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

by John Gottman

  Keep in mind that no single friend can fulfill all of your emotional needs. Still, in answering these questions, you may identify areas you’d like to pursue with a particular friend—areas of untapped potential in your relationship. On the other hand, you may see the limitations of your relationship more clearly, in which case you might do better to turn to other people for various emotional needs.

  • What does it mean to you to be a good friend? Do you feel that each of you is a good friend in this relationship?

  • Is it important to have a balance between giving and taking in this friendship? How are you doing in that regard?

  • How important is it for you to be able to express your true feelings to one another? Is it okay if you and your friend tell each other when you feel angry, sad, or afraid?

  • What’s the role of acceptance in this friendship? Can you rely on one another to feel affirmed? Supported? Valued? Is that important to you?

  • Is it important to offer advice to one another? Is it important to be willing to listen to each other’s counsel? Does this differ from topic to topic? Are there certain areas where you’re not open to advice from this friend—your marriage, for example, or your career or your children?

  • What’s the role of truthfulness in this friendship? Is it important for you to share honest opinions? Is it okay to disagree?

  • Is it okay in this friendship to be jealous or resentful of one another’s success? Is it okay to express those feelings?

  • Is it okay to feel jealous or resentful if this friend has close relationships with other people? Is it okay to express those feelings?

  • How important is trust and confidentiality in this friendship? What happens if you or your friend betrays that trust?

  • How important is it for you to support the commitments each of you makes outside the friendship? For example, how should you support one another’s commitments to marriage, career, or children?

  • How much time should you make for each other? What if one or both of you have family obligations that get in the way? What if either of you has job responsibilities that steal time away from the friendship?

  • What’s the role of intimacy in this friendship? How much sharing is enough? How much is too much?

  • How dependent should you be on one another? When asking for a favor, how much would be too much?

  • What’s the role of adventure in this friendship? Are you both satisfied with where it stands?

  • What’s the role of entertainment or amusement in this friendship? Are you both satisfied with where it stands?

  • How important is reliability in this friendship? Do you see it the same way?

  • How important is affection in this friendship? Are both of your needs being met?

  • How important is intellectual stimulation in this friendship? Are you both satisfied in this regard?

  • If one of you acquires a lot more money or status than the other, how would that affect your relationship?

  • How important is it to you to have the same philosophy of family life or parenting? Do you share the same values in this area?

  • How important is it for you to have the same ideas around monogamy and commitment to marriage? Do you have this in common?

  • How important is it for you to agree about spiritual matters or religion? Do you agree on these topics?

  • How important is it for you to agree about politics? Do you agree?

  • How important is it for you to pursue the same recreational or leisure-time activities? Are you both satisfied with where this stands?

  Rituals of Connection with Friends

  Exercise buddies. Name the two activities that fall to the bottom of your to-do list most often. If you’re like many people, they’re “exercise” and “spending one-on-one time with friends.” But if you link the two with a regularly scheduled fitness ritual, you may find you’re more likely to do both. When you know that your friend is waiting for you at the corner each morning for your 6:00 A.M. walk, you’re much more likely to get out of bed and do what’s best for your health—and your friendship. It’s also a nice way to show your concern and affection for one another. The ritual says, “We choose to be active together because we care about each other’s health and well-being.”

  But what if your schedules are too unpredictable? Then make a pact to touch base each Monday—or even each morning—just in case the two of you have time to spare for walking, running, or shooting baskets together.

  The standing date. Anybody who’s read the runaway best-seller Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Albom, will understand the power of promising to meet a dear friend weekly, no matter what. It’s the true story of a sports columnist who travels halfway across the country each week to meet with his old college professor, who is dying from Lou Gehrig’s disease. But we don’t have to wait for terminal illness to make this kind of commitment to one another. Pick a place (a diner, a park, a tavern, your home) and set a time (once a week, once a month, once a quarter, or once a year). Make that time inviolate. Then show up with your ears and heart open to each other’s wisdom and influence.

  Volunteer together. Like setting aside time to exercise with a friend, volunteering in tandem allows you to do two important things at one time— nurture your friendship and serve the greater good. I’ve heard of friends who work at food banks together, sit side by side at the polls on election day, or volunteer to co-lead committees at church. Doing this kind of work together reinforces shared values, which form the foundation of great friendships.

  Support groups, book groups, and more. Find some friends with whom you share an obsession, a problem, a craft, or a hobby, and form a group that meets regularly to pursue your interest. Read books about it, share what you’re learning, invite guest speakers, go on field trips. If your interest involves an activity, like quilting or playing cards, that you can do together at your meetings, have at it. If it’s a seasonal activity like skiing, gardening, or salmon fishing, get together in the off-season to make plans for next year.

  Most groups do well by sticking to their original mission when they get together, lest they lose members for lack of focus. It also helps to place a strong emphasis on the friendships and emotional support that sustains the group. Let the group evolve and go in new directions, as well. I heard of a bridge club, for example, that started pooling its winnings to finance trips together. Then there was the men’s spirituality group that got tired of discussing the work of Robert Bly and the like, and decided to just watch Monday Night Football instead. One book group could never agree on what to read, so they just discarded that aspect of their regular gatherings. Now they just come together to talk about their struggles with job and family.

  Six to twelve people are a good number for such groups. This makes a group small enough to allow everybody to participate, but if a few folks can’t make a certain meeting, the group doesn’t lose momentum. When discussion and support is key to your purpose, a casual ritual, like giving everybody ten uninterrupted minutes to talk, can help.

  Commuting time. Board a ferry in the Pacific Northwest on any weekday morning and you’ll find them—the “ferry friends.” They’re people whose bonds are forged by saving seats for one another on the crowded boats that carry passengers from their island homes to Seattle each morning. I know of one woman who passed up a higher-paying job for one reason: Her new schedule would prevent her from visiting each morning with three women who always shared her booth on the boat. Another woman had a friend who suffered from episodes of depression and was sometimes so despondent that she could hardly speak. “But my friend always arrived early and she always placed her briefcase in the next chair so that I would sit next to her,” the woman explained. “Some days it was hard to sit with her in the silence, but I knew she wanted me there, so I would do it. Then a few days would pass, and everything would be just fine.” In this way, the seat-saving ritual sustained their relationship when words could not.

 
; Ferryboats aren’t the only places where commuters meet and hatch such loyal bonds. Friendships are also formed and strengthened by the forced intimacy of carpools, express buses, and commuter trains. If you travel the same direction on the same schedule day after day, you’re bound to meet others with whom you can share the ride. And if you take the chance of turning toward those familiar faces on a regular basis, within time you may find friendships that enrich your life.

  Holiday celebrations. When we think of traditional holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Hanukkah, we usually think of spending that time with relatives, celebrating “the way we’ve always done it.” And yet, people’s most precious holiday memories often involve times when they were separated from family and were forced to celebrate with whatever ragtag group of “orphans” they could gather together. (“It was my first year studying abroad, and I thought I’d be alone on Thanksgiving. But then I met this couple…” “It was during the war, and I was stationed in Korea…” “Remember the first Christmas we were married? We couldn’t afford to fly back home to Minneapolis, so we…”) Two factors make such celebrations special: One is that we’re forced to take an active part in actually creating the ritual rather than depending on others to create it for us. The other is one I mentioned earlier: the very voluntary nature of friendship. In other words, the participants in these celebrations come together because they want to do so, rather than out of a sense of obligation.

  We don’t have to wait until life circumstances separate us from our relatives to have this experience, however. We can simply make the choice to be more conscious about the way we celebrate holidays, and with whom. Inviting friends to mix with your family during the holidays can be a great way to liven up tired holiday rituals. It gives us an opportunity to see our customs with fresh eyes and consider why we do things the way we do them. It can also be fun to invite friends from different religions or cultures to share our traditional holidays. Doing so gives us a chance to remember what our traditions mean to us. (“What is the significance of eating bitter herbs at the Passover Seder?” “Why do we bring these dead trees into the living room every December and decorate them with all these gaudy baubles?”)

  Spiritual practice. Whether we form friendships in traditional churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples, or via pursuits like yoga and transcendental meditation, the emotional connections we make with others around religion and spirituality can be quite strong. It only makes sense. In most cases we’re drawn to particular communities of worship because we agree with that group’s beliefs and values. In fact, many of us are attracted to the same denominations to which our families belonged—sometimes for generations. Once embraced by a particular group, we’re invited to engage in ritualized communal activities like song, prayer, meditation, sacraments, and service to others. By design, such activities help us feel connected to something much larger than our individual selves—namely, a community of spirit. When that connection is authentic, the quality of unconditional acceptance and friendship that we find in such settings may be unsurpassed. That’s why I often encourage people with an interest in religion or spirituality to seek friends in such organizations, and to strengthen those bonds through communal worship.

  Building Better Emotional Connections in Adult Sibling Relationships

  Step 1. Look at Your Bids for Connection with Siblings

  Ask people about their feelings toward their brothers and sisters, and you rarely get a neutral response. Whether we view our siblings as a source of delight or heartbreak, it is clear that sibling bonds are often the most emotionally charged relationships in our lives.

  Why is that? For one thing, people typically spend an enormous amount of time with siblings at a very impressionable age. According to one study, 80 percent of Americans and Europeans have at least one sibling with whom they spent more time during their formative childhood years than they did with their parents.

  Consequently, these relationships become interpersonal “learning labs”—a place where children first experiment with behaviors and roles they can use later in life. The assertive older brother, for example, gets to wear the mask of benevolent (or malevolent) boss, while his little brother experiments with being alternately compliant and rebellious. An older sister, acting as baby-sitter for her younger siblings, finds out how it feels to be a loving, nurturing parent or an abusive, raging one. In learning to fight and reconcile, to cooperate and manipulate, to compare and compete, children use their sibling relationships as a key element for determining who they will become. And in so doing, they develop patterns of interaction that may affect their feelings toward one another for the rest of their lives.

  Because these patterns of interaction are set at such an early age, it’s sometimes hard to stay present in your relationships with siblings. In adulthood, you find yourself relating to brothers and sisters as you remember them—“the gullible little one,” for example, or “the stronger, smarter one.” If you want to connect emotionally, however, you’ve got to be able to see and understand one another as you are today. This often takes an extra measure of effort, attentiveness, and curiosity—a willingness to ask, “How are you now? What’s your current life about? And where are you headed?” Expanding your view of your sibling in this way will provide you with a much broader and deeper terrain upon which to connect.

  At the same time, acknowledging your shared history is also important. It’s what makes our relationships with our siblings so unique, and talking about the past is certainly one way to connect emotionally. But if you want your relationships with siblings to grow and evolve, try not to focus exclusively on yesterday’s issues.

  Exercise: Look for Opportunities to Turn Toward Your Siblings

  Below are lists of activities for building better emotional connections with your brothers and sisters. Scan the lists for ideas about how to converse and interact. Circle those activities that you’d like to try, and make a conscious effort to incorporate them into your life over the next several weeks. Then look back to see whether you notice any shifts in your relationship. Don’t expect to see any drastic and immediate changes; instead, look for subtle shifts of energy—slightly more enthusiasm for the conversation, perhaps, or more expressions of interest in one another’s current lives.

  Remember also that people with truly satisfying sibling relationships often treat one another as they would their friends. So, when you’re thinking about ways to turn toward a sibling, take a look at the lists of suggestions for marriage (this page) and for friendship (this page). They may provide ideas for staying present with your siblings as well.

  Things to Do for Your Sibling

  • Visit one another.

  • Ask your sibling about his or her job. Listen.

  • Ask your sibling about his or her hobbies or interests. Listen.

  • Ask about his or her spouse and kids. Listen.

  • Be kind and accepting to his or her spouse—even if it’s a second marriage.

  • Be kind and accepting to his or her children—including stepchildren.

  • Offer advice if your sibling asks for it. But remember, it’s best to offer words of understanding before words of advice.

  • Refrain from offering advice when you know your sibling’s had enough.

  • Listen to your sibling’s memories of childhood—even when they’re hard to hear or different from your own.

  • Share your own memories of childhood—even when they’re hard to talk about, or different from what your sibling remembers.

  • Write a letter of apology for things you’re sorry about. Then let it go.

  • Accept your sibling’s apologies. Then let it go.

  • Show a continuing interest in your nephew or niece.

  • Host your niece or nephew for a long weekend or spring break.

  • Support your sibling’s efforts to improve his or her life.

  • Remember birthdays and other important events.

  • Accept invitations
to weddings, graduations, funerals.

  • Let your sibling tell his or her own news to other family members.

  • Offer help in hard times.

  • Accept help in hard times.

  • Buy candy from your niece or nephew’s Scout troop (or basketball team, jazz band, etc.).

  Things to Do Together

  • Share jokes, gossip, and news via e-mail.

  • Phone one another often.

  • Give one another pictures of your kids.

  • Host a party for another relative.

  • Pool your family pictures to create a “family archive.” Make copies of the good ones so that everybody can have one in their own home.

  • Interview elderly relatives about their life stories. Record the interviews on audio- or videotape.

  • Research the family tree. (Local librarians can point you to great resources on genealogy.)

  • Talk about your perceptions of the past. (Who was favored? Which parent was the more involved one? How was your parents’ relationship?)

  • Be there for the big events in one another’s lives—weddings, graduations, funerals, serious illness.

  • Hand down the baby clothes.

  Step 2. Discover How the Brain’s Emotional Command Systems Affect Your Sibling Relationships

  In chapter 4, you had a chance to assess how you use your brain’s emotional command systems, the various circuits that carry your emotional responses to life experiences. Using Your Emotional Command System Score Card, on this page, you can compare the way you and your siblings use these systems, which may provide insights about ways to connect emotionally.

  As you become more conscious in your sibling relationships, know that it’s common for the competitive Commander-in-Chief operating system to be hard at work in sibling relationships. While this is true of many peer relationships, with siblings it’s likely to be even more intense. For example, you may have some feelings of jealousy or envy left over from the days when you vied for the same space on Mom’s lap or for the last cookie in the cookie jar. In addition, as adults you may or may not have the same values and lifestyle. After all, you don’t choose your brothers and sisters the way you choose your friends. Unlike friends, your relationship is not centered on living in the same neighborhood, belonging to the same social circle, or working at the same types of jobs. So chances are greater that you’ll be on uneven ground, with one of you having more wealth, more accomplishments, or better luck than the other.