If you were to ask me about the
one thing that determines
whether a couple will have a successful relationship, I’d think you were
crazy. I mean: trying to boil down
all of the complexities of a
relationship into one single line of advice? My average column hits 2200
words and you think I’m someone who can boil things down to a
soundbite? Something you can slap on a bumper-sticker?
But as it turns out, there’s an answer. And it’s deceptively simple.
It’s how the two of you
choose to look at your relationship.
One of the biggest mistakes people make is that they assume their
view of reality is both accurate and objective. We tend to believe that
what we see and experience is 100% exactly what’s going on in the world
around us. The only time we really start to question the subjectivity of
reality is after a couple of deep bong rips in college.
“Shit man, what if essence really does precede existence?”
In reality, however, our brains lie to us
all the damn time.
We can only handle so much information at one time, so in order to
free up space, our brains skip over things and fill in the blanks based
on what we know and what we expect to happen. We filter our reality
through our assumptions and preconceived notions. Part of why most
automobile accidents take place within five miles of your home is
because the area is
so familiar to you that your brain quits
paying attention and goes on auto-pilot. It fills in the blanks based on
what it believes to be there. Then that pick-up comes barrelling out of
nowhere and you literally didn’t see it coming.
But what does this have to do with relationships?
Well, it’s about expectations. Much as with confirmation bias, when
you expect to see something or hear something, you will. The same thing
applies to relationships: what you expect is what you will get. Not
because the experience is manifestly different, but how you
perceive and
react to it will be.
Now, the big question is: how does this apply to you as a couple?
Celebrate The Good, Minimize The Bad
Since we see what we expect to see, it’s important to make sure that
what you expect are the best parts of your relationship. The problem is
that the
bad almost always outweighs the good in our minds.
Because we have this inborn negativity bias, we often let the good
times pass without comment while the bad times hit us like a ton of
bricks.
That’s why it’s so important to celebrate the good times in your
life. Not “acknowledge.” “Celebrate.” Sure, people in a happy, loving
relationship can take their partners’ pride in them for granted. But
even in the happiest, schmoopiest of relationships, nothing feels better
than to get that little burst of validation from someone you love. It’s
lets them know that you see what they’ve done and you want them to
know, without a doubt, how proud you are.
That’s why it’s good to celebrate life’s little victories; it
reaffirms that you appreciate your partner’s accomplishments, just as
they appreciate yours.
Yeah, it can feel cheesy to make a big deal out of, say, finally
nailing that recipe that’s been giving you trouble. It brings to mind
ever Baby Boomer who’s ever complained about kids getting participation
trophies for just showing up.
“Way to devalue real accomplishment. Asshole.
Love you!”
But there’s legitimate value in making a fuss over even relatively
small
accomplishments. Those little celebrations can actually be more
important to a successful relationship than simply being the rock they
can rely on when shit goes down. Yes, supporting your partner during the
bad times is important. Being one pillar of their support system is
like the first aid of your relationship. You’re staunching the bleeding
and stabilizing the patient. However, that’s
all you’re doing… relationship triage. Cheering your partner on and being cheered on in turn, on the other hand, is what helps
heal the relationship.
Knowing that somebody sees the little things we’ve done, who knows
what they mean to us and thinks that it’s great that we’ve achieved it?
That’s a warm fuzzy feeling that makes us feel closer than before. And
most importantly: celebrating those little moments is
fun. Fun doesn’t become any less important when you’re in a relationship
than when you’re dating.
The more fun you have in your relationship as a couple, the more it
strengthens your connection, your commitment and your intimacy.
So when you or your partner have some good news, overcome some
obstacle or reach a goal at work, celebrate a little. It doesn’t have to
be a giant production; a little reward or minor indulgence is all you
need. Your celebration might be a nice foot massage or an extra glass of
wine. It might even just be getting excited and asking for all of the
details so your partner can feel like the conquering hero as they relive
the moment.
The
way you celebrate is ultimately less important than the fact that you
do it and make it a habit. That becomes part of the programming of your relationship.
Affection Makes The Difference
While we’re on the subject of making sure our partners know how we
feel, it’s also important to demonstrate our love and affection for one
another. It’s one thing to assume that our partners know that we care
for them, but it’s another to
show it.
One of the traps that we can fall into over the course of a
relationship is that we stop being affectionate with our partners.
Things become routine, rote, even. We do things because they’re
expected, part of what we do every day, rather than out of genuine
feeling. A quick kiss before you go out the door, saying “I love you
too” reflexively… if we aren’t careful, those just become part of the
background radiation of a relationship. We become less like a couple
than a pair of Disney animatronics, performing their daily routines with
no feeling behind them.
When we want keep those positive associations going so we are primed
to see the best in our partners and our relationship, we need to make a
point to express ourselves. Not just to say the words or perform the
expected observances, but to make a point of demonstrating and
expressing our fondness for the person we love. After all, whether
you’ve been with someone for six months or sixty years, we still like to
know that they’re happy and want to be with us.
Let’s look at Patrick Swayze in
Ghost. The fact that Swayze’s character
Sam can’t say “I love you,” is a minor plot point;
Demi Moore’s character Molly feels a little put out by the fact that
Sam just says “Ditto” when she tells him that she loves him. Sam clearly
feels the emotions even though he can’t say them. However, it feels
less like a playful moment of someone who’s uncomfortable with intimacy
to just… doing what’s expected. Even sweetly-intended jokes can damage
the relationship in tiny ways if done for too long. It’s like being
stabbed with a toothpick. On it’s own, it’s not a big deal. But those
small cuts and stings add up over time, and it sets a specific tone and
expectation.
This is the birth of a wonderful ro-meh-nce.
On the other hand, you have my favorite fictional couple,
Gomez and Morticia.
Not a day goes by without a “Cara mia” or a reminder of how much they
mean to one another. Critically, it doesn’t feel forced or rote; it
feels like a genuine expression of affection. They’re deliberately
setting up what to expect from the future of their relationship.
If you want to make your relationship a generally more positive one,
make sure that you keep up your affection for one another. You don’t
need to make a production how much you love someone — that can end up
feeling like you’re making a joke — but you
do want to express
your fondness and affection for one another. Compliments, terms of
endearment and flirting are all ways of keeping that feeling of
affection alive. So too are little touches; not just kisses or hugs
(though those are important) but the casual physical contact that
reminds them that you like being with them. Your hands on their waist,
your knee next to theirs and snuggling up to them on the couch or in
bed… these are all ways of reminding your partner that you care.
They may be little gestures, but those little gestures build up over time too.
Want A Successful Relationship? Manage “Me vs. We”
Another key to the way you perceive your relationship is managing the “me” vs. “we” factor.
There’s a delicate balancing act when it comes to a successful
relationship. You’re both an individual with their own wants and needs
but also part of a gestalt being — that numinous “we” that you and your
partner built together. You are both the individual pilots
and Voltron.
Defender of the universe, yet still can’t agree on what you want to eat for dinner…
You construct that “we” out of your time together, of the life you’ve
shared and the work you’ve both put in. You have to be willing to
commit to that “we” — that is, to the relationship the two of you have
built. Focusing on the “we” means that you put aside your own wants and
needs and doing the things that support the relationship. Notice very
carefully that I
didn’t say your
partner’s needs. While that is important, that’s not what I’m talking about here. Your partner’s needs aren’t the same as the
relationship’s needs. The relationship requires maintenance from the two of you working on concert with one another.
This is, of course, a tricky line to walk at times. While it’s important to
have a life outside of your relationship, it’s also important to remember that at the end of the day, you’ve chosen to be
together. You’re individuals yes, but you’re also a couple and that relationship is supposed to be greater than the two of you apart.
You will have things that you want. Your partner will have things that
they
want. It’s important that you both indulge each other’s needs and do
things specifically for your partner… but that’s not the “we”, that’s
two “me’s”.
You
both will have to be willing to sacrifice your interests
and time to do things that are specifically for the relationship itself.
This sacrifice may be something as simple as establishing a date night
and sticking to it. Alternately, it may be something as fun as finding
couples activities that encourage the two bond on a deeper and more
meaningful level. It may be something as emotionally difficult as
setting up a recurring appointment with a relationship counselor to iron
out issues that you’re unable to resolve yourselves.
If you want your relationship to last, you’ve got to remember that
your “we” isn’t just you and them, it’s what the two of you have built
together.
The Glory Is In The Struggle
Into every relationship, some strife must fall. How you respond to
those hard times is what will make the difference in the long run. Do
you believe that trouble is inevitable and hard times are there to be
endured? Or do you dig in your heels, spit into your hands and get ready
to do whatever it takes to get through to the other side?
That choice is significant, because it could affect the rest of your
relationship together. Couples who see trouble as something to be
endured are far more likely to break up than the ones who treat it as
something to overcome.
There are two factors at work here. The first is simply the locus of
control. Couples who are content to passively endure the hard times are
functionally giving up their ability to affect their relationships. In
focusing on endurance and simply trying to bear up under the stresses of
a relationship, they’re saying that they’re helpless to do anything to
better their position. Relationships are hard and shit happens, so wear a
hat.
“Now maybe we can get through our Netflix queue without major trauma…”
Couples who gear up to work through the problems, on the other hand,
are coming at it from a place of agency. In trying to overcome whatever
life throws at them, they are taking an active role in their own
relationship. They know that things are tough — they’re facing the same
problems as everyone else and feeling them just as keenly — but they’re
choosing to work together to get through. They believe that they are can
make things if they work at it, as long as they try. That belief, that
fundamental optimism of “this is hard, but we can work harder,” gives
them the emotional resilience to keep trying. They get knocked down, but
they get back up again. They tire, but they endure.
Like a bird pecking away at at mountain, they may not make much
progress at first. But by fighting for their relationship, they know
they can break through eventually. They keep at it until they wear that
mountain away.
And it’s that struggle together that leads to the other factor that
determines who stays together and who breaks up: the reinforcement of
“me
vs. we”. Couples who simply endure are maintaining the status quo. They
don’t commit to the “we”. They continue to do the same things over and
over and watching their relationship fall apart under the stress.
Couples, on the other hand, who struggle and fight are committing to the “we”. They are growing and changing
together.
In taking a position of conscious effort and improvement, they’re
having to work together as a team. They have to communicate and
cooperate. They’re finding new and different ways of solving their
problems as a unit and it’s bringing them closer together. The times are
hard, the pain is great and the stress is almost unbearable. But in
working together and rising up to the challenge, they come out the other
side stronger and better than they were before. They fight on because
they know that in the end, it’s
worth it.
That’s the glory in the struggle to make a relationship last. There
will be times when it’s nothing but frustration and pain. There will be
times when it seems like nothing would go right if you stuck a gun to
it’s head. But when those times come, if the two of you look at each
other, roll up your sleeves and prepare to face those troubles head on…
you’ll find yourselves breaking through to the other side and ready to
face the other challenges life throws at you.
And
that leads us to the most important part about making a relationship last…
You Build A Successful Relationship With The Stories You Tell
At the end of the day, the success of your
relationship revolves around the stories you tell about your
relationship. Is it the story of two people who muddle through life? Or
do you tell the story of two determined bastards who’ve fought for every
scrap they have and love each other all the more for it?
Sounds a bit woo-woo crazy-pants, doesn’t it? But there’s actual
science to back it up. A study from the University of Washington found
that
the
longevity of a couple’s relationship could be predicted with 94%
accuracy based on how couples describe their relationship history.
See, the stories we tell about our relationships define who we are as
a couple. Those stories correspond to how we perceive the way our
relationships have progressed. The more negatively you describe your
relationship, the more you’re predicting the
future of your relationship together. Those negative beliefs are going to color the way you see
everything
in your life with your partner. They could be sitting quietly eating
Triscuits and they’d still be pissing you off. Look at them eating
crackers like they’re not the worst person in the world.
“Tiscuitts? Triscuitts?! WE ARE A WHEAT-THINS HOUSEHOLD!”
Alternately, the more positively you describe your relationship, the
more that positivity is going to influence your perceptions. Yeah,
you’re struggling right now, but you know that deep down, you both love
each other and at the end of the day there’s nobody you’d rather have at
your back.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that you’re supposed to pretend that you
didn’t have to struggle. You don’t act as though you didn’t have hard times or that there weren’t moments that
by God you were ready to choke a motherfucker.
It doesn’t matter how much you love one another. It doesn’t matter
how much sex you have or how many separate vacations you take. E
very couple has times when they are just sick of each other’s shit.
It’s how you
choose to view those times that makes all the difference. And it
is a choice. As someone wise once told me: pain is inevitable. Everybody’s going to get hurt at one point or another. But while
pain is inevitable,
suffering
is optional. You may hurt. You may get angry. Hell, you will
have days when you’re so pissed off that you’re quivering with
suppressed rage. But if you can grit your teeth and hold on to that core
of love at the center of your relationship – you know, the one I’ve
been talking about over and over – then you can find the strength to get
through those bad times and back into the good.
And when the good times come again: how are you going to describe
what happened? What is the story that you will ultimately tell about
your relationship? Are those bad times simply a matter of how close you
came to ending things, or are they a time when the lightning flashed and
the pillars of Heaven shook and the two of you lashed yourselves
together and rode through the storm?
Do you talk about how you made a mistake when you got married? Or
perhaps you reminisce more about the days when you were single and free?
Are your stories about how you miss those days?
Do you talk about them as though it was the worst time of your lives? Is it a miracle that you got through it at all?
Or — like Gomez and Morticia — do you look at it as a struggle that
brought you two closer together? Did it nearly tear you apart, or did it
show you that you had more work to do and inspired you both to work
harder?
Do you talk about how marriage may be a struggle, but at the end of
the day, you agree that it’s worth every hard-fought moment? Or do you
talk about the hard times and the bitterness? Can you find the good that
came from your tribulations and focus on
that instead?
The stories you tell about yourselves will be what determines your future together. So it’s up to you.
Tell your story.
Just make sure it’s a good one.
by Dr. NerdLove
The post
The Key To A Successful Relationship appeared first on
Paging Dr. NerdLove.
