The Best Predictor of Your Happiness Is.........

Greetings everyone......I received a report recently which I have decided to share with everyone.  For over 75 years, a team at Harvard has tracked the physical and emotional well-being of two populations:  over 700 men from both poor families and graduates from Harvard. The study included brain scans, blood samples, self-reported surveys and actual interactions. (I’m not sure why it was limited to men…but I believe the results would not be that different if women were also included.)

The conclusion:  One thing surpasses all the rest in terms of importance:  the clearest message from the 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.

The biggest predictor of your happiness and fulfillment overall in life, is basically, love.

The data is also very clear that those who feel lonely are more likely to see their physical health decline earlier and die younger.

According to one of the researchers, “It’s not just the number of friends you have, and it’s not whether or not you’re in a committed relationship.  It’s the quality of your close relationships that matters.”

What that means is this: it doesn’t matter whether you have a huge group of friends or if you are in a “perfect” romantic relationship.  It’s the quality of the relationships—how much vulnerability and depth exists within them; how safe you feel sharing with one another; the extent to which you can relax and be seen for who you truly are and truly see another.

There are two foundational elements to this: “One is love.  The other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away.”  So it’s important to prioritize not only connection but your own capacity to process emotions and stress. 

The data is clear, that in the end, you could have all the money you’ve ever wanted, a successful career, and be in good physical health, but without loving relationships, you won’t be happy. 

So the next time you’re scrolling through Facebook  or remain glued to your phone, instead of being present at the table with your significant other, or you are staying late at the office instead of getting together with your family or close friends, consider making a different choice. 

Relationships are messy and they’re complicated.  Well, that’s life.  And according to the director of the Harvard Study, Robert Waldinger, here is the bottom line:  The good life is built with good relationships. And obviously, that includes loving marriages.

Remember: Happy marriages begin when we marry the ones we love, and they blossom when we love the ones we marry......    Jim Covington       

The Grass is Greener

 I recently received a post from the Gottman Institute. I liked it and have decided to share it with you. 

It's called The Grass is Greener. 

In any interaction, there is a possibility of connecting with your partner or turning away. One single moment is not that important, but if you’re consistently choosing to turn away, then trust erodes. When this happens, you begin to focus on your partner’s flaws. You forget about their traits you admire and value. Eventually you start making what researcher Caryl Rusbult calls “negative comparisons.” You start to compare your spouse to someone else, real or imagined, and you think, “I can do better.” Invest in your marriage instead. Express appreciation for each other. Brag about each other’s achievements. Say “I love you” every day. The grass isn’t greener on the other side. The grass is greener where you water it. (And even if the grass looks dead, it may still be possible to restore it to green, if you water it.....) If you are interested in reading further about how to "water the grass," go to https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-grass-is-greener-where-you-water-it/?utm_source=Marriage+Minute&utm_campaign=c72a1c493b-MM_08312017&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_56abe07ac5-c72a1c493b-135378145

Compassion: The Essence of a Loving Relationship

When couples have compassion for each other, here is what they hear from each other in words and actions: I'm interested in you....... I hear you........I understand how you feel.....I'm with you......I'd like to help you (whether I can or not).....I'd like to be with you (whether I can or not)....I accept you (even if I don't accept all your behavior).

 

When marriages end, the final rupture is usually not caused by too much anger or abuse or infidelity.  Rather, most marriages die a slow, agonizing death from too little compassion.

 

Compassion is sympathy for the hurt or distress of another.  Compassion is empathy.  Compassion is experienced as attunement, i.e., the feeling that your partner is there for you. At heart compassion is a simple appreciation of the basic human frailty we all share, which is why the experience of compassion makes you feel more humane and less isolated.  Compassion is love.  Love is an act, not just a feeling.  Compassion is the antidote for criticism and contempt.

 

Compassion is necessary for the formation of emotional bonds which are the ground of strong, healthy marriages.  Think of when you were dating someone you eventually came to love. Suppose you had to call that person and report that your parents had died. If your date responded with, "well, that's tough, call me when you get over it," would you have fallen in love with that person?  Chances are, you fell in love with someone who cared about how you felt, especially when you felt bad.

 

Most of what you really fight about in your relationship is not money or sex or in-laws, or raising the kids. Those are common problems that seem insurmountable only when you're hurt.  What causes the hurt, i.e., what you really fight about, is the impression that your partner doesn't care how you feel.  When someone you love is not compassionate, if feels like abuse.

 

As compassion decreases, resentment automatically rises, making common problems insoluble.  That's why most of the time, the problems couples fight about are not the issue.  The issue is the lack of felt compassion in their relationship.  If unfettered by the better angels of our nature, resentment builds and will inevitably turn into contempt.

 

Remember: Happy marriages begin when we marry the ones we love, and they blossom when we love the ones we marry.       Jim Covington              

The Worst Kind of Communication

John Gottman writes about four types of communication that are most detrimental to marital or committed relationships: criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling..  Of the four, he names contempt as the most toxic and predictor of divorce. Based on my own observations, I agree with him.  

Contempt expresses the feeling of dislike toward somebody, and implies that the other person is considered worthless and undeserving of respect. Contempt projects superiority, conveyed through insults, name-calling, tone of voice, as well as facial expressions. Contempt eats away at a relationship rapidly and painfully. Conflict escalates and prevents meaningful communication. What separates contempt from criticism?  The intention to insult and psychologically abuse your partner.

Ways to show one’s contempt

1. Insults and name-calling are the most conspicuous and crude—you’re ugly, a jerk, a wimp, loser,  etc.

2. Mockery is a subtle put-down, where the spouse’s words or actions are ridiculed to show he or she is not worthy of respect or trust. A man may tell his wife, for example, “I really do care about you,” and she replies sarcastically, “Oh sure, you really do care about me.”

3. Body language, such as rolling one’s eyes or sneering, gives the clearest clue that a couple is in trouble.

4. Tone of voice is probably the most powerful weapon of contempt.

Responses to contempt

What do you do if you have a partner who is harshly critical or contemptuous toward you?

     Don’t be drawn into contempt, criticism or defensiveness. You can stand up for yourself, but without joining in the sneering, ridiculing, and hostile negative judgments. 

     The best way to neutralize your contempt is to stop seeing arguments with your spouse as a way to retaliate or exhibit your superior moral stance.  Rather, your relationship will improve if you approach your spouse with precise non-blaming complaints by expressing feelings from your own inner experience (rather than attacking your partner’s character). In other words, it’s not what you say, but how you say it that makes all the difference.

LOVE CONSISTS IN THIS....

One of my favorite poets, Rainer Maria Rilke, defines love as follows:   Love consists in this…..that two solitudes protect, and touch and greet each other.

For some reason, that one phrase has stayed in my heart for years….. He wrote the poem in the 19th century, but he defined love as we have come to scientifically and emotionally understand it. My interpretation:

Two Solitudes: The word solitude means being alone, but In this context, I interpret the phrase to mean:  two separate beings, independent of each other and responsible for self, yet longing for connection—as we are all wired to want….

To Protect Each Other:  I take this to mean: being there for each other in times of need, when feeling vulnerable and alone, to empathize with your love mate when she/he is feeling hurt or anxious or unsure even if the feelings are sometimes for the moment, not based in reality.

To Touch.  Any intimate relationship is strengthened and nurtured by touch—holding hands, arms around each other, embracing, massaging, cuddling, kissing and yes, when making love.  And emotionally touching each other's heart by the love we give.

To Greet.......is to welcome your love-mate’s presence upon meeting, to connect with loving eyes and words, to hug....to express interest in the other’s day or his/her inner reality and feeling known.  

And that is what love consists of, each and every day.  So be it.  Jim Covington www.marriagecounselormanhattan.com 

DANGEROUS MYTHS ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS

According to John Gottman, renowned research psychologist and marriage counselor, there are many myths about relationships that are not only false but potentially destructive.  They are dangerous because they can lead couples down the wrong path, or worse, convince them that their marriage is a hopeless case.  The notion that you can save your relationship just by learning to communicate more sensitively is probably the most widely held misconception about happy marriages, but it's hardly the only one. Gottman has identified other misconceptions:

1. Conflict is a sign that you're in a bad relationship.   Conflict is inevitable in all relationships. Furthermore, conflict is there for a reason--to improve our understanding of our partner.  Conflict usually arises from missed attempts to communicate, especially in one person attempting to get emotionally close to the other.  Conflict also emerges from discrepancies between partners in expectations.  These are worth talking about.

2. Love is enough.  Love is not enough, because in most marriages--especially after a baby arrives--people stop courting one another and they stop making romance, fun, meaningful conversations and adventure a priority. Relationships have a tendency to become endless to-do lists, and conversation becomes limited to errand talk.  You need to intentionally make (or keep) the emotional connecting parts of a relationship a priority.

3.  Talking about past emotional wounds will only make them worse.  Faulkner once said, "The past is never dead.  It's not even past."  It is possible to process past emotional injuries.  You can't change the past but you can change your recollection and retelling of it.

4. Better relationships are ones in which people are more independent of and less needy of one another.  Interdependence is what relationships are all about. In healthy relationships, people try to meet one another's needs.  They adopt the motto, "when you're hurting, baby, the world stops and I listen."

5.  If you have to work at communication, it's sure sign that you're not soulmates.  The sure thing is that if you don't work at communication, the relationships will deteriorate over time, just like a car that's not taken care of will fall apart.  All relationships require work.  The work in relationships is down-regulating your own defensiveness and listening to your partner.

6. If a relationship needs therapy, it's already too late.  That may be true for couples who have been fighting for so long that there is no emotional connection at all. However, there are 900,000 divorces a year in the USA, and fewer than 10%(!) of those couples that divorce ever talk to a professional.  Couples therapy is now very effective and many of these couples could have made it work had they sought help.

7. What couples fight about most is sex, money, and in-laws.  The one thing that couples fight about most is nothing.  These fights result from failed bids to connect emotionally.  In these small moments, it's important to turn towards instead of turning away.

8. All relationship conflicts can be resolved.     Quite the opposite.  In fact, 69% of relationship conflicts are perpetual(they keep recurring), so what is required is acceptance of one another's personality differences. Couples will need to dialogue about these perpetual issues to avoid gridlock and resentment.  The goal then is to manage conflict, not resolve it.

9. All relationship conflicts are the same.  Some conflicts are deal breakers and, for those issues, compromise can be very difficult.  It's important to understand your "non-negotiables" when it comes to conflict.  What are you willing to give up?

10.  It's compatibility that makes relationships work.  It's diversity that makes relationships interesting  We are not looking for our clones.  They famous T-shirt study by Claus Wedekind shows that the pheromones we find most sexy are from people most genetically different from us Agreeability and conscientiousness are the characteristics that people really mean when they talk about "compatibility."  These qualities are indexed by a person being able to say things like "Good point," or "That's interesting, tell me more" or, "You may be right, and I may be wrong" during a disagreement.

11. Living alone with occasional relationships is a lifestyle choice that is equivalent in terms of life outcomes to being married.   Social epidemiology has shown that--everywhere on the planet--people who live alone die sooner, are less healthy, are less wealthy, and recover from illness slower than people who are married.  This is especially true of men, who have much worse social support networks than women.  When men are in a committed relationship their social networks increase.

ON BEING PRESENT WITH YOUR MATE

I believe the bottom line of any loving relationship is "being present." What does that mean? It means being responsive when your partner is reaching out to you, or as John Gottman puts it, "making a bid for connection." and feeling that you are responding in an attentive, respectful, interested manner--i.e. "being present." The ground of any strong relationship is the emotional connection one feels with his/her partner.  When that connection is missing, couples will inevitably become distant or start arguing about issues that don't really matter.

In every relationship, couples periodically make what Dr. Gottman calls "bids" for each other's attention, affection, or support.  Bids can be as insignificant as "please turn down the heat" to as significant as helping a partner care for a sick child.

In these moments, we have a choice to turn toward our partner or away from them.  If we turn toward, we build trust and emotional connection

Dr. Gottman often jokes that "everything positive you do in your relationship is foreplay."  Foreplay happens in the grocery store when you partner ask, "We have milk?" and you respond, "I'm not sure. I'll grab some," rather than shrugging your shoulder apathetically.

In a six-year study of newlyweds, Dr. Gottman found that couples who remained married had turned toward their partner's bids 86% of the time in his lab, while those who divorced turned towards each other only 3% of the time.

The number one thing couples fight about is not money or in-laws, or sex. There are exceptions, of course, but most arguments in relationships are about a failure to connect emotionally.

Sometimes we do not recognize when our partner is making a bid for connection because it's wrapped in criticism, or so it seems.  We react to their negativity and miss the opportunity to connect.

For example, Chris wants Lisa to come to bed but she is returning work email. His bid is "Please come to bed with me" but comes out as, "You're on email now?  You had all evening!"

If Lisa focuses on his plea and not his tone, she has the opportunity to respond positively:  "Good point. I'll be right there."  So before you reply defensively to your partner, pause for a moment and search for the bid beneath their harsh words. Then focus on the bid, not the delivery.  If you find it difficult not to react defensively, take five really deep breaths. Then ask your partner. "What do you need right now from me?"

If wrapping bids in criticism is a habit in your relationship, work on softening your start-up.