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

by John Gottman

  Kyle felt there was little he could do about Jessica’s anxiety. And he was getting tired of being hurt by her every time he wanted to get close. So after a while he simply stopped trying to touch Jessica sexually. He started focusing more on other things that bolstered his ego—his job, his friends, his hobbies. He was choosing option 2: He was dealing with the problem by avoiding Jessica.

  Of course, neither option was good for Jessica and Kyle’s marriage. So, in therapy, I persuaded them to start working on option 3: self-disclosure and connection. Instead of attacking Kyle when he tried to get close, Jessica would work on simply telling him how tense she was feeling in the moment when he touched her. And instead of withdrawing, Kyle would work on staying with Jessica in her tension and telling her how he was feeling in the moment as well. He wouldn’t try to push her into having sex; he’d just listen, encourage her to talk about her feelings, and let her set the pace. But he wouldn’t give up and walk away, either.

  In one of our sessions, I asked them to close their eyes and imagine an encounter, talking through their emotions as they surfaced.

  “I feel anxious,” Jessica said after a few minutes of silence.

  I asked her to talk about the physical sensations she was feeling.

  “It’s hard to breathe,” she said. “I feel this tightness in my jaw.”

  I asked Kyle how he felt.

  “Like I don’t need this. I just want to bag it. I just want to walk away,” he replied.

  “Can you tell Jessica how you’re feeling?” I asked. After a pause, he said softly, “I feel like forgetting it. I feel like you just want me to leave you alone, so…I don’t want to be here.”

  “I know,” Jessica said, just as softly. “Part of me wants you to leave, to push you away. But that’s not what I really want.” Then, after a long silence, she added, “It just feels tense, that’s all. You know, like it always has.”

  I told them both to breathe, to stay present, and to keep talking about how they were feeling in the moment.

  “I feel edgy,” Jessica said. “In my muscles, in my skin.”

  “I feel bad, like you’re going to say I’m a loser, that I can’t get it right,” Kyle said.

  “No, it’s not that. I know it’s not your fault. It’s me. I’m just…tense. I feel tense.”

  “I feel…sad. Like I want to help you, but I can’t,” Kyle said.

  “I know,” Jessica said. “But it’s okay.”

  “All right. I can’t do anything, but I’ll just stay here, okay?”

  “Okay. I don’t want you to leave,” Jessica said, breathing deeply. “It’s okay.”

  “I’ll just stay here, then, and be with you,” Kyle said, breathing deeply as well.

  And so the conversation went as the couple continued to breathe together, to express their feelings, and to soothe one another. As we used the technique in subsequent sessions, they got increasingly better at focusing on their current feelings and describing them. I discouraged them from blaming one another, or from rehashing the history of their problem. Whenever they started to lose their way, I would remind them, “You have three choices—attack, avoid, or disclose. Make the third choice and tell one another how you feel right now.”

  Self-disclosure was not always the easy choice. Jessica didn’t always want to stay with her anxiety. And Kyle didn’t want to face his feelings of being hurt and rejected. But they were willing to keep working on the exercise because they saw how it was drawing them together and healing their relationship.

  Over time, as Jessica and Kyle learned to use the technique at home, they built a foundation of emotional connection that allowed Jessica to relax. She stopped pushing Kyle away, and eventually started enjoying his sexual advances. As Kyle started feeling more confident, he grew more content in the relationship and quit withdrawing from Jessica.

  This technique of focusing on your current feelings can help in all sorts of situations where people are avoiding the conversations they need to have:

  • A single mom comes home after a bad day at the office to find her two school-aged kids clamoring for her attention. She feels so exhausted that it’s hard to respond to their demands for dinner and homework help. She can (1) blow up and tell them to leave her alone; (2) lock herself in the bathroom without a word; or (3) tell them how she’s feeling and ask for their support: “Hey, you two, I had a terrible day and I feel drained. Let me go soak in the tub for twenty minutes, and when I get done, I’ll do my best to help you.” With this she helps the kids to understand why she’s acting so down. They know they’re not to blame; in fact, they can be part of the solution. It may not be the response the kids want to hear, but it provides a way for them to understand what their mother is experiencing. It’s the conversation they need to have.

  • A woman who’s been battling depression wants to talk with her older brother about a traumatic incident they survived together as children. Her brother, who has never been comfortable talking about the incident, tries to dodge the conversation time and time again. Sometimes he teases her, telling her she ought to write a sappy memoir. At other times he brushes off her concerns and says, “Quit feeling sorry for yourself.” The woman feels hurt that her brother doesn’t care enough to talk seriously about the issue. In her disappointment, she can (1) lash out at him and tell him he’s an insensitive jerk; (2) give up and let her resentment become a wedge between them; or (3) tell her brother how it feels in the moment when he dismisses her attempts to talk about the matter: “I feel hurt that you don’t care more about my problems.” Then she might invite him to share how he’s feeling in the moment: “You seem to feel uncomfortable talking about this and I wish I understood why.” She could even take a chance at trying to help him to identify his feeling. “Is it hard for you to talk about this because it’s painful to remember what happened?” Or, “Maybe it makes you feel sad to talk about this because you wish you could have protected us both.” He may or may not respond to this invitation. But if he does, it may help them to develop a deeper, richer relationship. It could be the conversation they need to have.

  While these types of self-disclosing, trusting conversations are extremely valuable, you can’t have them unless both parties are willing to work on the relationship. If only one person talks about his or her feelings, engaging in a conversation like this may feel like too much of a risk for that person. But if each person can take even the smallest steps toward self-disclosure, it can make a tremendous difference. Even when you feel as though you can’t talk about an issue, expressing those feelings of fear, reluctance, or anxiety is a sign of willingness and trust. And that small step can move the relationship in the right direction.

  Looking Ahead

  Improving your ability to bid and respond to bids is not going to solve all your problems. It will not banish all negative feelings. It will not solve all conflicts. But it will help you to get along better with people, to share life’s burdens, and to build better connections with significant people in your life.

  You can improve your skills in this area by discovering more about the basics of human emotion, which is the focus of the next three chapters of the book. In Step Two: Discover Your Brain’s Emotional Command Systems, you’ll learn about the latest discoveries in brain physiology, which show that each of us has a unique configuration of brain-based emotional command systems. These systems affect the way we experience emotions, and thus affect our personalities and the way we bid and respond to others. You’ll see, through a series of questionnaires, which command systems are the most dominant in your life and how they may impact your bidding interactions and contribute to your current sense of emotional well-being.

  In Step Three: Examine Your Emotional Heritage, you’ll take a look at your past, discovering how previous experiences may affect your bids. You’ll learn, for example, how your unique family history may have created enduring vulnerabilities that influence the way you now think about feelings and deal with other people’s feelings.
This, too, can color your bids and the way you respond to others’ bids. Becoming more aware of these influences, however, helps you build stronger bonds with friends, family, and coworkers.

  Then, in Step Four: Sharpen Your Emotional Communication Skills, you’ll read some very concrete, practical advice for improving your skills at sending and receiving emotional information in the bidding process.

  These three steps—understanding aspects of brain physiology, examining emotional heritage, and sharpening communication skills—are presented together because of the way they interact to define who we are emotionally. Research scientists are continually discovering how neurophysical pathways in the brain influence the way we behave. At the same time they are learning that the way we behave affects how those neurophysical pathways develop. The implications of such research are clear: As organic, living human beings, we have the capacity to grow and develop continually. With insight and skill-building, we can create in our lives an upward spiral of better emotional awareness and better relationships.

  Imagine that a group of seven old friends meets for a reunion at a wilderness resort. They’ve been looking forward to the trip for weeks, and upon arriving, each person has a clear vision of how to make the gathering a success. Because they’re such a well-rounded group, these visions vary quite a bit. And within an hour, each friend is bidding for connection around his or her top priority. Take a look.

  Christopher could be dubbed the Commander-in-Chief. He’s the one who planned the gathering and chose the site. He likes the place because there are no distractions. Everybody can concentrate on the activities he planned for the group—hiking, river rafting, and rock climbing. He figures he may get resistance about the rock climbing, but he’s not worried. He’ll bring the dissidents around. Christopher’s first bid? He wants help unloading the gear and getting organized.

  Merrill is the Explorer. As soon as she arrives, she drops her suitcase in the cabin, and grabs a topographical map and a compass. She’s so excited to be out here in the great unknown, she can hardly contain herself. She feels compelled to check out every trail, every stream, every mountain peak. “Anybody up for a quick hike?” she asks. Finding no takers, she heads out on her own.

  Carlos is the Sentry. He’s the one who spotted the notice about grizzly bear attacks when the group stopped at the general store on their way in. In fact, he picked up some little bells for everybody to attach to their backpacks; if you don’t surprise the bears, he said, they’ll keep their distance. He’s distributing the bells when he realizes that Merrill’s gone. “She took off without a bell?” he asks, dismayed. “We’d better go find her.”

  Katie is the Energy Czar. Her first order of business is to review the schedule, the menu, the supplies. “Let’s see, if we’re going to hike twelve miles tomorrow and then go rock climbing the day after, we’re going to need lots of nourishment and lots of rest. Did we bring enough trail mix and water bottles?”

  Darrin is the Sensualist. His initial inspiration is to reconnect with Merrill. It’s been years, but he hasn’t forgotten the terrific fling they had in their junior year at college. He’s pleased to see that she still wears her hair in that sexy French twist. And that walk of hers…Of course, Katie’s not looking too bad, either.

  Peter is the Jester. His first task is to hang the porch swing and set up a game table nearby. He’s not concerned about the food, the schedule, or the bears. For him, the most important thing is to relax, have some laughs, play some games, and enjoy the surroundings.

  Shelby is the Nest-Builder. She’s got her eye on everybody else. After she helps Christopher unpack, she pitches in to assist Katie. Then she sits with Peter on the swing to swap a few jokes. She spots the kerosene lamp near the window. “Perfect,” she says. “It will feel so cozy when we gather around the lamp after dinner. I just can’t believe it—at last, everybody’s here!”

  Interesting mix of folks, don’t you think? Now imagine yourself among them. Does any one character remind you of how you might behave in a similar situation? How about your spouse or other loved ones? What about your coworkers? Do you see them in the scenario? Perhaps you can see yourself or others in two or three of these characters. That wouldn’t be surprising, since we created them based on seven distinct “emotional command systems” believed to be present in each person’s brain.

  These seven specific systems were first described by neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp, a researcher at Bowling Green State University. We have given them labels like “Commander-in-Chief,” “Sensualist,” and so on to help people understand how each system functions. Each one coordinates the emotional, behavioral, and physical responses needed for certain functions related to survival (rest, procreation, self-defense, etc.).

  According to this theory, people differ in how much they like to have these systems stimulated. Identifying your own optimal level of stimulation is important for emotional well-being. First, it can help you to find roles with which you’re most comfortable and most likely to succeed. And, second, it can help you understand how your comfort levels differ from others’—a factor that’s significant when you bid for connection. If you’ve got a highly activated Explorer command system like Merrill, for example, you’re likely to have some conflicts with Carlos, who has a highly activated Sentry system. And if you’re like Christopher, with his highly charged Commander-in-Chief system, you may have conflicts trying to make decisions with somebody who’s also got a dominant Commander-in-Chief system, simply because you both want to be in charge. As you’ll see later in this chapter, acknowledging such emotional similarities and differences is an important part of bidding and responding to bids.

  What exactly are these emotional command systems? Imagine your nervous system as a railroad and your emotions as its trains. The emotional command systems are the tracks on which your emotions run. They take your feelings in various directions, depending on the service you need to perform—exploring your surroundings, seeking sex, making friends, and so on.

  In reality, emotional command systems are nerve-based circuits that coordinate electrochemical signals in the brain. Using a variety of experimental methods, scientists have proven the existence of at least seven separate systems. These pathways transmit messages from one nerve cell to the next until various body parts get the information they need to carry out the service desired.

  How important are these systems? Consider the one we’ve labeled the Sensualist. It’s the emotional command system believed to coordinate sexual response. When this system is activated, a person may feel a surge of excitement at the sight of a mate or potential mate. That feeling might be accompanied by an intense desire to kiss and hold that person. If everything goes according to nature’s plan, the two people come together and become physically aroused, perhaps resulting in intercourse. Current research tells us that this particular circuit in the brain coordinates these complex functions to help ensure survival of the species through reproduction. Other circuits handle other important functions, such as sleep (the Energy Czar), bonding with others (the Nest-Builder), obtaining power (the Commander-in-Chief), and so on.

  Each person has his or her own comfort zone within each emotional command system, a factor that may influence that individual’s personality. Depending on what’s happening in your life, you may feel that a particular system is being underactivated or overactivated. When you get out of your own comfort zone, you may feel sad, frustrated, anxious, or angry. But if you’re at a level that’s “just right,” you’re likely to feel happy, calm, or energized. So one part of examining your emotional command systems is to learn more about your relationship with yourself.

  The second part is to learn about similarities and discrepancies between you and the people around you. Here’s an example of how that might work with the Nest-Builder, the system that coordinates feelings of friendship and affiliation with other people. Two employees are invited to a weekend team-building retreat with the rest of their staff. One employee is quite
social and feels very comfortable when her Nest-Building system is highly activated. She stays in a chipper mood through most of the event. But the other employee, who consistently prefers to spend time alone, is more comfortable when her Nest-Building system lies idle. Working in groups for long hours leaves her feeling tense and drained. By the end of the weekend, she’s had it. Three weeks later, however, when the workers are back in their quiet, isolated office cubicles, the situation is reversed. The employee who has high Nest-Building needs feels tense and frustrated at spending so much time alone. And the employee who has low Nest-Building needs feels serene and energized from all her recent hours of solitude.

  Your ability to regulate how much stimulation each of your emotional command systems receives can affect your life moment by moment as well as over the long term. In the short term, feeling out of sync with your current lifestyle or with those around you may put you in a bad mood. Over lengthy periods, it can influence your whole personality. People whose emotional command systems are chronically overactivated or underactivated may develop personality characteristics such as pessimism, irritability, fearfulness, belligerency, or melancholy.

  Such negative characteristics can affect a person’s style of bidding for connection, further exacerbating his or her emotional stress. Consider, for example, the person whose Nest-Builder system is persistently underactivated. It’s a problem typically caused by chronic loneliness. If this person becomes pessimistic about making friends, she may lose confidence and develop a style of bidding that’s so nonassertive she never connects with others. Or, she may develop a style of bidding that’s so “needy” she scares potential friends away.

  Or think about the person whose Commander-in-Chief system is chronically overactivated. An example might be a man with little talent or desire for leadership who gets thrust into a manager’s job at work. Hour by hour, he’s called upon to bid for other people’s participation and support in the projects he initiates. But he’s not comfortable taking charge, and the constant stress he feels from it leaves him irritable and depressed most of the time. Consequently, he often presents his bids in such harsh or pessimistic tones that his employees turn away from his requests. Their response only makes the manager feel worse about his performance, so he grows increasingly depressed and anxious.