The Relationship Cure: A 5 Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships

by John Gottman

  Marly smiles. “No. But Greg and Susan took me out for a great lunch after I quit.”

  “What made you finally decide to leave?”

  “I dunno. I just woke up one day and knew I couldn’t take it one more minute. I called in sick and started applying for other jobs that same day.”

  “I bet it didn’t take you long to find something.”

  “About a month.”

  “So what’s your new job like?”

  “It’s okay. It’s better than SafeCore.”

  “In what way?”

  “The people are more real, for one thing.”

  “What do you mean by ‘real’?”

  “Well, you know…it’s like if you’re having a bad day, you don’t have to fake it.”

  “For example?”

  “Well, take last Thursday. I had just gotten my grades from last semester…”

  “You’re in school?”

  “Yeah, I’m trying to get out of this insurance thing. You see, what I’m really interested in is anthropology—”

  “That’s so cool. I almost majored in anthropology!”

  “You did?”

  “But then I switched to business instead. Big mistake. But you were telling me about what you want to do.”

  “Yeah, because insurance, it’s just so…boring. But if I can get a master’s in anthropology, I figure…”

  And they’re off. What makes the difference? Paul’s use of a little humor, for one thing. But more than that, it’s the way he expresses interest in Marly’s life. She’s still shy initially, so he’s still got to draw her out with lots of questions. But this time he’s not asking for simple data. Because he uses open-ended questions that get to the heart of her values and dreams, she can’t help but respond. His interest in the “real” Marly makes her feel more warmly toward him and he can tell. This raises his spirits and prevents him from becoming self-conscious and gloomy. Instead, he keeps his focus where it belongs, on Marly. And she’s getting more interesting to him by the minute. It feels to him that he may get what he’s bidding for—an emotional connection.

  And finally, let’s take a look at one of the most challenging pairings of all: the parent-teen relationship.

  Roger is a salesman who spends a lot more time than he’d like on the road. Each time he comes home from a trip and greets his daughter, Hannah, now thirteen, she seems to have grown another inch taller.

  Hannah believes her dad when he says “I missed you,” because she used to feel that way about him, too. But ever since she started middle school, that feeling is fading. There are just so many things to think about—friends, school projects, the track team, high school next year. Sure, she loves her dad, but he’s not the top item on her agenda anymore.

  One night, as Roger’s flying home, he reads an ad for Cirque de Lune—“an animal-free circus that blends the pageantry of the Big Top with the antics of street theater,” the ad says. The ticket prices are sky-high, but Hannah would love it, Roger muses—especially the “animal-free” part. She’s been talking a lot about animal rights lately. He tears out the ad and sticks it in his pocket.

  At breakfast the next morning he says, “Hey, sweetie, have you ever heard about this show called Cirque de Lune?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, it’s kind of like a circus.”

  “Daddy, you know how I feel about circuses.”

  “No, this one’s different. No animals. More like theater. Lots of acrobats and costumes. It’s supposed to be really something. I think you’d like it.”

  “Hmm…maybe.”

  “Go get the ad that’s in my jacket pocket over there,” he says, pointing. Hannah, intrigued now, does just that.

  “Oooh. It looks cool,” she says, as she peruses the description.

  “So I’m thinking I should get tickets,” Roger says. “Just you and me. Next Saturday night.”

  “Next Saturday?”

  “Yeah. You got a hot date or something?” Roger says, teasing.

  “Well, that’s the night of Rachel Iannelli’s slumber party.”

  “Oh, she probably has slumber parties all the time,” Roger says, good-naturedly. “Besides, that’s the only night I’m going to be in town while it’s here.”

  “But I really wanted to go to Rachel’s party…”

  “Honey, you girls have these parties nearly every weekend.”

  “No we don’t.”

  “Well, okay. Maybe not every weekend. But I thought this was something special you and I could do together.”

  “But I don’t want to go that night.”

  “Because your friends are more important.”

  “No. It’s just that this is Rachel Iannelli’s party and she’s never invited me to one before and—”

  “Okay, if that’s a higher priority for you, fine. Go.”

  “So now I’m in trouble.”

  “No, you’re not in trouble. I’m just disappointed, that’s all. We don’t have all that much time to spend together.”

  “And that’s supposed to be my fault?”

  “No, it’s not your fault. It’s nobody’s fault. Forget it. Forget I mentioned it. Go to your damned slumber party.”

  With that, Roger crumples up the ad, and Hannah leaves the breakfast table in tears—not exactly the scenario Roger had in mind.

  Could it have gone differently? Let’s take a look, picking up the scene where Hannah tells Roger about Rachel’s slumber party.

  “Oh, she probably has slumber parties all the time,” Roger says, good-naturedly. “Besides, that’s the only night I’m going to be in town while it’s here.”

  “But I really wanted to go to Rachel’s party…”

  “Now, whose party is it?”

  “Rachel Iannelli. She’s this new girl who Dana’s always hanging with. Dana thinks she’s really cool.”

  “You mean Dana—your best friend Dana?”

  “Yep. And Dana’s always spending the night over there. Kelly and Laura, too.”

  “Oh. Is this the first time Rachel has invited you to one of these parties?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So it feels kind of important to you to go because you really like hanging out with Dana and Kelly and Laura.”

  “Yeah. I was feeling like they didn’t like me anymore or something. But I think Rachel just doesn’t know me that well. I really want to go.”

  “And it’s the same night as this show. I feel kind of disappointed about that.”

  “Me, too. Because the show looks really neat, Daddy. And it’s so nice that you want to take me.”

  “I really do want to take you. But maybe we could think of something else to do together. Like during the day on Saturday, instead.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Then you could go to Rachel’s party.”

  “And you could take Mom to this circus instead. I bet she’d really like it, too.”

  “I think you’re right. That’s a great idea. So you be thinking about what you want to do together next Saturday afternoon. Just the two of us, okay?”

  “Okay, Daddy. Thanks.”

  So Roger didn’t get to take Hannah to Cirque de Lune, but he did get what he was bidding for—an opportunity to spend time with his daughter. Not only that, but he got the chance to do something parents too rarely do: He got to show Hannah that he’s interested in her world, and that he really does understand how she’s feeling. That’s called emotional connection.

  Turning Points: The Choices We Make in Responding to Bids

  My insights into the process of bidding for emotional connection are a result of many years of observing human interaction in a variety of real-life settings. My research colleagues and I have studied the dynamics of friendships, parent-child relationships, adult siblings, and couples in all stages of marriage and child rearing.

  The group with whom I’ve always been most fascinated is the one I call “marital masters”—folks who are so good at handling conflict tha
t they make marital squabbles look like fun. It’s not that these couples don’t get mad and disagree. It’s that when they disagree, they’re able to stay connected and engaged with each other. Rather than becoming defensive and hurtful, they pepper their disputes with flashes of affection, intense interest, and mutual respect. Amazingly, they seem to have access to their sense of humor even when they’re arguing. In this way, their conflict actually becomes fruitful—a resource for discovery and problem solving, another place to demonstrate the overriding passion and respect in their relationships.

  How do they do it, I’ve wondered. It seemed that they must have some kind of secret weapon against elements like contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling—the factors that we discovered could destroy all kinds of relationships. What is it that allows couples to continue to react with good humor and affection despite the typical stresses of family life? If I could find the answer to this question, I might have a key to helping people build and sustain better emotional connections, not only in marriage, but in all sorts of significant relationships. The answer came, in part, when I started to look at the link between conflict and bidding behavior among sixty married couples who volunteered to spend the weekend alone together at our family research facility on the University of Washington campus. Affectionately dubbed “The Love Lab,” the place includes a small studio apartment in a parklike setting on the University of Washington campus. From the apartment’s large picture window, couples can watch pleasure boats float through the Montlake Cut, a canal that connects Seattle’s Portage Bay to Lake Washington.

  The apartment is furnished like a comfortable weekend hideaway. There’s a kitchen, a dining area, a hide-a-bed, a television, and a VCR. Study couples bring along groceries to cook, games to play, movies to watch. They’re asked to simply relax and do whatever they would normally do during a typical weekend at home together. The only difference is that we have stationed scientific observers behind a two-way mirror in the kitchen to observe every interaction that takes place. Four video cameras mounted on the walls and microphones attached to the couples’ clothes capture all their movements, all their conversations. The couples also wear sensors on their bodies to monitor signs of stress such as a rise in heart rate or increased sweating. (To preserve the couple’s privacy, we don’t monitor them between 9:00 P.M. and 9:00 A.M., nor do cameras follow them to the bathroom. They also get a half hour of privacy to walk in the park that surrounds the lab.)

  We learned that people typically respond to another’s bids for connection in one of three ways: They turn toward, turn against, or turn away. By correlating these three types of behavior with the status of their relationships ten years later, we were able to show how each of these types of behavior affect people’s connections over the long term. In a nutshell, here’s what we learned:

  1. Turning toward. To “turn toward” one another means to react in a positive way to another’s bids for emotional connection. One person makes a funny comment, for example, and the other person laughs. A man points to an impressive car as it passes by, and his friend nods as if to say, “I agree. That’s quite a car!” A father asks his son to pass the ketchup, and his son does so in a kind, accommodating way. A woman muses about a vacation she’d like to take, and her coworker joins in. He asks her questions, adds his opinions, lends colorful details to a trip they imagine together.

  What happens in relationships where people consistently turn toward one another’s bids for connection? Our analysis shows that, over time, they develop stable, long-lasting relationships rich in good feelings for one another. Like the “marital masters,” they also seem to have easier access to humor, affection, and interest in one another during conflict, a factor that allows them to stay connected emotionally, solve problems, and avoid the downward spiral of negative feelings that destroy relationships.

  2. Turning against. People who turn against one another’s bids for connection might be described as belligerent or argumentative. For example, if a man fantasized about owning a passing sports car, his friend might reply, “On your salary? Dream on!”

  Turning against often involves sarcasm or ridicule. In one instance in our marriage lab, a wife gently asked her husband to put down his newspaper and talk to her.

  “And what are we going to talk about?” he sneered.

  “Well, we were thinking of buying a new television,” she offered. “We could talk about that.”

  But his next response was just as mean: “What do you know about televisions?” he asked. After that, she said nothing at all.

  This woman’s withdrawal is typical in situations when one person habitually turns against another, we discovered. After all, who wants to be ridiculed or snapped at? We also found that this pattern of hostility followed by suppression of feelings is destructive to relationships. Among married couples, the pattern leads to divorce later on. Among adult siblings, such behavior is linked to being emotionally distant from one another and having a less supportive relationship. In addition, studies show that such hostility is also harmful to relationships among friends, coworkers, and other relatives.

  Interestingly, the married couples in our study who habitually displayed this behavior did not divorce as quickly as couples whose main habit of interaction was for one partner to turn away. But eventually the majority of them did split up.

  3. Turning away. This pattern of relating generally involves ignoring another’s bid, or acting preoccupied. A person in these instances might comment and point to that impressive sports car, but his friend wouldn’t bother to look up. Or he might look up and say something unrelated, such as, “What time do you have?” Or, “Do you have change for a five-dollar bill?”

  In a study I once conducted of childhood friendships, I often saw small children turn away from each other in games of make-believe. “Let’s pretend we’re pirates and this is our ship,” one would say. And the other child—without being belligerent—might respond, “I’ll be the mom and we have to go to the grocery store.” For obvious reasons, the game never takes flight.

  In one poignant example from our marriage lab, the wife apologized to her husband for a mistake she made in preparing dinner that night. She raised the issue three times during the course of the evening, obviously wanting him to let her off the hook. But all three times the husband met his wife’s comments with silence and looked away.

  Another husband said, “Dinner’s almost ready,” while his wife divided her attention between reading and watching TV. She didn’t respond. So he went over to the couch where she sat and said, “How’s your book, hon?” She ignored him again. He then kissed her twice, and she was unresponsive to his kisses. “Is that book good?” he asked. Finally she said, “Yes, it has some nice pictures in it.” That was their entire exchange.

  Consistently turning away from one another’s bids is clearly bad for relationships, our research has revealed. In our studies of children’s friendships, for example, the young children who couldn’t engage one another in shared fantasy failed to develop lasting bonds.

  In our marriage studies, we found that turning away on a regular basis is actually destructive. Partners who displayed this pattern of interaction in the apartment lab often became hostile and defensive with each other—particularly when they discussed an area of continuing disagreement. This behavior typically results in early divorce among married couples.

  Studies done on the dynamics of parent-child, adult friendship, adult sibling, and coworker relationships lead us to believe that it’s destructive to other relationships as well.

  Unrequited Turning

  What happens when someone in a relationship habitually turns toward the other’s bids, while the other person habitually turns away or against? As might be expected, our studies show that this is not a healthy situation. Just imagine the frustration of being in any relationship where you’re constantly in pursuit of somebody’s attention, but that person is always eluding you, and in some cases even being hostile in r
esponse to your advances.

  Our studies indicate that children whose parents consistently thwart their bids for connection often suffer long-term consequences as a result of constantly experiencing more negative emotions and fewer positive emotions. They have trouble developing the social skills to get along with friends, for example. They don’t do as well academically, and they have more problems with physical health.

  Unrequited turning is clearly destructive to marriage, as well. Even the couples in our studies who habitually turned away from each other found themselves to be more happily married than couples in which just one partner (usually the wife) was constantly turning toward and getting no response.

  We also learned that once bidders are ignored or rejected, they usually give up trying to connect in the same way again. My colleagues and I were quite surprised by how quickly people seem to lose heart once others turn away or turn against their bids. I think we expected people to be more persistent with one another, demanding a certain level of attention and responsiveness. But this rarely happens. Instead, we see failing bidders who just give up in response to another’s indifference or hostility. Among people in stable marriages, spouses re-bid just 20 percent of the time. In marriages that are headed for divorce, people hardly re-bid at all. Instead, they simply fade away from conversations, relinquishing their attempts to connect. Such reactions are a sobering display of what it means to lose your confidence and enthusiasm for a relationship.

  In addition to these discoveries, we learned that frequency of bids makes a difference. For example, happily married couples bid for connection far more often than unhappily married couples do. As I mentioned earlier, an analysis of dinnertime conversations showed that happily married couples bid as many as one hundred times in ten minutes. This compares with a bid rate among unhappily married couples of just sixty-five times in ten minutes.

  That’s not to say that happily married spouses turned toward one another every single time their partners made a bid. Attempting to pay that much attention to a loved one would probably drive a person batty. But because these couples gave one another so many opportunities to connect, they seemed to have a much higher potential for creating satisfying relationships than did those who didn’t bid as frequently.