Finding Balance

From Negativity to Winning Relationships

Balance is fundamental to so many aspects of wellbeing — whether that is personal or within our relationships with others. Though much has been written about how to find personal balance, less has focused on the idea of balance within a relationship.

Today we are going to focus on the idea of balance within the communication within a relationship (Sounds like Inception (2010) doesn’t it?). Hopefully, it won’t be that hard to follow, read on.

As stated by Kyle Benson from Gottman (read the full article here):

To understand the difference between happy and unhappy couples, Dr. Gottman and Robert Levenson began doing longitudinal studies of couples in the 1970s. They asked couples to solve a conflict in their relationship in 15 minutes, then sat back and watched. After carefully reviewing the tapes and following up with them nine years later, they were able to predict which couples would stay together and which would divorce with over 90% accuracy.

Their discovery was simple. The difference between happy and unhappy couples is the balance between positive and negative interactions during conflict. There is a very specific ratio that makes love last.

That “magic ratio” is 5 to 1. This means that for every negative interaction during conflict, a stable and happy marriage has five (or more) positive interactions.

While it might be initially difficult to view ourselves objectively during the conflict, I imagine without any practice at all you can recall how many times your partner was negative versus positive in the last discussion you had. Examples of negative behaviors might be: dismissing your ideas, not listening, raising his/her/their voice, slamming doors, being critical of you as a person, and not just disagreeing with your ideas, and others.

However, we can’t just point out our partner’s negativity! Can you imagine the scenario of conflict then you add in the feedback of “You aren’t even listening to me!” Hmm, sounds like more negativity doesn’t it? Instead, focus on your own feelings and how the negativity is making you feel. Here are some DO’s:

1. Take a deep breath.
2. If things feel heated, allow yourself (or your partner) to take a break. However, don’t just walk away. Explain what you need AND set a time to resume the conversation. For example “I’m feeling upset and I need a little time to work through my feelings, let’s take 20 minutes and then come back to this conversation because working this out with you is important to me.”
3. Try to understand their point of view before responding. Many times in relationships we think we know what our partners are saying but sometimes it’s a faulty assumption. Exploring what their side actually means can go a long way towards helping you find a solution that is a win-win or in deciding that you may never agree and that’s ok too. Some strategies to do this might include: “I think I hear you saying that you want to spend every holiday with your family rather than mine, is that right?”
4. Hone in on the feeling that you are experiencing as a reaction to your partner. Try to identify what you are reacting to — is it the content, their nonverbal communication or something else? Sometimes it’s less about what they are saying and more about how they are saying it. None of us like when someone is essentially shaking their pointer finger at us as if we were a small child for instance. While your partner might not be shaking their finger (and let’s hope you aren’t shaking yours), maybe they engage in communication that is less than ideal such as “You always leave the kitchen a mess” or (worse) “You are always a mess!”
5. Give honest feedback that isn’t a criticism but an observation about how the process of the argument is going. For example: “I feel frustrated because I’m not sure you are understanding what I’m trying to say.” or “I feel really sad when it seems that I’m not important to you.”
6. Use Assertive communication to Find a Compromise that is Mutually Satisfactory. “I statements” as described above, for instance, really help change the tone of the discussion to make it be more cooperative. After all, discussions with our partners shouldn’t be about winning — rather, they should be focused on how we BOTH win.

For more on improving communication with your partner, check out this series: