threaten a marriage’s health and longevity.

When I first see a couple for relationship counseling, I assess their communication behaviors by using a set of questionnaires developed from the research of Dr. Gottman. To evaluate criticism, for example, each client answers yes or no to statements such as “I feel attacked or criticized when we talk about our disagreements” or “My partner uses phrases like ’you always’ or ’you never’ when complaining.”

Defensiveness is seen in statements like “Many of our issues are just not my problem” or “I have to defend myself because the charges against me are so unfair.” Statements such as “I try to point out the flaws in my partner’s personality that need improvement” or “I feel disgusted by some of my partner’s attitudes” assess contempt. Stonewalling is when one partner just tunes out and ignores the other, usually after a barrage of criticism. Putting up a wall of silence is an attempt to protect the stonewaller from getting flooded by physical and emotional over- reactivity. Of all the Horsemen, Dr. Gottman says this is the most likely to end a relationship.

The good news is that each of these Horsemen has an antidote. The first step is recognizing these interactions when they occur. Often when couples are stuck in a cycle of negative communication, each person is unable to see his or her own part in the problem. But with gentle coaching, clients learn to notice when they are criticizing, being contemptuous, on the defensive, or stonewalling.

Next, I show couples alternative ways to expressing themselves by using a specific antidote to each Horseman. Today, let’s talk about the antidote to criticism.

Learning to complain without blame is key to short-circuiting criticism. Any relationship may give rise to legitimate complaints. But the key to avoiding defensiveness in your partner is to complain in a way that does not place blame.

The formula is pretty simple: “When _________ happens, it makes me feel____________. What I would like from you is_________________.” For instance, when Judy says to Mark, “You’re always putting your parents’ needs before mine. You’re such an inconsiderate jerk,” the likely response from Mark might be, “I do not! And if I do, it’s because you don’t take any time to connect with them, so I have to do it all!” Placing blame just engenders defensiveness, continuing the cycle of criticism.

Helping Judy to find a different way to express her feelings might sound something like this: “Mark, I miss feeling connected to you when we are with your family. Do you think that this weekend when we see them, we can stay close? It would help me if you’d check in with me every once in a while.”  In this version, Judy takes responsibility for her feelings and then asks directly for what she wants without making Mark out to be the bad guy. Mark, in turn, can listen to Judy’s request without feeling he has to justify and defend.

Antidotes to the other three Horsemen will be taken up in another post. But understanding how these concepts affect communication in marriage goes a long way to helping couples manage conflict.

 

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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.

 

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Updating Your Love Maps—Keeping Friendship in Your Marriage

“You like tomato and I like tomahto”

Know your partner well to keep friendship in marriage.
Cherry tomatoes, late summer harvest

Last night I made a salad for dinner.  I picked fresh lemon cucumbers and baby lettuces from the garden, topping it with a grilled chicken breast we had cooked the night before.  David added whole red cherry and yellow pear tomatoes still warm from the garden.At the end of the meal, the tomatoes were left uneaten, because while I love sliced cherry tomatoes, I don’t like them whole.  “Ah,” I jokingly told David, ”time  to update your love map!”

What is a love map, and why does it need updating?

When couples first get to know each other, they have deep, intense talks, learning everything they can about one another. As they’re courting (or going through the “mate selection process,” to use the sociological jargon) they learn each other’s history, concerns, preferences, and world views, while yet undistracted by jobs, maintaining a home, childrearing, or finances. They keep a cognitive map of the relationship and its history.

In his book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, Dr. John Gottman calls these cognitive spaces “love maps.” Making cognitive room for the marriage involves remembering major events in each other’s history and updating this information—the love map—as the facts and feelings of your partner’s world changes. Partners with good love maps know each other intimately and are well-versed in each other’s likes and dislikes, personality quirks, hopes, and dreams.

Why it is Important to Know Your Partner Well —Friendship in Marriage Depends on Updating Love Maps

But couples don’t always update their love maps. All kinds of stresses, personal problems, and life events can intervene in a couple’s positive regard for each other, and even destroy the deep friendship that is the basis for a good marriage. Anger and resentment can create “negative sentiment override,” in which everything—every conversation, mistake, action—gets interpreted more and more negatively. By the time couples enter counseling, they have forgotten what they love about each other and have stopped keeping track of relevant information about each other, meaning their maps are out of date. When partners stop paying attention to what is important to one another and instead keep a mental scorecard of mistakes, slights, and offenses, the positive perspective turns sour.

Because love maps are so important, one of the first homework assignments I suggest in couples therapy is the Love Map Exercise. For anyone old enough to remember the TV show “The Newlywed Game,” it’s the same idea. The questions are simple and fun. For instance, “Name your partner’s two closest friends,” or “What is your partner’s favorite music?” It is usually an easy assignment.

Updating your love maps requires communication about your likes and dislikes, and this is true for both partners. Do you like your cherry tomatoes sliced or whole?  After all these years, my partner didn’t realize I don’t eat whole cherry tomatoes.  But it is my responsibility to tell him this. If I don’t, he’ll keep adding them to our salads without slicing them first, and I’ll keep leaving them behind.

It may sound simple, but any map needs updating to stay relevant—even if the new information is just tomatoes, tomahtoes.

Reference:

Gottman, John; Silver, Nan (1999). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. New York, NY: Crown Publishers imprint (Three Rivers Press).

Originally published here.