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

by John Gottman

  “I’m worried about Tim,” Marie said. “He just broke up with his girlfriend. He says he’s fine, but when I saw him last night, I wasn’t so sure.”

  “Did you talk to him about it?” I asked, concerned.

  “Sure, but he never tells you much. He just said he was glad it’s over—that he and Pam should have split years ago.”

  “If he says he’s doing okay, then why are you worried?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. There was just something about him,” Marie explained. “We had a nice evening. But I could sense this feeling in him—in his eyes and the tone of his voice. Sort of a heaviness. And he was moving more slowly. He just seemed…sad.”

  “That would make sense—especially if he and Pam were close,” I said.

  “Maybe I’ll call him later and see if he wants to go to a movie with us this weekend. I think he may need a little extra company for a while.”

  “That’s probably a good idea,” I said. “And maybe you could remind him that if he wants to talk about how he’s feeling, you’ll listen. Because it sounds like he might not bring it up on his own.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Marie replied. “I think I’ll do that.”

  After Marie left, I thought about how fortunate Tim is to have a sister like her—someone who is so perceptive, so caring. He may have some rough times ahead. But with his link to Marie, he’ll know he’s not alone in his sadness.

  I’ve learned from my clinical practice that there are a lot of Tims in the world—people who have trouble talking about their feelings. And unfortunately there are not enough Maries—people who can detect another person’s unspoken pain as bids for connection, and turn toward it compassionately. But if Marie follows through, and Tim opens up to her—even slightly—it will strengthen their sense of connection, which may enhance the quality of their lives for many years to come.

  As we’ve discussed in previous chapters, people typically start building skills for such emotional connections early in infancy. From first smile to first date, childhood is a tremendous training ground for learning to detect, convey, and respond to feelings. But that learning process doesn’t have to stop after we grow up. Many people continue to develop their skills at emotional communication well into adulthood, allowing them to create richer, more satisfying relationships with others.

  In this chapter we’ll take a look at forms of emotional communication that people use to express, read, and turn toward one another’s feelings. These include a variety of verbal and nonverbal cues, including:

  • facial expressions

  • movement

  • gesture

  • touch

  • tone of voice

  • descriptive words

  • metaphors

  In addition, we’ll explore some basic listening skills that foster better emotional communication. The goal of all this examination is twofold: first, to become more aware of the way you may use these channels to express your own feelings, and, second, to become more aware of the way those around you use them, so that you can recognize and respond to others’ emotions through the bidding process.

  The more you understand these elements of emotional communication, the better you’ll be at bidding and responding to others’ bids in a meaningful way. You may learn to recognize simple communication problems that are interfering with your ability to make your bids as clear as you’d like them to be. You may also learn to detect and respond to bids for connection that are hidden or obscured by people’s anger or sadness. You’ll develop the skills to start new relationships on a stable course, and you’ll learn how to repair problems in continuing relationships and make them stronger.

  Communicating with one another on a heart-to-heart level is not as mysterious as it might seem. Nor is it necessarily intuitive or automatic. Whether we’re aware of it or not, people constantly send one another signals that can reveal how they’re feeling in the moment.

  As Alan Garner writes in his primer on interpersonal communication, Conversationally Speaking (McGraw-Hill, 1981): “You can’t not communicate. Whether you smile or maintain a blank face, look straight ahead or down at the ground, reach out and touch or hold back, you are communicating and others will attach meaning to that communication.”

  Through facial expression, tone of voice, gesture, word choice, and more, we’re constantly revealing our true emotional experience to one another. The key is to become more observant and more aware of these signals in your own behavior and in the behavior of others. Once you do, you can use your awareness in a conscious way to improve your bidding process and form better emotional connections.

  Pardon Me, but Your Feelings Are Leaking

  There are many reasons why people refrain from expressing feelings—especially such negative emotions as sadness, anger, and fear. Many people want to avoid or deny negative experiences, to keep their distance from things that are upsetting. By putting a positive spin on events, they believe they won’t have to think about things that sadden, anger, or scare them. Some people believe that their feelings are too frightening or disturbing to put into words. Or they may feel ashamed or embarrassed by what they’re feeling, so they don’t want to share their experience with others. Lots of people would like to avoid burdening their friends and relatives with emotional matters. They may believe that their feelings don’t matter and don’t deserve the attention of others, or they may feel that their problems would be too “upsetting” for others to bear. In addition, some people are so unused to expressing emotion that they can’t find the words to say what’s happening. And some, of course, simply value their privacy and so they’re unwilling to reveal how they’re feeling.

  But as Tim’s experience shows, just because people try to conceal their feelings doesn’t mean that their emotions don’t show. A videotaped study of unhappily married couples, conducted several years ago at the University of Oregon, graphically demonstrated this point. The experimenters told the stressed couples that their task was to “fool the cameras” and pretend that they were happily married. Then they asked the couples to make believe they had just been given a large sum of money and they had to decide together how to spend it. Looking at the printed transcripts of the couples’ conversations, you’d think that most of them faked being happy quite well. The words show them to be loving, respectful, and conflict-free. But when you watch and listen to the videotapes of the couples’ conversations, you get a much different impression. Their tones of voice and facial expressions betray their performances at every turn. Lines like “Whatever you say, dear” and “It’s up to you” are punctuated with sarcasm and contempt. Their interactions are like sieves, leaking hostility everywhere. In fact, that’s the verb psychologists use to describe the way we involuntarily show our emotions: Our feelings “leak” through. This and other studies demonstrate that no matter how much most people try to conceal their emotions, their true feelings usually become evident.

  Studies also show that most people trust nonverbal cues more than they trust one another’s words. Researchers have conducted experiments in which they deliberately combined facial, verbal, and vocal signals in inconsistent ways to see how people react. A speaker might say “Have a nice evening,” while wearing a frown and speaking in a loud, abrasive tone of voice. Or a speaker might say “Go to hell,” while offering a friendly wave and a warm, charming smile. In one study, when the research participants were asked to state which part of the message they relied on to discern the speakers’ true attitudes, they said they relied only 7 percent on the spoken word. But they relied 38 percent on elements such as tone of voice and pace of speech. And they relied 55 percent on facial expressions and other body language.

  That’s how it works in real life as well. In cases where a person is saying one thing with words, but delivering an opposite message with tone of voice, posture, and facial expression, people almost always disbelieve the spoken words and trust instead the manner in which they were said. When it comes to sharing
emotional information, we tend to look most closely at facial expressions and patterns of eye contact. We also watch body gestures, as well as how we position ourselves in relation to one another.

  This is not to say that verbal channels are always ignored. In one study of parents and children in a waiting-room situation, some anxious mothers tended to smile while they sharply cautioned their children to behave. The smile was a positive mask on the negative threat from Mom. The researchers found that the children were not at all confused by this inconsistency. They concluded that most children will believe any source of genuine negative emotion, whether it’s expressed verbally or nonverbally.

  For some people, “reading” emotional information doesn’t seem to require a lot of conscious thought. A woman may see a friend, for example, and know that he’s angry without actually thinking, “Tom’s furrowed brow and compressed lips tell me that he’s mad.” On the other hand, some people find it quite hard to read others’ emotions intuitively; these people need to make a more concerted effort to look for signals.

  Either way, it can be extremely helpful to consciously study how people express emotions through words, facial expressions, tone of voice, and so on. Doing so leads you to see all the subtle cues people pass back and forth as they bid and respond to one another’s bids for emotional connection. With this heightened awareness, you can ensure that the messages you send via body language match the messages you send with your spoken language. You can avoid sending mixed messages or unwittingly discouraging interaction. You can also improve your ability to recognize, interpret, and respond to emotional cues others convey.

  Learning better emotional communication skills can be helpful in many different arenas. Consider, for example, the supervisor who needs to assess whether a new employee is catching on to his job. Afraid of criticism, the worker may be reluctant to disclose any problems. But if the boss can read the employee’s facial expressions for signs of tension, he can take steps to ensure that the worker has the training and resources he needs.

  The trainee may find it useful to pay attention to his own nonverbal signals, as well. Say, for example, that he’s in the middle of a training session and he realizes that he’s been sitting in the same tense position for a very long time. What does the tension tell him about the learning experience? Is the trainer addressing all the issues he’s concerned about? Is there some question he needs to have answered before he can feel assured, and therefore more physically relaxed?

  Consider the parent who’s worried about her teenager’s grades. The mom knows her son is overbooked, and she wants to help him do a better job of setting priorities. But she also knows that if her son becomes defensive in a conversation about the issue, they’ll never agree on a plan. If the mom can listen to her son’s body language as well as his words, however, she may be able to steer the conversation in a more productive direction. She’ll be able to see when she’s having a calming effect on her son, and when he’s becoming agitated. It will be easier for her to determine when he feels the same way she does about some issue, and when they disagree. She will also know when her son truly understands what she’s saying, and when he’s just pretending to understand so they can get the conversation over with. The mother will know when he’s telling the truth and when he’s holding back information, fearful of his mom’s reaction.

  Recognizing feelings, identifying them, and demonstrating your understanding—all of these are important steps to building better emotional connections. And all of them can be enhanced through the emotional communication skills described in the next several pages.

  Understanding the Face

  Think about the pictures of friends and family that we keep in our wallets, on our desks, or hanging in the family den. Are these images of our loved ones’ hands? Are they portraits of their feet? Probably not. People are much more likely to keep pictures of their friends’ and relatives’ faces nearby. It’s their faces that you love to gaze upon. It’s their faces that tell us so much of what a person is feeling—about us, about themselves, about the world around them.

  Because faces are such a significant tool for making and responding to bids for connection, it’s important to have a clear sense of how your facial expressions come across to other people. It’s also important to learn all we can about the way others use their faces to convey feelings.

  Among all the parts of the body, the face is the most uniquely suited for the function of expressing emotion. With the exception of muscles that are attached to the jaw for chewing, there are approximately thirty-three muscle groups in the face that are not attached to moving bones. Instead, their primary purposes include the transmission of emotional signals from one person to another. Information is exchanged via rapid changes in the shape of the forehead, the brows, the eyelids, the cheeks, the nose, the lips, and the chin.

  Research conducted in the nineteenth century by the British naturalist Charles Darwin shows that people worldwide use the same facial expressions to communicate certain emotions. Darwin first explored the evolution of facial expressions by circulating questionnaires to missionaries and others in remote parts of the world. He asked how the native peoples showed when they were happy, sad, angry, and so on. If their answers differed, he could assume that expressions such as smiles were culturally based and not part of our genetic inheritance. But that’s not what he found. Instead, his research showed people around the globe used the same expressions to show the same emotions. And from this he could assume that certain facial expressions were innate and biologically universal. In other words, our tendencies to smile when we’re happy and grimace when we’re angry are built into the “wiring” of our nervous systems and our facial musculature. Such manifestations of emotion are part of what it means to be human.

  Many facial expressions evolved as a way for the human species to survive. Think about the way people grit their teeth and even bare them when they’re extremely angry or threatened. We share this common and highly intimidating expression of rage with our evolutionary cousins—gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans. Or think about the way most people raise their upper eyelids when they feel surprised. Such a wide-eyed look allows you to take in as much visual information as possible—an expression that’s been useful since our prehistoric ancestors first responded to unexpected bumps in the night. And finally, think about the way the nose crinkles in an expression of disgust. With raised nostrils and squinting eyes, our nasal passages and eyes are less exposed to noxious fumes.

  Over the eons, emotional expressions have become more ritualized and less related to survival. Under most normal circumstances, for example, we settle our disputes without biting each other, so teeth-baring expressions aren’t a literal threat. But we’ve come to interpret this facial expression as rage, and we’re wise to respond to it in that spirit. And what about nose-wrinkling? It’s still an expression of disgust today, even though we use it to respond to many things other than unpleasant or poisonous vapors.

  Knowing that certain facial expressions are part of our genetic heritage helps us to understand that they’re universal and instinctive. These notions were reexamined in the 1970s by Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen, research psychologists at the University of California at San Francisco, and Carroll Izard at the University of Maryland. As part of their early research, they showed photos of faces displaying basic emotional expressions to people from around the world. Their findings supported Darwin’s theory: People across many cultures use and recognize the same facial expressions for happiness, fear, anger, sadness, surprise, and contempt or disgust.*

  That’s not to say that some cultural differences don’t exist. Friesen and Ekman found such differences with an experiment where they videotaped the facial expressions of American and Japanese people as they watched a horrific film of an industrial accident. Because the Japanese culture places a higher value on masking one’s emotions, they expected to see less emotional reaction from the Japanese participants. And, in fact, when an offic
ial-looking, white-coated experimenter stayed in the room with each participant as he or she watched the film, that’s exactly what the researchers found. The American participants showed a wide range of distressed facial expressions, while the Japanese participants responded with polite smiles, if at all. Things changed, however, when study participants were left completely alone to watch the film. When they thought nobody was watching them, the people of both cultures showed similarly distressed facial expressions. This led Friesen and Ekman to conclude that even when a culture has strict rules about public displays of emotion, its people still use the same basic facial expressions in private.

  Although there’s still lively debate on this issue, most social scientists now agree that the seven emotional expressions shown in the illustrations on the next two pages are basic to nearly every culture, and the ways they are facially expressed worldwide are stunningly similar. Of course, there are many different variations of these basic emotions. And we often feel more than one of them at a time. But we can consider these seven expressions to be primary colors on a palette. Just as colors can be mixed to create an endless variety of hues, facial expressions can be blended to express a wide range of emotion.

  Sadness

  The inner corners of the eyebrows come up and together when a person is sad. This creates a set of wrinkles in the form of an upside-down U at the middle of the brow. There’s also a slight vertical furrow between the eyes. Taken together, this brow effect is called “Darwin’s grief muscle.” The outside corners of the lips point down.

  Anger

  When people are angry, the inner corners of their eyebrows are drawn down and together in a prominent vertical wrinkle called a “knit brow” or “furrowed brow.” They may open their upper eyelids more widely, displaying the whites of their eyes. They may also create an intense expression by contracting the lower eyelids. Lips may be tightly pressed together, and the pink part of the upper lip may disappear.