How to Save Your Relationship Using the Emotional Bank Account | Edmonton Psychologist Explains
Hi there, I’m Dr. Kelly Clark and today I wanted to talk about healthy committed romantic relationships. Now that can take the form of committed relationship. It could take the form of a common law relationship. It could take the form of a marital relationship.
So I wanted to talk about people that have effective marriages. They often do similar things. John Gottman is a researcher who has studied healthy committed romantic relationships for decades and has put together many commonalities, things that we would call master couples do that promote their healthy relationships.
I wanted to talk a little about my own experiences and my own research on marital relationships. In fact, myself, I’m a married individual as well. And so, realized that marriages are not easy, including my own. I realized just like my house, my car, my relationship with my friends, everything in life that is going to be quality and that is going to last for long. Our health, our house, our friendships, and of course, our relationships with our romantic partners.
So, I wanted to talk a little bit about that.
Shared Values and a Healthy Relationship Philosophy
I think that starting off I know healthy relationships, which I’ve been very intrigued that they’ve started off their relationship with writing a philosophical statement. I found this very interesting.
They will before committing, before marrying, before living together, talk about what it is that we think together combined is a healthy relationship.
Sometimes these are implicit expectations. I think generally most people would say they implicitly think that being just in relationship with one person while you’re in a healthy relationship is a good idea.
Most people don’t need to be talking about that before they meet.
Most people would agree that yes, if we’re going to be committed together, then you are exclusive to me. That would be a common feature.
But my point being more is that healthy relationships have shared values. They have common things that they agree on and they will talk about.
This will be something I’ll start off in a therapeutic relationship. Tell me about what brought you together.
And often that will be things that they had shared interest in together.
Whether it’s common hobbies, common values, a religious organization, a political organization, values on having children, they will have common philosophical views.
One thing that I think is a common view in generally healthy marriages is the idea that I am going to try my best to meet the other person’s need in this committed relationship.
Another thing I think is also very important in a committed relationship is trying your best to be respectful and communicating effectively.
Communication, Conflict, and Fighting Well
What I have noticed in people that are master couples, very good at getting along, is that they have a continual space for communication rather than having just the busyness of life.
And I sure get that when having kids. I used to really value getting things done on my own time. Once I had kids, I realized most things are not going to get done on my schedule anymore. It was a complete blessing and privilege to have our kids, but I realized that I needed to delay that.
However, one of the things that couldn’t go by the wayside is time with your wife or your common law partner or your committed romantic partner where you just create space to talk about how your week is going, about any things you might have some struggles with, about any things you wanted to communicate back to, are we meeting each other’s needs effectively?
These conversations in people that are very good and have healthy relationships, they continually meet those.
They also are effective fighters.
I remember a couple who was telling me that they would have big fights after the kids went to sleep and it’s like 12 o’clock at night. The husband has got to go to work the next morning or vice versa. And then all of a sudden they get into a big argument at 12:00 a.m. or 1:00 a.m. in the morning.
And I would call that unfair fighting.
We should have some good timelines. Pick these times in the day where you can actually have a good time to discuss some issues that you have together and fight better, fight healthier together.
If you get, and this often happens with any of us, including me, when we get set off or triggered, we can get into that very, and we all know that when you start to say the same argument, but you phrase it three different ways, trying to prove the other person wrong, it’s time to take a break.
In fact, the research would show that if we take a 20 minute break and come back, often we are reset and ready to re-engage in the conversation more effectively.
So make sure that you are trying to practice good healthy fighting.
Try to avoid blaming.
So if the person says you’re late and that frustrates me, I’d like you to be more on time. Saying well you do the same thing is really like a blame. They’re not taking responsibility.
And so instead, to me, the best thing is the goal is understanding.
Yeah, I can see why you’d be frustrated that I was late. I shouldn’t have been late. Yes, there was traffic and it was difficult, but I should have planned a little bit earlier.
So, not only not blame, but take responsibility.
I have noticed through the years that people that can change are people that can recognize that they have a fault or an area that they need to work on. Secondly, they can take responsibility.
It are those people that blame others.
It’s everybody else’s issue or it was the traffic, it wasn’t me.
People that blame usually cannot look at their own backyard, look at their behaviors and change and they don’t fight that well. They struggle with working through things because they can’t look at their own issues.
Also after a disagreement, clarifying what each other’s needs were in that, apologizing, saying something nice.
It’s interesting to me that I noticed that when couples, and another thing that we typically do, including myself, when I’ve had a fight, is avoid eye contact.
If I’m very mad, I don’t want to look at the person.
And you’ll notice that as well. If you’re in a place with your relationship where you’re walking around for the last 2 days and you’re avoiding contact with your significant other, it’s likely the body, the mind can lie, but the body can’t.
You could say, “Yeah, no, we’re good.”
But if your body through not looking at them, avoiding eye contact, it’s telling you something. I still have some unresolved resentment, some issue there.
So people that are usually, when we have a fight, we will often not look at the other person, we’ll avoid them. That’s another thing. We’ll avoid, we won’t talk to them, the cold treatment for a few days.
So I would certainly encourage us to come more quickly to resolving that cold shoulder and fighting more effectively by coming back and trying to work through it.
The other thing is that blasting.
Often when people are very mad, another thing that they might do is blast the other person.
So great for expressing, you get all that out, but if it’s just a blast and it’s not reparative, then it can be more damaging.
So the best way, rather than avoiding, rather than blaming, rather than blasting, is to express in a healthy way [Internal Link Opportunity: “express in a healthy way”].
And that classic rubric that works well even though most of us don’t speak this way is when you did this, I feel this, and what I need is this.
So in the case of where when you were late, I feel hurt that you didn’t care about being there for me or whatever feeling you had.
What I would like is for you to try to be more on time or try to be on time.
So fighting well is another thing with marriages.
Emotional Intimacy and Meeting Each Other’s Needs
Emotional intimacy.
Dr. John Gottman found that master couples are not only good with setting time apart and caring and having dates and those kind of things, but they’re also very good at being attuned to each other’s needs. Again, back to trying to meet the other person’s needs.
So he noticed, his research assistants noticed because they videotape these master couples.
He noticed that really effective couples do something called bids and turns.
A bid is something like, hey what are you reading over there?
And a turn is, oh I’m reading about the recent parade that happened downtown.
Oh tell me more about that.
So a bid and turn is initiation and a response.
So he found that people that are master couples do hundreds of bids and turns daily.
So there is that priority of creating that kind of intimacy, connection, and attending to each other’s needs.
So I would encourage that kind of affection and learning.
We’ve all heard about the love languages, but trying to meet your partner’s needs and having space where you’re building an affection and caring, whether that’s a kiss when they get home or a hug at night or holding hands.
But those kind of behavior, looking, eye contact.
So eye contact, even though we would think that this is just a natural one, that’s another one.
Looking at your partner, not looking at the bills when you get home or constantly scrambling and looking elsewhere because we’ve got busy lives.
But even little things like that are affection responses.
So, building those in together.
Shared Vision, Appreciation, and the Relationship Account
The other thing that I was going to talk about marriages was that shared vision.
John Gottman talks about having this shared vision together.
So updating our vision, our view of life.
As we’re progressing in years together, okay, what do we want to do for travel or with our kids or what’s important to you?
What’s some of your vision for yourself?
And becoming an expert on your person’s interests and just learning with an attentive ear.
So listening to understand and learn rather than just to respond.
So really showing an interest in some of those interests they have and having a shared vision, goals for the future, and ways to parent, spend money, talking about those things, very important.
But maintaining your own identity.
And you see this in healthy relationships where that ability to release.
You go away with your girlfriends or your male friends for 4 days or 3 days and do your own trip and allowing each other to have your own interest, your own identity, your own goals for your own growth.
A great idea and encouraging and building that as well.
And appreciation, again back to affection.
Master couples have little ways that they show affection to each other throughout that day.
Whether that’s now, they used to leave notes, now we could send a text message or share a funny article or do these kind of things.
And it’s very clear in the research that people that do better emotionally over the lifespan are those that feel valued, understood, and they share social relationships.
And so that certainly is one that we want to encourage with our relationships is that we are, as a couple, social together and relating to each other in a way that is affirming and encouraging.
So there’s a few things that I wanted to share with you about healthy marriages.
And the last thing I wanted to leave is a bit of an analogy that I like to share and that is I like to think of the relationship account.
Again, back to taking care of the house, taking care of the car, my own physical health, all of those things, my relationship with my children.
I think of the relationship account.
In other words, it’s almost like a bank account that if you are putting in deposits, making the coffee for your partner when they didn’t ask, meeting a need in a way that they didn’t think of, or just doing things that they appreciate, cleaning the dishes up when you finish your night snack, whatever things that they appreciate, that puts a deposit back into the relationship account.
And we really want to see more of a surplus than a deficit.
And this makes sense to most of us on an intuitive level.
If I have a bank account that is much withdrawn, it doesn’t feel good.
And that’s how it is too for our relationship.
So I really want us to think about if we are, you had a fight this week and you didn’t clean up like your partner would have asked you to.
Well, actually, we’re taking out every time that happens.
You’re taking out of that relationship account.
Or you didn’t listen to them or you ignored them when they asked a request or you’re not making time for a date night.
Those are all withdrawals.
And so if we have way more withdrawals than we have deposits, the relationship’s going to be in trouble.
And long term, even though a lot of committed relationships, solid strong relationships usually realize that commitment’s necessary. We have to work through some of the tough times.
But long term, a continuous withdrawal relationship account will have negative and often disastrous effects on the marriage.
So something to think about.
Are you depositing in your relationship this week?
Thank you for listening.
If you have any more questions or would like to consult with us, feel free to refer to Dr. Kelly Clark.