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To create a close, intimate connection we need to be authentic in our relationship. However, this is easier said than done.

The post Authenticity in Relationships appeared first on The Gottman Institute.

Out of a fear of abandonment, we unknowingly abandon ourselves.

The post Is It Trauma Bonding or Love? appeared first on The Gottman Institute.

There are two magic words that, in an instant, challenged what I thought I knew about relationship satisfaction, my ideas about the human experience, my mental health, my marriage, and my life.

Two words that, in the moment they passed through my ears, gave me the deepest breath of validation I’ve ever experienced and then some. I finally believed we could improve communication in our marriage and experience a marriage where we both felt validated and heard. I want to give you the same gift, but before I tell you what those words are and let you experience the waves of validation and acceptance crash over you, let me set the scene:

I’m a transplant-working wife and mother of 4 who spent 8 years as a stay-at-home/work-from-home mom but in the last 2 years our budget and our needs (alongside millions of other families) drastically increased. It was never the plan for us to live on one income and when tough circumstances led us to need one parent home full-time almost a decade ago, I stepped away from my career and plans for grad school and I did what our family needed me to do. My partner and I communicated quite a bit and agreed this was best for all of us but it was still very hard.

For years, I carried the bulk of the mental load – I handled the meals, the housework, the errands, the appointments, and all the emotions of an entire family. My mental health began to suffer as I picked up the shoes and the toys and the scattered pieces of our hearts and family and gave everything I had into putting it back together. In truth, my husband worked just as hard alongside me and his mental health began to suffer, too. He’s given his all and I’ve given my all– I have loved it and I’ve resented it- I have felt so much joy experiencing life with my kids and so much shame and guilt for wanting something more or. It felt like a war raging inside me all the time, never fully satisfied and always with one foot in two separate dreams. 

When we decided that my working was the right next step, I felt resentment toward my partner for not making enough money and I also felt intense excitement that it was finally going to be my turn. I felt so confused and my marriage was really suffering. I thought that if I left our home full-time our kids would suffer and I knew that if I stayed home full-time my marriage and I would suffer, which would still create suffering for my kids. GAH.

And here it is; the crossroads I faced and felt so trapped in where I finally met the words that healed me and unlocked a fullness of myself I didn’t know was in me to begin with. Are you ready to hear them? I’m ready to share them.

BOTH & AND

Aren’t they beautiful? BOTH. AND. I didn’t have to choose gratitude OR grief. I didn’t have to choose anger OR joy. I didn’t have to choose love OR pain. I get to experience both at the same time and SO DO YOU. I needed to give myself permission to embrace and experience the both/and of life and so do you.

• You can be both angry at your spouse AND still love them.
• Your marriage can be hard AND beautiful. 
• You can be hurt by your spouse’s decisions AND see the good they were trying to accomplish.
• You can want emotional/physical intimacy with your spouse AND have moments you need to be alone.
• You can deeply disagree with your spouse’s perspective AND validate their experience/thoughts/feelings without compromising your values.
• You can be afraid that the next fight will lead to divorce if it doesn’t go well AND be brave enough to speak the truth and see what happens.
  

We had never been able to communicate so effectively before and once we started it just got better and better. Your marriage can expand to make room for BOTH your experience AND your spouse’s experience at the same time. It doesn’t have to be one or the other and, in reality, marriages run into big trouble when their marriage is only flexible enough to accommodate one partner’s experience at one time.

So, I’ve shared with you what the 2 magic words are, now here are 3 things you can do with them with examples of how it works.

1. Use them to validate your individual experience and heal the pain you’ve experienced by having to choose one or the other.

• When I was younger, I didn’t feel like my voice mattered AND now I have an opportunity to change that.
• I have never felt good enough for anyone AND now I get to see myself in fullness and beauty where all parts of me are welcome.
• My parents never taught me how to communicate well because they always screamed at each other AND I can learn new skills and create a different future.
• “That traumatic experience I had was horrible AND letting myself heal now doesn’t invalidate how bad it was then. I can let go and slowly take steps toward healing.”

2. Use them to validate your needs and your spouse’s needs at the same time by replacing the word BUT with AND when you ask for what you want/need.

• “I know it is often difficult for you to share your thoughts/emotions with me AND in this moment, it is something I really need from you”
• “Right now you feel hurt that I dismissed you during our conversation AND I feel hurt that you cut me off. That conversation didn’t work for either of us. Can we try again?”
• “You worked so hard today AND we still need to cook dinner and help kids with homework; which would you like to do?
• “Last night I noticed you were trying to tell me that we haven’t had sex enough lately because you want to connect with me AND I felt invalidated and hurt when you said that; can I share about that with you?”
  

3. Use them to explore when you’re making decisions together so that you both feel part of the process.

• “It feels important to you to spend this weekend resting AND it feels important to me to spend this weekend doing house projects. Hm, that’s tricky, how can we both get what we need?”
• “I need more non-sexual touch between us to feel connected to you AND you need more sexual touch to feel connected to me. How can we work together?”
• “This $500 bonus check is really awesome! I am feeling worried that if we don’t put it in savings we won’t have it when we really need it AND you’ve been feeling like we haven’t done anything fun together in a while. How can we budget this so that I feel security and also you feel freedom?”

BOTH/AND thinking is MAGIC for marriage. You BOTH have valid feelings, thoughts, experiences, ideas, truth, wisdom, insight, dreams, goals, desires, and wants AND you both deserve a partner willing to create space for what matters to you. You BOTH have areas you can improve and grow in your marriage/lives AND you both deserve the encouragement and support to make those changes possible.

CONNECTION CHALLENGE

Substitute the word “but” for the word “AND” in your relational dialogue this week and see if you feel more connected and validated! 

Marriage365 offers videos, courses, and podcasts filled with practical skills and guidance to build stronger, more connected marriages. Learn more about our Membership.

Written by Anna Collins

Anna Collins lives in California with her husband and four children. She is passionate about her marriage, staying at home with her kids, writing, coffee, good conversation, and game night. Her life dream is to someday write a book and see it published.

The post The Two Magic Words that Changed my Marriage appeared first on Marriage365®.

Source: https://marriage365.com/blog/the-two-magic-words-that-changed-my-marriage/

Dear Captain,

Like 12 years ago, I (she/her) met a guy (he/him) online dating. He was perfect on paper and I felt sparks, which isn’t very common for me. Due to some mental health stuff he was very open about, he was super flaky. We’d get together a few times, then he would disappear for months. We ended up in that cycle for a while – having a great time for a bit before extended periods of silence. He was always kind, gentle, and non-judgmental and was doing his best. I ended up feeling very strongly connected to him, in a way that I haven’t with most other people.

In late 2015, he discovered that a) a different mental health diagnosis better fit his symptoms, and b) he had late-stage cancer and would be starting aggressive treatment. Things were not smooth sailing, cancer-wise. In summer 2016, he got in touch late in the evening and said he needed some support. I headed over to his neighbourhood and we went for a walk and talked for hours. Things got deep and we both shared a lot. There was some vodka (both of us) and some drugs (him) involved. He was waiting for some test results and expected them to be bad. We ended up in a small park in the middle of the night and things got a bit mutually flirty. And then the heavens opened up and we were caught in a sudden, intense rainstorm. Captain, it was the most romantic thing that has ever happened to me. Anyway, we both (him first) expressed interest in touching, made out under a bridge, then went back to his place and naked fun ensued.

A day or two later, I invited him to mine for more no-strings-attached fun. (Bad idea, since I had caught feelings). He enthusiastically agreed, but cancelled before we met up, saying he wasn’t really up to being around people. I assumed he got the test results back and his fears had been confirmed. This time, the silence lasted over three years. I reached out every few months, but never got a response. It broke my heart. I started to wonder if he had cared about me at all. So I stopped reaching out and put him out of my mind. About a year ago, I looked online to see if he was even still alive. I found an obituary, but it was for his girlfriend, who had died unexpectedly a few months prior. I left that man alone.

Then a few days ago, after a tough few weeks – and a dream in which I hit it off with, then got ghosted by Jason Mantzoukas – I was cycling past where he used to live, and got all up in my feelings. I went back to that park, cried, and sat on the grass until my foot got numb and it started to get cold. There’s not much to find online, but I don’t see an obituary. I found a picture that I think is relatively recent and he looks good. Like, lookin’ good, but also looking healthy.

So. Where does casually* reaching out fall on a scale from 1 to This is Bad News Bears and Everyone Knows It But Me? *Saying I was randomly thinking about him recently and asking how he’s doing. No Feelingsbombs.

I know that, usually, when someone stops talking to you, they don’t want to. Is it worth considering he might be too embarrassed about how things went down to reach out? Is there a legitimate possibility that things could be different now, if he is cancer-free and his mental health is mostly under control? Or am I deluding myself because of strong feelings and an idealized relationship that I’ve imagined?

Unbreak My Heart

Dear Unbreak My Heart,

Oh noooooooooooooooooooo.

Hi, it’s me, guest Curator-At-Large for the International Shitshow Museum. I’ve reviewed your application for inclusion in our traveling exhibit titled “Did You Break My Heart Or Did I Do It Myself? Studies In Wishful Thinking” and before I deliver the final verdict I’d like to invite you to view a short piece from my personal archives.

Once upon a time in my college teaching days, a student asked me to greenlight a 50-page shooting script for his final film in my first-semester production course. His was a sweeping, epic tale with 12+ speaking roles set across multiple time periods and multiple locations in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. His crew consisted of himself, and he planned to shoot the whole thing in two days. To give you sense of scope, it was a class for beginners,  the assignment was to make a five-minute film with a crew of 3-4 classmates to cover camera, lights, sound, art department, and production with equipment that could be checked out for a max of three days. The industry default assumes that one page of screenplay = roughly one minute of screen time, and exceptions usually translate to way more screen time (and production time) per page. Just search for “dream ballet” at this link and you’ll understand.

By this point in the semester, the project had gone through several rounds of notes and revisions where instructors and peers gently and not-so-gently encouraged him to trim the story down. Perhaps he could extract some key scenes that could be realistically shot now as proof of concept for a longer piece later? Maybe something that took place in a single time period and required just one or two locations? The student was having exactly none of it. He was going to do it his way or no way, and we could either greenlight him (by giving him the approval paperwork to check out equipment) or not.

My co-instructor was adamant that we should not approve the project in its current form. The student needed to learn that the ability to stick to a brief was part of being a professional, and that it was necessary to kill some darlings in the name of getting things done. My counter-argument was twofold:

1) This wasn’t “the industry,” and we weren’t the studio or the clients. As teachers, we could enforce a few safety protocols and make it clear that we’d only screen X minutes of any project during class time and base our grading on that excerpt, but the students were the sole investors in and authors of their work, and they had final say about what they made.

2) More importantly, there’s no teacher like experience. If you don’t believe me that trying to shoot a 50-page period piece in two days with a crew of one is a bad idea, and you’ve successfully talked 12 actors into showing up to the 9 locations where you’re attempting this Herzogian feat, then who am I to stand in your way? Either your harsh lessons will meet you later, in the editing room, without me needing to say another word about it, or I will get to witness a miracle. Here’s your paperwork, try to have fun out there.

All this to say: You are probably correct that “Hey, are you still in the old neighborhood? Want to grab a drink sometime and catch up?” will probably strike a more believable –and vastly less worrisome– faux-casual note than “Hark! I was crying in the park we used to make out in, and then Jason Mantzoukas appeared to me in a dream and I had a sudden, unshakeable compulsion to stop lurking on your socials and actually DM you! I saw that your girlfriend’s dead, so does that mean you’re single?”

The key word in that paragraph was “faux.” This was never, ever casual for you, and even now you are theorizing stuff like “what if he’s too embarrassed about how he left things last time to reach out” as a way to avoid dealing with the reality that this “flaky,” inconstant man is actually incredibly consistent in his commitment to not playing a consistent role in your life. On review of the data:

“…he would disappear for months…”

“…extended periods of silence…”

“…cancelled before we met up…”

“…the silence lasted over three years…”

“…I reached out every few months, but never got a response….”

“…I looked online to see if he was even still alive…”

I’m so very sorry for whatever you’re going through that left you crying in the park where you once kissed in the rain. I’m sorry that you were willing to settle for breadcrumbs from someone who wasn’t really present for you even back when you were sorta maybe actually dating him. I’m sorry that the memory of someone who used a cancer scare to draw you into a one-night stand, flatly declined follow-up stands, and then ghosted you for the better part of a decade still has such a hold on you. I’m incredibly sorry that when your subconscious went hunting for love’s last known address, the closest thing it could find was hell’s A.I. generated rebound boyfriend, Maximum Derek. That was not what we call a good sign, like, buddy, even your subconscious is warning you not to get your hopes up here! You deserve so much better than this from love, which is not to say that you deserve a happy ending with this particular man. My unambiguous and unfiltered advice is to continue leaving him alone for the rest of time and redirect any and all efforts into other areas of your life, like therapy, or building strong friendships, or mitigating climate change. This man is not the problem or the solution to anything, he’s just a distraction, or a signpost that’s pointing you toward something else you need.

In the meantime: Yes, you are deluding yourself. Yes, you are idealizing this “relationship” in the same letter where you describe what actually went down with astonishing self-awareness, to the point that it makes me a little bit worried about you and not a zero amount of worried about him. Making a messy student film because you were overly ambitious has few consequences to anyone but yourself, whereas it’s actually deeply distressing to cut off contact with someone and realize that they’re still chasing you across time and space like Pepé le Peu. If I thought that reaching out one last time and hearing a decisive no would put this to bed, I’d tell you to rip the band-aid off already. But it took three years of total silence from him to shake you last time, then six more years went by, and you’re still this overly invested in whether this guy might be the love of your life? That does not make me feel confident that you would be able to accept his answer (or silence) any better this time. That said, it’s very good that you asked for help!  You did that because you already know the right answer, and my help is that I want you to avoid upsetting him and hurting yourself, ergo, please keep leaving that man alone and go deal with whatever shit is making this seem like a good idea. Please.

If you, yourself, me, and your inner Jason Mantzoukas can’t convince you that opening this guy up to another round of unwanted pursuit and opening yourself up to another round of rejection is a bad idea, then I guess you’ll just have to reach out to him and see if he ghosts you even harder this time. Maybe you’ll be lucky, and he’ll give you a “no thanks” so clear and unambiguous that you’ll believe him the first time. Or maybe you’ll catch him in vulnerable, horny moment and he’ll dick around with your heart for a little while first. If I’m wrong, don’t forget to invite me to the wedding. I’ll leave a spot open for you in the Running With/Toward Scissors display just in case.

Ahoy, Captain!

My sister and I best friends, absolutely. We get along great and rarely have real fights. She’s looking to buy a house or a condo or a co-op or whatever she can afford. We live in a VHCOL area and she’s not having any luck.

She’s suggested we go in for a place together. I don’t want to for a couple of reasons. First, I want my own space without any family; if that means roommates, so be it. Second, she’s super private and wouldn’t want people visiting. I’d want to be able to invite friends and lovers (which is currently an issue anyway!) over to host and hang out and be a real space for community. Third, she absolutely wants to stay near the family home and I absolutely don’t want that. I don’t even want to stay in the area long term, but even if I did, I’d want to be further from home.

She’s starting to kind of push the idea. she thinks I’m silly for not putting down roots. She thinks it’s not practical to rent ever. she doesn’t believe that I’ll really leave home ever and I’m just delaying the inevitable, especially since i make a little more money and together, we might get an okay place.

how do I make her realize that I really, really, really do not want to move in together? An apartment might be okay, but she wants a forever home and I am not ready for anything forever right now.

Yours truly,
A Sister, Not A Roommate

Dear Sister Not Roommate,

I have good news: You don’t ever have to convince your sister that you don’t want to be roommates or that your reasons are good enough. So long as you don’t actually buy property together or become roommates, you get to win this argument forever. The boundary isn’t where you convinced her it was, it’s where you decided to put it. As long as your actions maintain it, it will hold.

Bad news, I know you want to get your sister to a point where she understands and agrees with your point of view so that she’ll stop pressuring you, but I’m not sure how realistic that is based on her behavior so far. You haven’t been ambiguous or unclear, and she’s still going strong.

From now on, if you can stop her before she gets going, do it. “Let me interrupt you right there. I already said no and I don’t want to rehash this again. New topic!”

If you can’t successfully divert her, be blunt, boring and consistent in your replies. Stop giving reasons or arguing your case. It didn’t work, and now the answer to why you don’t want to be roommates is because you don’t want to be roommates.

“But we’d be able to afford so much more if we pooled our funds.” “But I don’t want to.”

“But renting is silly when you could just buy something!” “But I don’t want to live with you or buy real estate right now.”

“But come on, you’re not really gonna leave home, are you? You’ll end up living with me eventually, so why not just do it now?” “Because I don’t want to.”

“But you know this is a great idea! Why are you being like this?” “Because I don’t want to live with you. What is unclear about that?”

“But we’re best friends!” “That doesn’t mean I want to live with you. We can be close friends who don’t live together.”

“Why are you being like this?” “Why are you pushing me to do something you already know that I don’t want to do?”

Try changing the subject again once you shut her down. If you try a couple of times and she won’t let you, cut the conversation short. It will feel very awkward and mean to cut a call or visit short without achieving some kind of resolution. It’s also already extremely awkward to deal with someone who doesn’t believe you about your plans for your own life and forces you to keep having the same argument again and again! There’s no removing awkwardness here, just redistributing it more equitably.

Pro-tip: Delete any real estate listings she sends you on sight, without responding. If you do this, she’s probably gonna pout and claim that she just wants your opinion or for you to see how cute some place is. Don’t fall for it. People who avidly want to move in with you tend to “just” spam you with adorable real estate listings the same way Jane Austen’s Emma “just” yeeted all the single people in her town at each other’s faces and I “just” sent Mr. Awkward photo after photo of adoptable kittens the summer we adopted Daniel and Henrietta: We’re hoping you’ll fall in love. There’s no talking to people when they’re in this frame of mind unless you’re willing to fall in love with whatever they’re in love with, be it an affordable place built for two with a decent Walk Score or the idea of love or a kitten named Daniel Striped Tiger with a little watch Photoshopped onto his wrist. If you say “I like the kitchen in that one” or deploy a thumbs up emoji, she’ll assume you meant “so that’s the one I’d rather live in with you like I promised I would, let’s get rolling on the paperwork” and you’ll have to have the whole argument again from the beginning.

If at any point, she says, “Fine, I’ll just stop sending you stuff since you obviously don’t care!” that is a victory. Let her flounce! Do not snatch defeat from its jaws by relaxing your filters! You care about her, but she’s made it so that you can’t safely care about her housing search without a lot of friction for you. Hold the line and trust that she can find someone else to go Zillowing with.

If she really won’t let up, you are probably going to have to fight about it. That fight won’t be about whether you should live together, because that’s already been settled. You told her no, and you don’t want to, so you won’t. The end. No, the eventual fight will be about how you gave her an answer and she kept trying to coerce you into getting her way. Sometimes that fight requires raised voices, cutting conversations short, and taking breaks from interacting. If the hundredth time you say “Oh, thanks, but I don’t want to be roommates” doesn’t make it through her wishful thinking field and on the 101st try you snap and yell at her to fucking drop it already? Get ready for your sister and any bystanders she can recruit from the rest of your family to treat you like you were the one who caused the conflict and then escalated it unforgivably.

If that happens, please know, it’s not because you did a bad job of explaining yourself and should have found different words. It’s because you consistently explained yourself just fine and the other person consistently decided to override your consent. Anger is a reasonable, logical response to someone who treats your consent like a passing inconvenience. I hope it doesn’t get to that point, but if it does, you can offer your sister a choice: There’s no universe where you end up living together, so does she want to live in the one where you live separately but stay close and enjoy your friendship, or the one where you keep having the same stupid fight over and over until you’d rather miss out on seeing her than have it even one more time? Let’s hope she makes good choices.