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

by John Gottman

  1. Working together, identify the problem that’s causing ongoing conflict.

  2. Each person makes a list of his or her “bottom line” issues. These are the issues about which you just can’t compromise. Make this list as short as you can. The idea is to include only those things about which you absolutely can’t be moved; to change your mind about these items would be intolerable.

  3. Each makes a list of issues about which you might have some flexibility, even if it’s just a little. Try to make this list longer than the previous one. Keep in mind that the more you’re willing to give, the better you’ll be at persuading the other person to give as well.

  4. Show each other your lists.

  5. Working together, come up with a temporary compromise that allows both of you to have your dreams, at least to some extent.

  Here’s an example of how this exercise worked for one family:

  1. Ken and Evelyn are a middle-class Caucasian couple who disagreed about where to send their daughter, Madeline, to school. Evelyn had her heart set on Forest Side, the same expensive private school she had attended as a girl. Evelyn’s research showed that Forest Side definitely had a better academic record than the public school. But Ken believed Forest Side would teach their daughter materialistic and elitist values with which he didn’t agree. He also worried about money; he was afraid that if they spent money on high school tuition, it would hamper their ability to save for Madeline’s college expenses.

  2. Both Evelyn and Ken had just one item on their list of no-compromise issues. For Evelyn it was academic standards. “Madeline should have every chance of getting into the college of her choice,” she wrote. Ken’s must-have issue was ethnic and economic diversity. “I don’t want Madeline’s world limited to a bunch of rich white kids,” he expressed.

  3. For the list of flexible issues, Evelyn wrote that she would be willing to explore schools other than Forest Side. Ken decided he could be flexible when it came to the money issue.

  4. The couple shared their lists with each other and talked about them. “I’m sentimentally attached to Forest Side,” Evelyn told Ken, “but there might be other, more affordable places that are just as good.”

  “There’s no way we can afford Forest Side,” Ken said to Evelyn. “But if we found the right environment, I’d be willing to at least look at the budget with you and see if we might find some extra money for tuition.”

  5. After some research, the family found a private school with a good academic record, a diverse student population, and tuition that was lower than Evelyn’s alma mater. “It’s not Forest Side,” Evelyn conceded, “but I think Madeline is going to flourish there.”

  “I never thought I’d be sending my kid to private school,” says Ken. “But after doing our research, I can see that she’ll have advantages there that I never even thought of.”

  Evelyn and Ken decided to enroll Madeline at the alternative private school, with the agreement that they would reevaluate their decision after her first semester.

  Explore the Rituals You Share and Create New Ones

  Just as sharing your dreams can lead to closer relationships, sharing rituals can help you to build stronger bonds. A ritual of emotional connection provides structure in your life to ensure that bids for connection happen on a regular basis. A ritual of emotional connection is the one place you can count on having a significant exchange with somebody you care about. A regular evening meal with your family can be a ritual of emotional connection. So can a couple’s annual romantic getaway, or the office staff’s quarterly retreat. A ritual can be as casual as saying hello to your coworkers each morning. Or it can be as elaborate as a royal wedding.

  Like routines, rituals are repeated over and over, so they become predictable. Everybody knows what to expect, and everyone knows what his or her responsibilities are in the ritual. But there’s an important difference: Rituals have symbolic meaning. Brushing your teeth in the morning is a routine, kissing your kids good-bye as you leave is a ritual. The difference is, the kiss carries the meaning, while the tooth-brushing does not. The kiss says, “I love you, and I’ll think about you, even when we’re apart.”

  People typically build rituals of connection around such informal activities as sharing lunch or greeting one another at the end of a workday. They also have more formal rituals, such as birthday parties, prom dates, or victory celebrations. Then there are very formal, scripted rituals such as the celebration of weddings, funerals, or holy days like Christmas, Passover, and Ramadan.

  Rituals are important in all kinds of relationships. Feeding and bedtime rituals are a fundamental way for parents to bond with their newborns. And such activities, when done with intention, can continue to be an important way for families to connect well into a child’s adolescence.

  Couples may establish rituals around lovemaking, taking vacations together, or relaxing over a glass of wine at the end of a long week.

  Extended families often have their own unique rituals around the celebration of birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and religious holidays.

  Rituals also serve to bond individuals with larger communities, such as their schools, sports teams, employers, unions, or political institutions. Singing the fight song at a high school football game is a way to say, “We belong together. We’re all Central High School Wildcats and we’re proud of it.”

  The rituals that people celebrate in churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples can be especially significant because they help individuals affirm their connection to a supportive community and to God. Many people find such rituals especially supportive and healing during times of transition, mourning, and crisis.

  Why do rituals have so much potential power in our relationships? For many reasons:

  Rituals symbolize cultural identity and values we share with our families, friends, work groups, or a larger community. They provide a focus whenever two or more people come together around a common activity, belief system, or cause. People may profess to believe in the same things, but rituals give them a way to put those shared beliefs into action.

  Think of the choice of rituals the Roth family might regularly share on Saturday mornings:

  • Maybe they all rise early to gather their ski equipment, pack up the SUV, and head for the mountains. If so, the children will know, “We’re the Roths, a family who values adventure, activity, and the great outdoors. We like to ski and we like to do it together.”

  • On the other hand, they may routinely attend synagogue on Saturday so the children can say, “We’re the Roths, a family who always honors our Jewish traditions. We find meaning in worshiping God together, and we do it in this community.”

  • If the family typically heads for the shopping mall on Saturday mornings, the children might learn, “We’re the Roths, a family who likes nice, new things and we don’t mind spending our hard-earned time and money to get them.”

  • And if everyone scatters and goes his or her own way? Perhaps the family will gather together at other times, for other rituals—bedtime stories, Sunday supper, or breakfast on weekdays. But if the family never comes together in a ritualized way, they may miss out altogether on that feeling of being emotionally connected to one another.

  Rituals ensure that people take time for emotional connection. Lack of time is one of the most common reasons people say they don’t form deeper connections with their families, friends, and communities. Ritual can help to solve this problem because it adds the elements of predictability and intention to our lives. When we make a commitment to participate regularly in some form of ritualized connection, we’re less likely to lose touch with the people who matter most. It’s the difference between saying, “Let’s do lunch sometime,” and “Let’s plan to take a walk together every Wednesday afternoon.”

  The “scripted” or predictable nature of rituals also makes them easy to execute. If we always meet in the same place and do the same thing, we don’t have to spend time researching new sites. We don
’t have to come up with a new plan of action each time we come together.

  But what if you’ve already got a full schedule? The solution is to create an informal ritual out of activities you’re already doing together on a routine basis—activities like watching TV, leaving for work, exercising, commuting, helping the kids with homework, or caring for each other when sick. Many parents of school-aged kids, for example, find they spend increasingly more time in the car, driving kids to soccer practice, ballet lessons, and the like. You can make the best of that time by building a special ritual around it. “Tell me the silliest thing that happened at school today,” Mom might say, inviting each child in the car to share a story. That might be followed with a round of “best things,” “worst things,” or “saddest things” that happened that day.

  Remember, also, that rituals don’t have to be complex or time-consuming; they only have to be repeated and predictable. The husband who always brings his wife a cup of coffee in bed each morning is performing a thoughtful ritual. So is the boss who always starts the weekly staff meeting with acknowledgments for work well done. Ditto for the church congregation that always ends its Sunday service with a chorus of “Happy Birthday” to members who’ve grown another year older. All of these are quick and meaningful ways that people use ritual to connect. (For more ideas of rituals for connection, see chapter 8.)

  Some rituals help us to process our feelings as we move through life’s transitions. The transition may be a minor one, like Mom’s daily departure from the day-care center, or it may be a major one, like a wedding. Either way, rituals give us a way to acknowledge that things are changing and to express our feelings about it.

  Small, simple rituals of transition—such as saying good night to coworkers or tucking a child into bed—may seem inconsequential at the time. But they can give people an extra feeling of trust in the relationship and in the world around them. The child can fall asleep feeling secure that all is right in her relationship with the most important person in her life. The coworker knows that when he gets back to the job the next day, relationships are on an even keel; work will resume in a calm, collegial manner.

  Big public rituals such as bar mitzvahs, graduations, weddings, and funerals can be especially helpful as we adjust to life’s major transitions—changes like growing up, leaving home, starting a new family, or dealing with the death of a loved one. By celebrating such transitions in the company of friends and family, we ask for and receive the emotional backing of our community. It’s a way to feel connected to a large community of support at a time when we need it most. If the ritual takes place in a spiritual or religious community, a person may benefit from feeling spiritually connected as well.

  Rituals can help us to stay connected despite our conflicts. Have you ever had an argument with your spouse, your child, or your parent just a few minutes before you had to leave for the day? With your feelings still stinging from the fight, you faced a choice: Did you (a) offer the hug or kiss that’s always been a ritual of departure in your relationship; or (b) just walk away without a gesture or word? If you chose answer a, your ritual of affection provided an opportunity for you to turn toward one another and begin a repair process, despite your conflict. Even in the midst of battle, your ritual can communicate, “I may be mad at you, but I still value our relationship. I think we can work this out.” If you don’t have such ritualized ways of expressing affection or respect, it might take a lot longer before such feelings are expressed.

  Our culture is filled with examples of other rituals that help to bridge the differences of opposing factions. Think of the way sports teams shake hands at the end of a game. Or the way disparate factions of a church community might come together to share communion. Athletes from around the world compete in the Olympics despite their political and cultural differences. In U.S. political races, when the election is over, the losing candidate typically delivers a concession speech in which he pledges to help citizens come together in support of their new leader. Following the disputed and highly contentious election of U.S. President George W. Bush in the year 2000, his opponent Al Gore delivered a concession speech that was characterized as an important step toward healing and unifying the country. That’s the value of such rituals. Whether the dispute involves a couple, a family, a work team, or an entire country, certain rituals can help us to maintain important relationships even in the face of tremendous conflict.

  Consider Emotional Command Systems

  As you think about rituals you’d like to have in your life, keep in mind that different kinds of rituals may appeal to different people, depending on the emotional command systems they rely on most. The Nest-Builder, for example, might best enjoy rituals that involve outward expressions of belonging and support. A game that explores what everybody has in common comes to mind, or an exercise in which people share compliments with one another might be appealing.

  The Commander-in-Chief, on the other hand, might prefer rituals that help the group move closer to achieving some collective goal. Many work groups, for example, hold annual retreats at which they review the group’s mission statement and then set the next year’s objectives, goals, and strategies, based on that assessment. Those with a highly activated Commander-in-Chief might appreciate rituals that move this task forward.

  The Jester might like rituals that provide entertainment and diversion, while the Explorer might enjoy those that help the group discover new realms of adventure. The Energy Czar might appreciate ritualized relaxation exercises, while the Sentry prefers rituals that help the group feel safe and secure. The Sensualist? Activities such as massage, aromatherapy, or hands-on art projects come to mind. The point is, if you’re creating rituals of connection to use in your family, work group, or circle of friends, it may help to consider the types of command systems that are prominent in the group, and plan accordingly.

  Re-create and Update Rituals in Healing Ways

  Rituals have the potential to be an extremely positive force in people’s relationships. But they can also have a negative power—particularly if somebody uses rituals to manipulate others unfairly, or to cause a rift.

  In one Jewish family I recently counseled, for example, the husband constantly chided his wife for not performing the rituals of their Orthodox traditions in the proper way. Even though he was inconsistent in his own religious practice, he expected her to follow the rules perfectly. But no matter how hard she tried, he always found flaws. Soon she began to feel that she could never be “Jewish enough” to please him, and this was causing a great deal of pain in their marriage.

  In this way, becoming overly rigid about manners, holiday celebrations, religious rites, and the like can harm a relationship far more than it can help.

  Perhaps you’ve seen the Coca-Cola television commercial where five generations of one family are gathered in a bucolic setting for a family reunion. Just as the photographer is about to snap the family portrait, an ancient matriarch asks her great-great-granddaughter for a Coke. “I’m sorry, Grandma,” the young woman says, “but we don’t have any.” At this, the old woman is outraged. “What?” she scolds. “I’m 101 years old and this is probably the last time we’ll get together. We’re supposed to have Coca-Cola!” She backs up her motorized wheelchair, knocking over tables and yelling, “Get away from me! Get away from me!”

  The ad strikes me as both funny and tragic. In its overblown way, it shows what can happen when people cling so tightly to tradition and ritual that it harms their relationships.

  Another hazard occurs when one person bears too much responsibility for making a ritual happen. The administrative assistant who single-handedly prepares a huge holiday party for the staff every year is a classic example. Not only does she feel overburdened and resentful, but the work team misses out on the fun of preparing the holiday party together.

  To remedy or avoid such problems, I often encourage people to take a careful look at the rituals in their lives and what these activities mean to the
m. I counsel them to explore their childhood memories of rituals surrounding mealtimes, holidays, and such. Most people bring up at least a few sorrowful recollections, such as evening meals fraught with conflict over a child’s refusal to eat what’s served. Or holiday celebrations ruined by a belligerent alcoholic relative. Forgotten birthdays. Turbulent bedtimes. Religious ceremonies that were painfully long and excruciatingly boring.

  Examining past rituals may help you to uncover unresolved feelings and hidden dreams. It’s also a great way to discover traditions that you want—or don’t want—to re-create in your current life. A woman raised as an only child remembers stuffy Christmas dinners surrounded by boring, aging relatives who drank too much, then fell asleep. To ensure that her children’s holidays will be much more lively, she’s developing Christmas rituals that involve families with children her daughter’s age, and with plenty of child-centered activities. A man who remembers falling asleep at night to the sound of his parents’ violent arguments goes out of his way to make bedtime peaceful for his own son. First there’s a warm bath, followed by a light snack and a bedtime story. Then it’s lights out while the rest of the family settles into quiet routines. In ways like these, you can create new and healing rituals of connection that celebrate your current dreams and values.

  If you decide you want to change existing rituals in your life, be sure to discuss those changes with others involved well in advance. Remember that your goal is to discover shared meaning and connection through ritual. Making changes on your own without the support of others will defeat that purpose.