In one of our latest experiments, we interrupted couples after fifteen minutes and told them we needed to adjust the equipment. We asked them not to talk about their issue, but just to read magazines for half an hour. When they started talking about their issue again, their heart rates were significantly lower and their interaction more productive.
Exercise 3: Soothing Each Other
Once you’ve calmed yourself, you can benefit your marriage enormously if you then take some time to calm each other. Obviously this can be quite difficult to do if you’re feeling very angry or hurt. But the results can be so impressive that it’s worth trying. Remember: Only do this after you’ve already spent twenty minutes calming down on your own.
Soothing your partner is of enormous benefit to a marriage because it’s really a form of reverse conditioning. In other words, if you frequently have the experience of being calmed by your spouse, you will stop seeing your partner as a trigger of stress in your life and instead associate him or her with feeling relaxed. This automatically increases the positivity in your relationship.
To comfort each other, you first need to talk earnestly about flooding. Ask yourself and each other these questions:
• What makes me (you) feel flooded?
• How do I (you) typically bring up issues or irritability or complaints?
• Do I (you) store things up?
• Is there anything I can do that soothes you?
• Is there anything you can do that soothes me?
• What signals can we develop for letting the other know when we feel flooded? Can we take breaks?
* * *
If your heart rate exceeds 100 beats per minute you won’t be able to hear what your spouse is trying to tell you no matter how hard you try. Take a twenty-minute break before continuing.
* * *
There are many different ways to calm your spouse. What matters most is that your partner determines the method and enjoys it. Some couples find massage the perfect antidote to a stressful discussion. Another helpful technique is to take turns guiding each other through a meditation like the one described on pages 178–179. Think of it as a verbal massage. You can even write an elaborate script in which you have your spouse tighten and relax different muscle groups and then visualize a calm, beautiful scene that brings him or her pleasure. You can tape-record your rendition for future use—perhaps give it to your spouse as a special gift. You don’t need to wait for a tense situation to use this exercise. Soothing each other regularly is a wonderful way to prevent future flooding and generally enrich your marriage.
STEP 4: COMPROMISE
Like it or not, the only solution to marital problems is to find a compromise. In an intimate, loving relationship it just doesn’t work for either of you to get things all your way, even if you’re convinced that you’re right. This approach would create such inequity and unfairness that the marriage would suffer.
Usually, though both partners do make an earnest effort to compromise on issues, they fail because they go about trying to compromise in the wrong way. Negotiation is possible only after you’ve followed the steps above—softening startup, repairing your discussion, and keeping calm. These prime you for compromise by getting you into a positive mode.
Before you try to resolve a conflict, remember that the cornerstone of any compromise is the fourth principle of marriage—accepting influence. This means that for a compromise to work, you can’t have a closed mind to your spouse’s opinions and desires. You don’t have to agree with everything your spouse says or believes, but you have to be honestly open to considering his or her position. That’s what accepting influence is really all about. If you find yourself sitting with your arms folded and shaking your head no (or just thinking it) when your spouse is trying to talk out a problem with you, your discussion will never get anywhere.
As I’ve said, men have a harder time accepting influence from their wives than vice versa. But whatever your gender, an inability to be open-minded is a real liability when it comes to conflict resolution. So if you haven’t already, work through the exercises in Chapter 6. Realize that it may take time and continued self-awareness to break out of this tendency. Your spouse can assist you in seeing things from his or her perspective. Ask your spouse questions to help you see his or her point of view. Remember to search for the part of your spouse’s perspective that, by objective standards, is reasonable.
Once you’re ready, there’s nothing magical about finding a solution you both can live with. Often compromise is just a matter of talking out your differences and preferences in a systematic way. This is not difficult to do as long as you continue to follow the steps above to prevent your discussion from becoming overwhelmingly negative.
Exercise 4: Finding Common Ground
Decide together which solvable problem you want to tackle. Then sit separately and think about the problem. On a piece of paper, draw two circles—a smaller one inside a larger one. In the inner circle make a list of the aspects of the problem you can’t give in on. In the outer circle list all of the aspects of the problem you can compromise about. Remember the aikido principle of yielding to win—the more able you are to compromise, the better able you’ll be to persuade your spouse. So try hard to make your outer circle as large as possible and your inner circle as small as possible.
Here are the inner and outer circles of a couple named Raymond and Carol, who were both dissatisfied with their sex life.
Raymond
Inner Circle:
1. I want sex to be more erotic.
2. I want there to be fantasy play with you wearing very sexy lingerie.
Outer Circle:
1. I can compromise on whether to have sex in the morning or at night even when I’m tired.
2. I can compromise on our talking during sex.
Carol
Inner Circle:
1. I want to feel like we’re making love when we’re having sex.
2. I want Raymond to hold me and stroke me a lot. I want a lot of foreplay.
Outer Circle:
1. I prefer to have sex at night because I love falling asleep in your arms afterward, but sex in the morning would be okay too.
2. Talking to me a lot while we make love is nice, but I can compromise on this too.
Once you’ve filled in your circles (your lists may be much longer than Raymond’s and Carol’s), come back and share them with each other. Look for common bases of agreement. Remember as you discuss this to make use of all the other problem-solving strategies outlined in this chapter—namely, softened startup and soothing yourself or each other if flooding occurs.
In the case of Carol and Raymond, their inner circles are very different, but they are not incompatible. Once they accept and respect their sexual differences, they can create lovemaking sessions that incorporate his desire for erotic fantasy with her longing for intimacy and lots of touching. And although their outer circles are in opposition as well, they are willing to give in these areas, so compromise should be easy. Maybe they’ll decide to switch off with morning and evening sex depending on how tired Raymond is. And they can vary how much they speak during sex as well.
The goal of this circle exercise is to try to develop a common way of thinking about the issue so that you work together to construct a real plan that you can both live with. As you share your circles, ask yourselves the following questions:
1. What do we agree about?
2. What are our common feelings or the most important feelings here?
3. What common goals can we have here?
4. How can we understand this situation, this issue?
5. How do we think these goals should be accomplished?
Most likely if you’re grappling with a solvable problem, following these steps will lead you to find a reasonable compromise. Once you do, try out the solution for an agreed-upon time before revisiting it and deciding if it’s working. If it’s not, begin the process again and work together to resol
ve it.
From time to time it’s a good idea to recharge your compromising skills by focusing together on solving a problem that is not related to your marital issues. What follows is a fun exercise that will give you practice in coming to consensus decisions by working as a team and giving and accepting influence.
Exercise 5: Paper Tower
This exercise is especially fun to do with other couples. Consider having a paper tower party or contest where each couple is a separate team. You can take turns being builders and scorekeepers.
Your mission: Build a free-standing paper tower using the supplies listed below. The goal is to build the highest, most stable, and most beautiful tower you can. You may have very different ideas about how to go about this, so remember to work out your differences of opinion using the compromise approach described in this chapter. During this exercise try to be a team. Try both to give and to accept influence. Include your partner. Ask questions. Take about half an hour for this task. The finished product should not adhere exactly to either of your visions but should include both of them. When you’re finished, have a third party (or another couple) score your tower. No doubt the scoring will be highly subjective since it values creativity more than engineering prowess. But your final score is beside the point, which is to have fun building your tower together. When you’re finished you’ll have created a monument to your marriage and your enhanced compromising skills.
Supplies
1 Sunday newspaper
Crayons
Ball of string
Colored cellophane
Scotch tape
Construction paper
Stapler
Cardboard pieces
Markers
Score: Have a third party (or another couple) score your tower. The top score is 90. You get:
Up to 20 points for height
Up to 20 points for strength (stability)
Up to 50 points for beauty and originality.
STEP 5: BE TOLERANT OF EACH OTHER’S FAULTS
Too often, a marriage gets bogged down in “if onlies.” If only your spouse were taller, richer, smarter, neater, or sexier, all of your problems would vanish. As long as this attitude prevails, conflicts will be very difficult to resolve. Until you accept your partner’s flaws and foibles, you will not be able to compromise successfully. Instead, you will be on a relentless campaign to alter your spouse. Conflict resolution is not about one person changing, it’s about negotiating, finding common ground and ways that you can accommodate each other.
When you have mastered the general problem-solving skills outlined in this chapter, you’ll find that many of your problems find their own solutions. Once you get past the barriers that have prevented clear communication, difficulties are easy to resolve. In fact, the next chapter offers some creative and simple solutions to some of the most common conflicts couples face—money, sex, housework, kids, work stress. But remember: These solutions work only for problems that can be solved. If compromise still seems like a distant goal to you, then the problem you are grappling with may not be solvable after all. That means it’s time to turn to the advice on coping with perpetual problems in Chapter 10.
9
Coping with Typical Solvable Problems
Work stress, in-laws, money, sex, housework, a new baby: These are the most typical areas of marital conflict, so there’s a good chance at least some of them are hot buttons in your relationship. Even in very happy and stable marriages, these issues are perennials. Although every relationship is different, there’s a reason why these particular conflicts are so common: They touch upon some of the marriage’s most important work.
Many people pay lip service to the notion that a good marriage takes “work.” But what specifically does this mean? Every marriage is faced with certain emotional tasks that husband and wife need to accomplish together for the marriage to grow and deepen. These tasks come down to attaining a rich understanding between husband and wife. A marriage needs this understanding in order for both people to feel safe and secure in it. When these tasks are not accomplished, the marriage feels not like a port in the storm of life but just another storm.
When there’s conflict in one of these six common areas, usually it’s because husband and wife have different ideas about these tasks, their importance, or how they should be accomplished. If the conflict is perpetual, no amount of problem-solving savvy will fix it. The tension will deescalate only when you both feel comfortable living with your ongoing difference. But when the issue is solvable, the challenge is to find the right strategy for conquering it. (If you’re not sure whether your conflict is solvable or perpetual, see page 134.) Here we’ve listed these six hot spots, the task they each represent for a marriage, and practical advice for addressing the solvable disagreements they often trigger.
STRESS AND MORE STRESS
The task: Making your marriage a place of peace.
Most days Stephanie and Todd get home from work within a few minutes of each other. Too often, instead of a loving reunion, they find themselves in a shouting match. Todd, who has been kowtowing to a difficult boss all day, gets annoyed when he can’t find the mail because Stephanie moved it off the table for the nth time. Stephanie, who has a deadline at work and knows she’ll be up late working, feels her anger surge when she opens the refrigerator and discovers nothing but Strawberry Snapple. “There’s no food!” she yells. “I can’t believe you didn’t go to the supermarket like you promised. What’s wrong with you?”
The real question is what’s going wrong between Todd and Stephanie. The answer is that they are bringing their work stress home, and it is sabotaging their marriage.
* * *
Scheduling formal griping sessions can prevent the spillover of everyday stress into your marriage.
* * *
There’s no doubt that work stress has become an increasing factor in marital dissatisfaction. Today’s couples work an average of one thousand hours more each year than people did thirty years ago. There is less time for talking, relaxing, eating, and even sleeping. No wonder the days of the cheerful “Honey, I’m home!” are history for so many families. Most likely “Honey” is working too and has come home with a stack of papers she needs to prepare for tomorrow’s presentation to a client. Or maybe she’s been waiting tables all day, and the last thing she wants to do is to wait on her man.
Solution Acknowledge that at the end of a long, stressful day you may need time to yourselves to decompress before interacting with each other. If you are feeling suddenly outraged by something your spouse did, realize that the incident may be overblown in your mind because you’re feeling so tense. Likewise, if your spouse comes home with a cloud over his head and your “What’s wrong?” gets answered with a snarl, try not to take it personally. He or she probably just had a bad day. Rather than making the situation worse by lashing out, let it go.
Build time to unwind into your daily schedule. Make it a ritual, whether it entails lying on your bed and reading your mail, going for a jog, or meditating. Of course, some couples find that the easiest way to relax is to enlist each other’s help. If so, try the soothing techniques described in detail on pages 178–179.
Once you’re both feeling relatively composed, it’s time to come together and talk about each other’s day. Consider this a sanctioned whining session during which each person gets to complain about any catastrophes that occurred while the other is understanding and supportive.
RELATIONS WITH IN-LAWS
The task: Establishing a sense of “we-ness,” or solidarity, between husband and wife.
Although mother-in-law jokes told by men are a traditional staple of comedy routines, the real family tension is more frequently between the wife and her mother-in-law. Invariably the differences between the two women’s opinions, personalities, and life views become evident the more time they spend together. A decision to go out to dinner can create dissension over such minutiae as where to eat, when to eat, what to eat
, how much to spend, who gets the check, and so on. Then, of course, there are the deeper issues of values, jobs, where to live, how to live, how to pray, and whom to vote for.
Although such conflicts usually surface quite early in a marriage, in-law difficulties can be triggered or revived at many other times, such as when children are born or pass major milestones in their development, and again as the parents age and become increasingly dependent on the couple.
At the core of the tension is a turf battle between the two women for the husband’s love. The wife is watching to see whether her husband backs her or his mother. She is wondering, “Which family are you really in?” Often the mother is asking the same question. The man, for his part, just wishes the two women could get along better. He loves them both and does not want to have to choose. The whole idea is ridiculous to him. After all, he has loyalties to each, and he must honor and respect both. Unfortunately, this attitude often throws him into the role of peacemaker or mediator, which invariably makes the situation worse.
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work Page 19
