While being mindful of your time, we’re digging deep here. This article draws upon my countless hours with couples (as a therapist), my marriage with all its significant ups and downs, plus insights from people with finer minds than mine that have helped along the way. It’s the best I can offer. Enjoy!
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At heart, a relationship represents an investment. With any investment, there’s something valuable at stake. Naturally, we’re primed to continually check that a fair return is available to us.
In essence, we want to know that our partner shares the unwritten arrangement that keeps the foundations of the relationship — loyalty, honesty, safety and trust — sturdy and robust.
When conflict occurs, these foundations can start to wobble. Faced with an ongoing dispute, both partners will often begin nursing a story about what has happened, what went wrong, whose fault it was and, critically, what the other person should be doing to put things right again.
It’s here that negative communication patterns commonly emerge — criticising one another, becoming mean or spiteful, getting defensive, and withdrawing love and attention. What you say and what they hear remain different things. And vice versa.
This process represents a draining and disheartening experience. In essence, all we want is to be understood and also to understand. It’s not in our interests when we fail to empathise with where our partner is coming from.
And so it continues. Both parties turn away from one another, often with painful results. Intimacy may suffer, empathy evaporates, suspicions arise, and mistrust develops.
If this sounds familiar, this guide and included tasks will offer you some practical and meaningful support. These ideas inform my marriage daily (married in 2006).
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This will help you dig into your relationship sub-text to truly understand yourself and your partner. But first, you (me … all of us) need to be ready to offer a commitment. A genuine commitment involves:
- Listening to understand, not just respond
- Understanding the sub-text — being attuned to what your partner is really saying
- Reflecting honestly upon where your assumptions may cause harm
- Fostering receptivity to change the story you’re telling yourself
- Being prepared to move on from the past and look to the future
Okay, with that said, let’s start with the basics. Each section has follow-up questions that I encourage you to reflect upon.
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1 — Know How To Communicate
I hear and use the word ‘communication’ a lot. To the point where I resent how long it takes to say and hear the word. Yet it’s the crux of, well … pretty much everything.
To improve communication, you need to know how you and your partner prefer to express yourselves. Not everyone has the same communication preferences.
For instance, faced with a problem, some people like a frank and outward discussion, while others might prefer to hold off from talking, waiting to see where feelings settle once things have cooled down.
Similarly, each of us has preferences for how we like to express and receive love and appreciation (commonly referred to as Love Languages). Understanding these preferences (both your own and your partner’s) will help you:
a) communicate your expectations more clearly
b) take the guesswork out of decoding your partner’s hopes and inclinations.
Think for a moment, what gestures, or acts of love, touch you the most?
Perhaps your ears prick up, and you experience a warm glow at the sound of compliments or words of encouragement (‘You’re looking great today!’). Or maybe actions speak louder than words: The thought and time involved in simple acts of service — such as having a meal cooked for you — might mean the world after a long day’s work.
Maybe receiving simple gifts — such as a small loving card left on the breakfast table — spikes your affections, or perhaps it’s all about the time you and your partner spend together that builds your faith in a soul-nourishing and quality relationship. Or it could be that it’s all about the physical closeness — holding hands, kissing, hugging — that makes it feel worthwhile when you get time together.
These affirmations of care are not exclusive. Emotionally secure and intimate relationships will likely involve a combination of these gestures and expressions of love. Yet your partner’s primary preference for experiencing love (Tip: Commonly, our preferences for receiving love are what we’re inclined to offer) won’t be replaced by the others. If physical touch is yours, or your partner’s preference, no number of presents or compliments will replace this. They want to know that you’re there, not just emotionally but physically.
Questions to consider:
- What does meaningful appreciation look and feel like to you?
- What does meaningful appreciation look and feel like to your partner?
- To what extent are you both aware of one another’s preferences?
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2 — Know Your Relationship Needs
We all know that we have physical needs — for food, water, warmth and shelter — which we need to survive. Equally, we also have a range of emotional needs that must be met to ensure our mental health and well-being.
From this perspective, your relationship consists of three organisms:
- You
- Your partner
- Two of you together.
The extent to which you can meet your emotional needs (think of it like emotional nutrition) plays a major role in the health of your relationship.
Two under-nourished people cannot feed on one another. When they try, the result is an introspective relationship ripe for blame and resentment.
So efforts to secure your emotional needs are a cause to strengthen your relationship.
These needs are for:
Security: A sense of safety and certainty; an environment where people can live without experiencing excessive fear to develop healthily.
Attention: Receiving consideration from others, but also giving it; a vital form of energy exchange that fuels the development of each individual, family and culture.
Intimacy: Emotional connection to other people for friendship, love, closeness, and fun.
Privacy: Adequate time and space to reflect upon and consolidate our experiences.
Connection to a wider community: Interaction with a larger group of people and a sense of being part of the group.
Competence and achievement: A sense of our abilities; the conviction that we have what it takes to meet life‘s demands.
Autonomy and control: A sense of volition over what happens around and to us.
Status: A sense that we are accepted and valued in the various social groups to which we belong.
Meaning and purpose: Being stretched, aiming for meaningful goals, having a sense of a higher calling or serving others creates meaning and purpose.
When these needs are sufficiently met, we feel validated and secure about our place in the world. When one or more needs are unmet, these accumulate to represent stressors in life. So how do these needs relate to successful relationships?
It all comes down to how you help move each other along to meet these essential needs.
Questions to consider:
• Which (if any) of these needs might not be getting met for you?
• Which (if any) of these needs might not be getting met for your partner?
• What might you do for yourself to get these needs better met?
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3-Help One Another to Get Needs Met
(and know when yours might wait)
Primarily, solid relationships are about service. As a result, a successful partnership will be one in which you are concerned with helping one another get physical and emotional needs met.
So how might we go about this? Some needs relate more directly to our relationship than others. For instance, you can attend to your partner’s desire for intimate connection and attention exchange. Equally, you can respect and support their need for occasional privacy. Yet, for instance, their sense of status and competence are concerns they will need to attend to themselves.
In addition, it’s essential to remember that — while emotional needs are stable across us — we each get these emotional needs met differently.
For instance, one person might achieve a sense of status through their success at work, whilst someone else might get a similar need met by being the go-to figure and trusted confidant within their social circle.
Whilst you can’t do your partner’s work for them (and vice versa), you can support them in pursuing their emotional fulfilment. For example, if success at work is significant to your partner’s sense of status, you might stretch yourself to understand those occasions when they have to work late.
You might do this because you know their commitment to work is essential to their overall satisfaction and well-being.
The benefit is then a two-way street — you assist their work endeavours, and, all being well, they come home feeling supported, acknowledged, and grateful for your understanding.
Of course, this exchange is all about balance. A successful relationship concerns itself with an ongoing negotiation in which both you and your partner are prepared to make a change (and compromise) in pursuit of the other’s wellbeing.
Every relationship is different. As a result, you and your partner need to construct a way of making this mutual commitment resonate with your circumstances. If one partner fulfilling their needs interferes with their partner’s ability to feel happy within the relationship, this needs to be addressed. However, if both parties commit to compromise in pursuit of one another’s welfare, a consensual middle ground will nearly always prevail.
When needs clash
To illustrate a stereotype, imagine this: Partner A arrives home from a demanding day at work — relieved to be unburdened and looking forward to the prospect of unwinding. ‘Finally, a bit of peace!’, they think to themselves.
At home, Partner B has been taking care of family matters and juggling the many — high maintenance, low brain — domestic chores that keep household life functioning. Understandably, Partner B is also ready for some respite (and some adult attention). In such circumstances, both partners require empathy and understanding. Each has legitimate needs.
The trouble is both partners may (temporarily) be too low on the requisite spare capacity to attend to each other’s desires.
Although both sets of needs are reasonable, these are likely (at the moment) to clash. Whilst Partner A focuses upon, let’s say, meeting a need for privacy and personal space to decompress, Partner B is motivated to pursue some much-deserved attention and emotional connection.
You can see how these might not align. For this reason, it’s worth anticipating and planning for potential situational pinch points with your partner.
In some situations, you may need to de-prioritise your needs. Likewise, in other moments, so will your partner with their needs, too.
Questions to consider:
- How might you support one another in getting your emotional needs better fulfilled?
- Between you both, what does meaningful compromise look and feel like?
- When necessary, what would it take for you to put your needs (temporarily) on hold in support of your partner’s endeavours?
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4 — Prioritise Presence
Relationships need to be maintained; they don’t just look after themselves. But how might you go about this? A couple whose relationship has grown stale may place cleaning the dishes, walking the dog, doing Yoga, and finishing the crossword puzzle ahead of spending time with one another.
And that’s not to mention the potential presence of children placing bids and demands for your time and energy along the way). Life is full of external pressures and domestic to-dos, all lining up to prevent you from enjoying quality shared company.
It’s here that having some agreements, i.e. pledges that bring unspoken expectations into the open, will support you in carving out some meaningful time together.
Pledge #1 Set the time
Some people like to connect with their partners the moment they step through the door. Others want to arrive more gradually, perhaps taking some time to decompress from the day’s events and settle their thoughts as part of their transition into home-zone interaction. When these expectations go unaired, tension and disappointment may arise because both partners’ preferences remain unheard. So begin by setting a time that acknowledges both of your needs. Identifying a consensus will help you each to align in arriving together.
Pledge #2 Dedicate presence (for twenty-thirty minutes)
The gift of attention is one of the primary motivating fuels for any successful partnership. Receiving attention promotes a sense of acceptance and reassurance. This interaction provides a calming antidote for many demands that might pull you apart daily.
To dedicate presence, start by focusing attention; express consideration for your partner’s tasks and experiences throughout the day. Next, open awareness. In other words, listen to understand your partner’s experience, not merely to respond before rushing along to your own. Support this interaction with generous intention.
In other words, aim to view your partner’s experience through the lens of their hopes and concerns, i.e. temporarily suspending your views and judgements to attend, offer care and fellow feeling.
Pledge #3 Watch the content
All too quickly and frequently, when you and your partner have limited talking time, the focus of conversation may turn towards conflicts or concerns within the partnership.
Whilst any grievances deserve attention, this talk is about giving you and your partner the space to discuss your thoughts aside from the relationship. Since the focus is on external events, expressing support and understanding of your partner’s worries and stresses is easier. So, ask your partner about their time and listen to what they tell you.
Pledge #4 Remain open and receptive
This conversation is an opportunity to unburden and distribute whatever might be going on for you both. It might feel uncomfortable if your partner shares anger, sadness, frustration or fear. Often, we’re tempted to find a quick solution or move the conversation along. Whilst understandable — feelings of discomfort may indicate our unease around expressing negative emotions — your role is merely to listen and acknowledge.
Allow this time to be a space for celebration, too. Share that if you have a victory at work or as a parent. Beyond raising frustrations, a relationship is about sharing and taking pleasure in life’s successes together. This sense of journey and triumph over adversity often makes the partnership meaningful.
Questions to consider:
- What (if anything) might stop you both from finding a mutual time together — and what can be done to resolve this?
- How will you ensure that this short time together remains focused on issues aside from the relationship?
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5 — Know How To Manage An Argument
Conflicts invariably arise despite how strong a relationship is.
However, while conflict is inevitable, combat is optional.
If you have lots of arguments with your partner, it is not necessarily a sign of a bad relationship or that you are ill-suited. What matters is how you both deal with the issue at hand — or how you argue.
Your relationship will strengthen if you learn to air grievances and complaints with a constructive attitude. But when a difference of opinion descends into blaming, accusing, generalising, exaggerating and undermining each other’s character, the relationship could be headed for the rocks. You don’t want that.
So, a way forward. A good agreement (or compromise) is akin to drafting writing. You don’t need a result straight away. Instead, it’s often wiser to compile (or draft)a compromise in steps. Paradoxically, couples racing to find an answer — in the heat of the moment — often drive one another further away. Seeking solutions when emotional is not the way to go.
Rather, do this …
The ‘Get it Right’Argument Guide
- Agree to have five minutes each to speak without interruption.
- Stick to the issue under discussion; do not bring up grievances from the past (‘What about when I wanted to visit my mother last Christmas, and you …!’)
- Do not attack each other’s character (‘You’ve always been a selfish (insert preferred insult)’!
- Avoid the words ‘always’ and ‘never’; such generalisations are unlikely to be true.
- When the first person has spoken, the second should summarise what they think was said without judgment or criticism. The first speaker then corrects their summary if necessary.
- Then the second person speaks for five minutes, after which the first person summarises (again without blame or criticism), and the speaker corrects as necessary.
- Say nothing more at this point! Agree to go away and digest what you have heard, whether you agree with it or not.
- If there is something to be resolved, agree to meet again later or the next day at a specified time, and use the same rules (no blaming, no character assassination, no interrupting, etc.) to put forward and discuss possible solutions. Do not use language secretly designed to antagonise or demean. For instance, if one person has superior reasoning skills and can rebut each point the other makes with ease, the one who feels thwarted must resort to a purely emotional response.
- Remember, if there is a dispute, there is a clash of needs. So it is important to genuinely value each other’s contribution and understand each person’s needs fully and clearly.
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Thank you if you read/ listened to this. I hope it’s worth your time. There’s a fair bit to digest, so you might like to get a clear and bright pdf version for reference. If so, …
(Grab a beautiful PDF version of the article HERE)
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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Photo credit: Everton Vila on Unsplash